Chapters Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
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"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.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
I approached the General's tent on Mane Street. I showed the guard the scroll I had been given, and entered silently. He was facing a table in the back of his tent, using magic to draw a diagram of one of the insects in a book.
"Sir." I greeted him, making him jump. He turned around to face me.
"You're Wing Nut? Correct?" He asked.
"Yes, sir." I answered, as I stared straight ahead at whatever was in front of me.
"You can relax." He told me, allowing me to return to a normal position.
"Thank you, sir."
"So do you know why I summoned you?" He looked at me calmly.
"It this regarding Flying Vee being replaced by one of them? Or about how I took control of my team?"
"Yes, both of those."
"Ok."
"So I understand that your flight leader was replaced by one of the creatures, was the fake acting strangely?" He asked seriously.
"Yes. She wore no armor to the battle today, carried no weapon, and didn't speak."
"Ok, thank you." He said, writing something down in a fresh notebook. "Why did you take control of your fellow ponies?" I hesitated a moment, trying to word my answer well.
"I knew that if we didn't get into the air before the enemy saw us, we would be rendered useless, as our training prepared us for surprise hit and run tactics. Not for full blown combat. But I knew Vee wasn't going to do anything, nor was she prepared to, so I took action." I answered. He looked at me with an expression of thought for a moment.
"Well, Wing Nut. I admire your leadership, and I would present you with a promotion, but you've already purchased yourself a commission to the rank of Air Marshall, so you don't need one. You're already above everypony else's orders." He laughed. "So instead, Since there's nopony else to do it, I'm going to put you in charge of the skirmishers. You also now have the power to conscript more pegasi into the group if you feel it's necessary. You have the power to function as an independent team. So you can call on or off missions whenever you feel necessary."
"Thank you, sir." Was all I could say. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"You should see your face." He smiled at me. "Anything you'd like to ask or tell me?"
"Until now I just assumed that you were an asshole, sir."
"Nope. I want my soldiers to love me, I just can't be too soft with the army, so it may not seem that way." He replied. "You can go now. Good luck."
I left the tent and dashed for the tavern, eager to tell my friends the news. I found them at the same table I left them at, three-quarters of the way through their meals. I sat down with them, unstrapped my sabre, and placed it on the table in front of me.
"You seem excited." Wanderlust said to me.
"Did you get an award or something?" Grayscale added.
"What would he get an award for?" Wanderlust asked him seriously.
"I don't know. For being a higher rank?" He answered.
"No. I didn't get an award." I interrupted them. "I got control over your flanks. The skirmishers are mine now."
"After one day??" Wanderlust yelled, making everypony in the tavern aware of her presence.
"Yes. Now you belong to me." I laughed in response. "Now let me explain how this team is going to work with me in charge."
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Three uneventful days passed. We simply cleaned our weapons, cleaned our armor, and waited for a sign that they were coming back. On the fourth day, we got one. It came in the form of leaflets, dropped on us by a pegasus (who was probably one of them in pony form). The leaflets read in poor, broken English:
"What you did to my Changeling sivilians is not go unnoticed. We will come with better troops in days of a few. Your time is run out. Surrender your country or suffer the power of my Changeling Army."
Everypony in Appleloosa got to read one of these slips. The civilian ponies developed a new sense of nationalism, deciding that they would fight alongside our army, whether we liked it or not. We made a plan that in the morning, the army would separate into thirds, march South, and then each section would guard a different area. If they spotted the Changelings, then they would attack on sight, using the other two thirds of our army to flank. I was independent, so I made my own plan. To fly around the desert looking for potential places that the changelings could set up a stronghold.
We left at dawn of the next day, before the rest of the army. The six of us flew for several hours before finding a resting place. We landed in a patch of rocks and cacti and checked a map. So far, there were no special landforms, rocks, valleys, or towers that could be used for hiding or staging an army.
"This sucks." I declared, lifting my helmet off of my head.
"Reconnoiter the desert you said. It will be fun you said." Over-G laughed at me.
"At least I can read a map." I responded jokingly. He immediately fell silent.
"Let's go back to Appleloosa and make sure nothing bad is happening there." I ordered. As I slipped my helmet on, I noticed a single pony running through the desert towards Appleloosa.
I intercepted the stallion and stopped him. He had the same color scheme as me, with a white coat, and sky blue hair. I realized that he was the same pony I had seen dead on the ground during that first contact.
