Ruina Imperii: The Wings of Freedom

Chapter One: The Notebook

Baltimare forward Infirmary, Equestrian mainland

I woke uneasily that day. Even as the first trickle of the morning began to seep through the stained windows I could not see a single speck of light from my eyes. I saw only the darkness; the images of the night still clung to my brain like a parasite till I writhed in agony and begged forgiveness. The visions, they came and went like the tide at sea, each painful recollection searing my wounds like salt water.

“Don’t worry, I promise I’ll keep you safe…“

I clenched my talon around the blanket, it didn’t feel any different. For a moment I imagined all those who would die just to feel this sensation just one more time. Perhaps they would return home to feel it, yet would never be satisfied as I did now. It was a curse, that I found only my peace of mind when I slept alongside the rubble and cinders, not because I enjoyed it but because… I knew I had deserved it.

“For your traitorous action, you shall pay with your life…”

I saw that figure once more; one who I felt was important to me but could not explain why. I heard screaming, an echo of fear I had heard all too many times before. It was terrible but there was also something sad and melancholy in that long cry. You could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything it had loved, to lift their heads and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, son, a brother or even the cry of someone you held dear.

“Florizel, help me!”

I struggled under the covers, gasping for air as it clenched around my neck. Feathers flew everywhere as the blankets hit the floor. Clutching my chest, I began to breathe frantically trying to force the images away. As seconds passed, a rhythmic percussion from a clock began to reverberate in my head, seconds that formed minutes went on until I was in a timeless vacuum staring into the blankness of this… desolate place.

I had no idea of where I was; a wide room with grey walls and beds that were lined up against them with the occasional turquoise curtains covering a few. I blinked; even in the light of day that shone through the murky windows it was remarkably dim. The weakened light seemed to pirouette all over the place until it led my wavering gaze upon on shiny glass needles and an assortment of bottles that were adorned with a singular red cross.

  “Good to see that you are doing well Lieutenant,”

I spluttered immediately as my throat dried up, it was his voice.  At once the images came back to me like a flood, but this time it brought not fear; but anger. It was that voice that sounded the crack of each rifle as they fired from one side to the other and the chaotic shrill of the shells as they delivered death to the soldiers. No matter how terrible the images were or how much bloodshed they brought back, I couldn’t forget it was that voice which condemned us all to death.

  “Why don’t you go burn in hell you bastard! Each and every one of you cowardly scum that call themselves officers!” I bellowed. There was a wanton fury rising within me like magma that demanded to be quelled with blood, and I would make sure that the blood would be his.

  The figure stepped out of the fading darkness, revealing a menacing presence that fit perfectly in the gryphon doctrine of strength and power. There was nothing perfect about him, each feature he possessed seem to have been battle-worn in some way or another. He had black feathers that covered his chest and face and eyes with fearsome golden irises that had witnessed the deaths of thousands. His beak and talon as chipped and worn they were, still conveyed the terror of his seemingly mutilating nature. Accompanying him was the silver armour that was strapped to his body and wrapped around the base of wings; faded purple that streaked through it designated his rank of a distinguished officer well beyond his years.

  His beak twisted into a cruel smile, “I flew in all the way from Clawdor, interrupted meetings to come see you in this desolate piss-hole.” He drew closer, revealing a scar that ran down across his eye. “I expected a much more convivial welcome for my trouble.”

  I growled as I tried to step out of my hospital confinement, only to be met with an agonizing pain which surged through my left wing like wildfire. Turning my head I silently cursed, the entire wing was imprisoned by bandages and now that I had realized, it felt cooped and the burning desire to stretch began to seethe through my mind.

  “I would be careful with that wing, you injured it quite badly. You’re quite lucky that you still have it,” He chuckled, dismissing my anger as if it was paper. He slowly moved towards a hospital seat and slumped down on it, taking out a cigarette and promptly lighting it.

“What do you want from me, General?” I hissed.

  I stared into his golden eyes, searching for an answer in the murky depths of his mind. For a moment he seemed hesitant as the pillars of wispy smoke puffed from his beak and stared elsewhere, closing his eyes with what seemed like an expression of deep thought or remorse. Then taking his blunted cigarette he thrust it downward onto the ashtray on the bedside table, smudging the embers into cold white ash. He reached for his satchel and pulled out a peculiar item which made my eyes grow wide, for in his claws was a notebook.

