The Blueblood Papers: Prince of Blood

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Chapter 1

The Blueblood Papers: PRINCE OF BLOOD

Prince Blueblood and the Battle of Ponyville

Explanatory note:

The following section of the Blueblood Papers - the vast collection of personal and private memoirs found amidst my nephew’s personal effects some years following his passing - continues on directly from the previous instalment, which, as the official story goes, ended with Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood foiling a daring Changeling plot to attack Fort E-5150 through the same tunnels they had used before. The previous instalments describe in astonishing detail his rise to fame during the Changeling War with the rescue of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, the first furtive attacks into the Badlands, the reform of the Royal Guard into the Equestrian Army, and the commencement of all-out war in the Heartlands Campaign. This instalment picks up after his recovery period in Canterlot, where he undertook administrative work in the Royal Commissariat before he was urgently reassigned to the defence of Ponyville.

The Battle of Ponyville remains perhaps the most fascinating and, as Prince Blueblood himself had put it, one of the most strange of the major battles fought in the Changeling War. Therefore, it is no wonder that it has attracted a lot of attention in the years in both popular media and serious academic study in the years since, however, with the exception of his official published memoirs that are so heavily edited that they are better classified as historical fiction, despite being a central figure in the events surrounding this battle, the full extent of Blueblood’s own experience had yet to be fully revealed until the discovery of these documents. While the events described herein will be familiar to our circle of chroniclers, it is still refreshing to read a narrative that is unconcerned with such things as saving one’s reputation, as is the case of most published memoirs of officers. Indeed, my nephew continues to provide an uncompromising description of the battle and his involvement in it, and readers will be familiar with his unusual honesty in his assessment of his own actions and how they contrast with both his public reputation and the ideals of the Royal Commissariat he embodied. It remains my opinion, however, that his awareness of his own shortcomings leads him to judge himself much too harshly.

As with the past extracts, I have refrained from excessive editing of this extract in order to preserve Prince Blueblood’s own narrative of events; I have restricted myself to correcting only his occasional lapses in spelling and grammar and breaking up the largely unstructured text into chapters to aid readability. His powers of recollection remain remarkably accurate, especially when one considers that he was likely writing these memoirs in his old age, but as before he is still frustratingly vague about events that he did not personally witness or he did not find of interest to him at the time. Therefore, I have continued to annotate the text to provide the reader with further context for some of his more obscure references. These annotations are in parenthesis, italicised, and in red ink. The text remains, however, purely Blueblood’s own.

H.R.H Princess Celestia

***

It is simply an immutable law of the universe that whenever I have finally managed to contrive a way to keep myself permanently out of mortal peril, fate finds a way to undo it all; apples fall to the ground when dropped, the tides go in and out, and Prince Blueblood finds himself wading knee-deep through cloying filth and stinking blood yet again. Until the exact moment I was thrust unwillingly into that awful mess in Ponyville, and given that particular village’s tendency to attract both the strange and dangerous I fear I may have to narrow which exact mess of which I write, I had truly thought that I had finally secured a permanently safe and cosy position through which I could ride out the rest of this horrible war in comfort. I suppose I ought to have seen it coming in hindsight, as the war always finds a way to drag me back into its unique horror, but this time I had believed, perhaps foolishly but I think I can be excused clinging onto a little hope here, that my troubles were finally over. No such luck.

It was some time after that unpleasantness under Fort Nowhere with those damned Crystal Pony archaeologists when it all went wrong. I’d escaped, yet again, minus one leg, and had a nice, long recovery period to look forward to in Canterlot in a comfortable hospital with many pretty nurses fulfilling my every need, medical or not. I still had my new leg to get used to, of course, and as many ponies had told me many times throughout the recovery process, prosthetics were indeed very good these days. I’d opted for a basic military model of prosthetic hind leg, which, like every other one that you might have seen on now elderly stallions and mares on parade during Veterans’ Day commemorations, was a simple one made of wood and brass. I could have afforded a fancier model even with the wartime rationing going on, but the propaganda teams got a kick out of a Prince accepting the utilitarian prosthetic that hissed steam and never felt completely right just like the lowliest private who had his leg blown off. One could never get used to the blasted thing. It operated as a leg ought to, and after some physical therapy with a rather pretty mare who seemed to spend a little too long lingering around my hindquarters than I thought necessary for the treatment, I could accomplish all of the things that I could do with my old flesh-and-blood limb, provided I remembered to maintain it. However, the lack of any real feeling in the false limb, besides that which my mind decided to hallucinate once in a while, remains a constant distraction, and even today I’ll find myself tripping over nothing while walking merrily along.

[The prosthetic in question was but one element out of a suite of devices originally designed to aid ponies in surviving the unforgiving cold during winter engagements, and the referenced maintenance largely involved topping off the steam-powered assembly that would keep the other units running. Blueblood opted for just the prosthetic leg version of the kit without the bulky 'core' that would be carried like saddlebags, which was less cumbersome, but required more frequent maintenance on its own.]

Ponies, of course, would comment on the new leg. “How’s the new leg?” they would ask, as though it was a growing collection of stamps or some other new hobby, and I would say that it’s ‘still there’ if I felt flippant. Its presence was difficult to ignore, not being something I could cover up with a sleeve if it had been a foreleg instead and I would not dream of wearing trousers as I am not a farmer. It became tiresome, even when it was out of seemingly genuine concern for my recovery, to have to sit through everypony’s unrequested advice on how to manage life with one less leg, not to mention having to tell the heavily redacted version of the story of how I lost the damned thing in the first place.

However, I had been in this exact situation before, more or less, for after I’d been flogged by Earthshaker I had returned home to convalesce only to be shoved back to the frontline after helping Princess Twilight Sparkle sort out her reforms of the Royal Guard with the House of Lords by way of gratitude. This time, I resolved, there would be no such repeat of that, and barring delaying my recovery with some self-sabotage as I’d seen some of the more desperate and creative deserters from the front perform on themselves there was only one thing that I could do, and it seemed just as upsetting as the thought of mutilating myself beyond what the war has already done to my mortal frame - I would have to work.

Ponies who are already familiar with my work would expect me to return to form and indulge in as much of the drink, debauchery, and casual fornication that the seedier side of Canterlot, buried beneath the pretty white marble and glittering minarets of the Old City, had to offer, and indeed that is what I had very much wanted to do. However, this time my mind was very much focused on keeping myself firmly here and not over there, so that I would have more time to attend to my base desires and need for luxury once this benighted war was over and the looming threat of glorious martyrdom at the front had fully passed, and so I threw myself into making myself as useful as possible until the thought of Yours Truly leaving Canterlot for any reason, particularly to die valiantly at the forefront of our great crusade against the tyranny of Queen Chrysalis, would seem as poor a strategic decision as any of the others committed in the first year of the war. That isn’t to say that I never indulged, for there were mornings when I dragged myself into the office with bleary eyes and a sore head after drinking myself into oblivion the nights before, but I at least was able to temper myself in the hope that I could truly celebrate once victory had been achieved and my safety thus assured.

The work, such as it was, was light in nature; dreary office business involving pushing pieces of paper around, signing them, sometimes reading them, and attending the occasional meeting where I would make seemingly insightful but fatuous comments to remind everypony just how important I was to the smooth running of the war effort. My ‘job’ (for a lack of a better term, as officially I took no salary from this posting but my royal stipend was quietly increased to make up for it and I largely got away with it) had me working closely with Princess Celestia, or Warmistress Celestia I should say, for it was in that particular ancient and august capacity that I saw her the most during those days. Clad in ornate ceremonial armour that was about as old as Equestria itself, she presided over weekly meetings with the General Staff to direct the conduct of the war at the highest level, and I attended each as her personal liaison with the Royal Commissariat. I was hopelessly out of my depth in these frankly tedious meetings. Ponies might imagine that plotting offensive after offensive would involve a lot of exciting speeches, drawing big arrows on maps or moving painted figurines around on them, and then at the dramatic conclusion a pony would ruin a perfectly good map by stabbing it with a dagger. In reality, these meetings were several hours of ponies in ostentatious uniforms arguing at length about such obscure details of whatever operation was being planned with a few little tea-and-biscuits breaks in between to break up the monotony of talking about the upcoming slaughter of a few hundred ponies and Changelings.

I have always suspected that Celestia knew exactly what I was doing here. Each time I would ask a silly question or point out something that was already blindingly obvious to everypony else present and they scoffed at the stupid Prince’s ignorance about the finer points of the supreme art of strategy, she would smile politely and rephrase whatever I had said as a rather insightful piece of military wisdom, and like most ponies they would all nod in agreement so they could be seen to be agreeing with my divine Auntie. On one occasion, Princess Luna, for she also attended these meetings, had posited the idea of launching a surprise amphibious assault behind the enemy’s frontline on the stalled Eastern Theatre, which aroused much excitement from the butchers all gathered around the table, until I pointed out that all of those soldiers would be on their own and surrounded on all sides by the enemy save that which faces the sea. This brought much condemnation and jeering from the gathered generals, who deplored the overly cautious approach Market Garden had exhibited through the Heartlands Campaign, until Celestia gently reminded them that those troops there would have to be supplied and reinforced constantly via the sea and air, thus straining our already stretched supply lines even further. They then sheepishly acknowledged this rather salient fact, while Princess Luna glared at me with the expression of one trying to make my head explode via the power of thought.

[The Royal Commissariat had requested Prince Blueblood’s urgent return to the frontline, citing his invaluable contribution to the morale and the fighting spirit of the Equestrian Army. However, though I had underestimated his desire to remain in Canterlot, I decided that he had done more than enough for the war effort on the frontline and so I quietly vetoed the request. Blueblood downplays his contribution to these meetings, but Princess Luna and I valued his input during incidents such as the one he described. Hundreds of miles away from the front, it is useful to have the perspective of a pony who has lived and fought there to remind the officers in Canterlot of the potential consequences of their decisions on the ponies who must risk their lives executing their orders.]

