Broken Hearts And Broken Minds

The Changelings approached and began to walk around our walls suspiciously. One of them rounded the corner and saw me. A pony behind me pushed a spear past my head and into its throat, generating yelling and a lot of motion at once. Some of our soldiers sprang out of their hiding places and efficiently killed some of the reacting Changelings. They began running frantically around and charging around. Some of them ran or were knocked into our spikes accidentally. The rest transformed into ponies in a flurry of green flames.

They began pouring around our wall in groups. Many of them barely made it past our dirt and tree bottleneck before getting hit by a unicorn's spell or a pikepony's spear. This continued for about five seconds before a few of them survived and began biting and thrusting back with their own jagged spears. The remaining ponies came out of their hiding places and stabbed some Changelings in the sides, before the fighting devolved into the same style as usual.

Ponies and Changelings were having tiny groups of duels all around Wanderlust and I. A unicorn had apparently panicked and lit the tinders already, because the forest was going up in flames slowly in the background. An enemy soldier ran up to us and attempted to kill me, but I blocked his attack, and Wanderlust quickly stabbed and killed him from the side. The fighting really began for us when a massive pack of them charged in and noticed us. The two of us were forced to separate and fight different Changelings.

I parried a spear stab and slit the insect's throat, uncaringly letting it drop dead to the forest floor. I did the exact same counter three times in a row before they changed their strategy. Wanderlust a few yards away was having similar success with fighting our enemy. She had already killed four of them.

I yelled loudly as I maneuvered my hoof around and slashed more of their unprotected necks. As ponies killed Changelings and Changelings killed ponies, the forest continued going up in flames. A large group of the Changelings was caught inside a box of flames, unable to fly away, as the trees above were too dense. I was both happy and depressed to know that they would burn to death in these woods. That would be fewer enemies that I would have to kill.

Out of nowhere a Changeling spear hit me in the left leg. It wasn't a very serious wound, but it didn't feel nice. I showed him what I thought by stabbing his face with the sabre on my other leg, splattering my armor and face in even more turquoise blood. The fight slowly turned into blocking constantly, after only three more kills by me. It only ended when Wanderlust finished off her own group and moved in to help me. She placed a blade into the back of one of the Changelings trying to land a hit on me, knocking it down and distracting the others. When they turned to face her, I stabbed another in the back, killing it unfortunately slowly.

Now they were after both of us at once again. I continued blocking and almost tripped over a corpse before finally seeing my opportunity to strike back. I felt a pleasing sharpness as my sabre rubbed along and dug into the creature's hard skin. I apparently hadn't hit something vital, because it fell down alive. I let it crawl away in a scared manner, even though I knew it would probably be slaughtered by another pony. A pony behind me dropped dead, having been stabbed by a Changeling in the heart. She was our first casualty that day.

The spreading forest fire reached us. Wanderlust and I were forced to move to avoid getting burned. We ran deeper into the forest, past groups of ponies and Changelings that were stabbing each other. The enemy that we had abandoned simply forgot about us and found someone else to attack.

"They give up easily." I said to Wanderlust.

"They're just as lazy as you." She responded.

We approached a group of insects that was ganging up on a pony from behind and began stabbing at them swiftly. They instantly turned to us and started attacking, leaving the pony free to run away. Instead she thrust a spear into the middle of the group and killed one of them. I blocked an attack and followed my block up with a stab to the neck, killing another Changeling. The fire that was prematurely ignited now surrounded and was closing in on the enemy army, leaving many Changelings attempting to push through our spiked walls or fly up and out of the dense forest. None of them were successful.

With a third of the enemy's unbelievably large army trapped inside our fire alone, things were beginning to look up for us. If we could manage to kill off enough of them like this, Equestria might have a chance. I cut down the final Changeling in the group attacking us, and we moved on to another group. As we walked, all we could see was Changeling corpses strewn about everywhere. There were only two pony corpses in the entire area, meaning we still had over 90 soldiers left. All of which apparently had more willpower than the enemies did combined, based on the killcount visible in the dirt.

