Shadows in the North - A Sundering of Equestria Tale

Chapter One

The icy chill of the harsh wind cut through Defiant Arc’s padded under-armour clothing and thick golden barding more effectively than any blade ever had. The Equestrian soldier trudged forwards through the sleet, head bowed. The few stray strands of his electrum-coloured mane that poked out from under his helmet were blown about wildly by the wind. Following the white-coated Centurion through the snow was a column of soldiers from the Royal Guard – his soldiers, under his command – who were likewise struggling against the harsh northern weather.

“Sergeant!” Defiant Arc shouted over his shoulder, his voice almost lost in the howl of the blustery winter air, “Are we still on course?”

“Yes, Centurion!” the soldier just behind Defiant Arc yelled back. Hovering in front of the unicorn – levitated by his magic – was a tiny compass and a snow-drenched map, the latter of which was barely still in one piece. “Still heading north! Only a mile and a half to go, sir!”

There was an element of hopeful cheer in the junior soldier’s voice that Defiant Arc chose to ignore. A mile and a half; he’d already lost nearly a fifth of his troops to the elements and enemy ambush since the beginning of their journey. The land around them now was completely open and devoid of shelter – miles and miles of rock-strewn, icy wasteland. How many more would he lose before they reached the waypoint and set up camp?

The Centurion’s thoughts were interrupted by a muffled thunder of hooves on snow, and Defiant Arc glanced back yet again to see another of his soldiers push his way through the falling sleet to reach the front of the column.

“What is it, soldier?” the Centurion called out. He didn’t know the pony’s name or rank, and didn’t much care. “What are you doing out of formation?”

“Centurion!” The pony stopped to salute, but Defiant Arc didn’t, and kept going. The other pony hurried after him. “Lieutenant Makewell, sir, of the Hospitaller Corps. Three more soldiers have dropped down – that makes twenty-four now. They need medical treatment, and we can’t help them while we’re still moving. Sir, we have to stop.”

“Don’t be so insolent, soldier!” Defiant Arc bellowed, “I have been put in personal command of this expedition by Princess Celestia herself! We stop when I say we stop!”

“But sir,” Makewell protested, “If we don’t make camp, we might lose them. I know we didn’t stop before because of the risk of enemy ambush-” Not true, Defiant Arc thought to himself, but it was good that the rank-and-file had come up with a viable excuse, so he didn’t have to. “-but we’ve long since passed through rebel-held territory. We’re almost at the Crystal Mountains, can’t we ju-”

Defiant Arc spun around and smashed the medic across the face with his hoof. “We stop when I say we stop!” he repeated angrily, “I am in charge - do not question me!”

Frightened, Lieutenant Makewell nodded and backed away submissively, the blood dripping down his muzzle already freezing in the sub-zero temperatures. The pony quickly saluted, before turning around and fleeing, tail literally between his legs.

Defiant Arc shook his head at the unruliness of his subordinates and continued marching, maintaining his position at the front of the column. The violence wasn’t strictly necessary, he knew, but he needed to make sure that his soldiers respected him. After all, it wasn’t much of a chain of command if he wasn’t being obeyed, was it?

The real reason he didn’t want the column to stop and make camp was, of course, because he didn’t want to. Certainly he was cold, but he had grown up in the cold. He was used to it. Defiant Arc didn’t much care if the others wanted – or even ‘needed’ – to stop. He could and would keep going, so his subordinates would have to keep up.

He hadn’t made the order to leave behind the bodies of his fallen soldiers lightly. He may have not thought very highly of them in life, but they didn’t really deserve to be left as frozen corpses in some distant place. But, nevertheless, it was necessary to keep moving until they reached the waypoint. That was all-important.

After that, it was on to-

The Centurion’s thoughts were interrupted yet again by another pony shouting. Their words were too incoherent to be heard and were quickly lost in the roaring wind. Defiant Arc turned back for the third time in five minutes, his rage slowly building. “What is it now?” he shouted.

The soldiers nearest to him looked bewildered, but were quickly shoved aside by a powerful-looking Earth pony. “Centurion!” the newcomer bellowed, “Sir, it’s an ambush! We’re under attack!”

“Impossible!” Defiant Arc shouted back, as the cries and sounds of weapons being drawn became louder, and closer, “There’s wasteland in every direction! Even with this sleet, how could the rebels have snuck up on us?!”