"What are you doing out here?" I asked him, flipping out my blade.
"N-... Nothing." He stuttered. "What about you?"
"I'm with Equestria's Royal Army. I'm protecting my country." His face went from nervous to terrified as I moved closer to him.
"So why are you out here?" I asked again.
"I'm running from the Changelings. I've been out here for four days." He looked down at the ground as he said this.
"Your army only told us it's name yesterday. You couldn't have known it if you were out here for four days."
"Good catch." It smiled as I pulled my blade out and it collapsed.
We flew straight back to Appleloosa and landed on Mane street. Nothing suspicious was happening. Two hours after arriving we were sitting in the tavern when all of a sudden, ponies began to run and hide indoors. I peeked out the window to see five Changelings with crooked black spears and blue armor marching through the town. I ordered us to split up and try to find out if there were any more than that. They began marching towards an occupied house. I could see a mare in the upstairs window hiding behind a curtain. They approached the house, bucked down the door, and entered angrily one by one. An image of Aerodrome flashed through my head. I crashed through the tavern's front doors, yelled to get their attention, and flipped my weapon out. They lined up in front of the house and lowered their spears at me, making it impossible for me to reach them. I yelled again and slapped one of their spears down to the ground with the side of my weapon. Their calmness faded away and they began to act aggressively in response.
Wanderlust swooped out of the sky and ran her sabre across all five of their backs, their armor deflected it, but it distracted them. I charged into the middle one, stabbing it in the neck with my armor's metal horn, knocking it back and incapacitating it. Thinking fast, I pulled the horn out and thrust my sword into the Changeling to my right. I felt my attack bounce off of it's helmet, accomplishing nothing. I stabbed at it four more times as fast as my leg could move before feeling the blade contact any kind of skin or shell. Then suddenly, a spear from behind went into my right wing. I screamed and dug the blade farther into my enemy before pulling it out messily and turning around. One of the Changelings had dug a thin, needle-like staff into my wing and was still holding on. I stood for a moment in shock before Grayscale came diving down, cut the pike in half and took off, freeing me. I turned and lunged at the Changeling, slashing its neck clumsily with my blade, and rendering it instantly useless. Two more to go. The point fell out of my feather and on to the ground next to me, and I folded my wing swiftly and carefully. The pain of the injury was mostly in the shock of realising that I had been stabbed.
There were Changelings to my front and back, both of which were aggressive and aiming to kill. I felt a spear bounce off of the back of my helmet with incredible force, knocking my head forward and disorienting me. Then another one rammed my breastplate. Then another one on my back. Then one on my forehead. I blindly charged forward into one of them, wounding it with my steel horn. I felt my helmet horn penetrate the Creature's face, and I heard a terrible screeching. Behind me, Over-G crashed down on top of the other one and stabbed it to death. I withdrew my horn from the insect's head and backed up to look at it. It was still alive. And it was staring painfully back at me. After a moment of silence, I tackled the Changeling and stabbed it eight times in various places. I was out of breath and felt like I had taken down the entire army.
"What the buck were you doing, Wing Nut?" Wanderlust yelled as she landed next to me.
"There was...". I said as the pain in my wing began to fade in. The rest of the team landed next to her and looked at me, waiting for an answer. "There was a mare in that window. It made me think of Aerodrome. I had to do something about it."
"Who is Aerodrome?" Shellshock asked me.
"She's the one that took him into her family when his was murdered." Wanderlust responded. Then our group was joined by somepony. The mare from the window dashed out of her front door and wrapped her hooves around me. She had a purple coat and a black mane.
"Thank you. You saved my flank." She said to me. I had no idea why she reminded me of Aerodrome, she didn't look, sound, or talk like her. Maybe I just missed her more than I knew it.
As she released me from the hug, my eyes fell on the corpses of the five Changeling soldiers. Three of them were bleeding from the necks, the one Over-G killed looked very broken, and the last one I killed was completely torn up. I felt both bad and good about it. I had killed four living creatures, but had also saved a pony's life. After I sent the mare back into her house, I returned to the tavern across the street to wait for Equestria's Army.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Chapter 6: Unexpected Rescue
The Army took until 2106 to return to Appleloosa. As they marched closer, I noticed that there seemed to be fewer ponies than when we started the day. They looked beaten and bent up, and I could see that something definitely had happened to them, but they were still waving an Equestrian flag, so they hadn't been defeated. They silently walked into the camp and started cleaning the turquoise blood off of everything.
