“I fucking hate my job.” Cestus says. I can hear the misery in his voice. A lit cigarette hangs weakly from his mouth. The embers are easy to see in the night. He leans on the stone baluster of the balcony. “Most days, we’re just hanging out in the barracks or the halls and doing nothing. I mean, Nightmare Moon insists that we’re ‘guarding’ her and the castle, but from who? I don’t think anybody’s ever tried to attack this place in the history of Equestria. Can’t forget that bitch is immortal, too. You'd think she wouldn't even need us.” He sighs and flicks the cigarette away. It lands in a small puddle, formed by last night’s rainfall.
I nod. “I hear you, man. At least we get paid well.” I offer.
He shrugs. “Enough to eat, maybe. I don’t know about you, but I live outside the castle, in an actual home. I’ve got an actual bed to sleep in. I’ve tried to sleep in those cots in the barracks. It wasn’t comfortable. They’re too hard for me. Do you know how fucking expensive chiropractors are?”
I shake my head. I rest a hand on my hip and the other on the pommel of my sheathed sword. “I don’t have back problems. The cots are fine with me.”
“That’s because you’ve been dealing with them for…” He trails off, looking into the night sky. A large circular void hangs in the sky, blocking the view of many stars. The sky’s been like that for nearly ten months, but I still haven’t gotten used to the sight. I never want to. “Fifteen years?”
I nod. “Yeah. Fifteen.” He offers me a cigarette, but I refuse it. “Even though I’ve been working for Nightmare for almost one of those years, I think it’s been worth it.”
“I don’t. It might just be Canterlot, though. This town rips the bones from your back.” He replies. I don’t add anything to the conversation. Silence fills the air around us for a short time. He looks down and to the ground. “Looks like we’ve got rebels again.” He says, breaking the silence. I look down to the courtyard in front of the castle. Among protests, the courtyard’s a popular place for executions.
A large crowd of at least 30 ponies are congregated in front of the doors. Although we’re up high, I can easily see that some of them have torches.
"You did say this was a boring job." I say. I turn back to Cestus. “We should probably go down there. You know how the rebels can be. We’re going to need some guards to keep them out.”
He nods. “So I don’t have to work tomorrow?”
I chuckle. “Yeah. That too.”
“Hold it.” A guard says to us almost immediately after we make it to the front doors. “I need your identifications before you go outside.” He says.
“You do?” Cestus asks. “Why?”
He gives him a blank glare. “The rebellion, smartass.”
“Since when?” I ask
The guard turns to me with a shrug. “Yesterday. The Queen gave us a personal order. I’m surprised the order wasn’t put in place sooner.”
Cestus groans. The two of us grab our wallets and give our ID’s to the guard. I catch a quick glance at Cestus’. The guard looks at our ID’s I look at Cestus. “When did you get promoted, Corporal?”
He looks up at me. “Two months ago.”
I give him a smile. “You’ll be a General in no time.” I say.
“You’re the Staff Sergeant. You’re a lot closer than I am.” He chuckles. “Why is a Staff Sergeant just a guard, anyway?”
I shrug. “Like you said. We don’t do shit around here. She just doesn’t need me anywhere else.”
“Alright, here you go.” The guard says and hands back our ID’s. We take them and put them back. “Good luck out there. I doubt it will end well.” He adds.
I nod. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Before you go…” He lowers his voice. “Are you the Morning Star that was at the Trotthauser Gate?”
I give him a soft smile. “That was another Morning Star.” I reply. “I hear that one’s in Crystal Kingdom.” I add in. The guard nods. Without another word, he signals for another guard to open the doors. They open slowly.
Cestus leans in close to me. “I didn’t know there were any other Morning Stars.”
“There probably aren’t.”
“What happened at the Trotthauser Gate?”
I sigh. “You wouldn’t believe it.” I reply. The doors finally open. Like we saw from the balcony above, there’s a massive mob of rebels at the steps. If I'm not mistaken, more rebels have joined the mob. A group of maybe 5 guards are trying to hold them back from reaching the base of the steps.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” Cestus mutters. “We should get back inside.” He adds in.
I shake my head. Cestus stares at me like I just broke out of the psychiatric ward. “The guards have it handled. We’ve got weapons and armor. They only have numbers.”
“‘When you have numbers, you have victory.’ Do you know who said that?” Cestus says. I shake my head. “Sun Zoo. The guy that wrote that book on how to win a fucking war.”
“He wrote that 2,600 years ago.” I retort.
“‘War never changes.’ Do you know who said that?” He says. I turn back to the mob. They seem to be getting more… I don’t know. Agitated? They're definitely getting a lot louder.
A small ball of mud is suddenly thrown from the mob and towards us.It hits me in the chest before I can move out of the way. Bits and pieces of the mudball splatter, some hitting me in the face.
