I am a Pegasus. I know eight winters.
This is all I am. My name will be a reward. Everypony earns their name in my tribe.
I have known the Flock since birth. I am of a broodmare I have never known. My sire is known only to the Esteemed Ones. I was raised in the correct way, the Pegasus way, where we are nursed by strange mares and weaned as early as possible. I know only the other foals in my cohort and those in the Flock that have presided over me.
The Flock does not abide by weakness. Those who show it are cast from the cloud's edge with their wings bound, as an extra measure.
I do not cry—only the weak cry.
I have heard their mewling myself. My fifth winter task was to toss a weak newborn who would amount to nothing and drag our race down.
Every task is an honor. I have succeeded in them all. I was marked with a black tear below each eye to mark me as above the weak and teary, all to show how I did not even sniffle.
I am always eager to taste the wind. What I hunger for most of all is battle. Every real Pegasus does.
To slice the flesh of an earth-worm that dares call itself a pony is to bless the ground. To see blood on one's face is a stronger mark than the black teardrops upon my face. False tears are the only righteous kind. To reap their crops and set fire to their huts so that more of our kind may breathe the air we are owed is to right the order of the world.
In the dirt they live. In the dirt they die.
They do 'mourning' because they are the weakest. We keep them under our hooves and wings to keep the natural order, where they surrender food or risk greater pillaging. To be an earth-worm is to live in eternal surrender to the superior race.
I shall cut the air with blades. I shall clean them of sullied flesh when all is done, only to ready them for battle once more. I will be a hero. A hero is always all of the Flock, never just one, as the arrogant unicorns say.
In the Sky we live. In the Sky we thrive. Those not within the Sky are not really alive.
I hear the worms dirty their blood. Their foals are not from family blood. We sow family with family so that only the strong may live.
I hear tales of how our stallions show their mares what is right. They use them up and show what is right. We do not let weakness or feelings taint the matches our Esteemed Ones make, while the horned ones and earth-worms refuse our better practices. All their bloodlines are as dirty as their lives.
Earth-worm mud ponies are fools who lack family broodmares and studs. The wretches raise their own dirty-blooded foals, without purity or honor. They cling to each other like flees. No Esteemed Ones are there to take their names, fix their blood, or split their desperate bonds. Their foals are not ripped from their hooves to be raised the Pegasus way.
I am a Pegaus. I am better than any mud-worm. May my wing-blades raze their wrongs when I am deemed worthy.
I am a Pegasus who thrives on the mud-wrestlers food. They are powerless to keep it from us. But the horned ones are not.
A horn-head mare is hard to break. That is what our stallions say. I think a blade is all that is needed, and I shall greet them with blades and fury in battle. All of the Flock will be heroes again.
Magic is housed best in them, though our race is not without power. That is what the Esteemed Ones say. Their word is All the Flock needs.
I heard that unicorn filth still reap mud-wrestler harvests. This means they are weak, for they cannot manage to match the yield of the mud-flingers. They trade their land with ponies and wage war against them equally, for the plain ponies violate the will of the nasty horn-heads in various ways.
Like earth-worms, the unicorns join their stallions and mares for life, and they punish the mixing of blood. They have no other means to trade land than through these heart-bonds. The Flock needs none of this story nonsense or the gems and stone that they have in excess. Our race reaps any necessary metals from raids upon the magic-minded filth so foolish to harvest it for our raiding parties.
In the Flock nopony belongs to anypony; we lack the weaknesses that keep us from the fight. In the Flock, the city is for all and all participate in the glory of war. Only those faced with being Fixed are not wholly shared.
Those who are Fixed know blades, coal, and more. Coals are heart-fires flown from the ground, stolen from the forges of the unicorn wretches who guard them with their weak excuse for might.
I am not Fixed. I know soldiers who are. They do not become family broodmares and studs. The Esteemed Ones deemed them unworthy of the right to breed.
Earth-scum and unicorns both have dirtied blood I am eager to spill. Eight winters is too old not to have stomped a face in. I must act on the stories that those who have joined the Flock have told my cohort since our youngest days.
I must have boasts of my own to build up my race. I must slay their weaker magics. The Flock walks the Sky!
