Magehold Nights

The night itself wasn’t particularly cold to the relief of most of the scribes running around and the chagrin of those who could still find joy in the simple pleasure of exhaling and pretending to be a dragon. Still, the wind swept away ambient body heat, making the night sufficiently uncomfortable; enough to be appropriate for the locale.

The earth pony gestured towards the ever present slum-like dwellings, “Before the order came, we had a union that was working to get rid of this kind of thing.”

“A union which was almost immediately subverted to the will of the two actual factions in the league, yeah. I didn’t hear any objections when they called in that monster to execute ponies not showing enough enthusiasm in the conflict, nor did I hear any complaint when rationing was enforced when we still had the ‘more than enough’ that we earned” The unicorn replied, rolling her eyes as she maneuvered over debris that had fallen off from the seriously outdated buildings.

“Be that as it may, there was still a martial glory to everything back then, it felt like we were fighting and unified, a force against those who would inevitably seek to destroy us.” The other pony replied, beaming at some nostalgic moment from her history. “I was in the southern front you know, pushing against the lines of forts set to safeguard The End. There was something magical in getting to fight the volunteers from Hellquill after our first major break through when the Knights fell back to protect the Rock.”

Guiding Bolt nodded along, she was on the more northern front where William Steelbeak fought. This was new information to her as she rarely initiated conversation with the other ghouls in the labor camp.

“Anyways, the griffons from Hellquill belonged to some ‘Reformisten’ faction and presumably got news there was a chance ‘defend griffonkind’ or ‘kill ponies’ or something like that, and, when Whitemane’s forces fell back, if the story my superiors told me was accurate, they accused her of ‘typical pony cowardice’ and remained defiantly at The End,” The earth pony chuckled at this as the sound of a bottle breaking came from a ways to their right. “Well, my battalion’s commander was a bonafide blood mage, not one of the newer posers we started recruiting prior to the war. She carried around this scythe and was scary as all Tartarus, typical vampire stuff. So, a decent amount of the griffons were entrenched in a town outside of The End, and they were dug in enough that cannon barrages weren’t really doing much.”

The unicorn continued to nod along, looking around as they both exited from the protection afforded by illuminated streetlamps. As they moved deeper into the unwatched parts of the city the crack of a rifle going off in the distance was audible, and while still distant, was certainly a bit more intimidating given the low visibility afforded by darkness.

The earth pony waved a hoof “See? My guess is some poor ghoul just got executed for hurting somegriff’s feelings.”

Bolt sighed, “I dou-”

“Alright, back to the story,” the other ghoul said, cutting the unicorn off, “Where was I? Right, the griffons were dug in and my battalion commander got to work her magic. We had a lot of thralls, so, naturally she gives a few the axe to get the magic flowing, and then she casts this huge illusion. Not the stereotypical big astral bear either, It looked like it started raining blood over the town, and a bunch of fleshy pustules started growing out of everything. This was mostly an illusion, mind you, but it scared the griffons something fierce. When the wave of zombies and skeletons came in, they blew most of their traps on account of being terrified, wasted a whole lot of ammunition and gave us a pretty easy path to clear the distance. Once in, with little ammunition and even worse cohesion, they fell pretty quickly. Honestly, there’s hardly anything better than seeing some griffons go from ‘ponies can’t amount to anything’ to ‘Boreas help me, they’re eating my legs, oh no, oh gods!’” The earth pony snickered to herself, turning towards Bolt “Anyways, do you have any stories? Even though you’re a quiet weirdo, I don’t take you for a factory ghoul.”

“Nothing really worth talking about, I worked with the cannons in the back away from the really graphic bits of fighting.” Bolt said, looking at the ground and narrowly stepping over someponies discarded femur.

“Come on, it was a pretty intense war, you must have managed to do at least something interesting,” the other mare taunted.

“I’d really prefer not to talk about it,” Guiding Bolt replied, in a quiet, uncomfortable tone, her focus firmly planted on the ground.

“Fine, way to be a buzzkill, the three pairs of ribs we passed enough to get you to carry my stuff?” the earth pony asked, her tone more relaxed, but still dripping with protective smugness..

“I’ve seen less sets of bones on the streets than I did on my visits here when either the Coven or Society were involved” Bolt replied, raising her voice slightly..

“Whatever, it's only a matter of time before we find some poor charred pony laying splayed out and covered in claw marks, then you’ll regret raising your standards.”

Bolt grimaced, like most ghouls she was conditioned to not really freak out too much at the idea of a corpse, but it was far too easy to project oneself into that image.