  It looked ancient to say the least. Much of the hardback cover was worn from use, sporting an array of damages and charred areas as small pieces of paper spilled from the corners. It was hardly worth mentioning, but what made it so petrifying was the letters etched onto its worn surface: Florizel Ironclaw.

  “Do you recognize this book?” he asked, passing it onto me.

  I stayed silent. With one claw I moved my finger down the cover of the old notebook, circling it around my name as if I was trying to prove to myself it was real thing. It was just as it was since the day it slipped from my grasp; since the truth was left behind against the oncoming slaughter.

  “What you wrote here, all these pages, contains enough offences to get a soldier executed many times over.” He said sternly. “What I want to know before that happens is the truth, and I want to hear it from the pony’s mouth.”

  I shot him a cold look. “You want to know the truth? You, the right arm of the war machine want to hear the truth?” I angrily bashed aside all the medical equipment and a flower vase on the bedside table in blind rage, followed by an orchestra of smashed glass.

  “You sent honourable Gryphons to die for the truth and didn’t even blink. All the time it was in front of you and you couldn’t see it” I hissed.

I waited for swift death to follow, the same fate given to others who had dared to question his God-given right to judge. The old gryphon instead frowned; a flash of tiredness creeping across his scar ridden face.

“If only a soul could ascend to paradise every time I heard that sentence,” he sighed. “Then we could all live far from this broken world, away from Equestria.”

He spoke rather slowly until his last few words were dripped with malevolence, “Let me be the one to remind you they brought this upon themselves, the plunderers and murderers of our culture and our people deserved far more.”

The images, they flashed back once more. An endless flood of blood-stained rain fell upon a shattered landscape devoid of colour, an echo of voices; pleas of mercy and capitulation falling on deaf ears as the bullets sealed their fate. I witnessed it all, each murderer holding onto their children as they left this world, promising them they would see each other again.

He reached down and produced a shrivelled rose from the vase which had been shattered by my fit. “When we first met, I saw you as a young bud with so much potential and eagerness to fulfil his duty to our nation as a soldier and citizen. Never have I witnessed such devotion, it was almost fanatical.”

“But it was foolish of me to believe that it would last,” he continued, crushing the aged flower in his claws, “as every blossom that comes forth will meet its end someday, and you are no exception.”

His sharp eyes turned to me once more, a petrifying gaze that pierced the thin veil of my self-confidence.

“I will reiterate my question, when did you begin to lose faith in the cause?”

I didn’t reply at first because I no longer had the spirit to be angry, instead I opened the notebook to the very first page. The first thing that caught my eye was the grey picture of a smiling griffon who I could hardly recognize as myself; enthusiastic and full of life with a happy mother at my side who smiled with the same kind of cheerfulness that the both of us shared with ignorant bliss. The rest of the singular page were filled to the brim with scribbled notes, ones that I had written all those years ago and still kept with a guilt that I had not written more. They were earlier attempts of writing which exemplified a true quality of frankness which slowly ebbed from my later prose which was deemed - even from my peers – “ornamental” at times.

“I lost my faith when I saw nothing but a truth covered in lies.” I replied adamantly. “These early pages, only they show the truth. I couldn’t sleep at night or watch this slaughter knowing that what I wrote to the people was nothing but… rose coloured glass of a massacre.

The guilt came and I was held at Tartarus’s edge to hold back tears that welled up in my eyes. “I witnessed comrades who cursed the war with their first and last breath and sacrificed everything to save what they held dearer than the great leader or the “fatherland”. I witnessed friends who fought for each other because of our bond, not for the reason you hammered into us.”

There was an uneasy pause that hung in the air like a foul stench before I spoke again.

“In the end how was I meant to repay this kindness? By lying to those at home that they had died for a cause they never believed in.”

The look on the veteran’s face remained unchanged, but the flame within him had died down.

“I've always wanted to be a famous writer General. But when I was young all I ever wanted was to rebuild our home as it was like so many others, not to die in vain for some campaign of conquest. I still remember the old streets of our home, my mother and all the others, left behind because the fatherland called us to do his dirty work.”