Ponies reading this expecting a blow-by-blow account of these meetings will have to be disappointed once again. I’m sure the Royal Archives has the extensive notes taken down by Raven Inkwell should one’s curiosity for the dreary minutiae of military planning overcome one’s need for more stimulating entertainment, but alas I have little further to add beyond what I have already told historians. For the most part, they were simply far too boring to register at all in my memory beyond a relatively small number of tedious anecdotes; there are precious few insights that I can give about grand strategy at its highest level or the relative leadership styles of Princesses Celestia and Luna that have not already been expounded upon by far more erudite scholars than I, save that their accounts fail to grasp the sheer, unalloyed tedium of waiting for two officers to finish arguing over which corps should receive the dubious honour of taking yet another occupied native village from the enemy before we can all clock off and go for a lunch break. However, there is one such meeting that still stands out clearly in my memory, if only because of where it eventually led.

As with most disasters, there was very little in the lead-up to suggest just how badly things were about to go. From what I can recall it was a morning like any other, though for once I was not suffering under another appalling hangover and felt remarkably chipper for it, which in hindsight ought to have been the warning I should have heeded. Still, it was terribly early, as these strategy meetings were always irritatingly scheduled for sunrise so that Princess Luna could attend after a long night of fighting the nightmares that still plagued her subjects, so that she might offer up another risky plan that could either end the war within a matter of days or have us pushed right back to Black Venom Pass again.

Ordinarily, which is to say during peacetime, I wouldn’t have risen out of bed for another six hours, but I had to maintain the appearance of being a professional little bureaucrat whose vacuous advice was taken as golden words of wisdom channelled from an ancient pagan god of war, and so I was there bright and early so I could have a mug of hot coffee and find a prime spot around the conference table as close to Princess Celestia as I could manage. Besides, even I had to go through the rather invasive security checks before being allowed anywhere near the castle, and there was always the chance one of the guards would seek to exercise what little power he had in the most petty way imaginable and contrive an excuse to keep me detained for a lengthy search even after it had been conclusively proven that I am not a Changeling infiltrator.

The War Room, or Conference Room 27-B as it was officially known, was an enormous room buried deep within the bowels of Canterlot Castle dedicated to the administrative running of the kingdom, now fully repurposed to serve as the Warmistress’ headquarters. It was from that vast wooden table, large enough to host a spirited game of badminton upon, that the direction of the war was decided (our direction, that is, and I imagined Queen Chrysalis was doing the same in rather dingier conditions). This ancient and sturdy table was all but covered in a vast array of maps, reports, memos, diagrams, and notes all spread out in that sort of chaotic system that only a general officer was capable of understanding. The table was surrounded by a halo of comfortable chairs, though often meetings spilled out into distinct sub-meetings as officers, taken by one particular idea or plan, would split off to hash things out without taking valuable time away from everypony else, and so there were other sets of smaller tables with chairs dotted around the perimeter of the room for such things.

Despite its name and the seriousness of the topics discussed therein, the War Room was, just like almost every other room in Canterlot Castle save perhaps the now-defunct torture chambers in the basement, a bright and airy place. Much light was afforded by the vast open windows, which provided a lovely view of the expansive courtyard at the centre of the castle. The same white and gold colour palette, tastefully accented with regal purple, still applied here. Highly polished marble reflected the yellow light of the early morning, bathing the scene in a pleasing glow. From all around the walls, portraits of statesponies long dead gazed down beneficently at the proceedings, as though to encourage this latest generation of leaders to not accidentally tear down what they spent their lives building up.

Celestia and Luna were already there, collecting breakfast from the catering table; one, apparently, should not discuss operational strategy on an empty stomach. The Princess of the Night, having come straight from her nocturnal duties, looked about ready for bed, as she regarded me with bleary, dark-rimmed eyes and uttered something that was halfway between ‘morning’ and a zombie-like groan. Raven Inkwell, Celestia’s private secretary and all-round dogsbody, was busy at the conference table, adding to its already considerable accumulation of official papers with fresh sheets. A few other officers were already deeply engrossed in a conversation about something that sounded rather technical and much too complex for me, so I ignored them and went straight for the coffee.

There, I bumped into Fancy Pants, the Prime Minister at the time, who I imagined felt rather redundant with Princess Celestia having taken up supreme power over the entire Equestrian state once more (technically, it was always hers, but in peacetime she let other ponies borrow bits and pieces for a while), but I suppose she still needed somepony around to represent the small proportion of the population that was allowed to vote at the time, Yours Truly certainly not included. Indeed, as the only civilian there besides the few serving staff still working, he stood out amongst the military ponies in their red, blue, or black service uniforms by wearing his usual black tailcoat, purple waistcoat, and matching bow tie. I observed him very carefully stirring his cup of tea in the manner approved by all etiquette guides, by swishing the teaspoon back and forth without it striking the delicate porcelain, with the sort of fastidiousness that only a common pony who has been raised to nobility and trying very hard to fit in can muster.

“Ah, Your Highness,” said Fancy Pants, complete with the curt little bow. “How’s the leg coming along?”

“It’s still there,” I said dryly, as I helped myself to a mug of coffee from the breakfast table. Normally, I would have allowed the servants to do their jobs and bring me one, but, given that the majority of able-bodied young ponies were involved in some manner of essential war work and domestic servitude had been determined to be non-essential, there was a shortage of them in Canterlot. “How has your latest attempt to bring Chrysalis to the negotiating table developed?”

Fancy Pants pulled a face; he would not be so rude as to pull one of irritation in front of royalty, but it approached that. “I simply don’t understand it, sir,” he said, as he flicked the last drops of tea from his spoon directly into his cup in the manner directed by those same etiquette manuals. “They have lost, completely and conclusively.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Chela is still putting up a fight.”

“It’s only a matter of time; the Changelings cannot sustain this war for much longer, and eventually they’ll run out of soldiers and weapons. Every moment they prolong this war only leads to more blood being spilled, more suffering, and more new horrors unleashed.” He shook his head sadly; Fancy Pants might have been somewhat deluded in his expectation that the enemy would be in the slightest bit open to negotiation while our forces rampaged through their lands and freed all of their slaves and ‘livestock’, but something about his pathetic hopefulness was endearing to me. If only it was truly as simple as that. “If they would just accept my invitations to negotiate terms of honourable surrender, we could end this awful nightmare now.”

“Tell me, old chap,” I said, for he had at least a decade on me, “were our situations reversed - that is, if the war-swarms of Queen Chrysalis were advancing through Equestria, taking Dodge City, Appleloosa, Baltimare, and Ponyville, and were converging on Canterlot as we speak - would you accept ‘honourable surrender’?”

Fancy Pants looked around, presumably to see if there were any journalists around who might print his response to the verbal trap I had laid for him and he had so merrily blundered into. A single phrase taken out of context could end his premiership so soon after it had just started. A few of the officers nearby and Princess Celestia were pretending not to be listening in on our conversation and doing rather poor jobs of feigning great interest in the croissants. “Of course not!” he said, not quite at the level of indignation that would cause his monocle to pop free from his eye socket just yet.

“Even to spare Equestria more bloodshed and death?” I asked. “Purely a hypothetical situation, of course, but I would imagine that to the enemy the thought of ‘honourable surrender’ would be met with just as much revulsion as you just showed.”

“But we’re not the same, sir,” said Fancy Pants, adjusting the old monocle and peering through it with an accusatory stare. “We have Harmony on our side. Equestria has been in terrible situations before with Nightmare Moon, King Sombra, and Griffon invasions but thanks to the Princesses we’ve always pulled through in the end. The Changelings fight for the very tyrant that oppresses them, and whose refusal to consider our terms is prolonging the suffering that we are forced to inflict upon her subjects.”

I became aware of a malevolent presence just behind me; it was not Princess Luna, whose shadow has an icy cold feel to it, as a cloudless night in December with the light of the full moon to illuminate the various sins that taint one’s soul, stripped bare by its chill light. No, this one, and unfortunately just as familiar to me, felt malignant, like the essence of cancer itself creeping over oneself like a slimy cloak. The officers who had been eavesdropping on our fascinating conversation rapidly dispersed to take their places around the conference table, while Fancy Pants took an involuntary step back.

“It never ceases to amuse me,” said Odonata, stepping out from immediately behind me. “You ponies still fail to understand that the Changelings love Queen Chrysalis as much as your kind love Princess Celestia.”

The sound of a loudly clearing throat brought my attention to Princess Luna, who now stood by her elder sister. She nursed a hot mug of the thickest, blackest coffee I had ever seen excreted from the much-abused machine in the corner of the room, and the smell of it alone was enough to trigger both a sense of vague nervousness and an elevated heart rate.

Odonata smirked; she had still yet to unlearn the habit of playing the sort of petty mind-games with her associates that her former ruler encouraged amongst her underlings. “And the other ones too,” she added. “And Blueblood, you should visit more often! Elytra should know who her father is.”

I felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment, and a pony somewhere coughed much too loudly in the awkward silence that fell. My supposed relationship with Odonata had become the origin of much rumour in Canterlot, and one that I suspected she had been spreading.

“Our Princesses and Queen Chrysalis are hardly comparable,” said Fancy Pants, deftly easing the social awkwardness. “The Changelings follow Chrysalis out of fear, but we follow the Princesses out of love.”

“I sometimes wonder what is the point of my being here if you ponies continue to ignore everything I say,” said Odonata, still grinning like a cat about to pounce upon a helpless mouse. “Changelings love Chrysalis because she is order, discipline, unity, and strength. When they see your armies driving into their lands, taking their hives and freeing their slaves, they don’t see a liberating force, but a conquering horde bent on tearing down and burning everything they have. For them, Chrysalis is now the bulwark between survival and destruction, and as things worsen they will gladly follow her into damnation.”

Fancy Pants snorted contemptuously and shook his head. “Which would make your little venture here rather pointless, don’t you think? Your Organisation for Changeling Liberation has just barely scraped enough to form a single regiment.”

