Pile

Chapters

Dmitry
Forest
Sanity
Mountain
Dirt
Horizons
Anomaly

Dmitry

“It’s cold.”

“Fuck you, it’s cold. Make the damn run! It’s your turn!”

“S’ Vetrov’s turn! I went two days ago, and my shift in the Factory District was yesterday!”

Blackened flakes of fluffy-wispy ice drifted through the shattered basement window, past the oil rags tenderly hung as insulation. Swirling in a majestic dance above the heads of the arguing men, the snow—soot by another name—alighted on heavy shoulders, blood-puffed noses, and shattered spirits. There was fire. Black, greasy smoke slithered across the stained ceiling above, pooling upon the four inches of cement and plaster between Comrade Stalin’s decrepit defenders and the devastated tenements above.

Men and women, children and animals, Bolsheviks and the Soon-to-be-Dead—all made a home down in the low places. The open air belonged to the Germans and the Burlap Ghosts, now.

And yet, despite the bleak numbness in neighbors’ eyes; cracked and dirty hands; burnt and bloody clothing; cold and empty hearts, the First Citizen’s once shining city held on one more day… and that was beautiful.

Truly.

The Beautiful Underground, Stalingrad.

“Vetrov? Dmitry, are you awake?”

A Burlap Man never sleeps, Lieutenant. You know…

“Dmitry… Soren’s right. It is your turn to make the run.”

Pile—he referred to himself as a ‘pile’ now, as one was wont to do in light of the most recent starving—righted himself at his superior’s command. The woman slumped nearest him cast a sympathetic look, and Pile took it: took it right out the air and kept it within himself. She wore the uniform of an infantryman. These days, it was hard to tell whom they belonged to—husband, son, father, brother—or if she was a fighter herself. Lord knew they needed them... more people to fight, that was… and husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.

The Run was also needed.

“Pack’s in the corner, by the stairway… Want a partner?”

Every day people arrived: runners from different parts of the city carrying scrounged ammunition, weapons, and medicine. The supplies—whatever wasn’t used on the spot—were consolidated into a large, woven pack to be worn by a runner and taken to the abandoned factory that the good Comrade Zaytsev made into his base of operations. Oftentimes, ammunition going to Vasily’s marksmen was only entrusted to one of his former students: this was one of those times.

“Dmitry? Dmitry, do you want someone to go with you?”

Pile shook his head, rising to his feet from newspaper bedding and suckled-clean rat bones. He never took another with. One person’s death was enough.

“All right, Corporal. Stay safe, eh? You’re going to the House, today.”

The House? Those poor bastards were still alive?

“Sergeant Pavlov will direct you from there,” the Lieutenant mumbled carefully, moving away toward the small fire; away from Pile’s gaze. He knew what he asked was sure suicide. The House was tenuously held by four men, surrounded by a buzzing hive of German forces. No reinforcements could break through, and they wouldn’t be able to in the foreseeable future, but one man… one man could perhaps slip in and re-supply the tired defenders.

Pile cast his weary gaze about the room, gathering the feeling of his comrades in arms: the sight, the sound, the smell. He would need it, later, in the city. His eyes met Private Soren’s, who at least had the decency to look sorry for him, but the marksman could see the relief behind his thin, sad eyes. He was only human, after all.

And no human wanted anything to do with the doomed souls in Pavlov’s House.

The smell of grease smoke was worse toward the ceiling, and Pile coughed raggedly, tilting his nose down away from the cloying scent. He was eyeing the ground, looking for his weapon in the stack of newspapers he had lay beneath, when a tug at his coat prompted him to turn.

A gloved hand, dirty and swollen, held forth a rifle. It was the infantry-woman, smiling grimly. She was missing a tooth, and the skin around her right eye was bruised and blackened, but it detracted nothing from her beauty. Everyone in the underground was beautiful: beautiful because they were alive.

If he returned, Pile told himself he would let her know how beautiful she was; how beautiful they all were.

Stooping, he reverently took his rifle, turning it in the flickering light of the fire. It was battered, stained, and scratched, but it worked, and for that reason he loved it. Pile’s fingers danced along the barrel; the scope. He checked the lever and reciever: both oiled and moving freely. The old Mosin-Nagant would be his only friend tonight, but hopefully Pile wouldn’t have to use it on the run itself. The comforting weight of the small Tokarev handgun at his side and the cold bayonet slipped into a small slit in his ratty left boot meant little against fully-outfitted German soldiers, but perhaps he wouldn’t run into any, as they were becoming a rare breed in and of themselves. Winter had come to Stalingrad, and the Germans were ill prepared.

Soon, they would be starving, too.

Pile slung the rifle over his head, the sheets of itchy burlap tied around its body scratching at the back of his neck. He crossed the room quickly, grabbing the heavy runner’s pack from the corner. He lifted the rough, woven sack with a small grunt and set the thick strap on his shoulder. It was time to leave.

Silently, he passed men playing cards and children snapping rat bones in the dust: the men nodded to him, and the children wished him goodbye in small, airy voices.

“Bye, Dmitry.”

“Come back safe tomorrow and we’ll play ‘sketch’ together.”

The sniper smiled and turned away, mounting the narrow stairway to the surface.

Frozen moonlight spilled through the cracks of the broken city. Twisted girders and broken mortar littered the black streets, and dust shifted and fell from once gleaming towers of Soviet prosperity: now bombed-out hulks of metal and cement. It was from one of these fallen giants that Pile emerged, boots shuffling anxiously in the snow. Popping, roaring gunfire could be heard to the east, a testament to the German line; and to the west, silence. The Germans hardly ever shelled at night anymore—too much chance of friendly fire.

Pile looked around, standing still at the edge of what used to be a support column for the building above. An overturned car lay nearby amongst the scattered bones of three horses. He knew it was three—picked clean by the men and women of the resistance. He’d counted them while on watch in one of the rooms above.

The bones of three horses… and one man.

Nothing was wasted in Stalingrad.

Making sure the street was clear on either side, Pile quickly stole across and into an alley between an old butcher shop—also picked clean—and a department store. The freezing night air bit at his face, raising his skin red and mocking him with its constant feeding and sucking of all warmth, but he kept on, moving quickly east to the next street, and the next.

The House was some miles away, yet: further than Zaytsev’s Factory. It was going to be a long morning. Hopefully, the sun would not yet be up when he got there. It would make sneaking inside much simpler. The wind blew, and Pile stopped, hunching inward on what was left of himself. There hadn’t been much in the way of food besides rats for the last few weeks, and it was beginning to show. Pile was thin before, but now his ribs were much more pronounced, matching his pale, protruding cheekbones and hollow eyes. He was so starved his body had stopped growing hair. Pile’s face remained smooth in the stinging cold.

His father had always told him that Siberians could survive any measure of punishment. Stepping over the stripped, frozen body of one of his darker-skinned comrades, he knew now that wasn’t true. Pile saw his own face everywhere he looked, mouth open in silent scream, filling with bloody snow, dark eyes open wide, and he was no longer frightened by it. He sometimes wondered if he was losing his mind, and the thought filled him with no small measure of comfort: the insane felt little pain in the end.

They imagined things, and were so caught up in their own reality they didn’t feel the hunger, the cold, or the bullets. It was beautiful, almost more beautiful than the warm bodies that hid below. The insane truly lived before the end.

Crunching lightly along the alley, Pile imagined a forest: huge hardwoods reaching toward the clear, cloudless sky, raking it like some unearthly, angered beast in search of food. Green sprouted from pure-white snow, a blanket broken only by the tracks of predators and their prey. There wasn’t a building in sight, and everything was quiet.

Yeah. Insanity would be nice.

Pile didn’t know how long he thought of the forest, but when he reached the edge of an alley and heard hushed, brusque voices and the crackling of a fire, he stopped. Peering around the corner of the brick building to his right, he spotted a group of soldiers huddled on the street corner around a garbage can: Germans. He must’ve been getting closer to the Eastern Line… or the Line was getting closer to him… whichever came first.

There six of them, all armed. Pile glanced left: the street was clear, aside from scattered mounds of rubble and a small car missing all of its tires—rubber was a commodity, it seemed. He looked back in the direction he’d come, weighing his options. The sun would be coming up soon, and he didn’t want to waste time trying to find another way around. Briefly brushing his hand across his handgun, the sniper quickly ruled out a direct confrontation and began to edge his way across the alley toward the wrecked automobile.

He would sneak around, and continue down the street a few hundred meters north of the Germans.

Not a problem.

On another world, it seemed that the sun was always shining, and just living wasn’t just beautiful; it was easy…

And Pink was an extremely popular color.

“Pinkie!”

A small, exuberant creature twirled on one blunted hoof, giggling to herself and smiling in the middle of the cobbled street outside her home. It was nearly noon, and the breakfast rush had ended half an hour ago, so she was no longer needed at her post behind the counter at Sugarcube Corner: her place of employment and current living arrangement. Ponyville was a small town, and everyone was so nice, so oftentimes she didn’t even have to sleep in her small apartment above the bakery, but she paid rent nonetheless. The Cakes, her employers, needed the money; they had foals, after all.

“PINKIE!”

“Yes, Carrot Top?”

“What are you doing?”

“I. Don’t. Know,” the creature—an earth pony by the name of Pinkie Pie—smiled, stopping her skipping and twirling for a moment to focus on the pony who’d addressed her. “How are you, today?”

“Oh! Just fine, Pinkie,” the yellow and orange mare—really named Golden Harvest, but she was too polite to mention it to the eccentric, pink mare—tittered from behind her carrot stall. “Sales have gone up since last week. I may actually get rid of my entire stock by the time winter rolls around!”

“Hey, that’s great!”

“Say,” the carrot vendor mused, leaning over her stall conspiratorially. “You and Rainbow Dash are good friends… you think you could talk her into holding off on the winter weather for an extra few days?”

Pinkie put a hoof to her chin in faux-thought. “Well, I don’t know. The weather schedule is kind of a set thing…”

“Oh, please!” Harvest pleaded. “Couldn’t you at least ask?” The pink mare smiled, reaching a hoof up to ruffle the other mare’s voluminous, orange mane. Golden Harvest snorted and shook her head, glaring at Pinkie with mock resentment.

