The Equestrian Warden

We left Orzammare, in the Crystal Mountains, and made our way south to the Castle of the Two Sisters on the edge of Hollow Shades forest. They say the castle was built by the Alicorn goddess Celestia and her mortal Alicorn sister Luna. They say once Luna died, Celestia in her grief destroyed the Tower of the Moon, and only the Tower of the Sun remained. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t reach it for at least a couple more days.

…

“Quiet! There are darklings nearby.”

We both froze and looked around. There wasn’t any darkling in sight, but the look on Midnights face said otherwise.

“How do you know that?” Azura asked hesitantly.

“Grey Wardens have the ability to sense where darkling’s are. It helps us become more efficient in locating them, and driving them back underground.”

“Will we be able to sense darkspawn?” Azura looked at her curiously but Midnight kept her usual solemn face.

“Maybe.” Was all she said before she continued forward.

We looked at each other before following Midnight deeper into the forest. The caravan we were traveling with asked us to scout ahead for any bandits or darklings. We continued walking for a couple more minutes, until Midnight once again stopped us from advancing.

“Look up.”

We looked at her, confused, but slowly did what she said. My mouth dropped. Above us were pegasi. No. These weren’t pegasi. These ponies were shells of their former self. These pegasi had no hair, their skin was green and deformed and almost gone. Many of them didn’t even have all the skin on their face. Their green glowing eyes looked around for prey. In their mouths they held various weapons, and their armor was stained with red paint. Or at least I hope it was paint

“What are those?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

“Hurlocks. Pegasi who were corrupted by the darkling taint. The darklings personal flying force”

“A-and those?” Azura asked fearfully, looking straight ahead.

I followed her gaze and was surprised to see that there was a large group of darklings in front of us. These ones had no wings or horns, but they looked a lot like the hurlocks.

“Genlocks. Earth ponies affected by the taint. Many of the Grey Wardens simply call them cannon fodder. Easy to kill unless they gang up on you.”

“What do we do?”

Midnight looked at us before her horn sparked up and from beneath her cloak she pulled out two daggers.

“I can handle the genlocks, but I need you two to handle the hurlocks. Consider this to be your first test as Grey Warden initiates.”

I nodded and gripped the dagger between my teeth and Azura grabbed the other, and we waited for Midnight’s order. Midnight drew a silver sword from under her cloak, and turned towards the genlocks.

“Go!”

I shot into the air with Azura by my side. We tried to be sneaky, but a hurlock noticed us right away and let out a loud screech to warn the other. Azura flew past me and engaged the hurlock, but the other were rushing to help their comrade. I managed to intercept one, but the hurlock didn’t seem fazed. The hurlock attacked with terrifying ferocity. I could barely keep up as I parried its savage sword swings.

The hurlock seemed to be impatient, if they could even get impatient, and the ferocity of its attacks grew, they sloppy. Every time it over extended itself during an attack, I darted in and slashed at any opening in its armor. Soon it was bleeding from cuts all over its body, and soon my dagger found its way into its heart.

I had to close my eyes as black blood sprayed onto my face and dripped off my dagger, but I watched in satisfaction as it plunged to the earth bellow. I saw that Azura was busy fighting two hurlocks, she quickly dispatched of the one who raised the alarm, but it looked like she needed a little help. I flew toward the two remaining hurlocks. Their focus was on Azura, so they didn’t see me coming until it was too late. One of the hurlocks let out a blood chilling screech as I shoved my dagger into its back repeatedly. I was glad that Midnight taught me a couple moves after we left Orzammare.

With one final screech it plummeted to the earth below. The last remaining hurlock turned to me, ready to strike when Azura with lighting speed slashed her dagger across it’s throat.

“Not bad Comet. You’ve gotten a lot better.”

“Thank you.”

We flew down towards the forest floor where Midnight was waiting for us, surrounded by genlock corpses.

“This was just a small patrol. The rest of their group should be somewhere nearby, and they’ll be wanting revenge for what we did here. We should get back to the caravan, and warn them of the coming danger.”

We returned the daggers to her, before starting back towards the caravans.

…

“Mommy. I'm really tired.” Said a little unicorn girl walking back with her mother behind me.

We returned to the caravan and Midnight told their leader of the possible darkling threat. The leader of the caravan, was a large earth pony who was leading his entire family away from Orzammare. He only had a handful of pegasi mercenaries, but he didn’t seem frightened by Midnight’s warning. The caravan moved on through the night, through next morning, until early in the evening. Luckily Midnight told me and Azura to get some rest in one of the wagons, so now we were up and ready for action. Others however, weren’t as fortunate and couldn’t afford to sleep in the wagons.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be there soon.” Her mother replied.

