Soldier of Fortune

The warm, tranquil night stood still and silent, the moon high in the sky, and the stars gleaming and twinkling among their cosmic neighbors. It really made it rather difficult for a guard serving the graveyard shift to do his duty.

Rampart blinked hard, trying in vain to clear the tiredness from his eyes. He began to slump over on his weapon, a tall pike tipped with a cruel, twisting blade, and jolted awake when his head knocked the side of the stone arch from which he was supposed to be watching.

He growled, in pain, in frustration at his inability to stay awake, and in resentment toward his commanding officer who decided that he must want to have this position for tonight. Grumbling, he raised his talon and rubbed the afflicted area on his throbbing skull.

The vast city of Apexri stretched out below him, as far as he could see, even from his spot on the high tower. To an outsider, be it a Pony, a Gryphon such as he, or whatever else, the view would be astounding, especially at night. Even he was struck with awe his first day up on the battlements, but when that amazing sight was all you got to see, for a very long time, it began to get boring. Tonight was no exception.

He began to clack his beak in boredom after the pain in his head had passed, and was just about to lapse into almost-sleep again when his closing eyelids were invaded by a dim, red light.

Rampart squinted and looked up in the sky, toward the source of the growing light and small rumbling. It did not take long to locate it; there, high in the sky, was a streak of flame sailing down through the air, rapidly approaching the city.

Rampart couldn’t tell how large it was, or whether it really posed that big of a threat, but he ran up the his bell anyway and seized the mallet with which he used to pound out an alarm.

He repeated the message, dropped the mallet, and hurried back over to the edge of the wall.

The other guards - few and far between, regrettably - repeated the alarm and soon the palace courtyard was alive with haste.

The space-borne projectile was getting closer all the time, and the rumbling was now clearly audible.

It was close enough now for Rampart to gauge its size and distance, and he decided that nothing to hideously wrong would occur tonight, but still, it was rather interesting.

Everyone else had realized this by now, and the haste had died down, but those who had been stirred lined all along the battlements, pointing.

It was an entire twenty seconds before the ball of flames finally reached the ground after that. Despite its distance, Rampart found himself involuntarily bracing himself for a massive impact. He silently scolded himself and smiled in awe at the slight rumbling in the ground, the flash of light, and the rapidly rising pillar of smoke.

It hadn’t landed inside the city, as had been feared, but it didn’t land too far off either; Rampart could clearly see the rut in the ground made by the falling object, just at the Eastern edge of the plains surrounding the city, and just peeking into the forest that divided Gryphonus and Equestria.

The lone guard surveyed the walls again and noticed that the king had been roused and stood upon a tall tower far away.

Rampart could discern his gestures and guessed that he was ordering a search party to go out and retrieve whatever it was that had fallen. Oh how he wanted to be a part of that search party . . .

Unfortunately, however, he was stuck. The depressed Gryphon looked up at the giant clock set in the face of the palace and slumped over, his hopes of a shortened shift dashed. Seven more hours to go.

The world was dim and buzzing faintly. Everything was blurry and nothing was intelligible. Even when Casey could hear or see anything, it was completely indiscernible. She tried to groan indignantly, but her brain decided that she didn’t get to do that either.

She should be happy, she supposed, that she was even alive, and (so far it seemed), un-brain-damaged, what with her pod’s shields deciding to malfunction over a half a mile above the surface, and she not even fully clad in her entire suit.

Then she remembered. The memories didn’t come rushing back in a flood of blood and sparks, of Unknown Entities and SCPs, and of invading armies and ends of worlds, they were just there again. And, if those most recent of memories were correct, she was in big trouble.

Finally, Casey was able to draw in a heavy gulp of air, and she did so without remorse. It hurt her lungs, but at least she was able to breath.

Slowly, the feeling began to return to her body, bit by bit, and soon Casey was hurting all over. She hadn’t tested any of her limbs yet, and, though she was silently hoping nothing was broken, she knew that that would be asking for far too much. Sure enough, when she tried to stretch her right arm, a bolt of pain laced its way up to her socket and all the way down to the tips of her fingers. Casey grit her teeth at the hurt. Today was not going to be a good day.

Amazingly, however, everything else was intact. It seemed like her devout Catholic ancestry was finally paying off!

Casey began to listen, to try and pinpoint her surroundings based solely off her sense of hearing. The pod, obviously, had ignited several small fires around her, but there didn’t seem to be any large wildfires or raging infernos, so that was good. She was hot, both from being cooped up in her pod for so long and because of the fire all around her, but she felt a cool breeze penetrating its way through the heat and onto her dirty skin.

Casey cracked open her eyes and immediately shut them again; the light of the small flames around her proved too much for her tired eyes. The second time, however, she went far more slowly, and soon her eyes were wide open and fully functioning.

Now the real surveying could begin.

The pod had landed in what seemed to be a large and very green pasture a few hundred yards back and had came to rest barely trespassing into an equally green forest. All of Casey’s clothes had mostly survived the fall, but she was still missing her helmet and arm sections, as she had known; wasn’t enough time to grab them.

Her pod had come apart in a surprisingly violent manner, as the many shards of metal in the forest’s nearby trees proved, and Casey was now lying with her back against the biggest surviving section.

Casey leaned forward a groaned in pleasure as every ligament in her back gave a satisfying pop. She raised her left hand, set it on her chin, and pushed either way, causing more ligaments to crack.

Her right hand, Casey observed, could still move and she could still flex her fingers on that hand, but her forearm was not currently checked in.