Pinkie already knew that Dashie wouldn’t delay the weather, not even for one of her best friends, but she decided to put Harvest at ease anyway. It would make her smile, and that was all that really mattered in the end. “All right, Carrot Top. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Pinkie,” the yellow mare giggled, beaming almost ear-to-ear.

The baker returned the smile, fulfilled for a moment, and began hopping, skipping, jumping down the cobbled road toward the center of town. She had decided to go visit the Ponyville Library that day, but not to check out a book. No, she was there on much more serious business.

Princess Twilight—hehe, ‘Princess’: that still makes me laugh a bit—hadn’t been seen outside in days, and Pinkie was elected by her group of friends to go find out why. It would be a rather simple task, considering Twilight never locked the Library door.

The walk was short, and the sun was shining. It was a good day.

Ponies waved as Pinkie passed, and she waved back, sharing kind smiles all along the way. The large oak tree that housed Ponyville’s one two major repositories of knowledge soon loomed above, however, and she found that she was already there. Sliding to a stop on the doorstep, Pinkie took a moment to admire the red tri-cut frame doorway that her friend had installed the year before. Slowly, she raised a hoof to knock… and promptly barged right inside.

“Heya, Twilight! What’s up?”

There was a bright, lavender flash and a muffled curse.

Pinkie was immediately bowled over by a blast of frigid air and lay sprawled against the doorframe. Her body felt all tingly and shivery, and something soft and cold alighted on the tip of her muzzle. She opened her eyes to find a small pile of snow forming on her snout, and she smiled.

Snow! Winter wasn’t for another week at least and there was snow!

“Pinkie!? What in Celestia’s mane possessed you to… to… are you alright?”

The pink mare shifted her glee-filled gaze away from her muzzle and toward the distraught mare before her. Light purple fur and feathers crowned with a nubby, spiral horn stood above, and twindigo—heehee—eyes stared down at her with concern.

“Pinkie?”

“Yes, Twilight?”

“Why are you here?”

Pinkie took a deep breath: “We-elllll I was just in the neighborhood and you haven’t left the Library in almost a week and we—I mean Applejack and Rarity—were really worried that maybe you were freaking out again and your eyes were all wonky and crazed since you have a whole bunch of new responsibilities and all, meaning you are probably really stressed out and need a massage or a cupcake or a hug so they told me to come over and—”

Wow, Twilight’s hoof tasted good! It must’ve been the hardwood floors…

“Pinkie, stop,” the lavender alicorn chuckled, “I’m fine, see?” Gesturing to herself with a wing, she displayed that she truly was in the right state of mind: perhaps in need of bathing, but a pony couldn’t be clean all the time. “I’ve just been working on this really complicated spell and I can’t quite get it right.” Another tip of the wing revealed a painstakingly painted pentagram and pestle, wreathed in a circle of blue candles on the tasty Library floor. “I just about had the spell matrices fitted together in my head when you came in, but I still think I got it a bit wrong.”

“What’s it for?” Pinkie queried from her position on the ground. The snow on her muzzle began to melt from the heat of her breath and was soaking into her fur.

“It’s supposed to grant the illusion of a pony’s last wishes: sort of a last-rites kind of gift used in some of the more modern hospitals,” Twilight answered. “Ponyville General doesn’t have a mage qualified to do it, and I thought that if I could learn it then, well…”

Pinkie frowned—she hated doing that—and nodded sagely. “I understand,” she sat up and encircled her royal friend in a comforting embrace. “Immortality is a bitch.”

Twilight locked up, her wings clapping to her sides as she snorted into Pinkie’s cotton candy mane. After a second, she began giggling quietly:

“I’m not immortal, Pinkie. You know that.”

The earth mare simply nodded once more, tightening her already tight hold on her little princess. “It’s still a filthy bitch.” She stroked Twilight’s withers lightly with one hoof. “Filthy.”

The alicorn couldn’t hold it in anymore, and what was once a chaste giggle rose into uproarious laughter. Pinkie shook about as her friend writhed in her forelimbs, and the small dollop of fresh snow on her muzzle slid off: right between Twilight’s wings. The purple mare yelped and broke away from her friend, shivering.

“Oh, yeah… what's up with the snow, Twilight? That, uh… that probably should have been my first question.”

Twilight examined the solidified dihydrogen oxide for a moment, scanning the floor for other errant piled of the stuff. “I’m not sure,” she hesitantly proclaimed, trotting around the table in the center of the main chamber. “It might be magical feedback, I guess. The spell is supposed to be targeted to a specific pony, but I have no idea where I directed it just now... someplace cold, apparently.”

Both mares stared at the slowly melting snow, spreading quietly and inexorably onward across the floor.

Twilight sighed.

“I’ll get the mop.”

Forest

Feverish barking rent the still air, and Pile ran.

These days it seemed that running was all he was good for, honestly. Though… he couldn’t rightly complain. It was his fault, after all.

Hasty as he was to finish the Run before first light, Pile failed to notice the damned fascist dog curled up behind the flaming can the German Reserves were using for warmth. Unfortunately, the animal neglected to show him the same courtesy. He had almost made it to the next alleyway when the howling and snarling began, and his entire world became a blur of frenetic flight.

The sniper let loose a sharp grunt as he vaulted over a fallen telephone pole, the wood warping slightly under his weight. Loaded down by the supply sack bouncing and tugging at his shoulders, Pile knew he wouldn’t be able to keep ahead of his pursuers for much longer: he needed to lose them soon, or die. Gunfire rattled behind him, and he ducked instinctively, throwing his body to the side as bullets whizzed through the space he’d just been occupying.

Scrambling and sliding over an inch of snow, he crawled under the wrecked hull of what was once a city bus: now just a bent, empty shell of metal and plastic. He had just made it half way out on the other side when he was set upon by heavy fur and snarling jaws.

Pile thrashed onto his back, elbowing the lithe animal off of him, and reached quickly for his boot, searching for his bayonet. His fingers closed around cold steel just as the dog leapt for him again—a flickering shadow of fur and fangs. Instinctively, the struggling sniper thrust up an arm and eight white-hot needles of pain erupted on his forearm.

Biting back a scream, Pile grit his teeth and feverishly worked to pull the bayonet from his boot, grunting and snorting in pain as the shepherd tore and flayed his arm through his thin jacket. With one final, sharp tug, he tore the old world weapon away and plunged the dull point into the hound’s ribcage. He was released with a loud yelp, and Pile quickly withdrew the bayonet, striking again: below the foreleg. He felt the warmth of life soak into his tattered gloves, tickling his frozen, red fingers.

It felt good. Hot like… like fudge.

How long had it been since he’d had frozen yogurt with his family?

Years.

A loud whine and crack of vaporized masonry snapped the bloodied man back to the present. He shoved the cooling body of the German watchdog from his chest and crawled into the building behind the wrecked bus, clutching the slick bayonet in his left and dragging the bag of supplies with his right, wincing loudly with every jarring tug.

Somewhere along the line he realized that his hat was missing.

The sound of crunching footsteps and shouting grew louder, and Pile struggled to his feet. He was tiring, but he couldn’t leave the heavy pack behind. If he lived, he was aiding the Germans; if he died, they still got it. Pile didn’t even know what was inside the bag… it could be important.

Finally on his feet, the sniper slogged through what appeared to be the remains of a hotel lobby: ornate, chain chandeliers lay coiled like snakes on the ruined carpets, plush sofas devoid of their bedding leaned against peeling geometric wallpaper, and the front desk was scattered all around, destroyed by a German shell. Pile hurried around the corner into a grimy service hall, searching for an exit. Behind him, the sound of pursuing soldiers swelled into the clatter of boots on wood and ragged carpet. He needed more time.

Pile stopped, positioning himself behind a mostly intact clay pot—once the protector of some fern-like plant—and slid his rifle from his shoulder. Muscles burning, eyes blinking away stinging sweat, Pile replaced his blood-coated bayonet in his boot and raised the Mosin to his shoulder. He was gasping for air, the barrel twitching and shuddering with every ragged breath.

Calm down... just, just slow—

Leather boots pounding, the first soldier cornered into the serviceway, and Pile fired.

The shot went wide, punching into the wallpaper almost a meter ahead of the approaching soldier, and the sniper cursed under his breath, turning and running as the German point man retreated around the corner: afraid for his life. Pile reached the end of the hallway and turned left, shouldering through the hotel service entrance and into the snowy citadel once more. Eyes searching the streets, the Siberian ran, feet leaving a trail for the Germans to follow. It was only a matter of time, now.

He needed a place to hide.

Spotting an apartment complex—luckily still standing—he tried to pick up the pace, hopefully reaching the multi-floored haven before the patrol caught—rattling filled the night air, and all was searing pain.

Pile fell, left side flaring as lead spat up black snow around him. Arms flailing in the snow, the sniper pulled himself behind a small pile of rubble, bullet-riddled pack shuddering and dragging along behind. He could feel the shots all around him: impacting the concrete and rebar pile at his back, tunneling through the air above. Dimly, he was aware of someone bleeding on the ground next to him.

Himself.

He was seeing himself.

As soon as it began, the out-of-body experience ended, and he was on the ground, gasping for breath. The sky was lighter. Rising sun ends the fun. Pile coughed and wheezed: it was harder to breath.

Oh, something was terribly wrong.

The sound of shouting grew, and reality dulled.

I’m dying…

Crunching snow. They were so close now. Close enough to end it.

Pile reached weakly for his handgun, wishing he was insane… and the footsteps halted. He didn’t notice it at first, as concentrated as he was on breathing and clutching at his Tokarev. All he knew was that the shouting had grown even louder and… confused. Like the Germans were frightened. Pile chuckled throatily to himself through the pain.

They were right to be afraid. Siberians don’t go down that easy.

Pile finally pulled the handgun from its holster and looked up.

Shock mingled with disbelief mingled with joy as he took in the impossible with his own two eyes…

He was insane, and it was beautiful.

