Rainbow Dash noticed the badly written letter on the desk and glanced at her companion before opening it with a shaking hoof
Dear Everypony,
I’m starting it like that because I don’t know if one pony will read this or a group.
By the time you read this, I am going to be dead. I know that no pony will be sad about it because I derped up again and destroyed something I touched and then Rainbow Dash shouted at me and then Applejack had to give up her prize winnings to pay for the repairs and then they were both mad at me… Anyway, I have left a note with this letter to tell Mr Cash that he can give Applejack what she would have won to pay her back.
I am really sorry that I annoyed you all when I was trying to help around Ponyville, but I just don’t know what went wrong in my life. I’d ask my mother and father but they went to the shops ten years ago and they’ve never come back – I hope they do before I die, but they are very late…
Um, oh…! I am really sorry for getting your mail late all the time, running into things, destroying buildings and everything else I bucking well derped on. I am a freak and I don’t deserve to live anymore – at least, that is what Rainbow Dash says… After Applejack has got her bits that she should have won, Mr Cash is going to share out what is left and sell everything in my home to help repay you all. If there is anything left over, give it to Pinkie Pie so she can throw a ‘Hooray, Derpy Hooves Is Bucking Well Dead Party’
I guess the other reason I am going to kill myself is because everypony hates me and is sad because I am alive, so by removing my existence I can make you all happy and you will never ever have to worry about a wall-eyed, speech impaired, derped up brain tumour suffering bucked up mare again. The last thing is that you are wondering why I am wrapped up in a couple of plastic sheets and wearing a helmet – well, that is because I don’t want to cause a mess for once – we now what happens when a pony dies after all - so all you have to do when you find my body is dump it into the garbage site like the pile of manure I am or get Princess Twilight to blast me into atoms or maybe just rinse me off and then throw my derped body into the forest for Timberwolves to eat like Fluttershy said she’d do to me once.
Sorry you will have to see my stupid derped up body laying in my own manure and piss, but this is the best way to keep my stupid bucked body all nicely wrapped up so you can throw me out like the waste of air and abomination I am.
I am taking the pills now so I die whilst asleep so I don’t cause you any trouble.
Derpy Hooves
“Oh Celestia, Twi… What have I done?”
“Yes, Rainbow Dash” Twilight turned her eyes on her companion “What have you done?”
“I will try to tell you what I can, but it is not very much” said the earth pony. “It was slow at the start, but at the end it was terribly swift. When I joined the Legion, about two years before the end, its heart was rotten - putrid rotten”
“Rotten?” Twilight asked in surprise, “Some of the Royal Guard was rotten?”
“Aye, lass... I strove to fight the rot in my own Legion and then the fighting grew to be too much trouble. The last Commander was a hard and upright pony without understanding, the worst sort to handle such a Legion. Soon after her visit to us one year, Celestia withdrew too many troops from Britmaneia for her other campaigns. We who were left to hold the frontier began to feel the races seethe under us and, when they rose, the whole north went up in flames. No sooner had we settled with the Changlings, then we were sent north to hammer the Ponylanders. It was autumn and from the start, the mountain country was blanketed in mist and out of the mist the tribesponies harried us though it never came to a fight - they hung about our flanks like wolves. They made sudden raids on our rearguard and loosed their arrows into us from behind the sodden bracken. And the parties sent out after them never came back. A Commander who was also a soldier might have saved us, but ours had seen no more soldiering than a sham fight on Mares Field and was too proud to listen to the officers who had. We reached Thunder Fury's old headquarters on the northern frontier – that was to be our base. But the old fortifications were crumbling, the water supply had long since given out and the whole north had gathered in strength by then” the old pony sighed as if trying to recall long ago memories. “Your brother tried to do his best, but even he found it difficult when some ponies refused to do their duty and man the defences. When we heard what was coming our way, he tried to speak to the Commander and that was the very end of it”
“‘Sir, we have stood one attack in this place and we cannot stand another. We've lost upwards of a thousand ponies by death and desertion and half the Legion is in a state of mutiny”’
‘Mutiny? What talk is this of mutiny?’
‘The Legion have chosen a spokespony’ and I trotted forward a little from the formation and gave a salute.
‘I'm not a mutineer, sir… I swear it before Faust herself. I hold the few ponies left to me at leash for the moment, but the troops say they will make what terms they can with the Ponylanders if they'll let us march back the way we came’ I told him. I was a soldier of Celestia, I got my commission as an officer from the Princess herself, but I was torn between my duty to her and my duty to the ponies under my command.
‘And leave this province in their hands?’ the Commander’s tone was full of disbelief.
‘Sir, this province is no more than a name and a name that tastes sour on the tongue at that’ Shining Armour said. He hoped that he could get his commanding officer to understand the situation was dire, but he knew it was hopeless.
