This was actually part of a series of posts on MLB and I think it deserves to be recorded.  The other work isn't mine to put up, but here's the link to the Borrowed Wings post where it started [link].  I think this works by itself, however.

TWILIGHT'S DAWN

I opened the door and stepped out into the grey dawn. The stench was overwhelming, as ponies of every type and description lay in heaps entangled in the guts of monstrous behemoths and less describable demons. As fires burned at all corners, a fine dusting of ash and bone meal coated my nostrils, causing me to sneeze and retch at the same time. I needed to take my charges away from this fresh new hell, and quickly. There was not enough food and water in the mountain sanctuary to last another day. I prayed to the spirits of my departed princesses to keep the worst of the worst out of view of the young colts and fillies filling the cavern behind me.

I cried out to them, using the Canterlot voice as sweet Luna had taught me, "BRACE YOURSELVES! FOLLOW, AND LOOK NOT LEFT NOR RIGHT! DO NOT FLY! STAY WITH THE HERD!" Then I plunged down the narrow path to the valley floor, the pathetic and terrified remnant of our once great nation behind me, crying, screaming and puking as they ran. "DO NOT LOOK!" I said in a voice that commanded obedience, and some heeded, but many could not, as the slaughterhouse smell wafted through the fetid air and awoke primal fears from an earlier age, when ponies were but dumb animals, mastered, and often eaten, by man. Several reverted to atavism, the intelligence leaving their eyes as insanity and fear crowded out reason. They whinnied and screamed and bucked, at least two charging off down slopes too steep for passage, to tumble broken and bloody to that carnal plain below. I could do nothing for them, and had I tears remaining, I should have cried enough at least to wash this dust made of the bones of my race from my eyes.

The rest followed, either intelligently or with the instinct to stay with the herd. I could heal those later, if we made it to our planned destination, whatever dead gods may remain to protect us. I resisted the urge to look upon the horror myself, for fear that I would see a tuft of rainbow colored mane, a broken party cannon, a twisted body surrounded by the shattered forms of animals that died fighting the unthinkable. A glittering bejeweled mace, the torn and battered hat of a dear friend. While I stayed in a cave and hid with the children. I may never die, but neither will my shame.

"TO THE ARK!" I led the survivors down the winding narrow pass to the docks, where I prayed the ship would still be, hidden by my magic. The Sea Ponies would help us establish a New Equestria, far away from here, on a distant island, until our numbers grew and time would heal this now desolated plain. We will return, I swear it.f