Chapter 1
Punishment
The dark cold waters of the ocean crashed against the rocks of the Alaccan shoreline that cold night. The nights themselves had been more colder than normal and it’s was nearly into the months of Spring, however, the cold nights were in fact the best way of describing the mood of the population of Alaccan. It had been many months now since the Alaccans faced the might of the now well-known Red Hooves of Celestia, Princess Celestia’s secret service built for warfare and the protection of Equestria and the provenance state of Farachan, the state for whom the Red Hooves were fighting for it’s territory dispute. To many neutrals during this war, the Red Hooves’ fighting skills seemed to match them alongside the likes of gods; they were unlike anything the world had seen before.
The last time the two sides faced each other; the Red Hooves had routed the Alaccans to point that the Alaccan population were so traumatized by it that they could’ve been shocked into surrender had it not been for their tyrant leader’s sheer strong force of will, Lord Ares.
In the Alaccan capital city of Astu, the tyrant himself watched the waves crashing against the rocks and pondering his next attack. Ares was a green unicorn stallion in his early thirties and surprisingly quite young to be a leader of a country. His horn was sharper than that of normal unicorns (almost like a sword in many ways), many of his people believed it to be the amount of times he’d been exposing himself to magic. The tip of his muzzle was that of a jet-black colour that blended itself on to his dark green fur, as well as having matching black hooves. His mane and tail were both quite bushy in appearance and was mostly light orange with some streaks of white in them. He also had a neatly trimmed moustache that matched with a small goatee that hung under his chin. His eyes were that of a strange bright red that whenever he felt angered by something, many could swear that they’d seem to glow. Finally, for his cutie mark, his was that of a purple shield with two swords crossed over, his skill with the power to commander his people.
For what seemed like a lifetime, Ares sat on his chair staring down on the crashing waves below his palace. He knew that his current commanders for the Alaccan army had been useless in his eyes. Even though the rest of the world seemed amazed by how strong the Red Hooves were, Ares knew that Celestia’s warriors were nothing more than a bunch of young adults whom had barely reached adulthood with several elder stallions within their ranks. The tyrant was totally convinced that had it not been for his commanding officers then it would’ve been quite likely that this war would be over and Farachan would be part of Alaccan.
On the first battle they faced with Celestia’s stallions in red, his army had been defeated in large numbers that seemed so terrible to anyone, but for him, it was so unexpected of the loss that he couldn’t help but smile at the ludicrously of their loss.
The one victory they seem to have was quite clearly a fluke in his eyes, and that had been his request too for them! And they had been so close to capturing Coltfast, only for the Red Hooves to destroy their forces with only twenty miles to go. For Ares, that loss was the finally straw; he had had enough with those commanders, and was preparing for their punishment service at dawn.
Even though it was only twenty minutes to six in the morning, he felt determined to chastise those commanders to the point were he couldn’t sleep. Commanders? To him, calling them that seem to pain him, they were more like clowns that acting as his blades of war.
Just then, a knock came at the door. Ares was broken out of his thoughts and turned round to look at the door.
“Come in,” He said in his comforting yet uneasy voice.
The door slowly opened to reveal a young twenty something like Earth pony stallion, one of his servants, who gave his a salute to greet him.
“My lord,” he began. “The crowds are already starting to gather along with the army, should we tell them to leave until then?”
The tyrant didn’t say anything and remained expressionless for a while. Then he smiled and walked over to the young nervous stallion. “No dear boy,” he replied calmly. “We can see that everyone else couldn’t wait to see this moment, all our failures is purely all on them…for what was suppose to be a quick and painless war has been dragged on for far too long…and now they must pay the consequences for their actions.”
“But sir,” the servant duly replied. “I’m scarred that we’ll lose this war…what will happen to us if they win and when Celestia decides to punish us all?”
Even though Ares may have seemed as a ruthless person who’d sacrifice anything to win the war, he had a massive love for his people from the likes of the poor, the rich and his servants. He placed a comforting hoof on the young stallion’s shoulder. “Do not fear young colt. We will win this war. I already have two new commanders that even though they have only just made it into those ranks, they are far better than those gutless bastards.”
