Heralds of a New Age

by baldraug666

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

Twilight Sparkle's thoughts turned introspectively as she returned home from the graveyard. “It's been 33 years since the elements were needed last." She mused silently to herself. “Are they even needed anymore? And what will happen when the current Bearers are all gone? Will Celestia take them back, or will they collect dust in somepony's attic?" She sighed “I just don't know."

Her inward thoughts distracted her from where she was going and she accidentally bumped into somepony. “Oh! I'm so sorry!" Twilight said, apologizing profusely for her carelessness.

“It's alright Ms. Sparkle." The other pony said. He gave Twilight a quick once-over to make sure she was OK, then said in a louder and slower than necessary voice, “Are you okay, Ms. Sparkle?"

Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. “I'm old, but I'm not deaf just yet Proudhoof!" She said feigning cantankerousness. She looked at young Proudhoof Doo. She marveled at how much he looked like his mother, with the bright blonde mane, and his bluish-grey coat. He lacked his grandmother's, to put it colloquially, “derped" eyes, and thankfully her and his mother's clumsiness. He had his father's piercing magenta eyes, and his grandmother's recklessness and adventurous spirit.

Proudhoof saw through her façade and chuckled, but jumped when a tiny cyan blur sped by before skidding to a halt a few feet away. Proudhoof facehoofed as another small blur barreled into the first. The two blue blurs were his sisters, Speedup and Scootaloo Doo.

Speedup, called just “Speed," by all was the older of the two. Scootaloo “Scoots" was younger by a few years. Those two looked much more like their father's mother than their mother's. Both had a less intensely striking cyan coat, and while Speed inherited the prismatic mane and tail, Scoots got their mother's blonde, albeit with streaks of red and purple. Neither of the two had cutie marks, but Proudhoof did. His was an anvil with a halo of bright red surrounding. He was an excellent blacksmith, recently apprenticing with Irontongs, the local smith.

As Proudhoof was trying to wrestle his two sister's apart, Twilight noticed the rest of the family approaching not far off. The parents rushed in to check on their children, the two far more aged mares following. As they grew nearer, Rainbow Dash finally noticed Twilight. She trotted over and the two exchanged pleasantries.

Twilight looked questioningly at Rainbow, and asked "Why are you all the way in Ponyville? I thought you were in Manehatten for Wonderbolt tryouts until next Friday."

Rainbow grimaced at the memory. Of the five ponies who tried out, only two were decently competent fliers. Of those two, one took a particularly brutal crash and was hospitalized with four broken ribs and a punctured lung. The final pony fainted from nerves halfway through the performance.

"The tryouts were a disaster, Twi." Rainbow said. She chuckled and continued, "I left early because I didn't want to deal with the criminal negligence suits. I left Soarin and company to deal with those." Ever since growing too old to perform as a Wonderbolt, Dash had moved on to coach and train new recruits, then a recruitment agent, and finally a supervisor to all of the Wonderbolt's dealings. She, like Pinkie Pie, hadn't slowed down in the least with old age. She was beginning to continue the story when a third, hyper, and wonderfully Pinkie-esque party entered the scene.

With a loud and high-pitched cry of “Hello everypony!" And a collective groan from a few of the adults, Little Pippin Pie bounded towards the small group. In mannerisms, words, deeds, and sometimes even thoughts Pippin was a spitting image of her Grandmother, Pinkie Pie, but in colouration more like her father. Her coat was a soft green, and her mane was infinitely less outrageously styled than her grandmother's, coloured a startling grey. Few knew where the grey came from, because her mother's mane was the pink that ran in the family, and the father's was blue with orange highlights. Most simply attributed it to her being a "Pie."

Pippin had, since foalhood, had her grandma's endless, and admittedly infectious, enthusiasm, her unexplainable quirkiness and curiousness, and remained to this day equally friendly and extroverted. She also inherited the "Practically Patentable Pinkie Pie's Pinkie Sense," to quote Pippin on the subject.

Since the elder Pie still refused to admit to growing old, she and Pippin engaged in partying and pranking day in and day out, leaving Pippin's poor mother, Polly to tend to Sugarcube Corner with the Cakes gone. This immature and irresponsible behaviour quickly garnered the ire of many adults, not including Twilight, Rainbow, or Fluttershy, of course.

She moved in the same impossible bouncing fashion, and in true Pie family tradition, upon reaching minimal conversational distance, took it upon herself to lapse into an unsurprisingly one-sided conversation about some author on a thing called a "websight" writing a story about all of them.

Of course none of them understood. "But that's not true!" She whined, breaking off from her previous train of thought completely. "You know what I'm talking about Mr. Author Person! And I'm not whining!"

Most of the small gathering ignored her, these sudden and unexplainable outbursts being normal for one of her stock.

Pippin absentindedly scratched her mane and left forehoof before having an ear flop about and her teeth chattering. She was confused by these odd feelings, but it suddenly hit her.

“My Pinkie Sense!" She cried. Everyone turned to look at her, years of living with the Pies teaching them to trust Pinkie Sense.

“What is it Pippin?" Scoots asked, nervous and frightened.

Pippin experienced another bout of twitches and itches, then blurted out with, “The author is going to reveal another main character soon!" The little gathering looked at her quizzically, before deciding to go get ice cream for the foals.

The group meandered in the direction of Fluttershy's Cottage, Pippin bouncing along behind, spouting her ominous prophecy of character exposition at different intervals.

Suddenly, and without warning, the small group felt the earth shake beneath them. Huge tremors flared around them; the ground heaved and roared.