There is none past the Flock and none still past the Esteemed Ones. They know all our city's movements. From birth, I have served them. We all have, and we are raised on the boasts that keep our race as strong as the freezing clouds that hold us up. Our young are soaked in words of glory from the moment we can remember.
The need for war is deep in me. I must be made ready by a soldier higher than me. I must face another who seeks the same. Their weakness must be laid bare before the Esteemed Ones.
If I am able to feed the clouds with their blood in the place only the war-bound know, I will be declared ready for the frontlines of war. I must show loyalty without question. I always have. Obedience is our highest ideal. Without it, our glories cannot exist.
There are no blades, no armor, nothing else in such a ceremony. We have wings, hoof, and teeth in this cloud arena. Magic rings in my bones and wings. The Pegasus I face is a filly like myself.
I can tell she is Fixed. Her tail is pressed between her legs. It is a weak instinct to cover the scars of those of unworthy blood.
The Esteemed Ones watch with faces stronger than any stone on the weak land below. Their faces are cut by wind and storm. Their bodies are scarred with battle. I want to be just like them. I want to see the ground that I have only ever heard of.
The Esteemed Ones await our moves. Victory at all costs. I know this. From my youngest days, I have trampled the weak of my cohort under my hooves to this. Our foals do not know the frivolity of lesser races. The prices of victory are many, and cutting out worthless things is but one such price.
For my whole life, I was made for war. I am of the Flock. I am War.
My fellow Flock members cannot be here. To want for anything is wrong but I want them to see me, not just the Esteemed Ones. My victory and war cry were meant for more than just those allowed to live to old age.
This is the day that all foals yearn for. This is what adults are proud of. Everything after this ceremony is a notch in their armor and a scar on their pelt. Their eyes always grow misty with tales of the first ritual.
My mark is a chipped stone spear-head. I am lucky to have one so young. As stone is fetched from the ground to make our tribe victorious, I shall cut through her skin. Her flesh is weak with her bad blood.
I do not dance like lesser races. I do not waste. I am a Pegasus, and we are always above everything. Our home is the Sky!
Those below us will be crushed. One day there will only be the strong and the Sky. Fighting is so that one day no unicorn and mud pony will hoard food from us. We wage war so that we might bring the impure races even lower. So that we might make them do nothing but be born to serve us, to feed us, and be kept for nothing else. We want to cut them down to the lowest numbers possible, to see the lot of their filth Fixed, and one day, we will wipe them out when we choose to. The valley will be ours. The rivers will be ours. The mountains that encircle us will be ours. All of the ice and snow will belong to us alone, and only the Flock will thrive. There is no better future.
Bruise. Blood. Bite. Slash.
Kick. Scream. Howl.
The crack of her wing is my most favorite sound. I am sure she loves how her teeth have ripped out a chunk of my ear. Mine have yanked bloodied feathers from her wings.
She wants to move away. I spot her limp. In her back leg is a flaw from a filly Fixed with coals flown so carefully to the city. I wonder if she is one of the foals that possesses defects that do not show right away. They are numerous in the pure bloodlines. The wicked horn-heads taunt our Flock, saying that our bloodlines are actually the dirty ones and that having so many ponies that need to be Fixed is our punishment for our practice. We Pegasus ponies know otherwise; they are cursing us with their evil magics. They deserve all the battles that we bring them for their misdeeds.
Such an obvious burden makes me think about how she masks it. Foals are rewarded for outing the defectives. Her broodmare and stud must have been weak to let a filly like her fight a filly like me. Her reason for being Fixed is so clear that winters after it happens it shows in how deformed she looks.
I buck at her side. It is puffy with bruises unlike any other I have given somepony in training. Her bleeding does not stop where I leave marks. Her bones are brittle. Her eyes bulge. She is weak and unworthy of the Flock.
Just like any other soldier, I will get rid of her. My world fades to her screams. I kick and kick again until she is down. The rush I get from this trumps any roaring cry of glory in training battles.
An Esteemed One cheers with the noise that comes from another bone breaking in this defective filly. This is glory. This is the War I long for.
With great leaps and as many pumps of my wings as I can do, I advance on her. She has fallen upon the clouds moaning as new red coats the old red of this sacred arena. There is thunder in my hooves.