“It’s not the rebels, sir, it’s-” The Earth pony never got a chance to finish the sentence, but to Defiant Arc it didn’t really matter. When the dark shape leapt onto the soldier’s back and slit his throat with a shadowy blade, the Centurion discovered for himself that it wasn’t the rebels that were attacking.

“Ambush!” the Centurion yelled, using his magic to draw his sword. The dark shapes (whatever they were, they certainly weren’t ordinary ponies) seemed to erupt from the very ground itself. At his command, the soldiers nearest to Defiant Arc drew their weapons, but the mysterious attackers were everywhere. Soon every Royal Guardspony was up in arms against these strange assailants.

Hurrying through the screams and the snow-storm back towards his column, the Centurion fell upon the first dark shape he found; a pony-shaped shadow that had just finished decapitating a spear-wielding trooper. Defiant Arc yelled as he swept his gleaming broadsword straight through the creature’s neck. A head for a head, he thought neatly – but then his eyes widened in shock at the truth of what had transpired.

The blade had passed through the creature’s neck – and that was it. The blow had done no damage at all, but had merely disrupted the creature’s shadowy outline, and even then only for a moment. Unharmed, the pony-shape launched itself at Defiant Arc.

The Centurion ducked under the attack, only now noticing the blade-like shapes protruding from the creature’s face and fore-hooves. To his horror, the shadow-thing changed direction in mid-air and turned back towards its foe.

Defiant Arc swung again, trying to knock it away from him, but his sword once again passed through the creature without harming it. Fortunately, the attack seemed to disrupt the thing’s shape a little more, and rather than feeling shadowy blades sink into his flesh, the Centurion was momentarily enveloped in a tangible cloud of darkness.

What in Celestia’s name was this thing?

Defiant Arc burst out of the cloud, only to see his attacker reform back into its pony-shape and launch itself at him again, shadow-blades re-growing from its face and hooves. In desperation, Defiant Arc swung his blade again, this time aiming for the creature’s heart.

To his surprise, his sword made contact with something. There was a sound like breaking glass, a gaseous hiss, and the creature instantly dissipated.

The Centurion looked about, wide-eyed and startled by his sudden victory. The shadow-pony he had been fighting – and he had no doubt that it had indeed been made of shadows, as impossible as that sounded to him – was nowhere to be seen. All that remained were some fragments of glass, or possibly crystal, lying on the frozen ground where the creature had once stood. In moments, the fragments were covered by the falling sleet.

“Soldiers! Their hearts!” Defiant Arc bellowed, turning back to face his soldiers, “Aim for their… hearts…”

His personal duel had taken the Centurion quite some distance from the main fight, which, as it turned out, was probably the best thing for him. Defiant Arc could see at a glance that the battle was lost; the shadow-ponies were everywhere, overwhelming the Royal Guard in huge mobs. More were attacking, appearing every second, emerging straight from the ground.

None were attacking him. None, it seemed, had even noticed him.

Hoping that at least some of his soldiers had heard his cry (and that nopony was unengaged and watching him) Defiant Arc put away his sword, and used his magic to levitate over to him the unattended compass and map that lay by the body of one of his fallen soldiers. Once he’d done that, the Centurion turned away from the battle and fled ignobly into the icy wasteland, trusting the sleet-storm to cover his tracks and obscure him from sight.

*

The year was 1043LB – that is, one thousand and forty-three years since Princess Luna (now Honorary Councillor Luna, and a traitor to Old Equestria) had been banished to the moon for crimes against Equestria – and the whole of the country had been embroiled in a war of previously-unimagined destruction for the last decade.

Much of Equestria was under the control (however nominal) of the self-proclaimed New Lunar Republic, the creation of which through a national revolt had resulted in an Equestria-wide civil war. The rebel’s opponents – those still loyal to Princess Celestia, who referred to themselves as the forces of Old Equestria – had fought back, and continued to hold out in the capital city of Canterlot.

The widespread violence and breakdown of order had led to further problems. Crazed religious fanatics calling themselves Discordians had taken over several cities, and now wandered across the land, looting and killing (as well as partying) with impunity. The inequine Changeling Swarm had also re-emerged from their forest hiding-places in inconceivable numbers and had since enslaved countless ponies, the emotions of which they fed upon voraciously.

Foreign powers had also intervened in what had previously been essentially a civil war. The Griffon Kingdoms – long-time neighbours and rivals of Equestria – had taken the opportunity presented by the principality’s weakness to invade. The gigantic World Empire, on the other hoof, had invaded nominally in a peace-keeping mission to combat the growing Discordian ‘infection’, but had since annexed Equestrian land at an astonishing rate.

