Broken Hearts And Broken Minds

"I see something!" A voice called from somewhere outside the tent, snapping everyone with any training at all awake. I slipped my hoof into my sabre's straps without even thinking about doing anything else first. Wanderlust was already wearing hers. I began to reach for my armor when suddenly, a tear formed in the roof of our tent, and in came a black blur, thrashing everywhere and hitting me in the chest with a dry, hard appendage. It felt like a hoof.

Wanderlust flipped her sabre blade outwards and stabbed at it a few times, causing it to screech and withdraw.

"What was that?" I asked her after I took a moment to stop screaming at it. "Did you see it?"

"No. did you?"

"No." I responded. I poked my head out of the massive hole that was now dividing her tent's roof in half, scanning for the attacker. It was nowhere to be found. Several ponies had jumped out of their tents and had begun to investigate the noise. Then I noticed a trail of dark turquoise blood leading from the hole in our tent towards the North. She saw it too. It only took a moment for us to decide what to do.

The blue trail led us about 200 yards North of the camp. And at the end was the fresh corpse of a disgusting black creature. It appeared to be some sort of hybrid between a pony and an insect, with a pony-esque shape, an exoskeleton, and paper-thin blue transparent bug wings. It had glowing blue eyes and huge fangs in its mouth, a hard, fan shaped tail that seemed to be the same material as its curved horn, and its hooves were peppered with holes.

"They were right. It is a bug thing." I said.

"Why did it attack us?" She asked quietly, leaning in for a closer look and making sure it was really dead.

A group of five royal guards came running from the town and stopped next to us , looking down at the carcass.

"Nice work." One of them said to me.

"She killed it." I responded, motioning to Wanderlust. He simply glanced at her for a moment before continuing to look at the black creature. After taking in the sight at my hooves and memorizing what my enemy looked like, I silently returned to what was left of Wanderlust's destroyed tent and went to sleep. This time with my sabre right next to my head.

The morning seemed to arrive the moment I had closed my eyes. Wanderlust had returned to the tent some time last night and was sleeping silently on top of a pillow. I sat up in my sleeping bag and poked my head out of the hole in our now cascaded tent roof. Most of the flyers were awake and walking around, awaiting the arrival of the unicorn and earth soldiers. I popped back into the tent and began to fasten my armor on to my body, trying not to wake Wanderlust up as I did so. I strapped on my sabre, then my helmet, and I flew straight up and out of the hole, as that was the quietest solution.

I landed in Appleloosa to find civilian ponies everywhere and Grayscale eating alone at a restaurant. As I approached, he noticed me and his face lightened up.

"I'm glad to see that you're alright, that thing tore a great hole in her tent last night." He said to me.

"She got Equestria's first kill in this entire conflict." I responded, sitting down in the chair opposite his. "She stabbed it multiple times."

"Nice." He concluded. "So I heard that as soon as the majority of our army arrives, we'll be forming up and marching around the desert. So when the train gets here, be ready to walk. Also, I noticed Flying Vee acting stranger than usual this morning, so if you see her, just avoid her. She's pretty damn angry at nothing for no reason."

"Thanks for letting me know." I responded as the waitress approached the table.

About an hour and a half after finishing my food, the pony in charge decided that it would be fun to force the entire army to go for a hike together, so we were called to assemble in the desert to the East of our camp. Once everypony arrived, we left to go wander pointlessly around in the desert. After marching South for five miles, we ended up running in to something we didn't intend to. Out in front of us, we could see a black line on the horizon, which was very clearly not a landform. It was the enemy army.

The flyers all instinctively rose up and out of the crowd to wait up in the air. We were hovering above a regiment of spear-wielding unicorn guards, staring at the enemy and hoping that they would just go away. I could see that most of the ponies below me were just as nervous as I was, they were shifting and looking around, and seemed uncomfortable with the idea of having to fight something that they didn't understand. Flying Vee was still standing awkwardly on the ground next to the guards below us, wearing no armor, and not saying a word. I turned to Grayscale next to me.

"Is this what you were talking about this morning? When you said that she was acting weird?" I asked him, pointing at her.

"Yes. I don't know what the hell she's doing." He laughed back. "I-..." He was interrupted by the sound of a trumpet blaring, telling us to advance slowly, and ending all talking instantly. We looked at each other for a moment before reluctantly and surprisedly leaning forward and accelerating towards the black mass of insects.

"Why are we advancing??" I whispered frantically to him, my eyes locked on to the imposing army ahead of us.

"I have no idea. Maybe somepony thinks we can defeat all of those things?"

"Let's pray to Celestia that we can." I told him.

"Yes, sir." Was all he said back to me.

I looked around me at the six members of our team currently flying, and I noticed how our lack of point pony made them nervous. We continued drifting towards the mass, which now seemed to be drifting back towards us as well. It was our job to remain undetected until we attacked, and if we were to have any chance of getting up into the clouds unnoticed, we would have to do so now. I looked down at Flying Vee, back at my team, down at Flying Vee, and then I yelled.

"Skirmishers, on me!" ...I was a higher rank than her anyway.