A small smile crept onto the young stallion’s lips. “Thank you…let’s win this.”
The tyrant smiled and nodded. “Good. Now would you please tell the crowds that have already arrived to remain…it seems that we have to bring forward the ceremony to be a bit earlier.”
“Yes lord,” And the young stallion quickly left Ares and hurried on down the corridor.
Ares looked back out the window once more, soon it would be dawn and the ill-fated commanders would all face their castigation. Ah yes, today was going to be one that Ares was going to enjoy very much.
XXX
The palace gardens was cramped full of Alaccan citizens, all of which waiting to see what their leader had in store for the commanders. Many of the Alaccan army kept many of the citizens back from the centre of the gardens, which was to be the location of where the events would be taken place, as in tradition of other similar proceedings from years gone by.
As the sun rose further into the sky and brought more light out on the world, the public waited impertinently for Lord Ares to arrive, many chanting his name and cursing the commanders who had yet to turn up.
After what felt like ten minutes to many, the trumpets sounded and a servant of Ares, a Pegasus stallion, hovered above the air with a scroll in his hooves. Quickly, everypony looked up at the Pegasus.
“Here, here!” Cried the Pegasus stallion. “All welcome our lord of Alaccan…Lord Ares!”
The trumpets’ song was overwhelmed by the sound of the cheers and cries of the crowd as they greeted their leader. Walking down a long purple carpet with guards on either side keeping the excited crowd back, Ares calmly walked, dressed in his royal purple armour with his sword by his side.
Even as he reached the centre of the garden, the crowd kept cheering for him non-stop, eventually though, Ares raised his hoof to silence the public. Ah yes, Ares had his people all wrapped round his hoof; they’d do almost anything for him.
“Thank you, thank you all for coming mares and gentlecolts,” Ares greeted them. “As we all know, our fortunes in this war have been in our favour and many great soldiers all have been lost to them…” He growled slightly on that last word as he could see the ponies all around him looking depressed over what Ares had been saying.
Ares then smiled. “Alas my friends…from this day forward, our luck will change for I have already brought in new commanders for our army and with their help, we shall win more battles and this war!”
A roar of approval could be heard from all around, Ares knew they need something cheer about. “But!” He cried out to silence them. “But you may ask yourselves…who was to blame for our losses…The Red Hooves, Celestia or perhaps something unknown? No, blame those commanders of ours. Their useless tactics has seen many brave stallions all die at the hooves of those damn Red Hooves. Now they face their punishment.”
He paused and looked back at the purple carpet to the large open doors. “Bring forth the prisoners!”
At first their was silence, then two Alaccan guards led out four stallions out in chains, all with their ranks of their muddy army stripped from them, these were the ex-commanders.
Then suddenly the crowd jeered at them and started throwing rotten fruit and vegetables at them. There was no way out for them and their fate lay within Ares’ hooves. Soon as they made it to the centre of the gardens and being forced to bow to Ares, the jeering and rotten fruit being thrown was stopped. For a while, all was silent as the four commanders kneeled there nervously all awaiting their fate. They’d rather die on a battlefield rather than be here.
“So…” Ares began, his tone now icy that made the commanders all the more terrified of what was to happen next. “I simply don’t know where to start. I order for this war to be over within a few days…NOT A FEW MONTHS AND US ON THE RUN FROM THEM!!!”
His sudden outburst made many in the audience, especially the four commanders all shaking like crazy, to jump back in fright. “With that, the blood of many of the fallen troops’ families is on your hooves…” Ares then looked over to a pack of twenty guards standing nearby. He nodded at them to come closer before casting his gazed down at the shamed stallions. “As you know, in the event of the most horrendous crime to our nation, I would order you to be sentence the island of Dunall, where you shall be left to die in shame.”