Nothing, Defiant Arc reflected, had been right in Equestria since the assassination of Princess Twilight Sparkle.

He had escaped the ambush with nothing more than a slightly-shortened mane-cut and, following the map, had carried on northwards alone. The sounds of battle and the screams of dying ponies had quickly (and, from Defiant Arc’s perspective, thankfully) been blotted out by the sleet-storm.

The Centurion was now travelling through a slight gulley in the icy wasteland. The sides of the gulley were high enough to keep out the worst of the sleet, but low enough that he could climb out of it should he come under attack. There was no sound around him now, other than the roar of the wind and the steady slushing noise of his hoof-steps through the snow-covered ground.

After some time, Defiant Arc’s stomach began to growl. He didn’t have any food on him; it was the privilege of the higher ranks to have their subordinates carry their supplies for them. But it was only then that he began to regret not staying around the ambush site longer. Maybe he could have stripped a few bodies of their provisions, not to mention their weapons or even extra layers of clothing. It seemed to be getting colder too.

Well, the Centurion thought, the waypoint couldn’t be that much further away. There would surely be food and water there, as well as a fire, and somewhere warm and dry to sleep. There would be other ponies there too, to whom he could boast of his exploits, as the only survivor of an ambush by evil shadow-creatures. It wasn’t as heroic as Defiant Arc would have liked, but it was much better than being labelled a cowardly runaway.

He continued to trudge onwards. After a while, small icicles began to form on his muzzle. His muscles were beginning to get tired.

“Halt, Equestrian, in the name of the Empire!”

Startled, Defiant Arc spun around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. His aching, frozen muscles protested at this sudden burst of activity. After a moment, he spotted it; a stallion (definitely a solid one) standing on the lip of the gulley. The low sun was shining from behind the newcomer, so the Centurion couldn’t see much of him, but the pony was definitely pointing some kind of device at him. He guessed correctly that it was one of those Imperial ‘pistols’.

“Keep that weapon sheathed, or I will shoot,” the newcomer said, as the grip of Defiant Arc’s sword began to glow, “I have a very good aim.”

“Don’t you know who you’re talking to, Imperial?” Defiant Arc hissed at the pony above him, sword still glowing but undrawn, “I am a Centurion of the Royal Guard of Canterlot! Do you really think one of your little bullets is going to do much more than scratch me?”

“Yes,” the pony replied bluntly, “But it is my hope that I will not have to shoot.”

“What?”

Slowly, the newcomer made his way down the slope and closer to Defiant Arc. A foolish move, the Centurion thought; now he was closer to the Guardspony’s blade. The gun’s advantage in range had been lost.

Now that both ponies were in the gulley, Defiant Arc could make out the newcomer in more detail. He was an Earth pony of grey colouration, and an old one at that. His head had a number of bald patches – most likely through age, though a number of faded scars suggested that it may have been something else – that showed through a short-cut and similarly-grey mane. His slow pace, which the Centurion had mistook for cautiousness, was actually the result of a limp in his left-hind leg. There was no obvious wound, so he took it to be an old injury.

The stallion was dressed in the typically grey and dreary, but exceedingly neat, uniform of the World Empire’s army. On top of that was a very thick (and warm-looking) winter coat, apparently made out of the fur of some exotic beast that Defiant Arc had never seen. A number of shiny pips on the pony’s shoulder and medals on his chest was further indication to the Centurion that this was not just some common soldier.

Piled on his back was a great deal of baggage; the Centurion, in his state of great hunger, immediately assumed that they were filled with food. From one of these bags, however, extended a very thin, spidery, limb-like appendage made of metal. The end of this appendage was attached to the pistol the Imperial had threatened him with, and seemed to be holding it in place in the air. The old stallion’s hoof was hooked into a small loop, right next to the gun’s trigger. It seemed to Defiant Arc like a very roundabout way of allowing non-unicorns to hold and fire a gun with one hoof.

“I see that you are alone,” the stallion said as he came closer, stating the obvious with a perfectly straight face, “I take it you and your comrades were ambushed by those… shadow… things. I do not know if you have a word for them in your language.”

“Are they something to do with you?” Defiant Arc demanded.

