Broken Hearts And Broken Minds

They came in greater numbers than we could handle that time. After our plan to stand our ground had failed, we ended up retreating farther back into the Everfree Forest.

"Let's go!" I yelled at the pegasi behind me as I ran away from the massive mob of Changelings. They caught up to me quickly, and we tried to get away together, but the deeper into the forest we went, the harder it got to navigate. We slowed down too much and the Changelings reached us. As we turned around to face the threat together, Over-G began to scream disturbingly. A Changeling spear had punctured him in the side of the neck. Then another one flew in and stuck into his head. He yelled louder. The third one hit him in the leg, still not killing him. His screams were too much for me to bear, and I stopped to slash his neck swiftly. There would have been no saving him.

Then the unarmed Changelings reached us. Only instead of attacking, they all erupted in flames and changed into random ponies from Appleloosa and our military that they had seen at some point. One of them changed into me. I began thrusting my sabre at the group, killing one of them somehow. Beside me, Light Wind was being overwhelmed. Three Changelings were attacking him simultaneously, and Purple Quartz moved in to help him. One of the insects tackled me and knocked me onto my back. I plunged my blade into his abdomen, but he somehow ignored it and impaled me back. I felt his fangs sink deeply in to my neck, where I was unprotected by my armor. They had a bone deep, cutting, stinging feeling, that seemed to spread farther than just where I was bitten. After a moment of being held in the grip of the creature's jaws, I saw a blade fly in front of my face and go into the bottom of the Changeling's head. I was released from the vice, though I didn't want to move, and felt like I couldn't yell because of the amount of pain I was in. I heard some Changeling screeching, then my world snapped into a black silence as something smashed into my helmet and I was knocked unconscious.

When I woke up three minutes later, Wanderlust had thrown me into a deep ditch where I would be safe. I was covered in mud, twigs, and leaves, and my neck stung with an unfathomable pain. My entire world was the burning, tearing, sensation in my neck and all I could manage to do was straighten my back and reach my hooves out to try and grab the nothing in front of me. A unicorn in red and white armor crashed down into the ditch alongside my helpless rolling self and tried to keep me still.

"Be quiet! This isn't too bad to fix! I'm here to help!" He told me, placing one hoof on my breastplate, and the other hoof on my neck against my jaw. I could no longer move my neck or head, and I tried to relax, but my body was struggling. His horn glowed and he held it up against my wound, bringing on another wave of pain. It felt like my neck was being ripped in half where the wound was, and I couldn't even yell anymore. It seemed to get worse, and worse, then it was gone in an instant.

"You're good! Go!" The unicorn yelled, releasing me and running back in the direction he came from. I brought my left hoof up to my throat to discover that while there was still some pain left over, there were no holes, cuts, or gashes any more.

I staggered on to my legs and crawled out of the ditch and decided not to think about it any further. I saw scattered corpses everywhere, both Changelings and ponies, but the fighting seemed to have moved deeper into the forest. I looked around at the bodies, but saw none that I knew except Over-G. I looked down at his trampled body with the three spears sticking out of it and a slit neck, thinking about how I had chosen to mercy kill him. Maybe he could have been saved, and I had pointlessly murdered my acquaintance.

Just as I regained full consciousness, an unarmored mare cantered up to me from behind.

"Help!" She yelled, startling me. I turned to look at her, and I couldn't believe what I saw. It was a white pegasus with a black and yellow mane, and it had a cutie mark of a tornado with wings. It was Aerodrome.

"Aerodrome?" I exclaimed.

"What?" She responded, not understanding why I had said that or what it meant.

"Don't you recognize me?" I asked. She shook her head nervously. My mood went from shocked to furious. She was a Changeling that must have found my photograph. I reached my front leg back to realize that I no longer had my saddlebag. My ears folded back, my sabre flipped out, and I prepared myself to kill what looked and sounded like my best friend. She spread her wings and charged at me, but I flinched and failed to counterattack.

I kept dodging and pushing and not being able to stab. That was until Aerodrome erupted into green flames and changed into me. I plunged my blade into the imposter immediately, triggering more flames and turning the Changeling back to its original black insect form. I pulled my sabre back out and followed up with two quick jabs to the face, killing the unarmed, unprotected Changeling. He fell to the ground silently.

When I looked up at the rest of the forest around me, I saw two familiar faces approaching from ahead. Whichever direction I was now facing. I honestly didn't know anymore. Wanderlust and Purple Quartz approached sadly. Quartz was wearing a saddlebag, and it was completely stuffed with something hard.

"What's wrong?" I asked them as they stepped towards me. Quartz silently dug into his saddlebag with his snout and pulled out Light Wind's black and orange helmet. He dropped it on the ground and sat down. Wanderlust just stared at it. I couldn't believe what I was being told. The colt who was just barely old enough to join Equestria's Army had been killed under my command while retreating.

The forest had gone silent. The fighting had all dispersed and scattered throughout the massive cluster of trees that lay in the middle of Equestria. The three of us that remained alive out of all eight ponies who had been the Skirmishers, resorted to wandering the Everfree Forest silently. We didn't know which way was North, South, towards other ponies, or towards the Changelings. None of us thought to fly out of here, we were all too tired. Our minds were blurry.

When we woke up the next day, we found that there was a clearing in the trees where we could cleanly take off and fly out of here. There was also a small pond in the clearing, with sparkling, transparent water. Wanderlust and I stripped each other's armor off, while Purple Quartz dipped his head down to drink some of the water. We all silently took drinks for a while before Quartz jumped in, armor and all, and lightened up the mood. He produced a massive splash that wet both me and Wanderlust as well as himself. I brought my armor and weapon to the edge of the pond and cleaned off the now brown and black blood staining it's scratched, but otherwise shiny face. The water was becoming a dirty brownish color as we rubbed yesterday's problems out of our gear. I began to smell something foul.