I rose straight up into the sky, followed by the others, who seemed to find comfort in having orders. We reached cloud level, and everypony landed on top of the largest, flattest one. I looked back to make sure we had everypony. Shellshock, Wanderlust, Grayscale, Over-G, Light Wind, Me, and strangely enough, Flying Vee.

"Vee! What the hell are you doing? Are you ready to take your team back?" I yelled at her. She just trotted closer to me nonchalantly. "Hello?" I asked again. Then, out of nowhere, she lunged and sunk her teeth into my front left leg. The ponies all around us dove into action, trying to pry her off of me in a nonlethal way at first, but I could feel how hard she was trying to incapacitate me, so I stretched out my other leg, flipped my blade out, and pricked her head with it. It worked wonders.

As I ran away from and looked back at Vee, she suddenly erupted in green flames. They went from her hooves to her head, and turned her into one of the black freaks of nature. The six of us stared in shock at our enemy.

"They can shapeshift??" Wanderlust shouted.

"Is that what they look like?" Over-G cried in response, backing up slightly. It scanned us quickly, decided to attack Grayscale, and went for him. He slashed his sabre across its face as it tried to bite him, knocking it back and surely making it regret the attempted strike. Light Wind approached it from the right with her sabre, stabbing it in the side, and allowing Grayscale to swiftly cut its throat. It collapsed onto the cloud and lie motionless.

"That was easier than it could have been." I said, before a full thirty seconds of silence. "...Good teamwork."

"But where is the real Vee?" Shellshock asked seriously.

"She's probably dead." Light Wind answered him. Another pause. Everypony's eyes were glued to the dead insect. We heard thousands of soldier ponies beginning to scream far beneath us on the ground, snapping us out of our quiet talk.

I peeked over the edge of the cloud to see that the two armies had hit each other, and the violence had begun.

"Why the hell are we attacking?" I asked anyone who wanted to answer. "Didn't we run in to them accidentally?" The other ponies looked at me in silence, then back down at the dead insect. On the ground below, I could see green flashes, and the black army began looking more like the colorful army as the freaks altered their shape and attempted to blend in with the ponies. It wasn't very helpful though, as every real pony there was wearing armor.

"We need to help them." I told the pegasi behind me as I opened my wings and rose off of the cloud. They stared at me silently. "Now!" I yelled, causing them to spring up into the air with me. "I may be your friend, but I'm still a high ranking officer!" I reminded them, leading them down towards the ground at high speed. I looked for potential targets as we flew, and after a whole five seconds, I had one.

"Hit and run that group of four!" I yelled, pointing at a small patch of the insects that had separated from their army to go stand idly away from the fight. We flew straight at them, stuck our blades out in front of us, and crashed through the group in an attempt to kill something. As we rose back upwards into the sky and away from the terrible, ugly sands of Southern Equestria, I looked back to see that all four of the insects we flew through were dead.

"That worked well!" Wanderlust yelled with surprise.

We climbed up to somewhere around sixty meters in the air before stopping and looking for more things to kill.

"That guard is surrounded! Go help him!" I ordered. We flew directly into the heart of the battle and landed around a royal guard who had been trapped inside a small circle of insects. Before they had a chance to assess what was happening, we began to stab and thrust our sabres wildly into the pack. I felt and saw mine go into one of their necks, for some odd reason, it was pretty satisfying.

The insects began to back off, and then flee. Not just the ones surrounding the guard, though. The entire army was retreating. A trumpet brayed, signaling everypony to march back to our camp.

"Is that it?" Wanderlust yelled.

"We don't even have to stay behind and make sure they don't return!" I answered her. Equestria's Army eagerly turned around and formed a grid shape.

As we left to go back to camp, I noticed that all of the corpses I was stepping over belonged to the black insects. I only counted three dead ponies. And all of them were untrained, unarmored Appleloosians who somehow managed to sneak in to our ranks. I noticed that one of them in particular had the exact same colors as me. He had a sky blue mane and a white coat. Only, his mane was short and flat, as mine was huge and bouncy. Something seemed wrong about this. It wasn't really a fight, it was murdering something that was far more primitive than us. I had second thoughts about how much I enjoyed killing the creature in defense of the guard.

We marched for an hour back up to Appleloosa and then were forced to attend a formation North of our camp, where the insect bled out last night. Our General, Total War apologized for forcing us into a fight without warning, and gave everypony in the army a small bonus of fifty bits because of our victory. After he distributed the wealth, he dismissed everypony, and we went back to the camp.

I left my armor in what was left of Wanderlust's tent, but I kept my sabre fastened to my leg. I didn't want to be the one who lets his guard down and gets killed. I found Wanderlust and Grayscale sitting around in a tavern in Appleloosa together, waiting for the food they ordered.

"You didn't wait for me to order?" I asked, sitting down.

"We thought you would be talking to the General." Grayscale answered.

"The General?" I asked, surprised. The two of them looked at each other, leaned in, muttered something, and then turned back to me.

"I think we were supposed to give you this." Grayscale said, as he presented me with a sealed scroll.

"We..." Wanderlust growled, clearly never having been responsible for the letter. I took the message, turned around, and walked out the tavern door. I knew what the message was about.