And off in the distance, they heard a terrible, ferocious mind-rending roar, coming straight form Fluttershy's Cottage. The roar sounded again. Massive, chaotically evil, and horrible, all of Ponyville froze, staring in the direction it came from. Almost no pony heeded the tremors, not even when a particularly vicious one rent a hole in the very earth, swallowing a fresh-fruit stand. Only the owner noticed, watching as his livelihood tumbled down into the abyss that yawned beneath his hooves. Even then, he did not pay it much heed, for he quickly turned back to the commotion at hand.

The small group of ponies, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Stronghoof, Speedup, Scootaloo, Dinky, Ditzy Doo and Pippin Pie, spared no time in leaping into action. They sprinted towards the commotion, worry for their friend overcoming their fears, while Pippin bounced jovially alongside them, leisurely taking her time, yet still never straying behind the group. Another horrendous roar split the afternoon sky, and a plume of smoke burst from the treetops ahead of them.

They were nearing the edge of Ponyville, getting closer to the scene every second. Finally, they rounded a bend just in time to see a massive, ancient dragon burst through the treetops, roaring ferociously. Another plume of flame lit the sky in a brilliant blaze of red, thankfully igniting nothing. The beast lurched towards the cottage, where the group could see two small, yellow ponies huddled together on the ground. Fluttershy, and her granddaughter, Angelshy.

"FLUTTERSHY!" Rainbow and Twilight yelled in unison. Rainbow put on a burst of speed, adrenaline pumping, and pulled ahead of the group, heading straight for the fierce monster. Twilight attempted to do the same, but as she willed herself to go faster she felt something in her hip pop, and collapsed onto the ground with a cry of pain. Ditzy and Dinky saw what had happened, and slowed down to help the fallen, aged pony.

While Twilight was being attended to, Rainbow had pulled far head of the rest of the group, racing on ahead, not feeling the burning in her lungs, or the stitch in her side. She unfurled her wings and started flapping them as she ran. Soon, she was flying straight at the colossal dragon. She put on another burst of speed, and with an angry yell which left her without a voice for days, she burst through the sound barrier, a brilliant prismatic BOOM shaking the earth around them more than the tremors. As she did so, she angled herself with one hoof pointing forwards, and collided with the titanic mass of dragon.

Fluttershy watched this with half-blind eyes from the ground below. She couldn't clearly make out what was happening, but when she heard the sonic boom, she understood it all in a moments' time.

"Rainbow Dash, NO!" She yelled, but her already meek and timid voice had been further tempered by age, and she barely reached the decibels associated with conversation.

The shockwave of punching the dragon on the jaw sent reverberations all throughout Rainbow's body, shaking her from hoof to tail. The impact shattered her shoulder, causing her to careen out of control. She plummeted towards the ground, but regained control just long enough to enact an emergency landing, skidding and tumbling until she blacked out from the pain.

The dragon fared little better, the velocity at which the small tasty-looking pony was traveling was enough to give her punch an impossible amount of power for anypony. It wrenched his neck to the side, and dislodged a massive canine, which flew off to the side, scattering droplets of crimson blood. The tooth impaled a tree, almost spearing the prone form of that same overly prismatic pony. After the dragon recovered, it let out a roar that quickly turned to a sob. It turned back to the insignificantly small Fluttershy and cried out, "The rainbow one kicked me again!"

---

Fluttershy had known from the start that it was the dragon they had asked to move from his cave all those years ago, and had tried to warn Rainbow Dash, but she wouldn't listen. Originally, she too was frightened by the tremors, which it turned were caused by the dragon stamping about in pain, because he had a huge splinter stuck into the joint of his wing. He had come to Ponyville because he hoped Fluttershy could help him.

A few hours later, after Rainbow and Twilight were both hospitalized, Rainbow Dash with a broken shoulder and an almost severe concussion, Twilight with simply a dislocated hip, and after Fluttershy had helped remove the splinter from the dragons wing (as well as help his jaw-wound) the two ponies decided to visit the elder mares in the hospital. Fluttershy went in first, fawning and fussing over the two for being so careless. Dash responded with her usual brand of dismissive remarks about her being able to withstand anything, but Twilight barely responded. She sat in bed, a look of hard contemplation on her face. Neither Fluttershy nor Rainbow noticed, but timid little Angelshy, almost exactly alike Fluttershy, except for her straw-coloured mane, watched intently. She was a shy pony, less so than her grandmother, but still did not like social situations too much.

Regardless of her timidity, she slowly walked towards Twilight's bed, asking in a ridiculously tiny voice, "Are you OK Ms. Sparkle?"

Naturally, Twilight, in her advanced years, didn't hear a thing. So Angelshy tried again, a little louder this time, and obtained the same reaction.

Finally, she tapped Twilight on the shoulder, startling her out of her stupor, and posed the question a third time. Twilight looked down at the young mare, and nodded her head in affirmation, saying that "Yes, dear, everything is fine."

Angelshy walked off, knowing full well that everything was not fine, and that Twilight sparkle knew that she understood this.

The reason for Twilight's stupor, was that she had failed in protecting her friend, (albeit unnecessarily.) She hadn't been able to even reach the dragon, let alone stop it, before her age caught up with her. Had the dragon had sinister intent, it would have killed Fluttershy, and Twilight would not have been able to stop it.

Even Rainbow Dash, with her massively powerful kick, would have only angered it more. Twilight was now faced with the fact that, the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony were no longer able to provide in a crisis, and that troubled her greatly.

"What if something were to actually happen," she mused, "How many would die because we're all too old to do anything but get in the way?" She sighed to herself, and told herself she needed to have a long talk with Celestia about this problem she faced.