The four commanders all knew exactly what Dunall was...the nightmare of Alaccan. Dunall was in fact a small rocky island about the size of a small street just forty miles of the southern coast of Alaccan, an island with no vegetation, no shade, no beaches. Just…nothing. The worst sentence that a citizen of Alaccan could face was being sent out there, where with only just one bottle of water, they’d be left to die slowly from starvation.
Ares then kept a smirk on his face as he glanced over to several of the guards standing nearby and motioned for four of them of come over. “However, despite this being such a crime against our people,” Ares continued now looking down at the fearful commanders, “I have made an exception…you will not be going to Dunall.”
Many members of the audience gasped at this, even many of the emotionless soldiers were stunned at what their leader had said. The commanders on the other hoof looked at each other in amazement, a mixture of relief and fear was felt between them. The fact they weren’t going to Dunall despite the odds, but what was it that Lord Ares had instead for them?
The green unicorn leader held his dangerous smile as he scanned them. “Your failure to even win, no, even take down a single Red Hoof was utterly laughable that you don’t even deserve to go to those rocks. I have this idea in mind for you instead…”
He paused as he looked over to the four soldiers standing nearby awaiting their orders. “Please step forward now,” he ordered as the small quadruple squad moved to stand in front of each of the terrified commanders. “Draw swords and the flats beat them to death!”
And with that, the soldiers followed their instructions and began thrashing the screaming commanders relentlessly. The sound of bones crunching and fainting screams of the now dying commanders was all music to Ares’ ears, as the audience could only watch in stunned silence, all of which never thought they’d be seeing this. The screams of death seem to last for about two minutes before the screams became silent, and bodies, limp.
They were gone.
There lying in pools of their own blood that stained the paving floor, the four commanders’ bodies had been so brutally beaten that it was nearly impossible to tell if they were even ponies.
However, the tyrant himself only smiled at the sight before him. There in that bloody shambles, army and his people all soon realised how much Ares meant to win this war. The war was far from over…the tides of war, were about to change.
Chapter 2
The Warning
While the country of Alaccan was getting over the brutal punishment of the four now deceased commanders, things couldn't be different up on their northern borders in Farachan. The population of Farachan and the mainland, Equestria, had all been relaxed since their last victory over the Alaccans and the elite Red Hooves could finally sit back and look at what they had all accomplished as an army.
What did the future hold for not only them, but for the final outcome of the war? On that night of the death of the four Alaccan commanders, up north, the Red Hooves slept soundly, unaware of the fate of the commanders, during the night in the knowledge that they seemed to have this war in the bag. Well the truth was that nearly all of them were fast asleep; the one in question was a certain blue Pegasus stallion with a red and white mane tail that kept twisting and turning in his restless sleep.
You see, this stallion was Blue Arrow, a stallion that only sometime ago had been involved with a bitter fight with another Red Hoof solider that nearly caused him to be deported back to Equestria, while in turn, the other troop was sent back home instead. That stallion's name was Peppercorn Tornado, though he always liked to be called Shadow. This stallion had not only sneaked his way into their ranks, but was also under the age of fighting, all of which made Blue Arrow want to stop him.
In his nightmare, Blue Arrow was seeing flashbacks of that brutal fight that nearly killed both of them in the process, but it was the last words that Shadow mentioned that seem to stick out.
"I wanted to be part of it! Don't you get it? Think about us guys about my age still be trained up? What if by the time I had reach eighteen and had been training since then only to discover that the war was over and there was no need for my type and all our efforts would be all for nothing…Sometimes, even if it's illegal to do so, you have to take matters into your own hooves."
Then Shadow suddenly charged forward to impale Blue Arrow, only for the blue stallion to awake from his sleep.
He sat up breathing heavily with sweat dripping down his face. He then notice that the dorm was filled with light, it was the morning and he glanced round to see his other roommates all still fast asleep, no doubt all having a better sleep than what Blue Arrow had.
He let his hind hooves hung over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes to feel fully awake. "That bloody nightmare again…" he uttered to himself coldly. He glanced over to a desk nearby that had a small alarm clock on it. The time read 6:33 am and Blue Arrow could only just sit there and think over his current dilemma, he couldn't tell his friends how he was feeling out of embarrassment, even if they were his closet friends that he'd trust 'till the end of the world.