“We have to get back inside, Star.” Cestus says firmly.
“No. Stay out here.” A guard, a private, near us orders. “We’ll need all the men we can get to hold these bastards back.” He draws his sword. “Step back! All of you!” He shouts to the mob.
Another protester throws something towards us. I duck this time. “Fuck Nightmare Moon!” A rebel shouts back.
The guard glances at me. “Morning Star, right? I need you over there. Keep them away from the doors.” He points to a relatively guard-free area. He turns to Cestus. “Stay with me.”
I move towards the empty area. The private might be below my rank, but he has the right idea. If we’re facing a mob, we don’t want to have a weakened area.
The crowd isn’t going to stay calm for much too longer. I put my hand on my sword’s grip and prepare for the worst.
I see something flying at me from my left. My reaction time is only fast enough for me to look at it and identify that it’s a brick, but not to dodge it. The brick hits me in the forehead, right above my right eye. I fall to the ground and almost onto another guard. I can’t see out of my right eye…? That brick fucking blinded me!
I take a deep breath and wipe my eye. Blood. Just blood. I can see again. My vision is blurred, but a wave of relief still hits me.
Through my blurry eyes, I can see the rebels charge for the guards. Some rebels are armed with bricks or bottles. The guards stand their ground. One of them, a unicorn, flips a rebel over his back and onto the ground. The guard turns around and picks up the rebel by the collar and waistline, then throws him back into the crowd.
Another rebel, armed with a brick, charges for the same guard. He prepares a spell, but the rebel uppercuts him with the brick. The spell is still cast, but when the guard is recoiling. The spell is sent above us, and right into a stained glass window. The window shatters. Most of it is sent inside the castle, but a noticeable and distressing amount is sent for us.
“Oh shit!” I hear a guard near me shout as the glass rains down on us. Some of it is sent directly for me. I crawl back as fast as I can, near some other guards who are dodging the sharpened rain. I barely have time to notice that one of the guard’s armored foot is aimed directly for my forehead. Everything goes black, and the pain from my fresh wound is killed.
My head feels like it was put in a washing machine filled with bricks, thrown off a cliff, then bashed with sledgehammers, and trampled by an army. A brick and a boot to the forehead will do that. For at least two hours, I stay in this semi-comfortable bed waiting for the pain to go away at least somewhat. It doesn’t.
My eyes flutter open. The sudden light only makes the pain worse. I hold a hand to my eyes, but the light doesn’t seem to dim. The light isn’t going to get any better. For the first time in ten months, I wish I was outside in the dark.
I sit myself up and look around, trying to ignore the pounding in my skull. The cots covered in white sheets, no blankets, and equipment I’m not very familiar with tell me I’m in a small medical center. A makeshift one, from the looks of it. I haven’t been in the ‘actual’ medical center many times, but I’m certain this one was made for the guards that were caught in the riot.
Only a couple of ponies are in the room. Most of them are in the cots. None of them appear to be Cestus. I only see one pony that’s standing. He’s wearing a white coat. A doctor. I call him over.
“It’s good to see that you’re making progress.” He says to me once he makes it to the foot of my bed. “You’ve been unconscious for seven hours.”
Shit. Seven hours is a long time. I rub my head. “How many casualties?” I ask.
He looks at his clipboard. “Two dead guards. 14 injured, nine of which are severe. You included, but I think we can take you off the ‘severe’ list now that you’re awake and talking.” He adds in.
Two dead guards? I need to find out who they were. Cestus couldn’t be one of them. He might be young, but he’s far from inexperienced. “What about the civilians?”
“You mean the rebels?” He almost spits. I can practically feel the venom of his words, even though they weren’t directed at me. “Only four mild injuries. No deaths.” He shakes his head. “You know just as well as I do that we need to fight back next time to keep this from happening.”
“Fighting back would just pour gasoline on the fire.” I reply. “They already see us as monsters. Killing any would just set that in stone.”
He scoffs. “If they already think we’re monsters, then we can’t get any worse in their eyes.”
“It can always get worse.” I retort. “Where’s the morgue?”
He raises an eyebrow and gives me a small smile. He thinks he’s won this little argument. “Out the hall. It’s next door on the left.”
I sit on the side of the bed. My brain feels like gelatin in a microwave. Walking is going to fucking suck. I stand up, and almost fall over. My feet slowly move towards the door.
Before I was a soldier, I ran in a marathon in Ponyville to impress a mare I knew. 26.2 miles in one day. It was a hot summer afternoon, too. I barely managed to make it in under nine hours. I was dehydrated by the end of it. My muscles felt like they were put in a taffy stretcher. The only good thing about that marathon was that it got me in bed with a mare I’ve had my eyes on for half a year.