Inhuman yowling echoed through the towering trees, and Pile listened as confused shouts became terrified screams and erratic gunfire. The sniper smiled a twisted, pained smile:

Sooooo beautiful.

Sanity

Heaven is a forest: a forest like no other. Trees as big as houses tower into the cloud-ridden sky and watch, impassive, as souls flicker to and fro. The sun rises as it does on Earth, generously lighting the way for those brave enough to walk her paths. For everything goes to heaven, my son: even the wolves.

Pile tried to rise, but was stopped by white-hot pain lancing across his ribcage. The sniper gasped, dropping his pistol, and laughed quietly to himself at the confusion all around him. He didn’t know if he was alive or dead. All he knew was that he hurt.

Do not listen to the priests, the politicians, or your mother, Dimitry. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Heaven is a forest, my son... a forest in the dead of winter.

Carefully, Pile turned on his stomach, using his uninjured arm as leverage, and began climbing the twisted rebar and concrete he had once used to hide himself—now a platform from which he could watch the show; witness damnation.

Slowly, painfully, he made it to the top, ignoring the whining sound of German bullets grazing wood and stone. A body, clad in grey, tumbled overhead, firing wildly into the pinewood canopy. Somewhere behind him, Pile heard a loud, crunching impact, but he didn’t bother to look.

He was busy watching the lion.

Or, at least it looked like a lion: mutated and distorted by his clearly diseased mind. It was nearly twice the size of a zoo animal; with proudly displayed leather wings and a grotesque armored tail. Five German soldiers stood around the creature, peppering it with bullets from their submachine guns while trying to dodge swipe after swipe from the creature’s powerful paws and sharpened tail. Two were not so lucky, it seemed, as a pair of blood-curdling screams rang out into the trees.

A brown shape rose from the snow to Pile’s right, and he just barely caught it in the corner of his eye.

Another lion, much smaller than the first, was loping toward his hiding place. Quietly, Pile slid back to the snowy pavement—odd thing to be in a forest—and waited. He was uncertain what he waited for. Whether he was to be saved or to be damned, perhaps? The inevitable?

He flipped over with a low groan and listened to the sounds of men meeting their fates at the hands of the forest’s guardian and closed his eyes.

Maybe he would be skipped over.

Maybe.

Pile felt the presence of another over him, hot breath wafting over his face and causing him to shiver in anticipation. He opened his eyes once more, and stared into the snarling maw of his end.

So it was damnation, then?

Fine.

Thoughts unbidden came and went in the span of mere moments:

A fire, casting shadows. His mother making porridge and black-bread for him and his sisters on a cold winter’s morning. He could smell it. Oil from the soldier-boats. Foot traffic down the muddy road to his home: running from something or someone. Beer with his father in a dark room. The Den. The Train. Stalingrad in summer. The woman with the black eye, sniffing in the damp cold. Beauty of life amidst death and a forest of tall, tall trees.

Now when you go there, Dmitry—ah! ah!—I know it won’t happen for awhile, boy. Just listen. When you go there remember this: death isn’t the end. Walk the land. Explore. Remember. And when you’re ready…

Pile wasn’t ready. He wasn’t.

When you’re ready, just let go.

The Guardian lunged, and everything slowed down. He could see every detail clearly, and everything made perfect sense. Cold breezes ruffled every little hair on the lion creature’s body, swaying gently like wheat. Short, underdeveloped teeth drew closer, surrounding a slick, studded tongue as it closed in on Pile’s throat.

Not yet.

The man called Dmitry Vetrov found his hands again: clamped around the creature’s feline head, holding shut the gaping muzzle that was to end him. The beast struggled, but the Siberian held it close, looking into its rheumy, red eyes. With a start, he realized the beast was just smaller than he was—a frightened whelp, or a cub. Fearfully, it pulled and shook, trying to claw at his belly through his wool uniform. Pile tensed… and acted.

If one had listened carefully, picking through the sounds of gunfire and angry, feline roars, one might have heard the sound of a neck snapping.

No one was listening carefully, and Pile, bleeding more heavily now, crawled through the snow further into the forest: away from the fighting and the losing and the noise.

Away from the letting go.

“The silence of a forest in winter is incomparable to anything else in all of the Soviet Union.”

Comrade Zaytsev told him that once.

They were on a rooftop in the residential district: Pile serving as a spotter for his more experienced compatriot. “Waiting for the motorcade,” he said… It never came, but the quiet hours spent on the roof, swapping stories of better times—Vasily, of his childhood in the Urals; Pile, his home south of Yakutsk, on the banks of the reka Lena—were entertaining to say the least. Nostalgia at its finest: not a sad memory to be had.

“The snow blankets the ground, like a thick, woolen sheet: unbroken as far as the eye can see. Everything is asleep, and your only company is your horse and the sun.”

Pile leaned carefully against his wooden shelter, grimacing at the low, throbbing pain that surged up his body. He stared out of the small hole he had crawled through, marveling at nature’s skillful painting. Sunlight bounced and blasted across the snowy ground, reflecting off every scintillating, icy crystal that blanketed the land. Trees jut out everywhere, spread just far enough apart for Pile to see where the forest ended: a sudden void of unbroken white. The occasional bush or leafy plant, doused in shimmering ice, cropped up here and there—like patrolling watchmen. One such arboreal guardian spread itself nearby, serving to conceal the hollow that Pile had so quickly claimed as his own.

It was small, but it was dry, and, for now, it was safe.

Still looking outside, Pile felt around for the large duffel he was supposed to deliver to Pavlov’s House. Finding it, he turned his attention away from the wintry expanse before him to the simple, burlap duffel he had carried all this way.

He decided it was a powerful thing, to have traveled with him to Heaven.

Pile ran his hands around its cinched opening, letting the coarse material abrade his fingers. He touched his side, feeling the cooling liquid that soaked into the lining of his coat and frowned. Should he open it? Could be first aid supplies inside, and he wasn’t exactly going to be delivering it anytime soon. Making a decision, he fumbled with the buttons on his faded, green uniform, stripping it off to reveal a simple woolen shirt. The white fabric was soaked through, the red blood pooling on the ground. A small hole could be seen, torn from the front of the ruined clothing.

Good. The bullet passed through.

Avoiding getting too much blood on his fingers, he lifted up his shirt, wincing at the sight: the slug may have passed through his side, but it took twice its weight in tissue along for the ride. Blood oozed freely from the meaty divot just below Pile’s ribcage, rolling and flowing down his pallid skin and into the loose crease of his pants. Panicked, the sniper let his shirt fall back down, tearing open the rough sack and fumbling through its contents. He paid little attention to what he removed, focusing only on what he needed. Antibiotics, bandages, sutures… anything, really.

His arm throbbed where the dog bit him, but he ignored that pain as well, searching with frantic darting eyes. Finally, after several minutes of aimless sorting, he found what he needed: a single shotgun shell, a bent book of matches, a small pad of dirty, white gauze, and a half-full bottle of penicillin-based… stuff. Pile couldn’t read the label: it was in German.

Using both hands, he pried the casing from the shell, tossing the brass pellets to the side and pouring the powder charge into the wound. He packed it in as best he could with his thumb, riding out the pain of each twisting press with a clenched jaw and teary eyes. His hands were shaking as he reached for the matches, bloody fingers slipping once on the cardboard packet before he could get it open. It was a full book. Happy day.

Careful not to get blood on any of the match heads, Pile tore off one of the cardboard fire-starters, steadying himself as much as he could for what came next.

He’d only heard about doing something like this once: while listening in on two corpsman chatting on the boat into Stalingrad. He was pretty sure it had been a joke between medics… but he had very little else to go on.

Pile had to stop the bleeding and move. The Guardian would surely try to follow him, and the trail of blood he had left behind would make him far too easy to catch. Briefly, the injured man reveled in the fact that he was most definitely insane, and he thought of home.

Holding his breath, he lit the match.

A bright flash lit up the small hollow in one of the towering pines of the Forest of Souls, and Pile screamed.

Mountain

Distant roars echoed through the trees, spilling snow from weighty boughs and shaking the very air with their mournful, raging might. A small, white rabbit scurried through the snow, bounding away from the tree line into a small clearing. From the center of the clearing there rose a small hill, a quaint, snowy hovel built within. Glowing warmth streamed through the cracks of polished, wood framed windows, closed tightly as insulation from the cold of last night.

The determined hare skated across the icy brook bordering his caretaker’s home, darting through the main gate and into the house proper, breathing heavily from its flight. It skid to a stop in front of a small, wooden door, and knocked frantically, prompting muffled sounds of movement on the inside.

“H-Hello? Who’s there?” a timid, female voice traveled through the door. The reddish-brown wood creaked as the door cracked open, revealing one, frightened, blue eye. “A-Angel?” Suddenly, the doorway was cast open, revealing the yellowiest, angriest, and most adorable hermit that ever walked on four hooves. “Where have you been?! I’ve been worried sick!”

Nonplussed, Angel Bunny thrust one foreleg forward, middle claw in the air.

Another roar shook the forest, and the rabbit scurried between his pony caretaker’s legs, looking out into the snow-filled clearing anxiously. Not bothering to reprimand her fluffy ward, the yellow pony let out a quiet yelp and slammed the door with one hoof. Butter-yellow wings fluttering, she latched, locked, and secured six theft countermeasures of various shapes and sizes before bolting up a set of stairs to the upper level of her usually quiet, woodland home.

Angel was left alone, dazed, in the house living area, surrounded by various perches and holes and houses for the small and furry. A small fire sputtered in the fireplace on the east end of the room, and the tired—and still rather frightened, but he wouldn’t dare mention it to anyone—rabbit sidled closer to the dying flames, taking comfort in the warmth they provided.

Outside, a beast tore along under the noonday sun, its terrible, yowling roar terrifying all in its path.

Mama was not happy. Not happy, indeed.

The Lady of the Forest was hunting him.