I felt the need to interject, mainly so we could get this meeting going in the hope to be out of here before elevenses or when Luna finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep with her head on the conference table, whichever came first. “History will remember that there were Changelings who stood up to Chrysalis,” I said, “no matter how small their number. They will serve as a good example for the rest of them when we finally have peace.”

“And so we consign ourselves to yet more misery and slaughter for all,” said Fancy Pants, sighing in defeat. “If only the Changelings could see sense, as you do, Odonata.”

“For as long as Chrysalis remains Queen of the Changelings she will drag her subjects into devastation and ruin out of sheer spite rather than give up her throne for the good of the Hives,” said Odonata, the snide tone in her voice softening just a little. “And neither will her subjects forsake her, for she is their final defence against the evil rampaging Equestrian swarm.”

It was, ultimately, very silly and rather stupid to entertain even for a moment that Chrysalis would consider abdication or surrender, and likewise that her subjects, in the process of entwining themselves in a grim and one-sided suicide pact with their leader, would do away with her when they fully believed that our forces would commit wholesale slaughter upon them (and I knew a few certain ponies who relished the idea, but mercifully Princess Celestia was canny enough to keep them away from any apparatus that would allow them to influence such things). One can certainly look back and laugh at Fancy Pants’ intense naivety, and I would always encourage ponies to point and laugh at that ridiculous parvenu, but it was one born of an earnest hope for peace that, while incredibly silly for a supposedly seasoned politician, I could thoroughly empathise with.

“The quickest way to end a war is to lose it,” I said. “The trouble is that nopony likes losing.”

With that bit of faux-philosophical nonsense, the meeting could finally start. It was an important one this time, which brought in a number of senior officers who otherwise would have sat this one out, and so while I was distracted by that rather awkward conversation, an over-eager staff officer had taken his chance and occupied the prime spot next to Celestia on the side that was not already filled up by Raven Inkwell. As more and more officers filed in around the table, some bickering with one another for the more popular spots closer to their favourite Princess or the snack table, I felt the chances of us being finished in good time become vanishingly small. This left me with a place further down the enormous conference table, which found me sandwiched unhappily between Fancy Pants and Odonata. At the very least, the presence of the former Changeling General made everypony else in the immediate vicinity rather uneasy, much to her quiet amusement judging by the superior smirk on her face, which I felt ought to impress upon others the importance of keeping the sort of unnecessary questions that prolong meetings to a bare minimum.

One pony was conspicuously absent—my poor aide Cannon Fodder had been left out of the proceedings due to their strategic importance, and I did not argue the point, not even when he protested rather endearingly that he should be close by in case the Changelings came for my other legs, in such fashion that I wondered if the ordeal had made him forget just what we faced below that benighted bastion. I did, however, strenuously insist he be allowed to stand guard outside the room, the idea being that his Blank aura could foil many potential infiltrators' disguises—although this was ruined somewhat when the other door guards politely assigned him to patrol the halls, no doubt to avoid his stench.

Fancy Pants remained quiet throughout most of the meeting, only offering a few comments here and there to remind everypony that he was still present; he seemed out of his depth, which, again, more than adequately described how I felt in these meetings, but in his case it seemed rather more tragic. For one, I was simply better at hiding it than he, despite his status as the head of government, and indeed from what little I had picked up from ponies discussing his oratory in the House of Commons he was hardly the shy and retiring sort that he appeared now. I could imagine that he simply felt totally powerless here, as a voice calling out for peace in a situation where it had been very much established that circumstances beyond the control of any one individual here had made it impossible. As the officers talked and bickered, sipping tea and coffee and nibbling on pastries as they discussed offensives, supply lines, operations, and projected casualties with the same tone that I imagined other civil meetings demanded, the feeling of being alienated from the reality of what was truly being discussed here became all the more pronounced. The maddening psychology of war required that level of alienation, for if the pony sitting directly opposite from me making the case for a broad offensive across all three fronts was to stop and fully consider every horrific implication of the words he spoke, that ponies would die as a direct consequence of what he proposed, it is unlikely that he could find the wherewithal to continue. Yet he must, as must everypony else here, for final victory.

Again, I cannot recall the entire meeting, and nor would I wish to. Provided one’s security clearance is high enough, one can always request the transcripts from the Royal Archives; indeed, Raven Inkwell was furiously scribbling into her notepad at a rate that seemed impossible to accomplish, yet somehow she was able to keep up even when standards of civility were abandoned and the meeting degenerated into a shouting match until Celestia restored order with judicious use of the Royal Canterlot Voice and a hard stare. However, I recall, aside from the meaningless bits and pieces that would only be of interest to those ponies who simply must know about every single trivial thing that happened during this war, that the main thrust of the entire meeting was centred around how to end the blasted thing in the first place.

There had emerged two schools of thought on this matter, well, three if you include the Prime Minister’s exceedingly optimistic position that if we keep asking nicely then the war will stop—push straight for Queen Chrysalis’ seat of power in the Queen’s Hive; or first take Teratoma Hive, the largest and most populated of the hive cities and the base for their war industry, and then use that as a launching-off point for taking the Queen’s Hive. Both ideas seemed to me to be rather bloody affairs, with much of the difference being where the acts of horrific violence were to take place and how quickly. At the very least, I reassured myself, if I carried on as I was here then whatever was decided here would not have to be personally experienced by Yours Truly.

“No monster survives decapitation,” as Princess Luna had put it, and she had injected rather too much relish in that statement than I’d have liked to hear. “Cut off the head and the body dies. With Chrysalis gone, the veil she has cast over the eyes of her subjects will be lifted and they will see that she had brought them nothing but death and ruin. They will lay down their arms and surrender.”

The Princess of the Night, sleep-deprived and therefore more even irritable than usual, glared at the assembled ponies and the one Changeling gathered around the table, daring one of them to contradict her. However, as Odonata was apparently rather used to working with difficult bosses, and, unlike Chrysalis, Luna was not allowed to send underlings who disagreed with her to forced labour camps or to face firing squads, she was the first to point out the rather obvious flaw in that plan.

“My Queen- uh, My Princess,” Odonata began. The mother of all death glares she received from Luna for that little mistake, intentional or not, made her pause for a moment. “While you are correct in saying that the Hives will abandon this war if Chrysalis was to be captured or killed, being a contingent for peace between us, I do not think it likely that she will remain in the Queen’s Hive and allow herself to be captured.”

An older stallion with an impressive moustache that was bleached white with age scoffed. “We ought to know by now to do the opposite of what the Changeling says,” he said, pounding a hoof on the much-abused conference table. “We take the Queen’s Hive and the rest will fold like dominoes. Even if she does flee elsewhere, it will become plain that they have lost!”

Odonata bore the insult well, and I’d imagined she’d been called far worse by far more powerful creatures before. “The Queen’s Hive is not Canterlot, and we Changelings are nothing if not adaptable; should the capital fall but Chrysalis escapes then her headquarters will move with her, and that will form the new base for resistance.”

“Would Chrysalis not remain in the Queen’s Hive to lead her soldiers in the final defence of their homes?” asked Princess Luna.

“That is what I would do,” said Celestia, speaking for the first time in this meeting for a while. She avoided dominating these sorts of meetings, instead preferring to allow her officers to discuss the matter at hoof at some length and offering only a few comments where needed and restoring order when things became a tad too heated. The final decisions and responsibility thereof still remained solely with her, but being both Princess and Warmistress she was wise enough to listen to all sides of an argument before reaching a conclusion. While it remained a testament to her experience as a leader, it did make these meetings drag on much longer than if she simply told everypony what to do.

“Of course,” said Luna, bowing her head a little in contrition; I would assume that her elder sibling’s comment was in reference to the last battle of the Nightmare Heresy.

Another officer, rather younger than most and with a smaller moustache than the one who spoke up before, chipped in: “Taking Teratoma Hive first would cripple the enemy’s ability to continue waging war.” He picked up a few of the sheets of paper off the table and flicked through them. “It accounts for two thirds of their remaining population and three quarters of their arms manufacture, excluding that which they import from overseas.”

“It also has a vast number of pony slaves,” said Fancy Pants. “If they continue to ignore my requests for peace negotiations” -a few of the officers audibly tutted and shook their heads at that- “then liberating our fellow ponies must be a priority.”

And on the meeting went in much the same fashion, back and forth between the ponies around the tables, each making arguments and counter-arguments for the direction of this war and growing increasingly technical and obscure as the more academically-inclined officers cited whole reams of statistics that they hoped would justify their position. It was around that time that I failed to keep up with the conversation, and instead found a window with a rather lovely view of the bright morning sky beyond and imagined myself being anywhere else but here. This may sound silly, but I imagined myself as a pegasus, flying freely between the puffy, cotton wool-like clouds, and perhaps simply flying away from all of this mess, never to look back.

[Blueblood’s summary of the meeting thus far is mostly accurate, though, as he mentioned, the discussion about the decision to aim for Teratoma Hive or the Queen’s Hive went into much greater detail than he has described here. The full meeting notes are available upon request, however, for the purposes of his narrative here, this will suffice.]

Ultimately, no decision was made, and just as the soreness in my backside from sitting for hours on end was starting to become unbearable, Princess Celestia made the decision to postpone the final decision until such a time that the conditions on the frontline made it necessary. “Market Garden is still bogged down in the Heartlands,” she said, attempting to mollify the more ardent members of either camp. “I have the utmost trust that she will prevail in time, but until then this is all very much in the long-term. The situation may yet develop that necessitates commitment to either proposal. In the meantime, you are to draw up detailed plans so that this war council may make an informed decision when that time comes.”

That seemed to work for now; part of Auntie ‘Tia’s job here seemed to be as much about managing ponies like a glorified team leader than being a warlord, but such was the nature of modern war. Far be it from me to pass judgement on the immortal alicorn princess who has steered our great kingdom from its very inception, but, on balance, I can be reasonably confident in saying that I think she did about as good a job of it as one can expect. Historians have already compared her leadership style with that of Chrysalis, who I’d witnessed bully her staff into submission and reduce her advisors to the status of mere yes-drones, and given that we went on to actually win this war I’d say puts our dear Princess of the Sun far ahead of the Queen of the Changelings as far as ranking goes.