He sat there pondering looking out through their dorm window; the sun had already started to rise on yet another spring morning. Also on his mind was, along with all his fellow Red Hoof troops, was what was going on in Alaccan? Though they had not heard of anything from the Alaccans since their last battle, many rumors were being told not from the ranks of not Red Hoof troops, as Blue Arrow knew about, but surprisingly from the city folk of Coltfast. At first Blue Arrow didn't think nothing of the worrying talks of people, but each day whenever he would be out of patrol with several of his fellow comrades, the locals would say that the Alaccans were preparing for something big.
By now, all of this was really making Blue Arrow seriously think how much information the commanding officers were keeping from them. If they were, why would they be? He and all the other troops there were the Red Hooves, Princess Celestia's secret service and her finest warriors!
"You up already?" suddenly said a voice from above him.
Looking up with his head leaning upside down was Blue Arrow's oldest and best friend, Dynamo. His dark green eyes were only half open with him likely just woken up and his neat blue mullet was sticking out in all different directions.
"Oh, hey Dynamo," Blue Arrow replied jadedly as Dynamo moved off the top bunk and landed down beside the blue stallion.
Dynamo was silent for a moment as he looked at Blue Arrow in contemplation. "I say, something wrong dear chap?"
Blue Arrow rolled his eyes; Dynamo had a knack for noticing something wrong almost immediately such as a moment like this. "You noticed?" He muttered with a small sarcastic grin.
The brown stallion stroked his chin. "Is it about, you know, him again?" He bit his bottom lip on mentioning the word 'him'.
"Say nae more," Blue Arrow replied unenthusiastically getting off his bed. "I don't know what's wrang wi' me, don't say I'm losin' my mind or somthin'?"
Dynamo sighed sadly. "I don't want to think of it like that, maybe we've gotten a sense of cabin fever with not being able to fight them. Maybe then a fight with them might clear your mind."
The blue stallion nodded. "Aye, that's true…still, that and no' hearin' a peep from the Alaccans is just makin' act crazy, unless that's what they want."
"Then in that case they're doing remarkably well," Dynamo joked, enough to keep their moods up.
"Hey who's wakened at this hour?" Came another voice from across the room. Looking over to their left was their fellow roommates, Flying Sunstar and Macca waking up from their slumbers. The voice itself belonged to Macca. "Oh, it's you two, is it a call for action?"
"No," Dynamo replied. "Just Blue Arrow going over a few things."
"Oh that's ok then," Macca said and went back to sleep, only for Sunstar to jump down of his top bunk and startle the younger Red Hoof troop.
"Time we up anyway," Sunstar ordered Macca, who groaned as he slowly pulled himself out of bed.
"Oh please," moaned the younger Red Hoof. "When one wakes up, everypony wakes up."
The other three chuckled but nevertheless began to get themselves ready for the day ahead, one that would Blue Arrow wouldn't forget.
XXX
It was just after eleven in the morning when Blue Arrow and another Red Hoof solider named Tail Spin were out on their morning patrol around the far side of Coltfast that hadn't been investigated much by the other patrol teams. Blue Arrow did feel a sense of worry about going to a part of the city he hadn't been before as their had been rumors of suspicious activity over there. However, it wasn't helping Blue Arrow that he'd been ordered to work alongside Tail Spin, who in turn seemed excited about this patrol and wouldn't even shut up about this mare that Blue Arrow couldn't give a damn about, he'd giving up listening since they started.
The rules were with these missions were that Red Hooves would be selected randomly to work together for the patrols, why this was the case Blue Arrow didn't know, though he had been lucky to work alongside Dynamo once or twice, most of the time he was working with complete strangers.