Grunting quietly, Pile shifted his—it truly was his now—pack from shoulder to shoulder. He could barely stand his legs were shaking so badly, his feet numb from crossing a small stream. Thrice he’d dipped his leather-and-cloth-bound feet into the below-freezing water: fruitless attempts at masking his scent as he stumbled wearily through the forest. An intense burning sensation stitched the man’s side, constantly throbbing and itching as he trudged along: wearing him out further.

Roars in the distance… were they closer, now?

Pile looked back over his shoulder at the churned, melting path he left behind and tried to increase his pace. His stride became more erratic, leaving a more visible trail, and he cursed himself.

In Stalingrad he didn’t need to worry about such things as leaving a trail. If one knew where to step—what well-worn paths to follow—it wasn’t an issue. In the city, he was a predator among men. Here, though…

Here he was the prey.

Easy prey, at that.

Sunlight, taking advantage of a break in the canopy above, shined spitefully in Pile’s eyes, forcing the tiring human to blink painfully. When the devilish light finally stopped its angry stinging, the reason behind the marksman’s sore, mindless walking came into view: a mountain of grey stone—the only one in sight for miles around.

High ground. Something Pile was familiar with.

The base was close now: he could see the rising stone through the gaps in the dwindling trees. Distant, popping gunfire made Pile pause, cocking his head to listen, but the answering roar—definitely closer this time—spurred him onward. The mountain was survival. It was an irrational assertion, but the only thing keeping the exhausted sniper from simply flopping down in the snow.

Perhaps the Lady of the Forest couldn’t climb.

Perhaps she wasn’t hunting him at all, and was chasing other new arrivals to the forest…

Or maybe she knew the he was injured; that he wouldn’t last long alone in her woods. He would keel over soon, and then… then she would find him.

Pile shivered violently, brushing his throbbing arm against the butt of his rifle. He snorted, trying to dismiss the thought, but no matter how hard he tried the feeling came back. The lioness knew something Pile didn’t: the forest knew something Pile didn’t.

The ground steepened and the sniper kept going, attacking the incline despite his waning strength. His vision tunneled until all he could see was the snowy shale before him, stretching up above into a fine peak. Tree branches brushed and snatched behind him, dropping snow onto his legs and boots. They were reaching for him—calling him back to a trail that would be his end. They knew.

And so it was that with thoughts of being watched by his own destiny, Pile began his ascent.

Fluttershy was afraid. That in itself wasn’t much of a surprise, but it did little to change the fact that she had been trapped in her cottage since sunrise, refusing to leave the perceived safety of her bedroom.

She was "‘yellow’ in the truest sense of the word,” Rainbow used to say—still said. But for once, she had good reason to be frightened.

Mama raged in the wilderness near her home, crying out the loss of her child, and no amount of kindness or care—or baleful glaring—would stop her. Fluttershy knew this from experience: she had the scar to prove it.

A small knock on the door to her room made the tense pegasus flinch, burrowing further under her down comforter. She peaked out with one, sapphire eye. “Y-Yes?”

The door creaked open, and in waltzed Angel, steaming bowl of vegetable broth held in his small paws. He carefully bounced his way over to the bed, careful not to spill a single drop, before leaping onto the straw mattress. Skidding to a halt, he performed an abrupt about-face and flopped down onto the comforter, leaned back against the shivering lump that was his caretaker, and began drinking his soup.

Fluttershy blinked, watching him for a moment before sighing piteously to herself. Her gaze turned toward the open window: to the verdant green and pious white that stretched on forever; to the grieving soul stalking within.

In the distance, Dragon Mountain stood watch, a dark silhouette against the eastern morning sun.

Dirt

Dirt changed: it was a defining feature wherever one went. In Siberia, the soil was hard and cold with permafrost. Farming was difficult in the northern provinces, but it could be done. Further south, nearer to Mongolia, and Northern China, the dirt became softer—loamy—and helped in the formation of thick sod fields and grasslands. The Asian Provinces had the most fertile dirt; a soil that was wet with life.

Ocean sand was coarse and rough.

Volcanic ash was fine and soft.

Lakebeds of black silt billowed and puffed with every squelching step.

The dirt sifting through Pile’s rough fingers felt unreal—warm; clumpy, like a toasted confection—and it should have been worrisome, but the gasping sniper didn’t care. Shoveling and grunting his way forward, Pile crawled over the lip of otherworldly soil onto level ground. Ahead of him lay a yawning opening: a cave large enough to be visible from the forest floor, and Pile’s new temporary home…

… hopefully.

Pile spat blood and saliva into the dirt, rolling onto his back and sullying his coat to the edge of unrecognizable territory. He stared at the sky, breathing heavily from exertion. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, betraying the late hour—betraying him. Soon, night would come, and Pile needed a place to hide.

The cave would have to do.

Fingers scrabbling weakly, the sniper grasped at his bayonet, slipping it from his boot and clutching it like a drowning man. He had seen the game trail ending at the mouth of the rocky shelter. It was the same trail he avoided following during the climb, using several rockslides and narrow passes to scale his way to the top in hopes of avoiding any hungry predators. Using his supply bag for support, Pile pushed himself to his feet, bayonet held aloft. He would have used his pistol, but he didn’t have it—lost it in the forest below that morning.

In the distance, Pile heard an anguished roar.

Leaving his rifle and heavy pack to wallow in the odd earth, the sniper stole into the dark opening. He ignored the fiery itch clawing up his ribcage; ignored the throbbing pain in his right forearm; ignored the clawing hunger in his gut and the intense fatigue tugging at every thin muscle. He held his makeshift knife at the ready, waiting for some shadowy thing to leap out at him. Steadily, the tunnel widened, forming a small, continuous antechamber before cutting off abruptly about a hundred yards in. A mound of stone and sediment—an obvious rockslide—blocked him from traversing further.

The only shadow that moved was his own.

Judging the cave safe for the moment, Pile slunk back outside to grab his few possessions. As quickly as he could, he dragged his weapon and supply-bag inside. Leaning his Mosin against the cave wall, he quickly rifled through the contents of the bag, intent on finding a single thing—something he’d noticed during his search for medicine that morning.

Where is it where is it where is it—ah! There you are…

Hands shaking, Vetrov reached deep within the contents of his bag, grasping something heavy, cold, and very, very powerful. Carefully lifting the object out, quickly observed its metallic outer casing: it didn’t appear damaged, and maybe, just maybe, it would suit his needs.

Five-point-five kilograms of TNT all wrapped up in a cylindrical, metal casing covered in etched, Aryan lettering:

Tellermine – 42

Whoever had the balls to pry that little fucker out of the ground deserved a medal, and perhaps a kiss. German anti-tank mines weren’t exactly on a hair trigger, but if it had one of those special TeeMyZee anti-disarmament fuses, well, an engineer could practically be considered missing in action. Oftentimes, not even steel dog tags survived the blast.

Slowly, and with no small amount of reverence, Pile carried the mine to the mouth of the cave, holding the device as far away as he could by its small, built-in handle. The shelf of level ground before the steep drop to the forest lay before him, and to his left he could see the beginnings of the game trail. Padding quietly over the paw-prints of countless unknown creatures—a single, enormous, saurian claw-print gave the sniper pause, but he quickly shook it off—Pile followed the trail for several meters, looking for a place to bury his treasure.

Finally, nearly two hundred paces below the cave mouth, he found the perfect spot.

The mountain rose up on either side of the trail, forming a narrow choke point that lasted almost ten meters. A choice between the perilous slope downward and the impossible cliff up to the peak above left only one option: the path. Pile smiled tiredly to himself, and, choosing a spot where the slope on either side looked the most solid, he dug a small hole in the dust. Packing down the loose dirt at the bottom as much as he could, Vetrov set the explosive inside and covered it, pushing sand in around the canister while leaving the pressure plate clear and free in the open air.

Pile let out a deep breath, scratching the bridge of his nose. All that was left was to arm it.

Now, mines like these weren’t supposed to go off if something considerably lighter than a tank rolled over them, but the weight limit was more of a guideline than a rule. Pile knew he would be safe, but the mere prospect of being torn to shreds in the blink of an eye was terrifying, and a part of him screamed not to do it—the dark, forgotten place where rationality feared to tread.

Dusty, shaking fingers caressed the edges of the steel pressure plate. It was cold, and felt sharp against Pile’s pale skin. Steadying himself, the sniper began turning the carefully-disarmed pressure plate back into position.

Seconds felt like hours, and Pile became increasingly aware of how tired he had become. He had been awake for nearly twenty-nine hours. He was hungry, thirsty, and unbearably, unshakably afraid.

Fear… he felt fear…

He couldn’t be insane, could he?

Did the insane feel fear?

What of the lion? The Forest?

Sweat pooled at the tip of Pile’s nose, threatening to patter-patter-drip down down down onto his hard work and the wind was blowing dust around and around and where, when, and how didn’t matter.

It was the ‘what’ that could bring down mountains.

A sharp click rent the evening air, and Pile froze. His eyes darted across the now set and armed Tellermine. It was small and unassuming, but exceedingly out of place in the middle of such a remote mountain trail. Daintily, like one of Stalin’s own personal chefs, Pile took up a handful of sand and sprinkled it atop the pressure plate to—hopefully—conceal it from any attentive guardians.

Satisfied with his work, Pile let out a sharp sigh of relief and turned to leave, but stopped at the sound of something familiar dancing on the wind:

Distant pops and cracks down below.

Gunfire. Gunfire far, far away.

Frowning, Pile rose, tearing off a sprig from a nearby mountain shrub and marking the trail next to the mine as an afterthought, before he crept back along the trail back to the cave. It would be cold that night, but he didn’t want to risk a fire—he was too tired to gather firewood anyway—so he would have to manage.

At least I’m not still down below with the murderous beasts, Pile mused. Ducking down into the spreading dark, he allowed himself a small smirk. Or the ones that aren’t German.

Dirt remained the same.

Or, at least, in Applejack’s experience it did.

Born into the soft, clumpy soil of an apple orchard, the orange mare grew up amongst clinging mud and fertile pastures all her life—the short hiatus to the cement streets of Manehattan didn’t count—and would most likely die amongst the same, beautiful filth. She chose the life of a farmer long ago, a testament to her bloodline. There was nothing—simply nothing—that was unknown to her on her land.