I saw Purple Quartz lying on a tarp, being carried by four pegasi. I immediately ran over to them and made sure he was ok, crashing through the ponies in front of me. I was told he had been bitten in the face by a Changeling during a fight, but not before killing six of them first. I decided to offer him a chance to join the skirmishers, knowing how difficult it would be to kill six Changeling soldiers alone, especially in the middle of a battle. Anypony with killing skills like that could be very useful in a small team. I followed the medics to the tiny, insufficient hospital and waited around for him to notice me.
It took him about five minutes to finally realise that I was there. He turned his head to look at me, and I saw the injury. There were two grooves from his ear to his jaw, and a clean area where his helmet was protecting him.
"Oh, it's you. Hi." He greeted me.
"That looks comfortable." I said sarcastically.
"The injury or the bed?" He asked, smiling. "I don't know which is worse."
"In that case, I'll avoid the hospital and just wrap my wing up and hope it heals." I said back.
"So what are you here for?"
"I heard that you killed six changelings."
"It was more like four, but I'll let them believe that."
"I remember how you said you wanted to be in a flying unit, so as the new leader of the skirmishers, I wanted to invite you to come fly with us."
He paused for a moment, a smile stretching across his face.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Now I have permission to pull you out of your current unit if you want me to, so if you don't want to be on the ground, you can come with us instead."
"Well..." He stuttered "...Sure. That would be great."
"Most excellent." I told him. "If they let you out of this place today, We'll be in the tavern anytime we're not working or sleeping. Meet us there, then you can take me to your commanding officer, and I can tell him the great news.
"Thank you so much... Uh." He stopped. "I forgot your name." He whispered embarrassedly.
"Air Marshall Wing Nut." I told him.
"Sir." He finished, smiling as I left the hospital.
My wing began to sting, and I remembered why I left the tavern in the first place. I ran over to Total War's tent and entered without warning, a sudden and intense lust to accomplish something engulfed me. There were no guards outside.
"Wing Nut?" He asked, noticing me immediately.
"Sir, when you were gone, a group of five Changelings attacked Appleloosa. They had spears."
"I know. We ran into a lot more than five when we were out in the desert today. Is this what you stormed into my tent for?" He asked with displeasure.
"Yes, sir. We killed them." I responded, straightening my neck and looking ahead.
"Ok. Then get out."
"Yes, sir." I said, running out of the tent and regretting my decision to enter it in the first place.
I wandered around in limbo for a bit before thinking of something else to do. I trotted over to Appleloosa's general store and bought Wanderlust a tacky new green and white tent. I made it just in time too. They closed at 2130, and I left at 2127. I brought the tent over to where Wanderlust's was and pitched right up against it. It may have been an ugly green and white, non regulation tent, but it was certainly better than having the entire roof torn in half. I moved my things into the sleeping space, and I felt the urge to accomplish something go away.
I relaxed on top of my sleeping bag for an hour or so, hugging the photo of Aerodrome, and relaxing in the lamplight before finally physically crashing after this long day. My wing no longer hurt, they must have barely wounded it at all. Suddenly, Wanderlust poked her head into the tent and looked at me. I put the photo down and sat up on my bag
"I got us a new tent." I said proudly and simply. "I didn't know if you wanted me touching your things, so I left them in the old one."
"No, I don't want you touching them. But thank you for the tent." She said, leaving, grabbing her things, returning, and dropping them on the tent floor. A trumpet brayed, ordering everyone to go into night time awareness mode, where we can do anything we want, as long as we're not emitting overly bright light or making loud noise. She lay down on her sleeping bag across from me, as I picked Aerodrome's photo back up and continued to hug it. I eventually drifted off to sleep.
I was awoken in the middle of the night by a series of distant explosions. I recognized the sound from the airfield back in Cloudsdale. It was the sound of an autocannon. A short while ago, weapons designers came up with this awesome side-mounted projectile launcher. You would wear a harness with the cannon on your left and a case on the right, and you would pull a short string attached to the weapon to fire it. It would launch 30 mm wide metal cones at over two hundred miles per hour. Hearing them being used outside of a testing area made me very nervous.
Wanderlust woke up at the sound of the fourth explosion.