I’m getting ahead of myself again. While it might have been all but certain that our victory was inevitable (and I struggle to think anypony fights a war in the anticipation that they would lose, but that appeared to be the path Chrysalis was about to drag her subjects down), it was just as clear that there was a lot of work to be done, which all entailed a great deal more fighting, suffering, and death before we could start planning the victory parades. As the last bits of business started to wrap up I noticed that other ponies, including Fancy Pants, had started closing up their notebooks, filing their various reams of paper, and returning pens to pockets in anticipation of finally leaving. However, as I began to detect the first faint whiffs of freedom, a certain Purestrain had to spoil it.

“My Qu- Princess,” she said, apparently still finding that certain old habits die hard. She had dropped the sneering, domineering attitude that she wore earlier, and when addressing the ultimate temporal and spiritual authority in the land she had slipped into something approaching due deference. “My proposal,” she continued, “have you found time to consider it?”

“Do you mean the one regarding the Free Changelings?” asked Celestia. She sorted through a ream of papers on the table before her, before Raven Inkwell helpfully found the right one for her.

“Yes, my Princess.”

Celestia spent an uncomfortable few seconds skimming over the page, all the while a few other officers grumbled about having whatever it was they were due to attend next delayed by another few minutes. “I’m afraid we would have to decline your proposal, Odonata.”

“My Princess, there are more than a thousand drones prepared to fight alongside ponies for Changeling freedom!” snapped Odonata, her voice rising in volume. “They are being wasted doing menial work here in Canterlot. They want to fight.”

[It should be noted that relative troop numbers only tell part of the story vis-a-vis any confrontation between ponies and changelings. Ponies have no true equivalent for the Purestrain creature, especially, aside from perhaps alicorns such as myself, a fact Odonata pointed out to me early, along with referencing Twilight Sparkle's ascension—but as I'm sure most if not all creatures trusted enough to read this passage are aware, it is not so simple to produce an alicorn or 'evolve' another pony into one. Suffice to say, relying on numbers in a conflict with uneven distribution of technology, magic and other potential force multipliers is inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst, a fact the Twilight Sparkle Reforms had by this point addressed.]

The officers grumbled again. “How does she think we’re fighting for the freedom of Changelings?” I heard one say. “Just use them as cannon fodder,” whispered another, “let them wipe each other out.”

“I understand,” said Celestia in that motherly tone of voice she used to try and let ponies down gently, interrupting the gossiping around the table. “Equestria is grateful for their offer. However, I fear that we are still some way before ponies will accept Changelings fighting alongside them. We cannot afford such distractions at a crucial point in our operations. I’m sorry, but the Free Changelings will continue to serve their noble cause in non-combat roles.”

“You mean fetch and carry,” hissed Odonata through set teeth. “Give them the chance, please, and they’ll prove their worth.”

It was at that moment, just as I started to mentally tune out the developing argument and return to another little daydream inspired by the clouds beyond, that I realised that ponies had stopped talking and were all staring at me. Now, I’m rather used to being stared at, it merely comes with the territory of being a Prince of the Realm who doesn’t exactly blend in with a crowd, but usually when two of the few ponies who outrank me on the royal totem pole are present I tend to be ignored unless I do something scandalous. However, when I noticed their stares, I also saw that they were looking at a particular part of my anatomy that, frankly, I didn’t think warranted such attention.

“What?” I blurted out; I imagined that this was what pretty mares felt like when stallions stared at their flanks, except their expressions were merely confused rather than lascivious.

“Your cutie marks are glowing,” said Odonata. “Is that normal? I didn’t know they could do that.”

I turned my head around to see, yes, they were indeed not only glowing, but also pulsing like the beat of a heart. The compass rose emblazoned on each side of my rear flashed in perfect synchronicity, and while I certainly didn’t feel anything before, I thought I could detect a faint tingle there. Fancy Pants, who stood to my left, inched away from me, as though whatever it was might be contagious.

Fortunately, the attention was drawn away from my flanks when a pony in a staff officer’s uniform burst through the doors, panting for breath as though she’d been running a marathon. In her mouth was a folded slip of paper, which, after going through the security measure of being zapped by the Changeling Reveal spell, she quickly passed to Celestia without bothering to bow or salute (there was still disagreement over which was more appropriate when greeting her in her capacity as Warmistress, with some fellows injuring themselves attempting both simultaneously). Whatever it was had to be important enough to interrupt this meeting, and as Celestia’s brow furrowed into a deep frown and the practised, pleasant smile she wore most of the time faded into a thin, set line across her elegant muzzle. Indeed, my divine Aunt had always had as close to perfect a poker face as possible, given she had several thousand years to practise it, and for it to drop so readily inspired a certain fear within me that had little to do with my oddly glowing flanks.

“Changelings have been sighted near Ponyville,” she said, lowering the letter to the table before her. “A full war-swarm within two or three days march, according to the reconnaissance reports.”

A collective shudder struck through the assembled ponies; whispers and murmurs spread like ripples in a pond, growing louder and louder until all was drowned out in the noise of several, panicked conversations happening at once. “How could this happen?” blurted out one officer. “Ponyville is hundreds of miles from the front, it shouldn’t have been possible for so many to get through.”

“The Changeling will always get through,” said another, repeating that old adage from ex-Prime Minister White Hall. “They always find a way.”

“Especially if they had help!” Another pointed at Odonata.

“Oh please,” sneered Odonata, dismissively waving her hoof at the petulant officer. “If I’d helped infiltrators cross the frontlines, I can promise you that you would be the first to know about it, lined up against the wall facing a firing squad. I’d never waste such an opportunity on a minor target like Ponyville.”

“How dare you!”

“Ahem, be that as it may,” another officer interjected, “but Ponyville occupies a strategic point on the rail line between Canterlot and the front, that alone makes it of vital strategic importance.”

“And Princess Twilight Sparkle lives there!”

A loud, resonant ‘thud’, like a nearby artillery piece going off, brought blessed silence once more. Looking at the source to my right, I saw that Luna had stomped her silver-shod hoof on the ground, cracking the marble again. She looked at each of the officers, and I found myself averting my eyes when she looked at me, and, apparently satisfied that everypony was quiet and attentive, said, “This emergency calls for immediate action.” Her sharp gaze settled on me again, and I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d done wrong this time to deserve this attention. “Commissar Blueblood, you are hereby reassigned with immediate effect to Ponyville to supervise the defence of the village. The Cutie Map must have called you.”

Damn. Blast. Bother. I was so bloody close to getting out of this infernal war only to be dragged kicking and screaming back into it. Now even ancient artefacts were conspiring against me. As much as I wanted to tell her into which orifice that has never seen Celestia’s sun she could stuff her reassignment, I could only nod my head and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

Luna nodded politely, and then addressed her sister. “Celestia, do we have any units of sufficient size within a few days' march of Ponyville?”

Raven Inkwell had already found the appropriate sheet of paper and given it to Celestia. Her worried frown deepened ever so slightly, which could only indicate bad news. “There is only one,” she said, before looking up from the report to the traitor Purestrain standing at my right side.

The largest and happiest smile that I’d ever seen on a Changeling formed very gradually on Odonata’s face as Princess Celestia read out the name of her regiment.

Chapter 2

Private Cannon Fodder had something of a knack for understatement, and this was exemplified by his appraisal of the Ponyville militia’s readiness for battle as ‘not great’. I would have gone with ‘a complete and total shambles’, but I was ostensibly there to improve their morale, not destroy it with a display of tactless and uncharacteristic honesty. I’m getting ahead of myself, but I felt the need to demonstrate that even my low expectations of what a tiny earth pony village and its surrounding shire could muster by way of fighting ponies were thoroughly dashed by what I saw there. This, however, was the second time that Princess Luna had had me bundled onto the next train out of Canterlot without any time to pack, though I was allowed to select a Pattern ‘12 sabre from the Royal Armoury while somepony fetched Cannon Fodder from where he’d nipped off to buy snacks. Luna had promised me an enchanted sword ‘more befitting my station’, as she put it, but given the urgency of this developing situation I had to make do with the standard-issue length of pointy steel. Soon after, I was escorted by armed guards and a very determined Princess of the Night to the train station. At the very least, the sight of Auntie Luna on a mission to personally deliver me to the train, for fear that I might decide to hop on the train to Yakyakistan instead and run away I imagined, kept other ponies from disturbing us.

That my cutie mark stopped flashing like Hearth’s Warming lights was some small relief, as I was worried that I was stuck with the damned thing glowing like that for the rest of my life. That sort of thing tended to attract attention, and eligible mares would likely be discouraged by its obnoxious flashing like a Las Pegasus neon sign in the boudoir. In hindsight, that would have been the very least of my problems.

Still, my mind was in too much of a mess to formulate an adequate plan to get me out of this latest catastrophe; Princess Luna had dragged me out while Princess Celestia carried on with trying to organise the defence of Ponyville from this new menace, and judging by the raised voices that echoed down the corridor behind me even through the closed door nopony was particularly happy about this turn of events, and not least because of the revelation that it would have to be Changelings coming to our rescue. Still, Odonata seemed pleased by her chance to prove her Free Changelings’ worth in battle, and, assuming that they didn’t all turn on us as the paranoid voice squatting in the back of my head shouted, would at least buy us sufficient time to allow a more dependable regiment of the Equestrian Army to come to my rescue. It was a matter of surviving until such a time, I concluded.

“I do not need to impress upon you the importance of holding Ponyville,” said Princess Luna while we waited for the train. Ponies, mainly civilians who I’m sure felt that whatever journey they were about to undertake was as ‘essential’ as the propaganda posters warning against unnecessary journeys stated, gawked vacantly at us on the station’s platform, though none were brave enough to approach and ask us for autographs.