Every laden tree, every pond, every stone, every twig, every smell, every presence, every sound was familiar.

That was, every sound except one:

Dreadful, aggressive roars carried over the still air, but that wasn’t it: everypony in Ponyville was privy to the unique squawks and growls of the Everfree Forest at night, especially her.

It was what came in-between that confused her: the pronounced, rattling and banging echoing through the trees behind every roar; the guttural, foreign shouting.

Applejack shuddered, gazing past a sea of empty groves into the dark pines of the wild, and, under the influence of Celestia’s will, the sun dipped out of the sky. A full moon quickly rose to take the place of its sister-body, brightening the land with its silvery glow, and the sound persisted.

Turning away from the forest, the farmer trotted through the patch of thin snow still left on her front walk and mounted the wooden porch jutting from the south-west face of her family’s rustic home. Ears still trained on the wilderness behind, she pulled open the screen door and slipped inside.

Moment’s later, the lanterns dimmed, leaving Luna to light the constant, sleeping earth.

Deep in the Everfree Forest, the noise continued.

Horizons

Suns and moons of varying size and luminescence danced a slow, circuitous ballet above the wintergreen sea. Consciousness came and went, and it was unclear how much time had passed. Pile knew not whether he slept or merely lost himself to feverish staring. At some point he ate—a moldy hunk of bread and three small chicken bones hidden within his supplies, washed down with mouthfuls of snow—and he knew he left the safety of the cave once to relieve himself, but otherwise he had remained curled up in the shadows for an unknown period of time, nursing his wounds.

It was there that he sat now: naked and shivering one end of the cave, staring intently at all he owned.

The burlap sack that had once held everything lay open, spread like a tiny tablecloth on the dusty ground. Everything inside lay scattered across the rough material, lying in several disorderly heaps without rhyme or reason. His uniform lay crumpled nearby, stained and bloody and torn beneath the shadow of his rifle, which leaned royally against the cave wall. His bayonet glinted faintly in the middle of it all: bloody steel surrounded by stacks of various ammunitions—most of which would fit his rifle—two Dutch Stielhandgrenates and a Soviet F1 fragg, bootlaces, an small, empty bottle of vodka and antibiotic, two condoms, a tin of German cigarettes, tobacco, rolling papers, a tin of sardines, and a cracked pair of binoculars.

A goldmine in the city… but here…

What was he going to do with condoms?

Lightly, Pile ran a finger along his side, wincing as it ran across his ragged, healing flesh. The punctures in his arm were blackened and sunken, but were less painful and hopefully not infected, and the burnt fissure below his ribs only clawed him when he moved. It was a godsend, really. Not moving was one of the things Pile was trained to do.

He was okay at it.

Sunlight shimmered in the corner of his eye, setting a divine spotlight streaming across the dirt floor. Angelic specks of dust tickled his skin, and Pile finally dressed himself, roughly pulling everything together: pants, shirt, coat, consciousness. The otherworldly dirt caking his ragged clothes felt oily against him, and he shuddered. Standing up to his full height, the sniper snatched up the old binoculars and walked further into the morning light.

Shading his eyes, Pile approached the edge of his own mountain shelf and gazed upon a slice of Heaven: an ocean of snow-capped trees stretching onward to the horizon. There was something though—something he had spied on the climb all that immeasurable time ago—a metallic glint to the north, at the forest’s end. A quick scan along the edges of his new world with the binoculars confirmed the sniper’s suspicions, and he sighed.

It was a weathervane, and weathervanes meant a building or a town, and a town meant people… people who cared about the weather.

There was a town at the edge of Heaven.

Pile wasn’t alone, and he didn’t quite know how to feel about that. It made sense that more people could have escaped judgment—refused to let go—but who? How many? Did the Germans make it? Pile’s comrades?

Maybe he wasn’t dead at all.

The revelation hit him hard, and the sniper lowered his binoculars for a moment, simply choosing to stare unaided across the cold, quiet land. Death had been an easy explanation: the best one. But what if it was something else? Pile had felt nothing but intense pain since arriving, and all the stories his father told him made it seem impossible to be hurt after death. There were dangers… but no pain. Hurting came later, after judgment.

Of course, Papa Vetrov could very well have been wrong.

Epileptic seizures weren’t exactly death, now were they?

Maybe this wasn’t the transition, and he had been reborn… as a starving twenty-year-old soldier in Stalin’s Glorious Red Army. Maybe there wasn’t a transition.

Pile shifted his feet and felt his stomach clench. Growling to himself, Pile ignored the gnawing pit in his stomach and tried to come up with some rational reason for his presence there. His eyes glazed over, and the ground fell away as his mind turned inward on itself.

*gr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r*

Fuck it.

Vetrov spat in his hand and rubbed it in the dirty lenses of his binoculars before taking another look at the slowly turning weathervane and the misshapen, snowy lumps that spread away from the gleaming edifice like acne. The place definitely deserved a closer look…

Another wet gurgle emanated from the corporal’s belly, and he lowered the binoculars.

He would explore, but first he needed to eat.

Time to go hunting.

Shapes moved in the forest.

They weren’t the flowy, shadowy shapes Rarity was used to catching—writhing in the corner of her eye while she worked on a particularly difficult stitch. She had taken to leaving the windows closed throughout the day to minimize distraction… but they weren’t closed today.

“Rarity? What are those things?”

Lithe and tall, they bent and moved among the trees, and the porcelain fashionista thought she could see the glint of metal amidst the snowy vegetation.

“I don’t know, Sweetie, but I think… I think you should stay inside today. It’s very rare for something from the Everfree Forest to come this close to town without provocation.”

A warm presence brushed up against her coat, and Rarity shuddered involuntarily as her little sister perched on the edge of the windowsill. “But they’re just trotting around at the forest’s edge. What are they doing?”

Decisively, Rarity raised a hoof, and with a sharp tug the shades fell across the frosted glass of the Boutique’s rear window.

“Whatever it is they’re doing, it is of little consequence. Animal things, Darling. Nothing to worry about.” With a gentle tug of the hoof, the pristine unicorn put on a strained smile and pulled her younger sibling away fro the opaque portal. “How about I make some hot chocolate while you be a dear and tell me about your day?”

Sweetie Belle squealed happily and bolted toward the kitchen:

“I’ll boil the water!”

Sister gone, the warmth drained from Rarity’s smile and she turned back toward the window. Blue manalight glowing faintly, she bent one shade downward and looked out into the wild, wintry arbor beyond:

Still and silent as the grave.

Perhaps she had just imagined it along with her sister—shared hysteria: she’d read about it in one or two very well to do magazines, she was sure.

No matter. She promised Sweetie that she would—wait...

“Sweetie Belle! Don’t—”

The fire alarm whined and beeped its clarion call from the kitchen, and Rarity sighed.

“—touch the oven…”

Stillness is an art.

Tranquility of the muscles; the body; the mind; the soul—it promotes an almost ethereal aura around a skilled practitioner of the statuary arts.

“I am invisible: a phantom amongst dogs.”

Breathing slows to a near standstill, and the beat of one’s heart is the only thing that reminds an artist of his true mortality.

“My will is law; my rifle, its instrument.”

Every sight, sound, and smell is amplified. Pile perceived all around his in his stillness, and, as snow fell in rapturous waves from the sky above, his finger tightened on the trigger.

A distant yowl stayed his itching finger, but it was two far away to be of any consequence. The Guardian was nothing to him—a god in his moment—and Pile focused on ending his stillness.

He lay in a thicket downwind of a small clearing, smeared in all manner of mud and filth. The salty smell of sardine hung on the breeze, and the sniper pressed carefully down upon the trigger of his rifle: comfortingly solid against his thin shoulder.

In the center of the open ground—in the center of Pile’s crosshair—lay a small mound of sardines. Further on, his prey, a pair of curious raccoons, stood warily beneath the tree line.

Snow in his mouth to mask the warmth of his breath, Pile remained invisible, and the furry pair moved closer.

“Woe betide all who draw the attention of my instrument.”

Thunder rocked the clearing, and red mist stained the snowy air. Rough squeaking and crunching frost signaled the retreat of raccoon number two, but Pile ignored it, as new, wrathful cries could be heard to the east. They drew closer.

The Guardian. It knew.

Rising from the bushes, Pile quickly made to gather his dinner. Tonight, he would feast, and tomorrow...

He strode to the opposite tree line, lifting the nearly headless raccoon by its limp, bushy tail and shoving it into his empty bag. Careful of blood, he slung the whole thing over his back. He turned west, and made for the high ground: his home above the horizon.

Burlap men never sleep, but tonight Pile would dream: dream of civilization and beautiful company.

… tomorrow, Pile would scout the town.

Author's Note

Frequency or length: I cannot provide both.

Anomaly

“Y-Yes, I know, but if you could—No, no—Please—If you would just—If you could—I-I—S-Slow down, please…”

Animalia of the Everfree Forest were as various in communication style as they were in species. All had different ticks and idiosyncrasies; all were unique in their own, special—albeit sometimes frustrating—ways.

“D-Dead? What do you mea—Hold on, Oh! Eeep, I—E-Explain, please—I don’t understand—You. You said ‘dead’, right?—Please…”

Squirrels were neurotic, bears spoke as slow as grinding glaciers, rabbits were openly rude and disobedient, birds had their heads in the clouds, and dogs were often inappropriately cheerful.

“S-Stop for a moment—Um, if you wouldn’t mind…”

Moles were deaf, owls kept repeating themselves, cats had enormous egos, and mice were extremely quiet, but when they did try to make themselves heard, they were squeaky and nearly unintelligible—Fluttershy could empathize.

“I-I just want—I just…”

Tortoises communicated through light gestures of the head and neck, crickets were self-deprecating, ferrets talked with their mouths full, and raccoons…

Well, raccoons were serial interrupters.

“Bandit, please—I need—I need you to—STOP!”