We reached a group of 5 undisguised Changelings that were busy attempting to pull a stallion out of a tree. They were rearing and flailing their hooves around at him. Wanderlust ran ahead of me and ran her sabre along the back of one of the creature's heads. She wounded it badly and it turned to attack her instead. It's fangs bounced off of her helmet and sliced her ear, warranting a yelp and alerting the rest of the Changelings of our presence. They all turned to her and began to move in.

I pressed my blade into one of them violently. Fatally wounding it, and sending it staggering backwards into a tree. As I thought about the idea of them killing her too, I switched into offensive mode. Wanderlust finished her kill efficiently as I stabbed the one closest to me. The other two were speared from behind by the stallion hiding in the tree. He jumped down, thanked us and ran towards a pegasus with an odd looking sabre and heavy armor standing some yards away from us.

Before I could ask Wanderlust if she knew who he was, he flipped out his sabre and plunged it into the stallion from the tree. Then he took a step towards us. I analyzed his armor and looked for weak spots. He had a thick breastplate, a flank and abdominal cover, a neckguard, which were uncommon because of their lack of flexibility, a helmet, and shoes, except for his front right hoof, which of course, had a sabre strapped to it.

"What the buck is this?" Wanderlust asked, taking a cautious step back.

"It's like a tank." I responded, not finding any real weaknesses in the armor except the back of the neck and the eyes.

It charged at us furiously, making Wanderlust and I jump out of the way. As it was slowing down I dashed to it and attempted to stab it in the unprotected part of the neck. I missed and was sent flying into a tree, snapping my horn off of my helmet. I felt dizzy for a moment, but nothing too bad. I got up to see that Wanderlust was fencing with it. The two of them were taking turns poking, swinging, and blocking, almost like a movie. A pikepony crawled down from the top of our walls and confusedly maintained a distance, not knowing which one to fight.

"The big one!" I yelled at him. "Kill the big one!"

He began poking at the tank's face violently, the stabs bounding off of it's helmet repeatedly. In the disorientation, the tank slashed way too close to Wanderlust's head, taking off her mane that was making up her plume, and also cutting off about half of her left ear. She screamed in pain and shock, and withdrew from the fight immediately. The armored bastard then moved towards the pikepony, who retaliated, thrusting his sharp pole again into the tank's face.

Hit in one eye, the armored stallion erupted into green flames. Once he had transformed, he had a sort of parallel set of armor to the one in his disguised form. It had all of the same pieces, but instead of being gold royal guard style armor, it was now like a blue exoskeleton. The sabre remained the same though. He must have stolen it from somewhere. He was still holding his eye and emitting a high-pitched screech when Wanderlust came furiously crashing back in, tackled him, and took the other eye out with her weapon. The stallion with the pike jammed his weapon into the Changeling's abdominal piece, punching through the armor and killing it.

Wanderlust rose off of him, hoof to her ear. The fighting around us had subsided, and was now being replaced by our tactical fire. Only a few ponies were fighting a few Changelings. I helped guide the now slightly disoriented Wanderlust to a small patch of bushes against a wall, before thanking the pikepony and ordering him to find a medic. We sat down against the dirt mound and relaxed for a moment.

"This sucks." She said jokingly.

"We can't stay here long. The fire will reach us soon." I told her in response.

A medic pony arrived at our bush pile and scoped out Wanderlust's wound.

"I kaant fix zis fore ever, but I kan seel zee wound." He said, bringing his horn against her ear and making us laugh. Wanderlust made a scrunchy face for a moment as the blood stopped flowing, and the mangled area went from exposed to looking sealed and well aged.

"Where are you from?" I asked him happily.

"Trotterdam." He said irritably before running off.

"Sorry if I offended you!" I yelled after him. "Come on, Lust. Let's go. There's fighting a little deeper in, away from the fires.

"Let's do it."