"Is that an autocannon?" She asked after stopping to listen to the booms for a moment.
"I think so." I whispered back. "Do you want to go check it out?"
"You mean try to find out where it's coming from?"
"Yeah."
"Is your wing okay?"
"There is a tear in one of my feathers, but I can barely even feel it. I'll wrap it in a cloth."
"You do that. I'll gather everypony." She said, leaving the tent to go find the rest of the team. I grabbed a long red strip that held the tent in a tight bundle in the packaging when I bought it, and wrapped it around my slightly damaged feather. I assembled my armor around my body and slipped my helmet on, noticing how well the red strip went with my armor's colors.
A few minutes later, we were low above the ground flying Southwest, towards the sound of the autocannon fire. Wanderlust was on my right and Grayscale was smiling over to my left. None of us saw anything on the horizon in the bright moonlight. We circled the desert once, flying around a huge rock before the firing stopped, the last boom echoing through the desert. Then Shellshock saw something.
"Hey!" He said to us quietly, pointing over at a unusually steep sand mound.
"Good catch." Wanderlust said back. I adjusted my heading and flew over to it, the rest of the team following closely.
We landed ten yards away from the mound, all of us flipping our blades out except Light Wind, who instead chose to stand behind everypony and do nothing. That was ok though, he was very young. We walked around the mound to discover that it was emitting a horrendous smell, and jabbing it with a blade only got my weapon covered in a green gel-like substance a few inches under the sand. The six of us began to dig at the mound and after a moment, uncovered what looked like a changeling egg sac.
"What the buck..." I said, leaning in to take a closer look at the green pouch. I found a window on one side, and inside was not a changeling. It was a pony.
I stabbed the pouch and slashed a hole in it, the mare inside crawling out to the sand clumsily. She was shaking and gasping for air, and had an expression that thanked us for saving her before she opened her mouth.
"Are you okay?" I asked, crouching down in front of the unicorn.
"Nobel... gas..." She said, still catching her breath.
"Take your time." I told her, trying to be as comforting as possible. "You're safe with us."
After a minute of silence, the mare caught her breath and began to speak smoothly.
"Nobel Gas." She said. "My group leader was killed by a changeling spear just South of here. I was magically incapacitated by them. I called for help, but everypony else just left me for dead. It's so hard to breathe inside those things, you should get everypony else out." She said, pointing to the mound. We dug up and cut them out carefully. One pony in particular caught my eye. She was a blue mare with a white mane. It was Flying Vee. I cut her out and helped her stand up, while the rest of the team freed more of them at a fast pace.
"We thought you were dead." I told her. She ignored me. "You were replaced by a Changeling..." She ignored me still. "It tried to kill us." She turned and stared at me with distain.
"What do you want?" She asked me angrily.
"To know what happened to you!" I yelled in response. The desert insects around us seemed to silence completely. It became unnaturally quiet.
"Finish getting them out." I ordered the team.
"Stop. That's my team." She said to me. They ignored her. "You have no place telling them what to do." I looked at her with an expression of disbelief.
"I am a high ranking officer." I said to her in a poisonous, quiet voice. "If I-" She cut me off.
"I don't have to listen to-"
"I am still talking!" I screamed in her face, interrupting her back. In Equestria's Royal Army, you could only interrupt an officer once. After that, the officer would be allowed to kill you, so she had no choice but to listen. "If I feel like I need to take over this team, I can. I don't understand why you think you can treat me like this, especially after I saved your life."
She picked up a rock from the sand and bashed me in the unprotected part of my nose suddenly, knocking me sideways. I felt my snout crush and blunt pains shot up into my head. The unicorn we freed first went into alert mode and restrained her. It took a moment for me to reorient myself.
"What in the name of Celestia is your problem, mare?" I asked her as she thrashed against the magic holding her back.
"You are my problem!" She yelled. "I hate you Wing Nut!"
"What did he ever do to you?" Wanderlust yelled from behind me as I wiped the blood from my snout with my hoof.
"He showed his perfect, skilled, little flank to me! And he only uses his skills to benefit himself! When I was getting captured by the Changelings, I yelled and cried for help. And nopony came!" She yelled. The cannons began firing again, surprising a recently freed earth pony, and making me uneasy as if something was moving in on us from a distance.