Though he had never met Tail Spin before in his life, one thing was certain that with all this chatting that the fellow Red Hoof went on about, he was clearly rubbing off the wrong way on Blue Arrow. Tail Spin, like all the Red Hooves was a Pegasus with a Red Hoof cutie mark, he had a dark grey coat of fur, a short orange mane and tail and pale blue eyes, he also was not that much older than Blue Arrow himself, being one of the many Red Hooves that came along on the ship with Blue Arrow to Farachan.
"I'm telling you," said Tail Spin enthusiastically as they flew over the buildings. "She is probably the most amazing mare you'll ever meet!"
"Aye, aye, fine," Blue Arrow muttered uninterested, not paying attention to his fellow comrade and instead looking out where they were going.
"She has this golden fur that sparkles in the sunlight!"
"Right."
"She has a voice that can make your legs quake."
"Mmm."
"Damn her eyes sparkle too, I swear she's a goddess!"
"Tail Spin—"
"I'll tell you something, when this war is over, I'm gonna marry her!"
"Excuse me—"
"And we'll have three, no, five foals for our—"
"TAIL SPIN SHUT YER FACE! I don't want ta' hear about yer bloody life story!"
The grey Pegasus looked quite shaken by Blue Arrow's sudden outburst. "S…Sorry…didn't mean…to annoy you."
"Nah, it's alright lad," Blue Arrow replied in a comforting manner. "I'm just worried about what ta' do if we find what we're lookin' for."
Tail Spin smiled. "Yeah, if we did find him, we should be able to stop that pony, whoever it might be…" He then paused and stopped in mid air looking down at something on the ground.
Blue Arrow noticed this and stopped too in mid air before looking down. There he could see on a deserted street was a figure wrapped in a black cloak glancing around a few times looking for something.
The two Red Hooves looked at one another then back down at the mysterious figure. Then Blue Arrow decided to call down on him. "Hey you there!"
The figure looked up, they could just see that it was an earth pony stallion with purple fur and yellow eyes. The cloaked stallion suddenly ran away from them down a nearby alleyway and Blue Arrow and Tail Spin went on after him.
"Hey! Get back here!" Blue Arrow yelled as he flew as fast as he could down into the narrow alley.
The cloaked stallion didn't turn back and kept on running, then Tail Spin flew past Blue Arrow at quite great speed before tackling the stallion to the ground in a pile of garbage.
Tail Spin had to wrestle the unknown stallion to the ground in an attempt to try and calm him down, which thankfully became a bit easier when Blue Arrow came by to help. After what seemed like a minute of restraining action, the two elite troops finally managed to get this strange stallion under control.
"Don't you dare thinking about any more surprises for us," Threatened Tail Spin, only for the strange stallion to say nothing for a few seconds, then he laughed…a cold laugh.
"And what's so funny then, mate?" Blue Arrow asked has he held down the stallion.
"Oh you have no idea about how ironic that quote your friend just said there!" The stallion grinned, which Blue Arrow and Tail Spin looked at one another with concern before looking back down again on the cloaked figure.
"What'd ya mean then by 'surprises' then?" Blue Arrow asked as the gears in his head starting turning over by what this pony meant."
Unknown to the two Red Hooves however was that this person had just managed to pull out a small packet of pills.
Suicide pills.
"You can tell your precious princess Celestia," the stallion said as he managed to get out one of the pills into his mouth. "That a storm is coming from the south...and that Farachan and Equestria…is doomed."
Suddenly after swallowing the pill, the stallion began coughing terribly that made the two Red Hooves turn the stallion onto his back as his coughing only worsened. Franticly, they tried everything they could to stop the coughing, alas it was no use.
After one powerful cough, the stallion lay they limp, he had gone. Silence befell Blue Arrow and Tail Spin, as they couldn't believe as to what had just happened. By then they both notice the small packet of suicide pills that had only just come into view.
"What the hell was that all about?" Tail Spin asked in shock.
Blue Arrow though could only stare at the body of the stallion. There was no doubt that this person was from Alaccan, but the fact that this was none other than a warning to them and the Red Hooves was fearful for him.
The war was far from over, and even the Red Hooves would be stunned later on.