That marathon holds nothing on this walk. I wish I was killed in the riot. At least I still get to end up at the morgue.
I enter the morgue. Inside is a table with four bodies, all covered by clean white sheets. “Are you here to see the casualties?” A coroner that I didn’t notice when I walked in asks. I nod. “You’re the sixth in the past hour.” He longingly looks at the table in the middle. “The poor guards died at the scene. That wasn’t a riot. It was a massacre.” He sighs.
Four dead? Not two? Fucking propaganda. We’re even trying to convince ourselves that we’re strong. Since it was the doctor in the room next door that told me only two died, I highly doubt he didn’t bother to check on any updates. I shake my head. “Have you identified any yet?”
He shrugs. “I’m working on it. Three of them didn’t have their identifications on them, and from the looks of it, one had a fake ID.” He chuckles. “Probably had some fun over at the brothel.” I ignore that comment.
“Can I take a look at them?”
He nods. “Go ahead. I already know the causes of death for all of them.” He replies. “If you can identify any of them, let me know.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I say. I start to walk away.
“After this,” He says before I can look at the first corpse, “you should go to the medical center. I can tell you were at the riot.”
I rub my wound. “Yeah. Good idea.” I start with the closest corpse on the table, underneath the sheet. I pull the sheet off.
“Oh, fuck me.” I mutter. To say this soldier was mutilated would be an understatement. Her left ear is nearly ripped off. Her nose is broken and she has two black eyes. There’s a stab wound in her upper chest, just under the collarbone.
I blink. I went to high school with this mare. Her name was Stardust. I remember that she never had the best grades at Cloudsdale High School, even though she always came to class early. I think it was because she didn’t have many friends. I talked to her a few times and tried to befriend her, but it never worked out. Sometimes you meet people and instantly become best friends. Sometimes you meet people and you just sort of know them.
I move to the next body. I remove the sheet, and immediately feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. She has fewer wounds, but they look a lot worse. Her skull has been indented, probably from one of the bricks the rebels threw.
I also knew this girl. Her name was Greenleaf. I used to be sweet on her back in college. Whenever she was skipping her classes, she was either in her dorm smoking marijuana with her friend Tree Hugger, or in my dorm sucking my dick. We didn’t date long, but I remember the next girl I was with jokingly accused my dick of smoking weed. I almost smile at the memory.
I rub my head. I almost don’t want to move to the next body, but it would be one step closer to finding Cestus. I know he didn’t die. Looking at the bodies first would prove that to me.
With a deep sigh, I step to the third body and pull the sheet down. To my relief, I don’t see any injuries or even recognize him. I look to the coroner. “This one doesn’t have any injuries.” I tell him.
“Not on the front.” He says without turning to me. “Turn him over.”
I look back at the body and turn him over. There’s a large piece of glass embedded in his neck. The injury probably came from the window that was broken.
I set him back down. Even though I didn’t know him, I still feel terrible that he died. I can’t stand looking at any more corpses. Three in one day is enough for me. I look back at the coroner. “I knew the first two. Stardust and Greenleaf.” I point to them when I say their names.
He rubs his chin. “Nobody’s been able to identify him…” He sighs softly. I can’t even begin to know what it’s like to know that there’s a body with no name attached. I can tell this coroner knows what it’s like. “Did you check the guy in back?” The coroner asks.
I glance at the body. I don’t want to, but something’s calling me to him. I step over to him and slowly pull the sheet down. He has a still-bleeding injury on his temple.
And, yeah. I knew him, too.
“Cestus… Fuck, man.” I mutter. I’m sorry you had to die because of this. What a great fucking friend I am. I couldn’t save you. I didn’t even watch you die.
I step back and pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting back tears. My best friend in the world is gone, and I almost walked away before I found out. What the fuck is wrong with me? Three people I knew are dead. All died within thirty seconds of each other. Stardust didn’t deserve to die. Greenleaf didn’t deserve to die. Cestus didn’t deserve to die.
Does this mean I didn’t deserve to live?
I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to see the coroner. “I’ll make sure they’re all buried with full military honors. It’s the least they deserve.” I can’t say anything in reply, so I just nod. “I can tell you were close to him. You shouldn’t have to see anypony you knew like this, alright? For your sake, you should get some sleep.” He says softly.
I nod again. “Thanks.” I manage to spit out. I walk out of the morgue and back towards the medical center. I think a few ponies talk to me, but whatever they say sounds like one of us is thirty feet underwater.
I make it to an empty bed in a semi-busy area of the medical center. I don’t care how busy it is. I just need to get off my feet and close my eyes. Some sleep would kill this headache that’s starting to form. I shouldn’t even be able to sleep. My best friend died.
I shouldn’t be able to sleep, but it eventually comes, like a predator attacking its unsuspecting prey.
