One hoof in front of the other
One hoof in front of the other.
Sandstorm kept telling himself this over and over.
It had become his mantra.
One hoof in front of the other.
He looked behind him, seeing a string a foals following him, all of them weak, emaciated, pinched, and thin. He had lost another one. At least, he thought he had. It was getting harder to tell, harder to think. There hadn’t been any water for a couple of days now. There had been a little grass, dry, parched, and difficult to eat with dried out mouths thirsty for water.
Sandstorm hadn’t eaten any grass. He had left it for the foals.
One hoof in front of the other.
Every step made his broken wing bounce and the bones scraped together painfully. Each step made his body beg to lay down, perhaps to never get up again. He would lay down soon enough, it was nearly nighttime. There was no good place to settle down and make camp. Sandstorm walked through dead lands.
They had gone after him. And he had fought back. Monsters fought under his command, foul magics flew from his claws, he had obliterated them. The armies of the Princesses had been ripped apart and then the Princesses had fled.
And Sandstorm had awoke, trapped under a pile of the dead, his wing broken and one eye missing, in the middle of the now dead lands. His magic had killed the land. All of this had been lush and green once.
And so Sandstorm had begun to make his way back home, blessed with a magnificent sense of direction, as befitting any pegasus. He had been heading home, walking for days, when he came upon the first village. There had been no adults alive, but several foals huddled in the remains of a house.
And they had followed him.
Sandstorm did what he could to look after the foals, but there was little he could do. They followed him though, because foals needed an adult. They cried, grieving those lost, leaking precious moisture from their eyes, and they followed, their tired little legs trotting to keep up with Sandstorm.
Sandstorm remembered when the first foal had died. The second day away from the village. He had simply fallen over and that was it. The other foals sniffled, and there was a few sobs, but the march had continued and they had done nothing to bury the foal, leaving him for scavengers.
It had broken Sandstorm’s heart.
The second foal had died later that day, a little pegasus filly.
Sandstorm had kept the foals moving, not giving them time to grieve.
One hoof in front of the other.
A few days later, they had found water, but it was bitter and full of silt. They had drank it anyway, trying to slake their thirsts and fill their bellies. Some brown grass grew near the stream they had drank from.
A few days after that, there had been another village. Horrible things had been done to the adults. Terrible things. Their bodies had become trophies placed on display, gruesome fetishes left as a parting gift. And the foals had seen it all, and had been left alive, to live among the violated dead.
Sandstorm’s troop had grown.
One hoof in front of the other.
Several days after that, Sandstorm was not sure how many, they came across a battlefield, full of the dead. Dead ponies lie everywhere, mostly pegasi. Quite a number of foals succumbed to their terrible hunger, and had feasted upon the dead, much to the horror of others.
The horrible slurping and sucking sounds, sounds of tearing flesh, and popping bodies, bodies left in the blistering sun, unnerved the living who did not feast. The flesh had been soft and somewhat rotten, and the ravenous living had feasted well.
Later, the sickness had started, first vomiting, followed by explosive muddy plots. Many foals fell from their sickness, and Sandstorm had left them to die, urging the living to keep moving.
None of those who feasted upon the flesh had survived. Almost half of their number had fallen along the way, sickened, and left for dead.
And Sandstorm had kept going.
One hoof in front of the other.
They were getting closer now. Maybe a few more days if they could keep the pace up. If home was still there. Sandstorm did worry about that.
What if he had destroyed what little they had left? They were perilously close to losing this conflict. So many had died. Cities destroyed. Greenery gone. Water left bitter, sometimes poisoned. There were rumours that the dead now walked the earth at his bidding.
He had fooled them all, pretending to be rehabilitated. He had waited, he was patient, he had made friends, and then, he had struck, destroying the elements of harmony first, the six mares who had once bested him, the six mares who had befriended him, the six mares who had championed his equality and heralded his so called reformation.
And he had killed them, one by one, brutally and horribly, violating their bodies, and then burning down their home, the town of Ponyville.
One hoof in front of the other.
Sandstorm almost stumbled when he saw them, pegasi in the sky, riding the wind. And they had seen him, swooping down upon him and his train of foals.
Sandstorm felt himself being lifted in strong forelegs, words of comfort spoken but unheard by his ears, unable to make out any meaning. He had walked so much that his hooves had worn through to the quick, and still he had walked.
One hoof in front of the other.
Commander Cloudrip felt the pegasi in his forelegs go limp, becoming heavier as the body became dead weight. Behind him, his soldiers carried over a dozen foals, brought out of the dead lands by one determined soldier.
Commander Cloudrip flew back to the fortress, seeing two alicorns in the middle of the courtyard. He circled, then hovered, gently placing the body of his fallen comrade down upon the ground at Celestia’s feet.
Celestia, and her sister, Luna, studied the dead pegasus and looked grief stricken, another one dead in the war against him.
The Royal Sisters were delighted to see the foals though, as foals represented hope. As long as some ponies lived, there was still hope, hope to stop him.