Author's Note

Hi. This is my new novel-length "short story". My old tablet broke, so I lost my progress on this and had to restart. My new tablet is an Android, so there are no indentations at the beginning of paragraphs, and also there may be a few autocorrected words that I missed. Anyway, any feedback negative or positive would be appreciated, so I can further improve my writing skill, and I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1: Introduction

When I joined Equestria's Royal Army, I never expected to have do the things I did. I never thought that I would be sent out to the middle of nowhere to fight an army of nightmarish magic insect-ponies. But those were my orders, and I was required to follow them.

Leaving for Equestria's newly found war was the most difficult part of the whole thing. I was living in a Cloudsdale house along with my foalhood friend Aerodrome. I had lost my family and moved in with hers back in our hometown of Manehattan, so we were very close as friends. After we moved there, I noticed how Equestria was in a long period of peace and decided to join the Army's ranks as a flyer, because damn, did they have some good benefits. I bought a commission for 20000 bits and became an Air Marshall, went through all of the training courses, like jousting, combat, tactical flying, sabring, and I even took some assorted advanced courses. Out of all of the weapons they taught me there, my favorite was the sabres. They were 18 inch blades mounted on a locking pivot, which was then attached to a Y-shaped strap on the side of your hoof. You could flip the blade out by slapping the middle of the pivot, and flip it back in by depressing and holding the pivot for a moment. They were fast, sharp, and as light as the feathers on my wings. After noticing my aptitude with the blades, the stallion in charge of training everyone offered me a position in a newly formed unit of flyers called "Skirmishers". They were stationed in Cloudsdale, meaning that I could still keep living in my current house, so I accepted without any regret.

Me, along with all of the pegasi also assigned to this group were meant to be hit-and-run supporters of the classic spear wielding soldiers. We were supposed to dive down from the air above the enemy, slash them up, and leave. This was an untested tactic, as Equestria was not currently at war with anything or anyone, and had not been for quite some time. I hoped, and unfortunately, assumed it would stay that way until I retired. It didn't.

One day, a mare arrived at the palace in Canterlot, terrified, and bearing news that her family had been replaced by black, shape-shifting creatures that she had never seen before. Celestia sent a handful of soldiers out to solve the problem, fully armed and ready to kill, obviously assuming that the creatures were unique. Two days later, news reached Cloudsdale that an Army of them had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, South of Appleloosa. We were ordered to
maintain a state of readiness, in case they didn't back off. We all hoped and wished that they would, but after two negotiators from Canterlot were killed by the mystery enemy, those harrowing words sounded from the loudspeaker in the middle of Cloudsdale's military airfield:
"Celestia has declared that we will be deploying tomorrow at 1200 to challenge an invading force from the South. All flyers, be ready to go when the time comes."

That short announcement signaled the beginning of the most terrible 50 days of my life.