I looked at Azura whose eyes were scanning the forest, probably using her bat hearing to check for any darklings nearby.

“Calm down Azura. We have pegasi guarding the skies, and Duncan who can sense when the darklings are nearby. We’re perfectly safe.”

She looked at me for a couple seconds before looking at the ground in defeat.

“I know. It’s just that the darklings are a lot more…frightening then I thought.”

I was surprised to hear that. Was she was actually scared of the darklings?

“But last night you killed that hurlock so easily.”

“I know.” She whispered. “But just because it was easy doesn’t mean they weren’t scary. I’ve always put on a strong face, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit when something scares me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. To me the darklings were just another thing to kill. They may look terrifying, but they bleed just like us. I'm sure Azura already knew this, but I guess she was taking it a lot harder than I thought. Before I could think of any comforting words, the leader of the caravan stopped the wagons.

“Oye! We stay here for the night. We should reach the castle by morning.”

Midnight who was traveling behind the leader spoke.

“I will take a couple of pegasi to scout the forest for any nearby darklings.” He looked at me and Azura.” Azura, Comet, stay here with the rest of the pegasi to guard the camp.”

Midnight went off into the woods with pegasi mercenaries, while the rest of us set up camp. Once we got a fire going, and food was given out, I guess you can say we had a little party. It took me a while, but after a drink or two and maybe a little pushing from the soldiers, I asked Azura to dance. It must have been a little strange to see a pegasi and a bat pony dancing in the air, but the the music, and the light shining in Azura’s sapphire eyes was worth it. We danced around for a little longer, and only stopped when everyone started going to sleep.

We sat near the fire with Azura resting her head on my shoulder with my wing draped over her shoulders.

“So tell me Comet. How did you get involved with the Carta?”

“You still can’t get over that can you?” I asked, taking a swig of my drink.

“Can you blame me? You got to have some serious balls to get involved with those criminals.”

I waited a couple seconds, sometimes opening my mouth like I was actually going to tell the story then closing it just to tease her. That of course resulted in her hitting my shoulder, and threatening to suck my blood, but I just laughed and soon she laughed with me.

“I ran away from Cloudsdale when I was just a filly. Over a disagreement with my dad over my life.” She smiled,

“Oh, so you were a bad boy?” She giggled, sounding drunk.

“Nope, I wanted to be a simple scholar, and he wanted me to join the pegasi royal guard like him. I ran away when my mother told me he was preparing a suit of armor for me. She gave me a bag, a knife, and sent me on my way.”

“I traveled around Equestria for a couple months. Then I joined a gang of mercenaries that were willing to let me join because apparently their cook was killed in the last battle.”

“How noble of them.” She muttered, hiccupping and taking another sip of her wine.

“Yeah… anyways, I traveled with them for a couple weeks until we found ourselves in Orzammare. They were trying to make a deal with the Carta, in exchange for gems and future business, we would give them some…questionable items that they could sell on the black market. The Carta managed to slip some of us into one of Orzammare's abandoned mines were we could make the deal. But it turned out that it was all just a set up.

The Carta turned on us, they killed all my men, and they would have killed me if a couple of nearby guards hadn’t heard the commotion. But of course the Carta has many powerful allies, and soon all their guys were out of prison and roaming about, while I was stuck in that cruddy dwarven cell.”

“And that’s how we met!” Azura said a little too loudly, but I didn’t mind.

“That’s one hell of a story Comet. I never would have guessed you could be this interesting.”

“Oh,” I smiled teasingly, “do I really look that boring?”

She looked at me for a couple seconds before gently licking my cheek.

“Nope!” She giggled, making me blush.

Wanting to change the subject I cleared my throat and asked,

“So I told you my story. Why don’t you tell me a little about you?”

At first she checked to see if I was serious before holding up the mug in her hooves.

“Only if you keep these coming.”

She never did tell me her story, but I still managed to get her a couple drinks from one of the caravan drivers. I guess she would tell me some other time. After a while I told her I was heading to my tent, she surprised me by asking,

“Can I sleep in your tent tonight? I forgot to set mine up.”

I had to force myself not to blush and strangle the pegasi guards nearby who were whistling and winking at me. At first I was gonna tell her to find her own tent, but considering how drunk she was, she probably wouldn’t even be able to find her tent. When I nodded she giggled and whispered,

“No funny business.”

I couldn’t hold back my blush, which only made her giggle more. I lead her to my tent and helped her into my sleeping back, and soon joined her. No funny business my ass! The second her head hit the ground, she fell asleep, but not before wrapping her fore legs around me and cuddling up to my chest.

I tried to resist but I had to admit, her fur was pretty soft. And she was very warm too. Maybe I had a little too much to drink. But soon that thought left me as I fell asleep.