"We have to go." I announced to everypony, including the recently freed soldiers. We all took about ten seconds to prepare to leave. the soldiers simply stood up, and the skirmishers only had to flip their blades in. I counted the number of ponies we had after all of the pod breaking. We had six more pegasi, one unicorn, and one earth pony.
"Alright, Shellshock and Over-G, you carry that unicorn. You two..." I pointed to two of the freed pegasi, who were still catching their breath. "You carry the earth pony." They stared at me pleadingly. "C'mon, just this last stretch and I'll personally request that you go home." They still silently stared at me. "...I'm an Air Marshall." I finished. They both sprang up into the air immediately, knowing that I may actually be able to send them home. The cannon booms seemed to get closer.
"Let's go." Wanderlust said just loudly enough for everypony to hear.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
I woke up with one hoof around Wanderlust's waist, and her lying facing me. She was staring at me angrily.
"Sorry. I didn't do that on purpose." I apologized, though I don't think it actually bothered her. I had one of the best nights of sleep my entire time here. I slid my hoof off of her and crawled out of her sleeping bag. It was a cloudy morning, something that was strange for Appleloosa. I checked on Purple Quartz, ate breakfast, wrote a letter about my team's discovery last night and getting the pegasi home, dropped it off at Total War's tent, and then I went to go get my armor on. Just because it was the safe thing to do. When I got there, the rescued ponies from last night had left our tents and dispersed around the camp.
By noon the sky still had not cleared. Everypony in town was becoming nervous. Even the Royal Guard seemed to be more fidgety than usual. I found myself repeatedly looking up at the sky to make sure there was nothing coming down out of the clouds. As I trotted down mane street, I saw a stallion creep in to an alleyway, as is to hide from me.
"Hey!" I shouted at him. "What are you doing?"
"I'm minding my own business." He responded, poking his head out of the alley to look at me.
"You shouldn't be acting so suspiciously while there's an invasion of shapeshifting insects." I told him as I approached.
"Sorry." He answered.
"Don't do it anymore." I ordered him, walking away. Then I saw something strange. There was a group of ponies walking in from the South end of Mane Street. All of them were carrying autocannons.
A royal guard approached them from the side, preparing to ask them why they were there. One of them turned and shot him. I dove into the alleyway where the stallion was, not intending to be killed by a prototype weapon, as the firing continued. I heard eight booms before there was a pause in the noise. Then the stallion next to me erupted into green flames and transformed into a Changeling.
"Buck!" I yelled, flipping my blade out. He attempted to bite my throat, but I held my weapon up, and he instead got a mouthful of razor sharp blade. It drew it's head back screeching, and I stabbed it in the chest. It wouldn't be abducting and replacing anypony else.
The firing started again as I stepped over the body and walked out of the back side of the alley, towards the campsite. I could hear ponies screaming over the sound of the booms, and wooden buildings were getting splintered where the cannons were hitting them.
"Buck this." I told myself as I flew up and landed on the roof of the building next to me. I peeked over the edge to see that the group of 5 cannoneers were slowly walking towards the army's campsite. They weren't paying attention to anything that wasn't in front of them, and they didn't see Grayscale creeping up from behind.
He stabbed one of them in the back of the head, knocking them dead instantly, and then he pulled the body into an alley and out of sight. They didn't notice. They simply kept advancing. Grayscale stabbed another. No reaction. Then he stabbed another. This time, the cannon wielding mare closest to him noticed, and she whipped the weapon around to point it at Grayscale. He reacted by charging and staying right up against her, behind the barrel, as I prepared to swoop in and stab her. I dove down, plunged my sabre into the mare's back, and Grayscale jumped back and stabbed her again wherever he felt like. I landed next to him just as all of the other cannoneers realized we were there and turned to aim at us. The two of us took off into the air in the fastest direction we could. We heard two projectiles whiz over our backs as we arched and dove back down into the streets, away from the cannoneers.
"That was close." He laughed, me turning to look at him. I remember he had the happiest and most relieved look on his face. Then another cannon went off, and his head was gone. I was covered in his blood.
I stood shocked for a moment before realizing what had happened. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I stared at the corpse that was my friend less than a moment ago and my mind went blank as it collapsed into the dirt. Then I looked over to my right to see a autocannon wielding stallion poking around a corner. My first thought entered my head. Kill the cannoneer. I unfurled my wings and flew straight at the pony, screaming at the top of my lungs. He backed up slowly with a look of absolute fear in his eyes. Running couldn't save him now.
