Broken Hearts And Broken Minds

Celestia revealed her plan to us. We would send in a few ponies to pose as transformed Changelings. They would attempt to weed out the real Changelings from Appleloosa, bringing them to the forest, where they would then be ambushed. We were to prioritize killing any Changeling that appeared to be in a position of power or appeared to possess any skill. It would either end the war immediately, or they would see through our plan and killing them would end up taking even longer. At least that's what she said. I didn't believe it would work. She taught the unicorns in the army a spell that she had created, which would kill the target instantly, from up to 16 yards away. I did believe that one would work.

We sent off two ponies without armor or weapons to try and bait the Changelings to travel North. After an hour and a half, we saw a black line form on the horizon through the thick trees. The Skirmishers gathered in a delta shape behind me, and we readied ourselves to fight. I checked behind me to ensure we had everypony with us. There was Light Wind, Shellshock, Wanderlust, Over-G, and Purple Quartz. Only five of the original seven. The Changelings drifted closer. There were three rows of unicorns lying in the dirt, followed by pikeponies, followed by the rest of the army. We were to the left of the lines of unicorns, hiding in a patch of bushes. They drifted even closer. Closer. Closer. Then the unicorns began to launch magic bolts everywhere.

The Changelings reacted erratically. As they began to fall dead in large numbers, some of them fled, some of them charged, and some of them tried to hide. Unfortunately, most of them eventually concluded that they should attack. The unicorns only fired for a minute before getting too tired to place any more bolts downrange, they were immediately moved behind everypony else in the army as the Changelings came closer. Then they contacted us. There was screaming and yelling as well as screeching as the Changeling soldiers stabbed and got stabbed. I led my team up in to the air, through a clearing, and out over the treetops. We couldn't see anything down below because of the dense trees. We circled above the forest multiple times, trying to find a spot to dive in. Eventually I just pointed to a hole in the leaves and ordered everypony to fly in and kill whatever they saw.

We flew in to the hole only to find unarmed but well armored Changeling soldiers. They were on all sides.

"Buck you!" I bellowed, going into insane mode as thoughts of Grayscale came into my mind. I focused and found a string of Changelings that could be killed. I dashed into my first target with all of my might. I placed my blade where his eye was and quickly drew it back out while I lunged for the one to his right. I ran the blade sideways across the next one's face, knocking him out of commission. Then a Changeling tried to bite me from beside. I placed my blade in it's open mouth and stopped it dead. Kicking it's chest with my free leg, I pulled the sabre out and gored it in the neck. Behind me, the others had begun overwhelming individual soldiers for kills. I stabbed randomly at the group in front of me, hitting a few, but not killing any more. Then I decided it might be best to leave, because there were a lot more Changelings moving towards us.

"Let's go!" I yelled, taking off out of the same hole we entered through. I was quickly followed by Wanderlust, Light Wind, Over-G, Purple Quartz, but no Shellshock. I entered through the hole in the leaves once again, just in time to see Shellshock get impaled through the breastplate by a spear. Then another spear. Then a Changeling bit his face violently and killed him. I jumped back up through the hole, where the others were waiting for me. I heard more magic bolts fire, and a moment after the firing started again, I saw the black and turquoise army begin pouring discordantly out of the forest and back towards Appleloosa. Equestria's Royal Army cheered, jeered, and yelled as they ran after the black insects, intending to rack up the kill count even higher. The Changelings were gone in a matter of minutes.

I flew back into the hole and landed next to Shellshock. He was a crumpled, mangled mess. Not exactly a hero's dramatic death. After a minute of looking at him, I slid his eyelids closed with my hooves and covered him with leaves. I didn't know him very well, but it still hurt, and I treated him with the proper amount of respect as I buried him in a shallow trench. Light Wind was completely smashed.

As I walked back towards our shelters, I looked around the forest at all of the dead bodies littering the ground. The number of Changelings greatly surpassed the number of ponies, with about twice as many insect corpses than stallion and mare corpses, but considering the number of corpses in general, that wasn't necessarily a good thing. I reached my tree and grass patch where the rest of the Skirmishers were waiting for me already. At least most of them.