"You need to brush your teeth." I told Wanderlust next to me.

"She's not the only one." Quartz replied, generating laughter from everypony. Then I heard a low growling. I stood up and turned around only to be scared shitless by the timber wolf standing three yards in front of me.

"Contact." I said calmly as the two other ponies turned and noticed it.

"Oh, hell..." Quartz added, climbing slowly out of the water to stand next to us. I quietly issued orders to my fellows.

"Scramble up and out of the clearing fast, in 3..., 2..., 1. Go!" The three of us flew straight up and out of the clearing, Wanderlust narrowly avoided getting her leg ripped the in the process. The timber wolf silently ran underneath us as we drifted up and out of the forest. I realized that we had gone East during our disoriented wander last night, and to the West there was a tiny pillar of smoke rising up from underneath the trees. We flew towards it, and once we were confident that the timber wolf was gone, landed in the nearest clearing, about three hundred yards from the smoke. We approached slowly and quietly to discover that the smoke was emanating from a campfire lit by Equestrian soldiers.

"Hey! You ponies survived too!" I yelled, announcing my presence. Five soldiers jumped up and pointed spears at us.

"We're army. We're a unit from Cloudsdale called the Skirmishers." I told them before they had a chance to do anything. They didn't look convinced. One of them jabbed at me unnecessarily, the spear bounding off of my helmet. "Hey!" I yelled. "What are you doing? I'm an Air Marshall! Stand down!"

Disregarding me, the rest began to thrust at us.

"Stop!" Quartz yelled, exciting the ponies even more. "There must be some way to prove that we're real!" Behind the guards, a unicorn had gotten up and begun moving over to us.

"Stop!" I yelled as well. One of the overly excited mares pointing spears at us plunged her weapon into Purple Quartz's neck. We all looked just as surprised as he did.

"No!" The unicorn behind them yelled, now running towards us. "I could have told you they were real!"

She pushed past the regretful guards and crouched down over Quartz's untransformed, bleeding body. She held her horn against his wound and tried to heal it, but the guard had already killed him. She stepped back and placed her head in her hoof. That's when I snapped.

"You!" I yelled, pointing at the guard with my now flipped out blade. "You just killed my second to last teammate that this war has left me with. We can no longer function as a team, and that is the fifth pony that has been killed under my command!" The mare looked terrified of me as I moved closer. The other guards did nothing to stop me or help her, knowing what I was about to do and why I was allowed to. I gently placed my sabre along her neck and leaned closer.

"Do you know what is about to happen?" I asked.

"Yes, sir!" She replied. "I failed to follow a direct order from a superior officer twice in a row."

"Do you have anything to say?"

"No, sir."

Then something stopped me from executing her. I don't know what it was, but I just instantly decided not to. I folded my blade and placed my hoof back down on the ground. I could see confusion and unsure thankfulness wash into her eyes. After a moment of standing silently, I spoke to her again.

"Go back to your space." I told her. "We need all the ponies we can find if we're going to survive this." We sat around the fire for the rest of the day, and nothing else happened. Wanderlust and I eventually fell asleep against each other next to the campfire.

The next morning was clear. Evidently, a large number of ponies had also seen the smoke and came to join us overnight, as the area was densely packed with soldiers. Apparently the entire Equestrian Army had been scattered and separated during yesterday's battle, not only us. At around 1300, we noticed the rumbling and stomping of many hooves approaching from the South. After a minute of frantically comparing and thinking, we determined that the Changelings were coming in great numbers. All of us knew that if we were to lose this battle, there would no longer be enough ponies to keep the enemy from successfully invading Equestria. We were all glad to have a proper, clear objective again.

We built mounds of dirt that reached all the way to the tops of the tree trunks around us, creating walls and making it difficult to navigate the forest. We created calvary spikes, and dug them into the outside of our newly created walls. A pile of tinder and leaves was built as a backup plan. If we were to fail to defend our nation, we would ignite the forest in an attempt to burn the Changelings. Only two minutes after we had finished building our defenses, we saw the first of the Changelings creeping towards us.

Our shattered group of around 100 ponies was all that remained of Equestria's massive army. We surely still had units farther into our nation, but they would be too small and scattered to effectively defend against the Changelings. I reflected back on how this started. During the initial invasion attempts, we slaughtered the unarmored groups of Changeling civilians. Once the Changeling Army showed up, we started losing about two thirds of what we were killing. Only, due to the attitude of ponies towards the military, we had about half the number of soldiers than they did. Luckily, us being left over meant that we were the best. The ones that survived.

Our remaining 100 soldiers prepared to spring out of their hiding places. We had ponies covering themselves with leaves, climbing into trees, sitting in holes, hiding behind our dirt walls, and doing anything else they could to successfully ambush and kill a few Changelings. Wanderlust and I were standing behind one of the dirt walls.

"I guess we've already lost Equestria." I said to her as the Changelings crept closer. "Even though I'd like to get home and see Aerodrome again, I can hear death calling out to me." I continued. "I'm not going to run away and hope to survive a little longer. I'm going to embrace death with an angry yell and a blade thrust. And whether you plan on leaving alive or dying with me, you'll be by my side until my world has faded to nothing." I looked up at her contentedly.

"I've had a great time killing these things with you." She replied, looking back at me with teary eyes. She began to quietly sing the song that she sang when Grayscale died a month ago.

"Do you remember

back in November?

When you asked me to be

your special somepony?

Do you remember

late last December?

Back on Hearthswarming eve?

You said you loved me.

You said you needed me.

You said we'd never be apart.

That's what I believed.

But you left me forever.

You left me with a broken heart..."