Other posters slapped onto the walls also warned about enemy infiltrators listening in on conversations, so I was rather surprised to hear Princess Luna speaking so openly about a Changeling war-swarm within a few days’ march from the city. That is, until I saw that her elegant horn was glowing and that the two of us plus Cannon Fodder and the guards were surrounded by a hemisphere of shimmering, pale light. Some manner of sound-dampening spell, I would guess, and I hoped that the ponies staring at us from outside this bubble were incapable of lip-reading.

“Yes, if they take it they’ll cut the main communication line between Canterlot and the front line,” I said, paraphrasing what one of the other, more military astute officers had said in that meeting to give the impression that I had been paying attention and knew what was going on. “Do you think that they will then march on Canterlot?”

“We can only guess at the enemy’s true intentions,” she said, “but that is one scenario we must prepare for.” Princess Luna looked past me at the ponies, quite ordinary stallions and mares going about their business, gathered around the station’s platform. “Canterlot is not completely undefended, but what few trained soldiers remain here are insufficient to defend the city from a full war-swarm, and we fear the enemy may have more forces hidden within our borders.”

I suppressed a shudder at the thought of that nightmare scenario; such a possibility had been discussed, for the Changelings had done such a thing before with their first attack on Canterlot, and given the chaos at the frontline it was all but inevitable that the enemy would be able to send infiltrators through our own lines to cause havoc within Equestria itself. Indeed, they had done so before, attempting to assassinate me in the city itself and other instances of sabotage of important war industries, but to muster a sizable formation of soldiers in the very heart of our kingdom was on a whole other level of horror that everypony had hoped was impossible for the enemy to perform. They were on their last legs, everypony had said, and they were no longer capable of executing anything like the attack on the Royal Wedding that started this war in the first place, for Market Garden’s slow but grinding push into their lands meant that they could not spare the drones necessary for such a thing. Once again, we had underestimated either their capabilities to do these sorts of daring plots or their stupidity in not recognising the need to conserve and carefully manage their ponypower.

“There is still much that we do not know,” continued Luna. “Confound this damnable fog of war. Whatever the enemy’s aim, it is clear that Ponyville is in danger. Listen, Blueblood, the village must not fall to the Changelings, which is why I am appointing you to its defence. You must rally the militia to hold fast until Odonata’s Free Changelings can march to its relief, and there are few other ponies with whom I can trust this duty.”

Oh, I could think of a great deal more ponies better suited than I to lead a group of peasants armed with pitchforks to victory over the battle-hardened veterans Chrysalis has likely sent against us, but against all her better judgement she had chosen me. I felt almost nostalgic for the days when Princess Luna had regarded me in rather more accurate terms as a decadent, useless drunk with about as much right to tell ponies what to do as a pig. However, I’d always suspected that deep down she knew of my cowardly nature, but was feeding me opportunities to try and overcome it.

“And if the village should fall?” I asked. “Hypothetically, of course, but you said that there could be more of the enemy out there.”

With the face Luna pulled I thought I was in for a violent beating accompanied with a forceful lecture about how the word ‘retreat’ does not appear in her lexicon, however, she appeared to remember the deeply painful lesson that she had learnt at Fort Nowhere and no such assault upon my person was forthcoming. “A grim thought, but it is one we must consider,” she said. “If the situation demands that you retreat from the village in order to save our subjects then so be it, I will trust in your judgement. Do not let them fall into the hooves of the Changelings, for their homes can be rebuilt but their lives cannot be so easily repaired. Remember, you are there to buy time for reinforcements.”

She meant Odonata’s Free Changelings, and it slowly dawned on me that I would not only have to make sure these ignorant peasants knew which end of a musket to aim at the enemy, but keep them from panicking and accidentally, or perhaps intentionally as the case may be, firing on their rescuers. “Is there truly no other regiment close enough?”

Luna shook her head. “Our forces are fully committed to the fight in the Badlands and overseas. All we have left here are police and local defence volunteers guarding the roads and security checkpoints. We have our royal guards and the Canterlot militia, but we must hold them back should this prove to be a diversion or should the enemy attempt to march on the city. Celestia will divert newly-raised regiments headed for the front, but it will take more time for them to arrive. The Free Changelings remain the only regiment at full strength capable of reaching Ponyville in time.”

[I believe further elucidation on my sister’s words here are required. By ‘overseas’ she means the on-going jungle war as Changeling forces attempted to invade Coltcutta from Marelacca as well as enemy raids on our colonies in Zebrica. She is correct in that there were fresh regiments en route to the frontline at the time of the Battle of Ponyville, however, by this point in the war the Equestrian rail system was already under intense strain supporting the existing forces already there. Stopping and diverting those units from their planned journeys caused great disruption to the rail timetables and caused no small amount of headaches for local signallers trying to re-route dozens of trains.]

That, I considered, was the real reason why I had been selected above anypony else in the Commissariat to do this; with my prior ‘relationship’ with Odonata, Luna seemed to believe that I would be able to smooth over the inevitable conflict between the Free Changelings and the backward inhabitants of rural Ponyville with my astute political acumen (or ‘bullshitting’ as my comrades in her Night Guard would have put it). I knew from experience that it was too much to ask for everypony to just get along and work together to defeat a common foe, but in the past that was largely because they had very different ideas on how to do that and which one of them should receive the shiny medals at the end of it, and I’d managed to resolve it by threatening court martials and executions until they all understood. This time, however, there was a very real chance, however slim, of it spiralling out of my dubious ability to do that.

“And what of Princess Twilight Sparkle and the Element Bearers?” I asked; damnation, that was another irritating complication. Although, their dubious military acumen aside, perhaps, thought I, they could be used to my advantage, and deflect the blame from me too should it all go to Hades in a hoofbasket as I fully expected.

“No doubt they will wish to lead from the front,” said Luna, with no small amount of pride in her voice. “But their safety is paramount. Make use of their unique skills as required, but do not allow them to take undue risks. I think you know which one in particular I speak of.”

I was about to ask if it would be a better option to simply evacuate them to Canterlot, but, aside from the impact on the morale of the village’s defenders, it would also leave me bearing the sole responsibility for the defence. However, if they remained behind and perished in action while I survived, few things would inspire more opprobrium from all quarters of Equestrian society than that. Besides, I hardly think they would wish to take that option even if the enemy was rampaging through their village in overwhelming numbers and burning their homes, especially a certain rainbow-haired pegasus with more stubbornness than sense. The time between the awful news breaking during the meeting and me standing on the station platform and waiting for the train had been a hectic whirlwind of rushing about, fetching ponies, delivering orders, trying to find a sword for me, and so on, and now that I had a chance to stand still and think I realised just how thoroughly perilous my situation was now.

When the train finally arrived and I boarded it I would have several hours more to ruminate on this. Luna didn’t quite give me a hug before I left, as she presumably thought that it was still unseemly for royalty to display quite that much affection in front of her subjects, but she gave me a pat on the shoulder that I assumed she intended to be reassuring, but given the cold metal of her rather heavy hoof felt more like the hefty burden she had just laid upon my scarred back. Still, she smiled softly and with what looked like genuine care. “I will not lie to you, Blueblood, you face grim odds,” she said, and if that was supposed to help assuage my growing fears then she had failed spectacularly. “Your glorious ancestors prevailed when all seemed hopeless. Should the situation become bleak, think of their example and you too will win a great victory here.”

I was about to point out that, yes, while a number of my distant ancestors had succeeded where all hope seemed lost, a fair portion of them had also died gloriously for the kingdom in the process, and the most famous of which was slain by Nightmare Moon herself, but I thought better of it. Instead I mumbled a half-hearted thanks, and as the whistle blew Cannon Fodder and I were insistently urged onto the train by the porters who had apparently been warned in advance that I absolutely had to be in Ponyville as soon as possible.

In truth, it was a bit of a relief to find myself on the damned thing, as I wasn’t sure how much more chatter with Princess Luna I could take before we exhausted the serious and grim business of the vast responsibility I was about to undertake again and we started discussing the weather. First class had been abolished as part of the war restrictions in place, which also meant I was certainly not going to be allowed my private carriage with the well-stocked drinks cabinet and collection of sordid books with which to distract myself, so I took my place amidst the riff-raff in a third class carriage and sat by the window on a too-hard bench. There, remaining on the platform, Princess Luna stood with her royal guards and waved her silver-shod hoof in that slow, practised manner that Princesses always do as the train pulled out of the station. Some of the other passengers seemed to think that she was waving at them in particular, and to the annoyance of the conductor they rushed to the sides of the carriage to wave back and shout patriotic slogans until she and the station receded into the distance.

Cannon Fodder was hardly a sparkling conversationalist even at the best of times, and he spent much of the journey sitting in silence, save for a brief exchange of words with Yours Truly at the start of our journey, as outer suburbs of Canterlot swept past our windows.

“Are we going to Ponyville, sir?” he asked. I’m sure he knew the answer, he was a damned sight more perceptive than most ponies would otherwise believe.

“Yes, Cannon Fodder,” I answered.

“Will Princess Twilight Sparkle be there?”

I could see where he was going with this, as his very first encounter with the Princess of Friendship, back when she was merely Celestia’s faithful student, was far from friendly. My aide rarely expressed much in the way of emotion; he obviously had them, as all ponies do, but he was blessed with a level of self-control that a monk would envy. So when he looked visibly anxious at the prospect of running into Twilight Sparkle again, even after receiving her apology for subjecting him to a night of experimentation to confirm his status as a blank, I knew that this was truly bothering him. That said, ‘visibly anxious’ as far as his demeanour went would only be interpreted by most ponies as ‘mild case of trapped wind’, but after spending years with this peculiar, magically-challenged unicorn both in the hell of combat and the tedium of paperwork in between, I had a good understanding of his strange quirks, and vice versa I’d imagine.

“I would imagine so,” I said. “But she’ll be very busy with her duties as Princess, especially with-” I looked around and remembered that we were surrounded by civilians who might not react in a calm and reasonable manner to the news of a Changeling war-swarm massing just outside Ponyville “-all of the friendship problems she sorts out.”