Squeaks of “death” and “bang” were strangled, and all was silent under the rising sun. Fluttershy, the generally quiet, yellow hermit and animal whisperer, sat on her haunches at the edge of her doorstep, looking down at a very agitated masked mammal. She cleared her throat and gave her best apologetic smile.

“Uh-m, sorry, but could you please just say it again—uh—slowly, please?”

The raccoon—“Bandit” to his late brother, Zsaz—took a deep breath, preparing himself. He began slowly, squeaking and making grand, sweeping gestures with his paws toward the forest. He mimed walking, foraging, and scampering with his brother through the ominous, but plentiful, woods. Gradually, the dictation picked up speed, and the frightened critter’s chattering blended together into an incomprehensible stream of anxious conjecture and onomatopoeias leading up to one, final, unexpected BANG!

Fluttershy’s muscles seized and she scurried backward as Bandit threw up his arms and collapsed, exhausted, onto his small back.

“Oh… Oh my. Maybe I should talk to Twilight…”

The yellow mare trotted back and forth across her porch, biting her lip and casting the occasional glance toward the wintry Everfree. Wrap-Up wasn’t for a few weeks yet, but the Weather Team rarely touched the cloud layer over the forest, and sometimes snow remained on the ground for over a month after winter officially ended. Whatever killed Bandit’s brother—a small tear welled in the corner of her eye at the thought—it didn’t hibernate, and was at large in the forest.

Maybe it was the same predator that incurred the wrath of Mama Manticore?

Slowing to a stop, the Everfree Hermit rustled her wings decisively and snorted, blue eyes narrowing dangerously. “Bandit, you go inside. There’s some fish in the cabinets: get Angel to show you where… I’ll be back soon.” Giving the prone raccoon a quick nuzzle, she left.

Princess Twilight would be informed, and a search party gathered.

Whoever did this was getting a stern talking-to.

About halfway to town, Fluttershy’s righteous anger quickly disappeared, chipped away by every rattling explosion and terrified shriek from the town proper.

Now deathly afraid, she hurried on.

Lyra Heartstrings was a unicorn, and she was damn proud of it. She was, of course, aware that her specific genus wasn’t her doing, but rather a mixture of heredity, blind luck—her parents were both earth ponies—and a night of drunken sexcapades in Canterlot. None of that mattered, however, and as she trot down Mane Street at ten o’ clock in the morning she reveled in her own, unique unicorniness.

She was a sort of sea-foam green color—Lyra didn’t know the specifics, but that made it even more special—a very magic-y color, she kept her mane short to accentuate the length of her perfect, spiral horn, and, though she tried to only use magic when it was socially acceptable and necessary to do so, flaring her golden aura for simple, menial tasks was a guilty pleasure of hers.

Nopony really noticed, and that was completely fine with her. She did it for herself: she was a proud pony, a proud, educated pony.

That is why, when everything went to Tartarus, Lyra Heartstrings kept her cool, and took the time to properly analyze the situation from behind the empty cart of the local Apple Merchant and Element of Honesty.

Number one: frightened screams, i.e. “The horror! The horror!” “We are all gonna die!” etc… Happens every other Wednesday.

Number two: loud, guttural shouting in… Germane: coming from Town Square. Definitely Germane. I know Germane… but nopony even speaks it anymore! It’s a dead language! What is this?

Suddenly, she wasn’t alone.

“Lyra? Do ya have any idea what’s going on?”

The teal unicorn glanced at the orange earth mare hunched next to her and shrugged. “No clue. Need to get closer.” A sharp “crack” punctuated her statement—like a tree snapping under too much weight.

“All right,” Applejack muttered, peeking out from behind the cart. “Ah think we can do that. Just follah me.” Another loud noise rent the crisp, winter air. With a flick of her blonde tail, the farmer darted to the next cart that made up Market Row—Harvest’s antique carrot stand—and Lyra quickly followed her.

Number three: more noises—sharp, rattling—like explosions? Magical discharge?

Gradually, the slinking, skittering mares made it to the edge of the small Ponyville market district, avoiding fleeing ponies of all shapes and sizes and flinching at every loud “bang” emanating from the Square ahead. Applejack made it to the edge of the last cart first, and Lyra waited behind while the orange mare quickly peered around the corner at the fountain beyond.

She stared for a moment then backed away, a look of abject confusion crossing her face. Silently, she waved Lyra forward, and the curious unicorn scurried to take a look for herself.

What she saw… was an anomaly, to say the least.

Number… Number four: three bipeds, over five feet tall standing around the Fountain of the Sun. Moving jerkily—agitated. Ponies running about in panic.

One of the bipeds raised an odd, metal object in the air, rustling its large, grey clothing—they were all clothed similarly, it seemed: uniforms perhaps? A controlled set of fiery explosions emanated from the end of the metal object, causing further panic amongst the Ponyville citizenry. The shortest of the three grabbed its compatriot’s metallic noisemaker and forced it downward, shouting in Germane.

Listening intently, Lyra tried to figure out what they were saying:

“Dummkopf! hören sie auf abzufeuern!”

“Aber sie hören nicht!”

“Das erschrecken sie mehr wird nicht uns überall erhalten!”

Lyra felt something nudge her flank, and she glanced back to find Applejack looking at her expectantly.

“What’s happening?”

“They’re—uh—I think they’re arguing.”

“Arguing? What are they?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to try and get closer.”

Before the apple farmer could protest, Lyra stood and dashed into the Square, hugging the edge of the crowd until the fountain was between her and the creatures. She kept low to the worn cobblestones, slinking below the lip of Ponyville’s single monument to the Princess of the Sun to get as close as she could to the trio without them noticing.

They stood close together, facing outward with metal noisemakers raised. Skin pale, muzzles flat and drawn tight around short, pointed snouts, they looked positively unique… but not quite in an ugly way. Hollow, exasperated eyes—smaller than a regular pony’s—darted back and forth beneath the brims of grey, tortoise-like helmets, following every movement; catching every scream, yell, and panicked squeal. Each of them looked haggard and tired, and the red tint of dried blood stained whole swathes of their dull-colored clothing.

Only one spoke now, shouting loudly to try and garner some sort of attention from the fleeing ponies. Lyra listened carefully, translating under her breath as best she could:

“Please stop running… need help… hurt in forest… need water, medicine… where is your—polizei?—where is your… your hospital?” Lyra watched grimly as one of the creatures throatily coughed into his front paw. The appendage came away red with bloody mucus and the teal unicorn shuddered at the sight. Her mind was made up then and there. They weren’t dangerous: they just needed help…

And she would be the one to help them.

Stepping out from behind the fountain, Lyra carefully clip-clopped toward them, smiling hesitantly and wracking her brain for a proper greeting. One of them immediately noticed her, pointing its metal device straight at her and nudging its companions. The other two glanced in her direction briefly, but kept their full attention on the rest of the square. The shortest one kept shouting.

The creature trained on Lyra only started to get nervous when she was less than four yards away, backing up into his counterparts and prompting an angry bark from the shouting one.

“G-Guten tag,” the unicorn forced, smiling as cheerfully as possible. “Wie fühlst—uh—Wie fühlst du dich?”

Three metal barrels suddenly converged on her muzzle, and all was still. The darkness clinging to the inside of each hollow bore felt ominous, alive even.

Number Five: those are probably not noisemakers…

“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” the shortest biped asked, clearly skeptical. When Lyra didn’t immediately answer he nudged her with the dark, metal tube and she flinched.

It was cold.

“Sprechen Germane,” Lyra answered, inching away from the combined chill of the other two creatures’ stony expressions. Her partner in tentative conversation paused, a confused expression on his face, before breaking into uproarious laughter.

“Sie sind ein lustiges mädchen,” it chuckled, bumping one of its friends with a foreleg. “‘Germane’, ah? Lustiges. Ich liebe pferde.” The taller creature, clearly unimpressed, grunted and continued to watch the unicorn skeptically.

The leader—or at least Lyra thought the vertically challenged one was the leader—crouched down, still laughing quietly, and looked her directly in the eye. An odd smirk crossed its surprisingly expressive face, and, slowly, it asked for help.

Lyra Heartstrings smiled amidst the screams of her fellow townsfolk—still panicking, as Ponyvilians were wont to do when “disaster” struck. What she was doing was absolutely unprecedented in pony history… well, for the last century or so… but still! First contact with a previously unknown intelligent species! This was her moment! Her fifteen minutes under Celestia’s Sun!

Bon-Bon was going to be soooo jealous!

With as much ceremony and dignified grace as possible, Lyra opened her mouth to speak…

… and in one instant everything went terribly, terribly wrong.

A bright flash of purple erupted right next to her, and a voice of absolute authority enveloped the Square:

“What the hay is going on, here?!”

The leader of the three creatures stumbled backward, falling to the ground in surprise, while his companions raised their noisemakers toward the source of the voice, obviously frightened.

Lyra, thinking as rationally as a unicorn of her caliber could at that moment, did the only thing that made any logical sense: she tackled Twilight Sparkle.

She went down rather easy… for a princess.

*Yelp!* “Wh-Wha—”

Before the lavender alicorn could properly express her distaste in Lyra’s actions, the spot she had been previously standing erupted in rattling, roaring thunder. Covering her ruler as best she could, Heartstrings felt the sting of cobblestone chips penetrating her soft skin, and the pressure of small projectiles burrowing through the air just above her flank.

Number Six: those are definitely NOT noisemakers!

Lyra scrambled to her hooves and stood protectively over Twilight—whether to protect her from them or them from her she didn’t know yet—amidst further screams and guttural shouting. She tried to calm the frantically swiveling creatures; to get them to lower their weapons; but the words caught in her throat.

“Bitte! Uh… Uh… Oh, Celestia, beruhigen sie… unten!”

Another, louder cry from above cut off any further attempt to placate the creatures, and two metallic weapons pointed toward the prismatic streak racing down from the sky.

“Twilight!”

Lyra blanched and looked up. Horseapples…

Twelve sets of explosions tore through the winter air.

Clouds were damned comfortable. Damned comfortable.