The stallion shook his head. “No,” he explained, sombre-faced, “They attacked my soldiers as well, in huge numbers. We were completely unprepared. I managed to escape from the slaughter with a few companions, but we were pursued. As far as I know, I am the only survivor. I assume a similar thing happened to you?”

“We were attacked as well, yes,” Defiant Arc said, and then, because he couldn’t help it, he added, “My entire column was slaughtered, but I managed to fight those shadow-ponies off single-hoofedly! A single thrust through the heart is all it takes to kill them!”

“How very admirable,” the pony said, apparently unimpressed, “You are clearly an excellent fighter – as I have come to expect from the soldiers of Old Equestria, as you call yourselves.” He slightly lowered his gun. “May I ask you your name, Equestrian?”

“Centurion Defiant Arc,” the Guardspony said, unsure why he hadn’t lunged at the Imperial the moment the stallion had let his guard down, “Of the Canterlot Royal Guard.”

“My name is Colonel Staid, of the World Empire’s Expeditionary Force to Equestria,” the stallion said, lowering his gun even further, “Seeing as we are both by ourselves, I have a proposition for you, Centurion.”

“What’s that?” Defiant Arc said gruffly.

“I propose that, until we reach a place of relative safety, we work together,” Staid replied, apparently completely serious, “I believe the colloquial Equestrian term is ‘team-up’ – please correct me if I am wrong.”

The Centurion stared at him incredulously and more than a little suspiciously. He, a brave soldier of the Royal Guard of Canterlot, ally himself with a heartless Imperial dog? The idea was utterly ridiculous!

But this Colonel Staid appeared to be quite serious, and as the seconds ticked by (and as the wind grew colder, and his stomach rumbled louder), Defiant Arc could find fewer and fewer reasons to object. At the very least, if they were attacked again by those shadow-ponies, the Centurion was sure that he could outrun the old stallion and escape while the enemy was distracted.

“… Okay,” Defiant Arc said at last, “But this is only temporary, you understand? You help me, I help you, neither of us kills each other – until we reach safety. Those are the terms. Got that?”

Staid nodded. “I accept those terms,” he said, and held out his hoof.  Hesitantly, Defiant Arc held out his own, and they shook. “Now, Centurion, you look hungry, and you seem to be devoid of any provisions. How about we rest here a while and eat?”

“That’s… that’s probably a good idea,” Defiant Arc acquiesced, and allowed his tired limbs to lower him onto the cold ground.

Staid sat down too – in a rather strange position, the Centurion noted, that made him look a little like a baying dog – and began to rifle through his many saddle-bags. “Here,” the Imperial said, pulling something out and hoofing it over to his new companion, “Have you tried Imperial rations before?”

“No,” said Defiant Arc, examining the unappealing, compressed grey bar with a critical eye, “You said you’re a colonel; don’t you have anything nicer-looking than this?”

Colonel Staid looked confused for a moment. “Every soldier in the Imperial Army gets the same standard rations,” he said, “Unless they’re ill or injured. My apologies, but this is all I have.”

Mentally shrugging at the weirdness of the Imperials, Defiant Arc took a bite out of the hard, grey bar. It tasted a little like porridge, with old cabbage mixed in. It didn’t taste awful, though, so Defiant Arc quickly ate it up. “What’s in it?” he asked casually, wiping the last few crumbs off of his muzzle.

“Reconstituted vegetable matter,” Staid said, taking a bite from his own bar, “Mostly.”

Defiant Arc stopped. He had heard stories. “… ‘Mostly’?”

“Well,” Staid began, “We in the Empire believe in a concept – it’s difficult to translate, but it involves mass production of food, to ensure maximal nutritional output for the minimum of cost. Anyway, ever since it was realised that all the necessary proteins and some nutrients necessary for pony health can be found within, uh, ground maggots-”

The Centurion nearly vomited. “What?!” he exclaimed, looking down in horror at the crumbs on his hooves, “Maggots?! I’m eating maggots! That’s disgusting!”

“Oh! No, no, no,” Colonel Staid said hurriedly, waving a hoof, “All the fly larvae are thoroughly processed and ground up, so all you’re eating is the dried protein and other nutrients taken from it, identical to the nutrients from anywhere else. It’s simply a chemical compound.” He took a bite out of his own bar. “I say, Centurion, you look somewhat unwell, are you alright?”

“No, I’m- I’m fine,” Defiant Arc said, his white face turning a nasty shade of green. As his cheeks bulged, he wondered if he could survive by just eating snow.