That seemed to placate him, and he returned to staring blankly at the majestic scenery of our fair kingdom rushing past us. The journey was uneventful, aside from a few delays caused by our overtaxed rail system prioritising the movement of war materiel to the front than ponies, which meant we spent an hour or so stuck on the side of a mountain while somewhere else further down the line the rail workers had fun trying to untangle another conflict of schedule. My esteemed presence had attracted a wave of initial interest from the few ponies in the carriage after Luna had disappeared from view, but after a few autographs and such they mercifully left me alone with my thoughts. It couldn’t be particularly difficult, I reassured myself; Ponyville might have had merely a peasant militia, but given that they ostensibly defended Princess Twilight Sparkle and lived next door to one of the last remaining monster-infested forests in the realm, then it stood to reason that they ought to have been at least halfway competent soldiers. Reason, however, seems to take a holiday when war is involved, as I was about to prove again.

It had been far too early in the morning when the meeting started and still too early when I’d been rushed out of it, but given the delay in the journey it was around noon when I arrived in Ponyville station. Having skipped the important meal of elevenses, I was rather hungry and was looking forward to what passed for a good lunch in this small village. No doubt Twilight Sparkle would want to get straight to the business of defending their little town from imminent invasion and all that, but I could always quote her idol Princess Celestia and say that a good general never makes important decisions on an empty stomach.

As I disembarked, I took a moment to pause on the platform to gaze out into the village that I was ostensibly here to help organise the defence of, while striking a pose that I’d hoped looked suitably heroic for the villagers that I was allegedly there to save. For a settlement that was supposedly days away from being attacked by a ravenous swarm of Changelings, things looked decidedly normal. For a given definition of ‘normal’ during wartime, that is, as I’d noticed that metal railings that were present around the station and on the sides of streets during my last visit here had been removed, presumably to be melted down and turned into weapons. New propaganda posters were pasted onto walls and the sides of lampposts, imploring ponies to sign up for the Army and for those who remained behind to watch out for the enemy within. ‘Is your friend behaving strangely?’ one poster read, depicting Changeling that was halfway in the process of changing into a smiling pony. ‘Report suspected Changelings to authorities immediately.’ I could imagine Odonata and her Free Changelings were going to be in for a nasty shock if they expected the villagers here to welcome them with open hooves.

[The Ministry of Information’s now-much derided propaganda campaign was feared to encourage undue paranoia amongst the subjects of Equestria, and resulted in a number of ponies being falsely accused of being infiltrators either mistakenly or, in rare cases, to settle a grudge. It is fortunate that unicorn officials trained in the use of the Changeling reveal spell were posted in sufficient quantities across Equestria to ensure that these were kept to a minimum.]

Aside from those peculiarities, ponies still went about their daily business without any apparent worry or concern that the enemy would very soon be at their gates, if Ponyville had any gates, that is. I had expected to see that authorities (whoever they were in this village, as I imagined the elected mayor and Princess Twilight Sparkle had some overlapping realms of responsibility here that they may or may not have sorted out) institute martial law already, or at the very least the village’s militia patrolling the streets. Ponies have varied reactions to impending doom, and one of the most common is to pretend that everything is fine and that the problem either isn’t that much of an issue, or it’s so far away and abstract enough that they think they can worry about it later. It was a better option than blind panic, perhaps. I would have to consider my way out of here before the day was out, thought I, when it all inevitably went wrong for me; if the enemy was clever then they would move to cut the railway, which meant I’d have to chance it on hoof.

“Lord Commissar!” A mare’s voice interrupted me from my plotting. Waiting for me on the platform was a unicorn mare with a pink coat in a commissar’s uniform, and it was an exquisitely tailored one too. It was clearly new in stark contrast to mine, which, although had been expertly cleaned and pressed thoroughly by my valet Drape Cut, had faded from severe black to a charcoal grey and had been repaired with patches. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her, and the unnerving thought that she might have been a past liaison made its unwelcome entrance into my mind.

She trotted on over with a clumsy gait, as though she was thinking a little too hard about the manner she was walking, and tripped a few times on the uneven surface of this rather ill-kept station platform. When she stopped she seemed to vacillate between bowing and saluting, before settling on the former with a gesture that was somewhere between a nod of her head and a half-bow followed swiftly by the latter.

“Commissar?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m Starlight Glimmer,” she said. The mare beamed with a happy smile, but I could tell that she was a veritable bundle of nerves; her words came in a frantic rush to get out, and she seemed terribly twitchy. I thought perhaps that she was merely overawed by my presence, as some ponies inevitably are when they find my rather more ragged appearance doesn’t contradict whatever lofty image they have of me, however, it also occurred to me that her anxieties had less to do with meeting royalty and a national hero, but were altogether of a more basic nature. Her uniform was brand new and she seemed uncomfortable wearing it (not because it didn’t fit, because it fitted her with such perfection that my Saddle Row tailor would hang up his shears and retire in shame should he see it, but because she felt uncomfortable in any sort of uniform), and so I made a not-unreasonable guess that she had no idea what she was doing and trying to keep everypony else from finding out.

So, it was not just me, then.

“Twilight sent me to escort you from the station,” she said. This Starlight Glimmer was a rather attractive young mare, and though the severe black of the commissar’s uniform and its skull motif were quite off-putting, she filled it out rather nicely. A wavy purple mane peeked out from under her peaked cap, almost teasing at a certain sensuality beneath the grinning alicorn’s skull adorned atop her head.

“You’re on name terms with the Princess of Friendship?” I asked.

The young commissar smiled widely and nodded her head eagerly. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “I’m her student!”

I recalled hearing something about that, but as that information was not immediately important to me in any way shape or form at the time I didn’t think to consider it further. What little thought I had previously given that little fact was the assumption that said student would be a filly, as Twilight Sparkle had been when Princess Celestia had taken her under her royal tutelage. I suppose it would have been only a matter of time before she would follow in her mentor’s hoofsteps, and, at the considerable risk of outing myself as even more of a lascivious wretch than ponies correctly assume that I am, I briefly entertained the thought of the two of them engaging in a few extra-curricular activities together.

“She’s waiting for you at the Castle of Friendship,” she carried on, interrupting the alluring fantasy in my head. No doubt Princess Twilight Sparkle wanted to get started on planning the defence of her home right away, and somehow believed that I would have some sound tactical insight to provide. When it finally dawned on me that, until Odonata and her Free Changelings arrived, I was the most experienced military officer in the surrounding area and therefore what passed for a knowledgeable expert on such matters, I felt a sense of dread even greater than the sensation caused by the thought of an enemy war-swarm popping up in the middle of Equestria.

Starlight Glimmer led me to the Castle, which still towered over all of the quaint little cottages and shops in Ponyville and was visible from just about any point in the small village, and Cannon Fodder followed a few steps behind, warily eyeing the perfectly harmless villagers going about their day as if one might turn out to be Twilight Sparkle. I probably could have made my own way there, but I suppose it was polite of Twilight to send her new student to fetch me. We made some small talk along the way, as ponies stopped and stared at the two of us in our grim uniforms walking through their streets. She had only been the Princess’ student for a few months now—we had indeed met before in a bar, but I was apparently too drunk to remember giving her permission to found an ‘autonomous self-sufficient commune’ on a distant scrap of my land—and following some confusing unpleasantness involving a cult and the theft of cutie marks and time travel that I wasn’t aware of, she ended up here. She seemed shocked that I had no idea of that last issue.

“I must have been at the front at the time,” I said. “News from elsewhere in Equestria doesn’t always reach us there.” Not that I was worried about money, but I wondered if she and the rest of Our Town owed me rent; it was the principle of it, for while it was vulgar to expect royalty to pay up, that certainly did not apply to the common ponies.

“Oh, it’s just that most ponies I meet already know about the things I’ve done, so in a way it’s kind of refreshing to meet another pony who hasn’t.” She made an awkward, anxious grin. “You know how it is, you do a few bad things and ponies never let you forget it.”

I did know, as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t about to admit it to her or anypony else. “I’m sure Princess Luna would agree,” I said tactfully. Then, changing the subject, I asked, “How long have you been a commissar?”

That nervous smile of hers grew wider, almost splitting her face in two. I didn’t think ponies’ faces could stretch like that, unless they were Pinkie Pie, but she managed it. “Since four hours ago,” she said. “Twilight appointed me when we heard about the Changelings. Said the militia needed a commissar to keep an eye on them, and, well, since I apparently successfully led an autonomous collective she thinks that qualifies me to do that.”

That was not what we in the trade would call a ‘good sign’, I thought. I knew that her appointment had to have been recent, given that she’d only just been allowed back into polite Equestrian society after the rather serious time travel incident, but I’d have assumed that the mayor’s office would have followed the diktats of the DoE Act and maintained their militia at an appropriate level of combat strength with a commissar appointed to oversee such things. Still, the ponies who crafted that bill and saw to its implementation assumed that the enemy would only send small units for nuisance raids, not entire swarms, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference really. I had to admit that I didn’t know if militia units needed to have commissars attached to them. I imagined, however, that the mayor of this village, whoever they were, was likely panicking at the thought of a ‘real’ commissar coming along to judge them, and had persuaded Twilight to appoint the first available pony.

[The Twilight Sparkle Reforms had folded most of Equestria’s formal militia units into the Equestrian Army, which, as Blueblood had explained, left small units made up of local volunteers to guard against enemy raids. Such raids were not frequent in most parts of the country, though acts of sabotage were common in places with heavy industry like Manehattan, but the DoE Act had made it the responsibility of local authorities to set up and maintain these volunteer defence forces, which were colloquially called militias. They were not under the formal oversight of the Commissariat, with exceptions for major cities such Canterlot and Manehattan. It had been assumed that the enemy would not mount anything more than nuisance raids in our land, and therefore large militias were considered a waste of ponies who could be put to better use at the front. However, provision had been made in the DoE Act to allow conscription en masse should the enemy make a large-scale incursion into Equestria, which would necessitate commissarial oversight.]