I collided blade-first with him. I felt it puncture his neck with extreme force. I dug my sabre down to my hoof into him before drawing it back out and slashing down into one of his legs, which he was now holding out to try and stop me. My blade went cleanly through, leaving half of his front leg on the ground. He yelled as I tackled him onto his back and thrust my blade into him repeatedly. I efficiently stabbed him eleven times before staggering back off of him and staring down at my victim. Then I realized that to my right were the speared corpses of the other shooters, and standing over them was a large group of soldiers staring at me, open mouthed in shock.
I turned and ran back to Grayscale's decapitated body. I lied down on top of him, squeezed him in my hooves, and began to sob. Then Wanderlust rounded the corner and saw me. She approached silently, sat down on the dirt road behind us, and stared with a blank expression. I forgot about her instantly. All I could think about was my dead friend.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Chapter 8: Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
I woke up in the middle of the night on top of Grayscale with red eyes. I was covered in the dried blood of both him and the blood of his killer. The streets around us were cleared of everything but a few blood splashes in the sand, and some wood pieces. I stepped off of him and noticed a small pouch attached to the back of his armor. I opened it and found a small folded sheet of paper inside. Written on the back was: "do not open until the war is over." I retracted my sabre and slipped the paper down into my breastplate where it would be safe. I looked up and around to see that there was one of Celestia's Royal Guards looking over at me with an expression of extreme sympathy and sadness.
"That was a good kill." He said in one of the strangest comforting attempts of my life. "You took that bastard's leg right off." What was stranger than the attempt was the fact that I actually found it comforting.
"Thank you." I said to him. He nodded at me as I walked back towards my tent. I didn't look back.
I got back to the tent and cleaned the blood off of everything with my rag. Then I dropped my armor to the floor of the tent and collapsed onto my sleeping bag. After a moment of silence, Wanderlust got up from her bedroll and joined me in mine. She set herself down against me and began to stroke the top of my wing. She began to sing quietly.
"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..."
Her song seemed to be followed up by an unearthly silence as she continued stroking my wing.
"That was beautiful." I told her. "What song is that?"
"It's called Broken Hearts And Broken Minds." She answered. "...Wing Nut?" She asked me.
"Yes?" I responded calmly.
"I'm sorry." She said to me. I felt her soft hooves stroke my wing gently and I relaxed completely. Right before I was about to respond, I heard the church bells in Appleloosa begin to ring violently. She stood up reluctantly and pushed my armor towards me, while simultaneously reaching over for her own. The entire campsite seemed to be coming to life around us. There were soldiers diving out of their tents and yelling. I lifted up and assembled my armor as fast as I could, Wanderlust did the same. I exited the tent swiftly, this time with my saddlebag on over my armor. I decided that from now on, I would carry Aerodrome's photo with me any time I could. What I saw was appalling.
Changeling soldiers were dropping from the cloudy, pitch black sky and landing on top of ponies. Most of them were getting impaled, but some of them were crushing, biting, or impaling Equestrians with spears of their own. And they just kept coming. Ponies were getting killed left and right for several seconds before a fall back trumpet call brayed over the chaos. Everypony simultaneously began running North towards the Everfree forest after the civilian Appleloosians that had already fled.
We flew straight North for half an hour before the Changelings stopped pursuing us. We were almost at the edge of the Everfree Forest, and far out of the desert. The ponies that couldn't fly or that didn't have wings arrived at the forest's edge a few minutes after us. The Changelings had stopped following them as well. Our army was now a third of the size it was. I thought about the fact that no one would be back in the town to clean up the dead or to give them a proper burial. Except the Changelings. They would take over the town and use our fallen as disguises.
My thoughts were interrupted by a General's bodyguard making an announcement. He used magic to amplify his voice.
"General Total War has been killed by the Changelings!" He bellowed. Everyone in Equestria's Army yelled back angrily:
"Long live Total War!" He passed a scroll to another guard to be sent to Princess Celestia, before continuing his speech.
"I am sending a scroll to Princess Celestia requesting that she personally join us on the front lines. In the meantime, we will hold the Everfree Forest and block the enemy from advancing any farther. Go! Build shelters! Now!" He ended.