It was a wonder that more pegasi didn’t own cloud houses, or even just cloud beds! Most Ponyville residents of the winged variety had groundside homes, and slept in feather and spring or even hay cots. Rainbow Dash didn’t understand it: for any serious sleep—the kind where she wasn’t spying on Applejack while she worked—she always slept in complete comfort on a bit of errant weather.

She loved her midmorning naps just as much as her mid-afternoon naps, and took both as seriously as a good night’s sleep.

So, when Dash was awoken from her slumber by the sound of panicked screams, she was immediately rather angry. When the vase containing her grandmother’s ashes—on a shelf just outside the door to her room—exploded in a puff of ceramic and grey dust, she went from angry to ballistic in nearly ten seconds flat.

Bursting through the cloud floor of her home, she directed the full weight of her ire on Ponyville Square, where panicking often ensued for almost no reason whatsoever. This time, however, there was a reason.

A reason that made Rainbow’s stomach clench.

Down below, three tall… somethings… stood ominously above a shaking and shouting green unicorn. And under the unicorn…

“Twilight!”

Dipping downward, Rainbow spiraled into a steep dive, gathering as much speed as she could for an aerial assault on the three monsters threatening the town—and her friends—below. She was going to save the day or die trying. Why? Because Rainbow Dash was a mean, lean, flying machine! A paragon of prowess! A master of disaster! Queen of the skies! The ideal pony to take on any—

Sharp pain lanced through her right wing, and Rainbow Crash was falling.

“Buck!”

Still spiraling—with much less control, now—the sky-blue pegasus did everything in her power to right herself before slamming into the cobbles below. With a sob of pain she spread both her wings and tried to slow her descent, but it was too late. Missing her target completely, Dash barreled straight into her lavender friend, just barely missing the teal unicorn who stood over her.

Everything after that was a bit of a blur…

An inane stream of fuzzy color and blurred voices pounded against Dash’s skull, so she clutched at it with her hooves, trying to alleviate the pain. They came away red, and the rainbow pegasus felt her heart skip a beat.

“Nien! Nien! This is all a huge misunderstanding!”

“Rainbow?! Twilight?! What the hay is happening, Lyra?”

“Applejack! Get them out of here!”

AJ? Applejack was there? Good. Good. She wouldn’t let anything happen to her, no no no. Rainbow felt warm. She knew she shouldn’t, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was the orange and yellow blotch hovering over her, breathing hot, gasping, frantic breaths, tickling the tips of her primaries, stiffening her shrieking wings.

Suddenly, with a loud, feminine grunt, the blotch was gone: replaced by a huge, grey shape. Something metallic glinted in the afternoon sun, and the screams of the ponies around her escalated desperately.

“Nien! Bitte!”

“Nopony points… whatever that is at my friends! Ah’m gonna kick your flank into next week.”

“AJ, back off or they’ll kill her! Nien!”

Rainbow just stared dumbly at the shape above her—the ominous metal object pointed aggressively at her face. It was familiar, what it was, but…

Oh her head hurt so much and the shouting was getting louder and she just wanted to scream and the ground was soft and shifty and warm—

A distant crack echoed through the Square, and, reflexively, Dash’s ears flicked back against her skull.

“Heckenschütze! Heckenschütze! Stürzen!”

A great weight pressed against Rainbow’s chest, and she felt suffocated under a sea of wet redness and gray cloth. Darkness took her, and the pain disappeared.

It was a good hit: not very clean, but good.

Pile sprinted along the forest’s edge, side burning and bleeding from overwork as he relocated. Rifle in hand, bent at the waist like an infirm, the “heckenschütze” weaved along the thin tree line, looking for another viable perch. Snow crunched and spat loudly under his shoddy boots, but, screaming and shouting as they were, Pile doubted that either the Germans or the little horses would hear him. He was silent by comparison.

Cottages and thatched dwellings flashed by past the trees to Pile’s left, and the sniper counted them as he ran—a sort of habit he picked up; calming—and contemplated the decisions that led to his current predicament.

He had eaten raccoon that morning: leftovers from his hunt the day before. It had been a novel experience for the young Russian… if only he’d known how the rest of his day would play out. Stomach full, he’d gathered his rifle, binoculars, the rest of the sardines, and a clip or two of ammunition before following the game trail down the mountain—cautiously, of course. When he made it into the tree-choked foothills, it had been mid-morning.

The sun had moved slowly toward its peak as Pile weaved branches, twigs, leaves, and pine needles into his hair, the seams of his coat, and his ratty boots. Mud plastered his face and bare hands, and the sniper lamented the loss of his hat before setting off, properly camouflaged for his simple purposes—he had hoped to hide in the branches of a tree and just watch. Trekking south, the marksman kept an eye ahead and an eye behind, wary of the Guardian that seemed to have vanished into the crisp, forest air.

Pile made the edge of the settlement a little after the sun began its afternoon descent, and… well he hadn’t known what to expect, but what he saw simply baffled him:

Little rainbow horses trotting rider-less through the streets, speaking casually to one another in a language Pile had trouble recognizing. From his perch in a particularly tall tree at the town’s edge, the sniper had the time to take note of a very structured market system, seemingly governed by the small tattoos marked on the natives’ colorful flanks. Rose-tattoo sold roses. Apple-tattoo sold apples. Etcetera. It was… controlled.

The familiarity of it all had been disconcerting.

Horses trotted through the market, ate at the small café on the corner, and generally acted human. There was a main street lined with walk-in shops, restaurants, and even a barbershop. A small path leading through a gazebo went directly to what looked like a town square, giving him a direct line of sight on a rather large, decorative fountain and a Victorian-esque government building. Everywhere, there had been horses.

Watching them, Pile had once again begun to wonder if he was really dead.

His insanity was no longer in question: just his transience.

Pile had pondered his mortal coil and watched for what seemed like hours as three tall shapes left the trees a hundred meters to the east, and the locals began screaming.

For too long, he watched and he thought…

… so long that he had only realized what was different when the shooting started.

It had been sudden: a jolt and moment of incredible panic. Rapid bursts of a submachine gun rattled the air, and the screams—so human; so young—became something different… had held deeper meaning.

Pile remembered tensing and steadying himself on his perch, searching for the source of the weapons-fire, paranoid and waiting—just waiting—to be shot. Vetrov’s silver bullet had never come, and the gunfire had petered out just in time for the alarmed marksman to spot its source: three shapes, similar in height and build to himself. Carefully looking through the scope of his rifle, Pile had confirmed that they were, indeed, human—depending upon one’s point of view, of course.

The Germans had arrived… rather loudly, and amongst much alarum by the locals.

So they, too, escaped judgment? Very well.

Back-to-back, facing the comically fleeing quadrupeds, they hadn’t seemed to have noticed Pile, so he calmed his twitching heart and settled back to continue his observation. One of the three soldiers raised a rusted maschinenpistole in the air and shot off a few more rounds. The sharp reports drew a flinch from the observing sniper, and he remembered the feel of his fingers tightening around the stock of his own weapon.

Yes, he would watch: he would watch them carefully, and he did.

Pile hadn’t wanted to get involved yet, and, as far as he could see, there had been little reason for him to. The Germans, despite the gunfire, didn’t appear hostile toward the natives, and one of the town’s residents—green like nothing Pile had ever seen—was communicating with them. Things were dying down around the square as well, fleeing horses slowing to witness what they probably believed would be the demise of their green comrade.

He remembered thinking that if they accepted the Germans, perhaps they would accept him as well. He could get proper medical treatment and some supplies. Pile had decided not to worry about the Germans, continuing to work under the assumption that both he and they were already dead. They were someplace else, and their war was over.

Deep down, Pile had been unsure whether or not the Germans thought the same way, but he had stupidly ignored the notion.

That was why, when the blinding flash of purple light nearly blinded him, and the Germans began firing on the horses, Vetrov had been unprepared. He had blinked and rubbed at his eyes, smearing the mud that covered his face, before frantically scanning the Square for… well he hadn’t known what he was scanning for.

The Germans had been swinging their weapons blindly, aiming at anything moving, when the blue one struck: a flying horse—a spirit? a Guardian?—streaking through the overcast sky toward the anxious soldiers. Pile had watched, motionless, as rattling bullets clipped its right wing, and what had once been an attack reminiscent of a Luftwaffe strafing run had become a death spiral. The crash had been muffled by another body, and the conflicted sniper aimed at the Germans, the fountain, the horses, the cobbles…

It was the screams that had finally gotten to him. The rainbow equines, inhuman as they were, had screamed like women—young women and men and children—and the guttural shouts of incensed Germans only made the illusion more real. One of the soldiers had stepped into his sights, standing bloody and ragged above the blue sky-horse and its companions, weapon at the ready, and Pile fired.

About three hundred meters to the south, a young Aryan had doubled over with a loud grunt, spitting blood as he fell atop two barely conscious ponies of blue and lavender. The other two Germans, shouting in surprise, had been quick to find cover behind the fountain, and Pile’s fate had been sealed.

Jumping from his tree amidst blind, whizzing gunfire, the sniper had torn through the underbrush along with the German bullets, and now he was hidden once more, but needed a new sight line on the Square. Pile didn’t know exactly what he should have been doing anymore, so he decided to finish what he started.

He wouldn’t allow these creatures, whatever they were, to undergo the same fate as so many of Pile’s comrades.

Still running, the Siberian came upon what looked like a schoolhouse nestled near the edge of the forest: one with an ruddy, red bell-tower. He strode purposefully from his cover beneath the trees toward a small, ground level window and tested the lock.

A sonic creak and jerk as the window rose from its position on the sill resounded amid scattered screams and beleaguered shouts, and Pile grinned.

It was time to work.

Shambles. All of it: so much bloody shambles.

Strange, whining explosions clattered across the town square, and invisible knives tore at the trees and undergrowth at the town’s edge. There was something in the forest, and it had gravely injured one of the Germane-speaking creatures. It was there, now, thrashing weakly on the cobblestones, leaking thick blood and shredded entrails onto two Elements of Harmony from a gaping wound in its belly.