“There’s a fair bit of overlap between a cult leader and a commissar,” I said. “Both entail persuading ponies to give themselves to a higher cause at great risk to their own lives.”

Starlight Glimmer didn’t seem to understand that I was merely joking, and pulled a slightly offended expression. “Well, this time I don’t have a magic staff that steals cutie marks,” she said, rather huffily.

I changed the subject yet again: “If you’ve only been appointed today, how did you acquire a uniform so quickly?”

“Rarity made it for me this morning,” said Starlight. “Well, she only finished it an hour before you arrived, and I barely had any time to put it on. When she heard the news about the Changelings and my appointment she declared ‘you must have a uniform, darling!’ and locked herself in her shop for the whole morning and then came out with this. It’s a bit creepy that she already had my measurements to hoof.”

“And convenient.”

Were it any other pony besides Rarity I’d have expressed extreme scepticism of her claim, but, though it pained me to concede this, she was a mad genius when it came to clothes, and her tendency to deal with stress by frantically creating stunning works of art in a matter of hours had certainly paid off here. A commissar’s uniform should look imposing, at least according to Princess Luna, to visually embody the ideals for which the Royal Commissariat stood for (I often struggled with remembering what those ideals were supposed to be but I think they were integrity, honesty, commitment, and not getting too drunk on the job), and Rarity’s interpretation fulfilled that entirely. Out of it, I imagined that Starlight Glimmer here would look like a thoroughly ordinary pretty mare, but in it, the severe black of the uniform, tastefully applied gold braid and brass buttons, and the padded shoulders made her look like nothing less than the instrument of the Princesses’ collective will and authority. She was the iron hoof of their justice, or she would be if she could get her facial expression and body language to appear anything else but a bundle of nerves. I, on the other hoof, had deliberately not acquired a new uniform because the patina granted by the years of wear and tear brought on by life on the frontline had not only softened its severity somewhat, with its faded hue and patches, and thus made me seem perhaps a little more approachable to the average young officer and enlisted pony, but also conveyed the impression that I had ‘earned’ my dubious reputation the hard way. Clothes maketh the pony and all that, or at least first impressions count for rather a lot; her facade was that of competence and severity, but her demeanour illustrated her anxiety and inexperience, in the same way that her uniform, though perfect, reflected those insecurities thanks to its newness.

We arrived at Twilight’s castle in due time, having exhausted all possible avenues of small talk save the weather, which was a pleasant and bright Spring day, but not willing to talk shop about our imminent peril just yet. The castle itself was on the outskirts of the village, accessible by a single road and set some distance away from the nearest thatched cottages. This space was normally cleared, and I imagined that when the Tree of Harmony decided to fashion a home for the new Princess of Friendship it knew that ponies would have to walk a not-inconsiderable distance to its front door, and therefore they would be suitably over-awed by its beauty by the time they reach it (and presumably be too tired to do anything but agree with whatever Twilight Sparkle said). That day, however, this cleared space was filled with a formation of soldiers, approximately a battalion’s worth, lined up in rows on parade and blocking our path. As we neared, I could make out two distinct sets based on their uniforms; the majority wore very simple metal armour in imitation of the old Royal Guard, but one platoon, which stood apart from the others, was clad in a uniform made of dark green cloth. All of them were armed with muskets, mostly seemingly brand new, but the ones in the green uniforms had weapons with far longer and more ornate barrels, almost as long as the old Royal Guard spears.

[The muskets in question were derived from the 'jezzail' of Saddle Arabian origin, their longer barrels lending themselves more to defending stockades and other fixed positions than contemporary weapons. Blueblood may be forgiven for not noting, or perhaps mistaking the addition of stabilizing bipod mounts for mere embellishment. Garrison and 'home guard' units were supplied with these on account of their greater range and accuracy, while line infantry retained the lighter and more versatile musket.]

They made for an impressive sight, and indeed I was pleasantly surprised by what looked like a formidable and professional group of soldiers. Perhaps we wouldn’t even need Odonata’s Changelings after all. That feeling would last until I actually met the officers, but I’m getting ahead of myself. At the head was a colour guard, and a big, young earth pony with a red coat held aloft the standard of the Ponyville militia, which was an old and faded quilt with dozens of once-brightly coloured patches attached to a stick. The largest and most notable patch depicted a big red apple, which I assumed was meant to signify this village’s origin in apple cultivation. Standing under the banner was Twilight Sparkle and her friends, along with a group of other ponies in similar uniforms who I took to be the militia’s officers. As I walked closer, taking my time both for dramatic effect and because I was feeling especially petty that day, I also spotted Spike the baby dragon amongst them, who chose to ruin that effect.

“Ugh, finally!” he groaned. Twilight shot him a glare but didn’t reprimand him, which might explain his continued insolence.

“Apologies, the train was delayed,” I said, bowing low as custom dictated. Princess Twilight Sparkle blushed and muttered something about it not being necessary, but that it made her mildly uncomfortable was the reason I continued to follow such protocol.

Now closer, I saw that all the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony were present. Rainbow Dash wore her skin-tight Wonderbolts uniform; Applejack was dressed in the same green uniform as that odd minority of the militia, but her sleeves were emblazoned with the rank insignia of a Regimental Sergeant Major; and Pinkie Pie and Rarity stood a little off to the side, wearing nothing, and making some manner of idle conversation while the military ponies got on with the unpleasant task at hoof. I had seen Fluttershy before at the party at Twilight Sparkle’s castle some time ago, and may have exchanged a few drunken words with her before her habitual shyness made continuing conversation impossible and I duly left her alone. Here, she appeared to be hiding behind Pinkie Pie and Rarity, and, echoing how I felt inside, seemed to be terribly uncomfortable with all of this. Two other ponies I hadn’t met before were also present: the first was an elderly earth pony mare with a lime green coat, wearing a tattered and frayed military dress uniform that was considerably older than I was, topped off with a battered old helmet with more than a few dents in it; and the second was a youngish stallion with a greasy black mane slicked back, who wore a business suit with a necktie decorated with his cutie mark of a bits sign, which I thought to be a rather vulgar affectation.

“I still can’t believe the Cutie Map called Prince Blueblood, of all ponies!” said Spike, folding his little arms over his chest and glowering at me.

“Spike!” hissed Twilight under her breath. “Look, there’s your friend Cannon Fodder, why don’t you talk to him about your club?”

The baby dragon huffed, blowing a small cloud of smoke out of his nostrils. “It’s not a ‘club’, Twilight, it’s a trade union of number one assistants.” Nevertheless, he waddled off to where my aide stood silently observing the proceedings. The two got to chatting, well, Spike did most of the talking while Cannon Fodder entertained him as he usually did by patiently nodding along, and I picked up a few worrying terms like ‘dental plan’ and ‘paid sick leave’.

With that weird distraction out of the way, Twilight cleared her throat and said to me, “Welcome back to Ponyville, Prince Blueblood. I present to you the Ponyville Militia Guard for your inspection before we commence with our strategy meeting.”

If that little speech seemed rehearsed to you, then good, because it certainly did to me. She’d probably practised it over and over as a way to keep her mind off the vast weight of responsibility about to fall upon her head with this latest crisis. As for me, however, I could only feel a vague sense of dread at having yet another dreary meeting to look forward to. Still, the sooner that we got this part over with the sooner we could have the meeting and the sooner I could have some damned lunch, or whatever passed for a midday meal around this culinarily-depressed part of Equestria. Even the grass at my hooves was starting to look appetising.

Still, I gave my thanks for the welcome and bade them to begin. Twilight nodded and turned to the elderly mare in the uniform, and I had a sinking feeling that this old fossil held a position of command in the militia. “Granny Smith, would-”

“Colonel Granny Smith!” shrieked the old mare, her voice high, shrill, and the accompanying accent bordering on incomprehensible quickly identified her as one of the Apple Family clan. She brandished a swagger stick at Twilight Sparkle, and were she not clearly so old I might have intervened. “My pappy founded this here militia when the Princess gave him this here land to protect it from the monsters in the Everfree, and you’ll do well to remember it, little missy.”

Rainbow Dash, who was hitherto looking rather bored by all of this needless ceremony, tried and failed to hold in a laugh, and after a few splutters and snorts she was on the floor trapped in paroxysms of hysterical laughter. Applejack rolled her eyes and gave the incapacitated Wonderbolt a few deft kicks of her hoof, and then moved to quickly diffuse the situation. While this was going on, I shot Commissar Starlight Glimmer a look. I like to think that I’d become rather good at doing those; the grim uniform and a well-practised expression of disdain certainly helped when I wanted to convey without words that I was very much not impressed. She could only respond with another awkward grin and a nervous shrug of her shoulders. It was not a particularly auspicious start.

The stallion with the slicked-back mane, however, sidled up to me in the manner that reminded me of a slithering snake. I know one shouldn’t put too much stock in first impressions, but something about his manner simply screamed that I should not trust this pony under any circumstances. That he wore a garishly vulgar tie and the sleazy smile of a confidence trickster is probably what set off that particular reaction. “Prince Blueblood, it’s an honour,” he said, his voice disgustingly sweet as he bowed low in an overly obsequious manner that felt almost sarcastic. “I’m Filthy Rich.”

“And so am I,” I said, slightly baffled. When he laughed I realised that was actually his name, which explained his cutie mark, and was mildly thankful that he took it as a deliberate joke.

“Granny Smith is the Colonel-in-Chief of the militia,” he explained. “A ceremonial position, thanks to her family’s history in founding the Everfree Rangers.” Filthy Rich waved his hoof vaguely at the ponies in green uniforms, and then indicated to the greater mass in rather primitive armour. “The Ponyville Militia itself was founded and funded by me, and so I’m the commanding officer here. Lieutenant-Colonel Filthy Rich.”