Wanderlust and I gathered the Skirmishers, went a bit deeper into the forest, and we built ourselves a small set of close-together shelters. They consisted mostly of leaf beds, dug out or knocked over trees, and twigs and sticks supporting leaf roofs. I lied down with Wanderlust on a clean patch of grass under a tree and crashed. I couldn't stay awake any more.
I woke up at 1324 the next day. Everypony else was already awake and trotting around. Some of them were crying. Wanderlust was talking to Purple Quartz a few meters away from me. I stood up on the grass and walked over to them.
"Hi Wanderlust." I said quietly.
"Good afternoon, Wing Nut." She answered.
"Good afternoon sir." Quartz joined in.
"We were just discussing Quartz joining the Skirmishers." Wanderlust told me.
"I'm happy to serve you, sir." He added. I stared at them tiredly and silently before returning to the grass patch and sitting with my back against the tree. Quartz looked at Wanderlust confusedly and painfully for a moment.
"His friend was killed by the rogue cannoneers." She told him quietly.
"He was more than my friend." I responded. "He saved my flank on numerous occasions. Whether it be in training, exercises, or in combat. He was an exceptional flyer and friend. And I may have appeared to let go of him, but I never really did, and never will let go of him. He'll be in my heart and mind forever.
"I'm sorry." Purple Quartz responded.
"I am too." I replied. "...Welcome to the Skirmishers."
Later that day, I realized that there was nothing to do in this forest. There were no restaurants, no taverns, and no stores to look through. Over time though, we created a routine based on hunting, conserving energy, and conserving supplies. Everything in the forest was quiet. A month went by without any combat or orders. It was the break we needed, and it was good that we had it when we did, because Celestia decided that she would come. And she didn't just come. She came with plans.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Chapter 9: Celestia's Simple Plan
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.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Chapter 11: Fight With Fire
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."
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
We reached the fighting after only about a minute of running. We found it just a little deeper into the forest. There seemed to be only barely more changelings than ponies left over, as most of them had been trapped and killed in the fire outside our homebrew walls, and the rest were overcome by friendly soldiers who outsmarted or outfought them. It wasn't over quite yet though.
Wanderlust and I took on a duo of Changelings together. After only a few seconds of standoff, we stabbed them simultaneously and brought them down. I could tell that her ear was bothering her, because she kept touching it gently with the tips of her hooves.
"Are you okay?" I asked her between fights.
"Yeah. I'm just not used to missing half of my ear." She replied.
The Changeling's numbers were quickly dwindling. The ones that were left out of the combat were the ones stuck in the fire. Groups and teams of ponies that had survived the battle thus far were cutting down the separated, disorganized Changelings like a plow through snow. Wanderlust and I patrolled through the forest, stopping only twice in a hour to fight the failed invaders. The battles slowly became less frequent throughout the day. By evening there were only a handful of Changelings that had not been killed. They surrendered and were sent back South without their weapons or armor.
The unicorns magically extinguished the forest fire and we moved back towards the charred remains of our walls and the surrounding area. Against the outside of our walls, hundreds of Changelings were lying dead. The ones that had tried to fly away were hindered by the dense trees above, and the rest probably either asphyxiated or burned, being surrounded on all sides by flames. The bottleneck created by our walls was blocked up by Changeling corpses, so they couldn't have simply run around them either. Seeing this made me think about what I had done out here.
Thousands of lives had been lost, both civilian and military, in the Changeling's attempt to invade our beautiful land of Equestria. The majority of their species lay dead all over our desert and forest, staining our nation's soil with their dark turquoise blood. They properly announced their surrender in the morning of the next day.
Before returning home, all of the surviving soldiers, flyers, medics, pikeponies, guards, unicorns, and all of the rest of Equestria's Royal Army, regrouped in the clearing created by our fire and celebrated. We talked and laughed and took our armor off for almost the last time. We had no food to feast on, or dress uniforms, but some musicians had survived, so we still had music. A trumpeter began to play an iconic Equestrian victory song, and everypony around joined in immediately, creating a beautiful chorus of ponies who understood and meant what they were singing.
"Stand fast! The beasts draw nearer and nearer.
They mean to take over our land!
Stand fast! Their intentions grow clearer and clearer.
So line up and take a stand!
They spread their wings and gnash their teeth,
Their trumpets call and their war drums beat.
They come in force to take our homes.
Their flags are up and our land they comb.
