“There's a sense of pure fear when you see that green haze engulf an entire city. The only kind of haze that you see when a Balefire bomb detonates. Then you hear the screams when the wind carries them. The screams of the dead and then the screams of the dying. Foals, mares, stallions, you can hear them. Even after the bombs you can still hear them, echoing throughout the ruined cities with the wind.”
Artillery shells land close, spraying the trench with dirt, rubble, and bits of gore from the dead. I adjust the helmet on my head with a clawed hand, myself and uniform covered in mud and grime. Machine gun fire from both our side and theirs occasionally picking off anypony that tries to look over their trench at each other.
It’s been five years since the war started. Most countries were allied with Equestria since Zebrica was a very isolationist country. We’ve been fighting for six months now with the newest invention that the eggheads in Canterlot drew up: the tank.
I bring the periscope down before turning around. “Alright boys, when those tanks pass overhead, we go over the top and follow behind them. Watch for anything you can get tangled in. If you get stuck we can’t help you.”
I check the rounds in the revolver before slipping it back into its holster. Half an hour passes and our armor finally arrives, the slow masses of steel and guns lumber over the trench as everypony ducks down to not smack their head on the undercarriage. Officers go over first, walking beside the tanks. Ponies fall in behind the rhombus-shaped vehicles in fours, rifles ready. Since ponies can’t hold guns like Griffons or any other species with claws they have to hold them in the mouth. Long rifles are assisted by straps since battlesaddles were only being thought of. I walk next to one of the sponsons that hang off the side of the tank, a rifle at the ready. We had chosen the cover of night for the charge so we could get close to the trenches without serious resistance. We still had to deal with the gunfire from the machine gun nests and the errant gunfire of Zebras occasionally firing rifles from the trench.
We had made it about three quarters of the way across when a starlight flare was fired into the air from the Zebra trench. Within moments, No-Pony’s Land erupted into gunfire. Zebrican tanks that had lain in wait for a false advance the next morning immediately begun firing on our tanks and troops. We had continued to advance despite the losses of our already dwindling number of tanks. As we continued advancing, the Zebras had sent out their anti-tank rifles. I had seen one of them a moment too late, the round the Zebra had fired ripped through my shoulder and blown out my left arm and wing. It was an unlucky miracle that the round didn’t kill me then and there. As I lay in the mud bleeding to death, one of the soldiers in the company I led, a unicorn, was unknowingly to me a test subject for a very, very early version of the Phoenix Talisman. Her name was Edelweiss. I couldn’t help but watch as she took her knife and cut the talisman out of herself, jamming it into the gaping wound. It kept me alive but didn’t restore the damages done. She died from her wounds, bled to death long before the medics arrived. I was taken to a field hospital near Mane. I spent five weeks in the field hospital and then a year and a half in a military hospital in Canterlot. Some project had been able to give me mechanical prosthesis and then sent me back out into the field, I fought for the next eighteen years until the end of the war.
My name is Brigadier General Astraeus Stonefeather, formerly Royal Gryphonic Military and Equestrian Defense Force. I fought for a nation that wasn’t even my own during the Great War and I would’ve ended up dying for it. I was there when the bombs fell. I saw the haze from the cities of Marescow and Stalliongrad. War is hell, so is the Equestrian Wasteland. I lived through both.
Chapter II "The Wasteland"
Two hundred years. That’s how long I’ve wandered the Wasteland. I saw the radioactive snow and the sweltering heat. I saw the Pink Cloud in Canterlot. I’ve seen it all, even the bodies of my own family. This talisman has kept me alive, but if my body is completely destroyed or the talisman is cut out, I will die.
The wind howls through the rotting frame of the building, the building itself creaking and groaning with every gust. As I sit here I think about everything that’s happened. I’ve thought many thousands of times about cutting this fucking talisman out, but every time I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s almost as though something wants me to keep moving forward and I just listen to it. Perhaps one day I’ll die and be reunited with them but as of right now, that’s not going to happen.
I continue sitting there for what seems like an eternity before the wind brings the snaps of distant gunfire and the yelling of raiders draws my attention. I immediately grab my rifle and slide off the building, falling about a hundred feet before I snap out my wings and flying off in the direction of the gunfire. As soon as the scene comes into view I set down atop a small two story building. What lays in front of me is a typical raider ambush. Three caravan wagons, what once was fifteen caravan ponies has been reduced to six survivors against ten raiders. Raiders are the scum of the wasteland. I kill them every chance I get. In only a few seconds I've already set up and scoped in, slowly squeezing the trigger. The rifle fires and the bullet travels through the head of the first raider, dropping him instantly. The rest of them begun to panic as the next two go down. One of the raiders, a mare, opens fire on the building. Two shots drop her like a rock. Some remain completely oblivious while others will try to figure out where the other shots are coming from, either way they get picked off. The intervention takes about ten minutes to clear up before I take off and go wherever the wind takes me, leaving the survivors to regroup and wonder who helped them.