Slowly, reservedly, the female soldier stood. It was then that she had realized that the wind had stopped. No, it had simply declined, as if something was blocking it . . .

Casey felt a rough prod in the back of her neck, and with lighting speed, she drew her knife and whirled around, her entire body already rife with adrenaline and ready to fight. Twenty blades, all much larger than hers, brandished back.

Perhaps, far below and down on the ground, it was warm, but higher up the slope, atop the highest peak of the Unicorn Range, it was frigid. The presence of magic and fire made it better, but it still wasn’t pleasant, especially not to a newbie such as Private Bright Light. What exactly he was thinking when he decided to sign up he had no idea. At least not this . . .

“Oi! Light! You not dozing off over there, are ya?”

Light internally sighed and turned to face his commanding officer who stood by the brazier near the center of the tower with an amused look on his face.

“No sir, Sergeant Gold sir . . . Just bored.”

The hearty stallion laughed and returned his attention to the third and last pony in the tower: a cold and unamused bat-pony stallion, and resumed their hushed conversation while Light turned once again to the land of the Gryphons.

If you squinted your eyes really hard, you could just make out the outlines of the Gryphon capital of Apexri. Bright wondered to himself why the capital was so close to the border; if Equestria ever decided to invade them for whatever reason, the king’s city would be automatically within their grasp.

Perhaps the Gryphons didn’t have such a firm grasp on the ways of warfare as rumored. Either that, or they knew something that Bright Light didn’t. Probably that.

The only thing that Bright wanted was to be warm for pony’s sake, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so he just stood and stared at the forest far below. That place looked warm . . .

A corner of the dark, blizzard-ridden sky was suddenly alight with a dull furnace-red glow, and Bright was pulled from his self-pitying.

“Uh, Sergeant Gold?” the young guard called from over his shoulder, his eyes still curiously locked on the glowing section of sky.

“Eh? What is it, boy?”

“You should see this, sir.”

Sergeant Golden Fields exchanged glances with his companion and they both stood up and trotted over to the edge of the tower.

Bright Light gestured with a jerk of his head and both of the others frowned.

“I say, what in the deepest pits of Tartarus is that?”

“I do not know.”

Light flinched. Had the bat-stallion just talked? In a voice loud enough to hear?

The member of the Night Guard noticed Light’s surprise and smirked, but soon returned his sight to the glow in the sky.

“Could it be a meteorite or sumfin’?” Gold mumbled.

“I suppose that’s a possibility, though if it is very large we may need to vacate the premises, for our own safety.”

Light grit his teeth. Were all bat-ponies this technical-sounding? It reminded him of that one pony that used to be his neighbor, who was it? Ah, Twilight Sparkle. She was nice enough, and rather pretty, but holy cow she could get annoying. But now she was Celestia’s personal student, so maybe talking smart got you places.

Bright frowned. His thoughts had really learned to wander in the past few days. Damn guard duty; that’s what it’ll do to ya.

“Oh, Luna, that’s good.” the bat muttered.

“Eh? What?” Gold asked.

“Based off of the steady growth of light and sound, the object is indeed one that is traveling through our atmosphere at a rapid pace . . . “

Bright inwardly groaned and tuned the bat out.

“. . . which means that we are safe. It may not be the same story for the small animals in the forest below, but they are hardly of any concern for us.”

“So . . . We’re safe?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s a relief, eh Bright?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, we don’t have to flee for out lives, that’s great.”

Where most Sergeants would punish Bright for his sarcasm, Golden Fields simply smiled and turned back to watch the sky.

He may be an uneducated git, but he was nice.

“Ah, there it is.”

Light pushed his way between Gold and the Bat and looked upwards. His eyes widened.

“Woah . . .”

“Indeed.”

The clouds and fog were being parted as a streaking ball of fire and smoke bolted downward through the sky and toward the tower.

“Uh, Tranquility?” Gold asked with a slightly frantic tone in his voice.

So that’s his name! Bright thought.

“Eh?”

“Are you sure you did your math n’ stuff right?”

“Mostly, but it I am wrong, there is more solid ground around us than air, so there is a higher chance of us not plummeting to our dooms.”

“Righ’, righ’. . . “

Sergeant Gold did not look to reassured at all. After a few more moments of silence, the bat, Tranquility apparently, spoke again, saying, “It will be rather loud, and a small earthquake wouldn’t be a surprise , but not to worry; we will be unhurt, I am sure of it.”

It was at that moment that the object, whatever it may be, touched down in the fields in front of Apexri and began digging a deep rut, sending giant clumps of dirt and grass high into the air.

It was a bit noisy.

It took a full fifteen seconds for the meteorite to grind to a halt, right near the edge of the forest, and all three of the tower’s occupants were looking almost vertically down.

“Well, that was definitely not a meteorite.” Tranquility said.

“Eh? ‘Ow do you know that?”

“A meteorite would have simply caused a crater and a shockwave, but that object, whatever it is, was light enough to instead do what it did, while simultaneously managed to stay together in its descent through the atmosphere.”

Both Private Bright Light and Sergeant Golden Fields frowned.

“Well then, what is it?” Bright asked impatiently.

“I, as at the beginning of this little adventure, do not know.”

Again, the three ponies turned their heads to stare down at the cleft ground, the burning grass, and the smoking object, all three of them - with varying levels of intelligence - wondering what it could possibly be, and asking themselves if it would effect their lives in the days to come.

It would. As well as the lives of the entire planet of Equis, and the lives of an entire other world.