‘Lay down the arms you've taken up against your Princess, and I shall not make summary punishment - not even of the ringleaders. If you do your duty, henceforward, I will make fair report of it on our return. The good and the bad’ the Commander attempted a less aggressive tone, I will give him credit for that, but it was too late.
‘Sir, we shall never return’ your brother hissed at him. I watched as the pair argued with each other before he shoved him away with a hoof and faced us once more.
‘You scum! Rabble... I order you to do your duty as Legion soldiers! Bring me the ringleaders for execution or you will all hang when we get home alongside your families’ and then one of the ponies next to me used their magic to fling their spear into the Commander’s side and killed him where he stood. So, the thing ended in fighting. He was a brave pony, though a fool in almost every regard. After that, there was no more talking - the ponies in the Legion knew what the punishment would be”
“Decimation” Twilight remembered the punishment from an old book she had read in the Canterlot library before she had been sent to Ponyville.
“Aye, that would have been the sentence of the Legion. It comes hard to draw lots
out of a helmet knowing that one in every ten means death by stoning for the pony who draws it. It had never happened for hundreds of years, but it was still a punishment to be given”
“What happened then?” asked Rainbow Dash with a little understanding creeping into her tone.
“The Ponylanders came swarming over the barricades to help with the foul work. By dawn, there were barely two full cohorts left alive in the fort”
“The rest were all dead?” Rarity paled in shock.
“Oh, no” Guardian Sight wheezed in a hollow laugh as he took some of the water offered to him by Applejack, “Many went back over the ramparts with the tribesponies. They may be scattered about this entire area now for all I know, living as I am, with a wife and children to come after them” he looked at his fire, then at his drink and then at Twilight again. “Just after dawn, your brother called together the few that were left and took hurried counsel. We determined to win our way out of the old fort, which had became a death trap, and carry the colours back to Appleloosa as best we might. It was no use by then thinking of making terms with the Ponylanders, because they no longer had cause to fear us. And besides, some thought that if we won through with the survivors and our colours intact Celestia could scarcely count us disgraced” he wheezed and Fluttershy moved over to him, but Guardian Sight waved her off with one hoof and a shake of his head. “That night the fools feasted, so low had we sunk in their contempt. And while they drank, we got out, what was left of us, and passed them in the darkness. Then we began the long forced march back to Docklington. They picked up our trail at dawn and hunted us as though it had been for sport. All that day, we struggled on and those who dropped out died. Sometimes we heard them die almost within touching distance... Then I too dropped out. I had a wound I could put an entire hoof in and I was sick. I slipped into some cover and hid. One of the Ponylanders nearly trod on me but they didn't find me. And when the hunt had passed far away, I stripped off my harness and left it. I could have gone on. It was being hunted, the being hunted. Then I suppose I wandered about all night. In the morning, I came to a village and I fell across the doorsill of the first hut. They took me in and tended me. When they found that I was an Equestrian soldier, they didn't greatly care. I wasn't the first to desert to the tribes. And then my mare, Murna, spoke for me like a griffoness whose cub is threatened. A few nights later, I saw the colours carried by with a great triumph of torches following behind”
“Where did the Legion end up?” Twilight swallowed.
“That, Miss Sparkle, I don't know. But what I can tell you is that there were no prisoners when they passed by, although I do know what happened from tales told over the years. The Ponylanders attacked and killed the Pegasi first so they could not fly off and raise the alarm and come back with more soldiers. Then they went for the Unicorns before finishing off with the sick, weak and the Earth ponies. What exactly happened is a mystery, but this much has been told to me – your brother battled like he was a god. The last Equestrian to hold the colours was your brother – whatever ponies might say, he was not a coward” and he would have said something more but Pinkie Pie popped out from the cave roof and scurried over.
“We’ve got company” she said, “And I don’t think they want a party”. Twilight was thankful for Pinkie’s ability to hide without any sound made – she had made the perfect lookout whilst they spoke to Guardian Sight.
“I want to know one thing” Twilight stood and flexed her wings slightly. “Why didn’t you try to get back to Equestria and explain what happened?”
“I could not move much for a long time and, when I was fully healed, it was three years later and the border between Ponyland’s newest territory and Equestria was an area of instant death. Some sort of impenetrable magical barrier had been set up by the Ponylander Unicorns in the name of their goddess – a strange and somewhat frightening creature that walked on two legs and had things called h-ands instead of forehooves. I couldn’t believe of such a thing until my mare showed me pictures and it struck fear into me. According to the legends, she could turn a great power on an enemy and defeat them with just a few words spoken” Guardian Sight seemed to be a little uneasy at speaking then – almost as if he believed in myths and legends. For her part, Twilight looked at her friends one by one with eyes as wide as Luna’s moon.
“This goddess, what is she called?”
“Mehgan”
Author's Note
This chapter is based on an old drama in the 1970s called "The Eagle of the Ninth" and assumes that Shining Armour went missing with his entire unit whilst on duty. Twilight and the rest venture out into the wilds to find out what happened