Stand fast! Over the hill they come!
Stand fast! Right into our blades!
Stand fast! The ground is stained with blood!
We stood fast! And our trumpets in victory brayed!"
Our hymn echoed throughout the charred forest, a fittingly powerful end to this anti-campaign. Once the world around us finally fell silent, the band resumed their normal playing. We celebrated for the rest of the day, only crashing late in the evening. Wanderlust and I found some kind of fruit on a tree, which we shared for dinner, then we found ourselves a patch of soft moss to sleep in. We rested against each other quietly for a while before I remembered that I still had Grayscale's note tucked into my breastplate. I pulled the note out of my armor and read it out loud to Wanderlust next to me.
"If you have this note in your hooves, I am likely dead. I hope that my death did not hinder your ability to effectively defend Equestria. In the short time I spent in this world, I had an exceptional time. The ponies I loved were always near me, and were always ready to fight with me. If Wing Nut and Wanderlust die beside me, or die before they get to read this letter, I hope they were as ready as I was. They made my life feel meaningful, showing me a good time between fights and cheering me up when I needed it. If I did not die a hero, I hope that you will not lie and tell the world that I did. Though I hope to be recognized in death as I was in life. If you didn't like me, you don't have to start liking me. If you saw me only as an acquaintance, treat me accordingly. If you were a friend, remember the fun times we had together. My only request is that however you saw or knew me during my life, don't forget me in death.
First Sergeant Grayscale"
The two of us sat together in silence on our bed of soft moss. Then Wanderlust closed her eyes and began to cry. I lay down on top of her and placed my filthy chin on top of her filthy mane. In response, she brought her right hoof up, placed it on my head softly, and began to stroke it. Eventually the crying stopped, and I rolled off of her and onto the moss.
"Are you ready to go home, Wanderlust?"
"Sir... yes sir."
When we woke up on the morning, we all began our trip home. The pegasi flew back to Cloudsdale and the earth and unicorn ponies marched back towards Canterlot. Our flight was only an hour and a half. The airfield staff were stunned when I told them that we were the only pegasi left. There was me, Wanderlust, and ten others that were from random regiments around the army. We were forced to stay on base until the rest of the army arrived, and we were finished with the memorial service in Canterlot.
The service came three days later. We were ordered over to Canterlot, back in our armor again. Only this time it was clean, and so were we. My armor no longer carried any scuffs or scratches, nor did my body. We paraded through the center of Canterlot as heroes, though to this day, I'm still not sure if we really were. After going down Canterlot's main boulevard, we marched into the castle's garden and lined up by regiment.
We had short, sad lines of up to five ponies in each row, as most of us had been killed. Spectators and family members of the soldiers were lining the castle walls around us, greatly outnumbering our ninety remaining ponies. Celestia and the newly returned Luna approached our ranks, we exchanged bows, then she read the names of the ponies that had gone missing or were killed. The name reading took four hours.
The eight remaining officers were presented with a war veteran sash, and then we bowed to the flag. Finally, we dropped our weapons at our hooves, Celestia bowed to us, then we heard those words that we had all been waiting for.
"Equestria's Royal Army! As princess and ruler of this nation, I compliment your efforts to defend Equestria, and commend you for surviving the struggle through honorable means. You are hereby dismissed from your wartime duties."
Everypony along the wall that wasn't sobbing or mourning was then permitted to run down into the garden to meet us. Aerodrome flew straight down to me from the wall and crashed into me violently, knocking me over and pinning me on my back.
"I'm so glad you made it!" She yelled in my face. Wanderlust was watching us and smiling at me happily from her spot next to me, waiting for her brother to find her.
"I am too..." I responded, thinking about all of my dead friends. "I don't want to discuss what happened right now, so don't ask. Maybe I'll tell you some other time. If I can manage to."
"I don't want you feeling any worse about anything. Tonight we can go out to dinner and then you can finally get back to our house." She said caringly. "I'll bet you're exhausted."
She looked into my eyes, searching for an answer. I remember she had the biggest smile on her face. I let my head drop down into the grass and I closed my eyes and relaxed all of my muscles.
"Yes..." I told Aerodrome. "I am exhausted."
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
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
That short announcement signaled the beginning of the most terrible 50 days of my life.
Broken Hearts And Broken Minds
Chapter 10: Scattered And Regrouped
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..."