Lyra did her best to ignore the dying thing, focusing on dragging a soiled purple body from under its weighty flesh. Next to her, Applejack, her pegasus friend’s colorful mane clenched in her teeth, did the same.

The Square had finally managed to empty of extraneous ponies, and the streets were practically deserted. Princess Twilight’s tail in her jaws, the green unicorn hardly noticed the sudden emptiness—it certainly hadn’t gotten quieter, what, with the noisy weapons and the angry shouting and… and the gurgling pleas for help…

“H-Helfen sie mir… Bitte… Bitte, Karl… H-Helfen…”

She was crying. She didn’t know when it started, but they were tears all the same.

“H’ve l’most gt ‘er,” snarled an Ozark voice, and Lyra felt the weight of the dying creature shift as Rainbow Dash was pulled from underneath it. With a phlegmy grunt, Lyra yanked with all her might, and the Princess quickly followed suit, leaving the beseeching creature to writhe alone on the cold cobblestones.

“K-Karl! Wacht—*cough*—Wachtmeister, bitte!”

Twilight shifted, snorting and grunting as she slowly came to when Lyra kept dragging her: out of the Square, toward the Cider Bar that cornered into the market district. AJ had already slung Rainbow over her back, and was hightailing it to the hospital. Lyra could hear her hooves beating—like the beasts’ metal weapons—down the street.

“Wh-Whu??”

“Cover your head, Princess,” Lyra spat as best she could through a mouthful of indigo tail. “Just hold on.”

Across the Square, a heated, nearly unintelligible debate was taking place in Germane, ending with one of the bipeds breaking cover, sprinting toward his fallen friend. A crack—closer now—sounded to the east, and the running beast’s head jerked back with an echoing “clang”. The metal helmet that adorned its cranium jumped, flipped once, and landed on the cobbles with a loud clatter.

“Scheiße!” yelped the creature, unharmed aside from the loss of headgear. It skidded to a halt, scrabbling for purchase on the wet road, and fled back toward the fountain.

It made it seven steps.

Lyra didn’t even hear the explosion that time, but the evidence was clear: a sudden spray of blood from the running creature’s upper back, and the sound of skin grating against the cobblestones. Almost immediately, the shortest of the three creatures was on its feet, weapon rising above the roofline… and began firing on the schoolhouse tower—hopefully emptied in the earlier panic.

Wood split and shattered up above as the explosions clattered to Lyra’s left, and suddenly Princess Twilight’s tail was tugged from her mouth, and the noise stopped in a flash of lavender manalight.

“You will stop that this instant!” the alicorn shouted, gripping the towering creature in a cloak of levitation magic. Her eyes slowly widened as she caught sight of the other two on the ground: one still barely clinging to life, while the other lay motionless, sprawled facedown in a growing pool of blood. “B-By order of the Alicorn Diarchy I place you under arrest f-for crimes against the s-state…”

The creature floated closer: it wasn’t listening. Straining against Twilight’s magic, the biped’s cold, green gaze never left the schoolhouse bell tower—shrouded in the shadow of an overcast sky. It kept struggling, even as it began to shout over the Princess, yelling for the benefit of another: one unseen.

As it went, Lyra translated as best she could, both for herself and the only other pony still within hearing range. Later, she learned Twilight was fluent in Germane, as well as seven other world languages. It didn’t matter. Translation made the words sound more real to her.

“Sowjet?! Können Sie mich hören?!”

“… can you hear me?”

“Wir sind die einzigen zwei verließen!”

“We… we are the only two left.”

The Princess floated the creature closer: they were just feet apart, now. She eyed it nervously, and a bead of sweat traced its way down her brow. It must have been struggling hard.

“Es gibt nicht mehr: gerade die pferde!”

“… no others: just the—just the… equines?”

“Töten sie den Führer und wir können die stadt nehmen!”

“Kill the leader,”—Lyra’s gaze flickered from the schoolhouse to the alicorn tensed next to her—“and we can take… we can take the town.” Twilight shifted, clearly unsure of herself, and began shouting the creature’s Stalranda Rights, circling and trying to put the biped between herself and the building toward which it had been staring.

“Die pferde helfen ihnen nicht. Ohne mich sind sie allein!”

“The equines won’t help you. With—Without me, you will be alone.”

Other ponies had begun filtering back in, now. Some peeked in from the market to the east; others, various pre-made hiding places around the square: a barrel here, an empty cart there, and the hollowed cellars beneath City Hall for good measure. Hundreds of frightened eyes trained on the new princess, searching for something calming to cling to.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t in any position to find that something.

“Be quiet! Sei ruhig!” she shouted, keeping low to the ground, looking at the roof of every building; the darkened windows of every house, hovel, and hotel. Lyra, struck with a sudden feeling of responsibility—her long dead spirit of nationalism, perhaps?—joined her, shielding the alicorn with her body and serving as another pair of eyes as she kept brainlessly spewing out whatever the detained creature said.

“Töten sie es! Sie sahen, was sie uns antaten!”

“Kill it. You saw what they did to us.”

“Wir taten nichts! We did nothing!” Twilight negated, now actively trying to preserve her own safety.

“Sie jagen sie! Sie helfen ihnen nicht! Sie sterben im Wald!”

“They will... hunt you. They won’t h-help you. You’ll die—You’ll die in the forest.”

“SHUT U—”

The shot came from nowhere—a muffled ‘crack’ from the ether—and Lyra froze. She looked to Twilight, and nearly threw up: her muzzle was flecked with blood and slivers of skull, eyes wide, mouth open in mid-shout. The princess started hyperventilating and her eyes rolled back into her head and Lyra didn’t know what to do and… and…

Twilight fainted, magic imploding with a loud pop, and the creature fell to earth in a slump—minus a head and spewing sticky, maroon ooze onto the street.

Hooves pounded across the Square: the other Elements, probably. Lyra didn’t care anymore. Looking around her, all she saw was blood and broken bodies. Her eyes flickered to the schoolhouse, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun, and she swore she caught the slightest flicker of movement.

Something grasped her hoof, and Lyra looked back down on the bloody paws of the grievously injured—but still somehow living—biped.

Scheiße…

Pile slunk quickly down the creaking bell tower stairs, choosing not to lament the fact that he hadn’t understood a single word of the German soldier’s speech: never learned the language.

He didn’t really care, honestly.

Out the window, through the deserted schoolyard, and into the forest he went. He settled down beyond the tree-line, content to continue watching the town.

All he had to do was wait… it was what he was good at.

Lyra hadn’t met Fluttershy. Never. The mare was a recluse, rarely coming into town for anything other than the most essential of supplies. Whenever anypony talked to her—with the exception of one very uncomfortable, frightening day—she squeaked and hid behind her fashion model pink mane… now that she had seen it in person, though...

Damn she is hot… but nopony ever goes for her, Lyra, or at least that’s the consensus. “Leave the girl alone.” Rainbow Dash enforced that, I think.

She should have felt bad, thinking like that, especially when there was somepony—thing—dying not four hoof-steps away, but she couldn’t help it: clung to the feeling of desire, actually. It was the only thing that didn’t hurt and confuse her.

“Uh—um—Oh, dear. Somepony get me a compress! A towel or a coat or… don’t just stand there!”

The yellow pegasus was with the creature now: standing over it, putting pressure on its ruptured belly, trying—trying so, so hard—to put what had been lost back inside. She had gone from dormouse to doctor in less than six seconds, and the transformation surprised Lyra a bit. She knew she was the town’s animal caretaker, but the sudden assertiveness caught her off guard.

She had checked Twilight first, of course, but the alicorn was already recovering from her involuntary slumber when she got there. The princess was now fully awake, taking turns scrutinizing both Lyra and the thing dying in the street. Heartstrings shifted uncomfortably, trying so hard to ignore the piercing, intelligent—most definitely twice as intelligent as her own—gaze.

She watched Fluttershy: watched until the librarian finally spoke.

“What did this?”

Lyra hesitated to speak, glancing to the east: the schoolhouse. “I—I don’t know. C-Can’t translate the word they used.” The others listened, Pinkie Pie unnaturally silent, solemnly staring at the bleeding soul behind them alongside the town seamstress, Rarity. Applejack was doing Fluttershy’s bidding. Rainbow Dash was in the hospital.

“Did you see it?”

Again she hesitated, avoiding Twilight’s iron stare. Slowly, Lyra lifted a bloody foreleg, indicating the schoolhouse. She heard a gasp and the sound of hooves fading down the street: Rarity, gone to find her troublesome kid sister; the one who broke Heartstring’s lyre along with her friends; the one who—

“Geist. L-Leinwand-Geist.”

It gurgled with half congealed blood and floating flesh, and Lyra froze, her train of thought derailed and left to crash miserably into the side of some metaphorical mountain. Slowly, she turned around.

Fluttershy blocked most of the view: panting and scuffling and pushing and “oh my”-ing over red-stained gray death. It still moved, despite all of it, arms twitching and paws clenching on the rough cobbles. Still moved and still spoke, whispery and wet despite the butter pegasus’ pleas for it to “hush, now; quiet, now.”

“Heckensch—Hecke—G-Geist.”

Giving the two magic-wielders a pleading look, Fluttershy began to weep. She worked as she cried, only breaking the monotonous sway of her hooves in the pond of red once: to shakily ask what it was saying. Lyra looked to Twilight, but the alicorn was miles away—staring like a dead-pony, mumbling under her breath.

Quietly, Lyra answered her: “‘Ghost’. It’s saying ‘Cloth Ghost’.”

Somehow, it knew what they were afraid of, whether from Lyra’s pointing or the inflection of their voices, and it tried to warn them.

A Ghost in the Everfree Forest… one that they knew well enough to call by name.

Sowjet, or Hecken-something?

Lyra, didn’t know—and, at that moment, she didn’t want to know. Instead she watched as the sun slowly began to lower from the sky: watched the creature die.

When its eyes finally glazed over, and it wetly gasped its last, the sun was dipping below the trees. Fluttershy simply kept cleaning, whispering and muttering encouragingly into its one, upturned ear.

Nopony stopped her.