I toss my mind to the wind and think of flight. With more winters, my flight will only grow stronger. I will brave storms, winds, snows, and all. No might or magic can keep a Pegasus at bay. In life, we terrorize the lesser races. In death, it is our bodies that nourish the food grown by mud-slingers. All of those crops are rightfully ours.
I already know the weather that anypony in training knows. I have seen the weak plummet to the ground under the weight of training armor. Those who reach out to any that plummet are beaten, and beatings make us stronger. I am strong and bellow with a leap forward.
She is screaming as I leap upon her again and again. I hear splinters that are unlike anything that would happen if I stood on the clouds. I jump with everything I yearn for in war.
My howls are louder than the last of her calls because I do not hear them for long. I pour my strength into drowning her out, so that no part of her will be remembered, and she will never earn a name. My eyes are closed and I feel things under my hooves. I shift with how she breaks so that I do not fall.
The Esteemed Ones are roaring with everything I want them to. I can feel my hooves sink in something rich with warmth and raw. Something hard and broken jabs at my drenched legs. Something that pokes out from shredded flesh.
All around me is warmth. Hot liquid laps my hooves and spills across the padded surface of the clouds. Pulpy bits and hunks are below my uneven stance. War whoops ring and wind brushes my blood and sweat-caked mane.
That wind is different from our city's usual cold gales. It touches all of me that is not steeped within a filly that no longer breathes. This is the icy gust of the ever-longer winters.
My legs are heated with the fire of her insides which reminds me of the sloshy mash in my rations. Even the sweetest of winds to coast along on cannot compare to this feeling, this bone-chilling impression of the weakness other ponies are made of.
When I open my eyes, air is strangling my throat even when my mouth is closed. The Esteemed Ones shuffle among themselves. There is a trampled and beaten mess that I stand in, reeking of sickness. The metallic taste of blood has claimed the air itself.
Rattling pains my chest. I crumple within her hot and broken body. What is left of her only lets me kneel so much.
I am cramped in what has yet to be a shell of her with her hot blood coating me thickly. Flesh and parts I cannot name and describe churn about me. Not all of them are broken, but the life is gone from this defective little filly.
I am unable to howl and my head is filling with something dangerous that has no name. The Esteemed Ones are changing and their faces are showing something. I am filled with tight cowardice that I have never let out before.
Over and over, I can only see this filly and this flesh at my hooves. The two images are one in the same, and seeing them both at once makes these weaker feelings force themselves into me even more. The Esteemed Ones see weakness. I know not if I have these parts in me as the weak one at my hooves does, but if I do, I want to pull them from my mouth and feel no more. I want to feel war forever. I want all questions to drain from my body like the wickedness they are, the very evil that the Flock beats out of us from our youngest days. I want to feel nothing forever.
No more of this. My body is being bitten by something that is not the cold all around me, and it is from the inside. I think of all the winters I have seen. I have never known a wound such as this, that digs its teeth into me and begs me to howl.
I will be taken to the clouds. I am called a filly but I am no filly. I have not been a filly since I was torn from my broodmare.
This is not a filly at my hooves. She was a mare as young as I. Soldiers, the true soldiers, call us 'filly' until we pass this and it sticks to our tongues like the blood on my skin. But I do not think we have ever been fillies.
I know her blood has touched my own and mixed with my wounds. I can see the Esteemed Ones flying towards me with grim purpose. They must be close enough to know my weakness.
In this ritual, one must fall.
Upon my cheeks are spots like the water-weakness that spills from the eyes of infants and cowards. The soldiers assigned to train us in our earliest winters are experts at striking it from our faces. But I have always had two spots like this weakness on my face. I was marked with reminders of how early this weakness had been beaten out of me, to show what I had never succumbed to. I was marked like a soldier.
One must always fall.
I am a Pegasus mare of eight winters. Tomorrow, my wings will be tied to my sides and my hooves shall leave the clouds for the first and last time. Any others of my broodmare and stud will follow. All because of my crimes. For the sake of purity.
This is not my victory.
I will fall.
Author's Note
I guess I've been revisiting a lot of older pieces lately. Something about fleshing out older anthology pieces feels like a great way to get back into writing.