"Where's Light Wind?" I asked the group. Over-G pointed North, where in the distance I could see a pegasus weaving between the trees and walking away.

"He wouldn't talk to us." Wanderlust told me. I looked back over towards him to discover that he was now cantering away.

It only took a minute to catch up to him.

"Hey!" I called after him. "Come back!" He stopped running and collapsed on to the forest floor a few meters in front of me. "Come on! We need you back there." He turned to look at me. His eyes were completely red from crying. "I understand that he was your best friend, and I can't imagine what it must feel like for a pony as young as you, But I lost my friend too. You can't bring him back. The best thing to do is to say goodbye, and then take out any lingering pain on the enemy." He continued to stare at me silently for a moment before speaking.

"You're probably right, and I'll go back. But I don't want to." He muttered in response. "This war may not kill my body, but my heart has already been destroyed." He got up and walked slowly back to the shelters with me.

By nightfall, our army had cleaned up the mess. The forest was cleared of corpses as Appleloosa had been on the day we retreated. I set myself down next to Light Wind on his makeshift bed.

"Tomorrow I'll launch an independent attack on them." I told him. "You can get your revenge." He closed his eyes and lay in silence, not answering me. I opened my oversized wing and wrapped him in it caringly. We fell asleep together on his bed of leaves.

When we woke up in the morning, we found that Celestia and her regiment of royal guards were gone. When I asked the night watch, they said she had taken her soldiers South to try and regain Appleloosa. I remembered that last night I promised I would take Light Wind out for some revenge, and I realized that now might not be the best time, with Celestia doing something down there, but we would go anyway. If we got in Celestia's way, too bad.

The five of us flew only a few meters above the ground all the way to Appleloosa. We landed outside the campsite which used to be ours. There were no Changelings around, and it seemed unnaturally quiet. After a quick look around, we concluded that the town was completely abandoned. Wanderlust and I returned to the Campsite and collected our sleeping bags from our tent. We also took everything from our tent that we had to leave when we retreated (everything but my photo of Aerodrome), and everypony on the team managed to pack up and carry a total of eleven tents back to the forest's edge, including the one I purchased independently.

We dropped off and hid our load underneath a fallen tree right behind Over-G's sleeping spot. We would reveal our loot to the other ponies later. Once we had it sufficiently hidden, we flew back down to Appleloosa once again, and we looked around with a slightly more extensive search plan than last time. We checked in buildings, in houses, around the camp, at the train station, and nothing ever came up. Not even Celestia or her guards were there. After flying a mile wide circle around the town, we decided to head back to the forest. Light Wind wasn't even sad that he missed out on revenge. The five of us grabbed even more of the military tents, and we carried them back.

We spent about an hour distributing the tents among the soldiers fairly. Of course, the Skirmishers all got their own two pony tents. Wanderlust and I set our tent up in our old sleeping space on the patch of grass where we stayed for the previous month. We crawled in that night together, and we slept right up against each other in her warm sleeping bag.

When we woke up, Celestia was back as well as her guards. Wanderlust and I stayed in the tent and talked until noon, enjoying the recently rediscovered luxury.

"So how did you sleep last night?" She asked me happily.

"I slept like a filly." I responded.

"A filly?"

"Yeah. Slept like a foal sounds stupid." I reasoned.

"What about slept like a colt?" She asked.

"Is that a phrase?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

We exited our tent and decided to launch another attack tonight. If there was anything in Appleloosa, of course. The sun was shining brightly, sending beautiful rays of light down through the treetops and projecting golden-green patches of color onto the forest floor. A perfect day had begun. Everypony in the forest seemed to be in a good mood. Even Light Wind appeared to be content. The day went by happily and swimmingly. Until somewhere around 1400. Everypony was snapped out of their good moods by a chilling, screeching, call echoing in from the South. A pegasus flew in a minute later with news that the Changeling Army was marching towards us. We fastened on our armor and prepared for the worst. Celestia came ahead of them, wished us luck, then fled back to Canterlot.