Oh no, thought I. So, this is where the imbeciles who otherwise would have tried to buy commissions ended up after the Twilight Sparkle Reforms, running local militia units in the hope that somepony in the Ministry of War will take notice of their untapped military genius and make them a general. In theory, this Commissar Starlight Glimmer should be keeping an eye on him, ready to strip him of his uniform should he fail to live up to the basic level of competence that it demanded, but she had been in the job for less than a day and possessed an aversion to making those sorts of important decisions. And on that one note in particular:

“Why are you not in uniform?” I asked.

“Blueblood,” he said, sidling even closer to me. He didn’t put his foreleg over my shoulder, but I could tell that he considered it. “Can I call you Blueblood?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. The sight of his face dropping in disappointment made the unpleasant journey and the mortal peril I was about to experience almost worth it, and somewhere, just out of my sight, I heard Rainbow Dash break into another fit of laughter. “It’s ‘Your Royal Highness’ when you first meet me, and then ‘sir’ after that.”

That had deflated him considerably, which cheered me up, of course. Having failed to make me his new best friend, he stepped away to leave what he probably thought was a respectable distance, and explained his lack of appropriate dress for the occasion: “I have such confidence in the Ponyville Militia that I do not feel the need to change into my uniform. We will defeat the enemy before they even set hoof in our fair village.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said diplomatically. “Carry on.”

His confidence still shaken, he trotted off with Sergeant Major Applejack to get the militia in order. While he did that, I turned to Commissar Starlight Glimmer and said in as low a voice as I could manage while being audible enough for her to hear: “He needs to go.”

“What?” she blurted out, and then likewise dropped her voice. “But he’s in charge of the militia.”

“That stallion cannot lead ponies into battle,” I whispered. “He must not be allowed to. As the commissar of the militia, it is your job to make sure that its officers are competent. He does not strike me as particularly competent.”

“But he paid for it,” said Starlight, as though that meant anything. “The uniforms, the training, the weapons, in exchange for him being its commanding officer.”

“And other ponies will pay with more than merely bits if he is allowed to continue,” I said. “Remove him and appoint a pony more suitable to command, or I will do it.”

I moved to join the others with the militia, but Starlight darted forwards, waving her hoof at me. “Slight, tiny little problem with that,” she said, grinning awkwardly again. “There isn’t really anypony here ‘suitable’ for command.”

Perhaps it was because I had spent far too much time around soldiers lately, but I was starting to find civilians rather irritating; they like to question things, talk things out, and one isn’t supposed to just shout at them and threaten floggings until they obey. It did occur to me that I was a bit too harsh with them, however, I reminded myself that the enemy was going to be far harsher with them than I could ever be, and if this village, and more importantly I, were to survive what was to come then I could not afford to coat my words with honey just to make them feel comfortable. “You ran a cult-”

“Autonomous collective.”

“-rather successfully, so you’ve implied; Twilight Sparkle wrote the report that reformed the Royal Guard into the grand army it is today, and though she’s an alicorn princess we can find a way to work around that little prohibition; Applejack runs a farm and therefore ought to know a thing or two about organisation; and Rainbow Dash has been in frontline combat before.” I offered what I hoped was a sympathetic look and sighed, saying, “I’m not telling you to find the next Neighpoleon in Ponyville of all places, I’m asking you to find somepony who is going to take this seriously.”

I left Starlight Glimmer to stew on those words for now, as I was sure this would come up during that meeting that Twilight Sparkle had just threatened to impose upon me. We still had the ceremonial part to get over with before we could get down to brass tacks, so to speak, and I still hadn’t had my lunch, so my stomach was gurgling away as I trotted to where Granny Smith stood before the assembled militia. She was still mumbling away to herself in an accent that was almost unintelligible to anypony born north of the Appleachians. However, when she saw that I was finally ready to join them, she cleared her throat loudly and with much phlegm.

“Ah-ten-hut!” she shouted. Her voice was loud even with her advanced age.

The militia gradually came to attention, some by shuffling their hooves together, others attempted to imitate standard military drill by stomping their hooves but couldn’t do it in unison, and at least three simply fell over. My expectations had been low, but I was still shocked.

Chapter 3

Inspecting the troops is usually a mere formality. I’ve done it a few times in the past before this blasted war even started, on occasions where Princess Celestia was too busy with whatever crisis you haven’t heard of because she dealt with it so well (as opposed to the ones you have heard about), and the Royal Guard regiment had to make do with me doing the honours. I have even inspected a few foreign units in my time, during tedious state visits to places like Griffonstone. By and large, the regiment being ‘inspected’ is immaculately turned out, and even the Griffons made an effort in appearing presentable, so all one has to do is merely walk up and down the lines with the officers and make the occasional comment about how very professional they all look. If it all goes well it’s usually over and done with rather quickly, less than an hour, certainly, and everypony can carry on with their day. This one, however, remains simultaneously the most tedious and the most eventful inspection that I have ever undertaken in my ‘career’ as a Prince.

The tedium came from Princess Twilight Sparkle’s impromptu history lesson about the Ponyville militia. Readers, whoever you ponies are, with an appreciation of the strictly limited amount of time we mortal ponies are allocated in this life will thank me for respecting the grains of your hourglass inexorably slipping away not writing her lecture here in full. I don’t recall most of the precise details, which meant the rest of it was largely irrelevant anyway. Ponies might assume that the Princess of Friendship’s tendency to expound pointlessly on such topics as showing off, but having been on the receiving end of a great deal more of these than I would have otherwise liked, I can safely say without fear of contradiction that she had genuine interest in educating other ponies, whether they wanted it or not, that I found rather endearing, despite having forgotten most of what she said.

What little I do recall, and must therefore be the only parts that were in any way relevant to the proceedings, was that Ponyville had in fact two militias. The first were the Everfree Rangers, the fellows in the green uniforms and armed with those overly long muskets; it would be more accurate to call them monster-hunters than militia, numbering only about thirty in number, made up of ponies all across the shires that bordered the Everfree Forest, and whose sole purpose was to keep the monsters of the Everfree firmly inside the Everfree. However, in times of emergency they could be relied upon to take up arms in defence of Ponyville and the surrounding lands from marginally less-monstrous enemies. They were, by virtue of having at least some measure of training and experience in using their weapons, the most competent and reliable of the militia. As Granny Smith had said, her ‘pappy’ had indeed founded them when Princess Celestia had granted the Apple Family that scrap of land that would one day become Sweet Apple Acres. Of course, the Everfree Rangers back then simply consisted of members of the Apple Family old enough to pick up a pointed stick, but since then had grown with the village to become the dedicated unit of professional monster hunters standing to attention before me.

[Blueblood is half-correct, in that the Everfree Rangers were indeed trusted with dealing with creatures that could become a danger, but misses the fact that the bulk of their duties involved acting as firewatch, due to the chaotic and unreliable nature of weather within the forest's boundaries. A blaze could easily force out the more dangerous forest denizens, with Ponyville being right in their path, and rain not always being a convenient and viable method of containment as it is elsewhere. The Rangers were thus instrumental in keeping the surrounding lands safe by ensuring the stability of the creatures' natural habitat.]

The second lot were the large, ill-disciplined mob of peasants armed with the shiny new muskets that Filthy Rich had bought for them. As with all of these local defence volunteer groups, they were either ponies too old or too young to enlist or those engaged in vital war work, and in this case it was mostly farming. These ponies spent a few hours every evening dressed up in uniforms, practicing with muskets, and going on patrol to hassle ordinary ponies they deemed to be ‘suspicious’ and therefore must be Changeling spies. I had to remind myself, as I walked up and down those lines and regarded the peasants standing there dumbly, that their purpose was to slow down the enemy and buy time for the professionals to swoop to their rescue, but as we carried on that thought started to feel less and less reassuring.

“How many rounds a minute can they fire?” I asked Twilight Sparkle, once her twilecture had wrapped up.

“Oh, I think it’s three,” she said, though her voice indicated that she was just as sceptical of that claim as I was.

“That is the standard as set by Princesses’ Regulations,” I said. “I will have to see that for myself later.”

“I’ll organise a demonstration!”

The overwhelming majority of the ponies who lived in Ponyville were earth ponies, of course, with unicorns, pegasi, and one alicorn making up a small minority. As a result, the militia had merely lumped the unicorns and the pegasi in with the earth ponies to make organising things easier, which, while not actually being the tactical genius ponies seem to believe I am, I correctly assumed would impair them from fulfilling their assigned niche as dictated by Equestrian military doctrine. Some of the better flyers amongst the pegasi had, however, been organised into a ‘crack platoon’, as their commander, Rainbow Dash, had put it. They were simply the ponies of the weather team and any other pegasus deemed to be somewhat capable of flying well enough for combat. Now, civilian weather ponies had proved their bravery in Virion Hive, and indeed I would not be here to write down these reminisces were it not for them throwing themselves into the gas-soaked skies filled with the enemy’s swarms, yet there were less than thirty pegasi in the militia, and they would have to contend with an enemy entirely gifted with the use of the air.

The soldiers were growing restless as we made our way through their ranks; it’s a challenge for anypony to remain perfectly still for any period of time, but it’s even more of a challenge to see a vast swarm of the enemy advance directly upon one’s position and not do the sensible thing and immediately flee in terror. After all, that was the point of all of this drill, at least in part, and their seeming inability to accomplish this hardly boded well for when they would finally face the enemy. They shuffled, twitched, stretched their hooves, and looked around, which were all things that would have driven Sergeant Major Square Basher to the heights of apoplexy. I could also sense the anxiety of my accompanying entourage as they followed, especially Princess Twilight Sparkle, who seemed to have taken this exercise as something of an incredibly important homework assignment that I, taking the position of a stern teacher in this analogy, was about to mark. If I didn’t know better, I’d have also said that her frequent expositions on the history of the Ponyville Militia was also a mechanism with which she employed to keep her stress from bubbling over into a full meltdown.

We passed one pony. He was a young stallion, not quite old enough to officially join the military but apparently old enough to pick up a musket and defend his village, and as I walked by he decided that this was the appropriate time to commit the most cardinal of all sins and speak while at attention. “Sir!” he called out, stopping me mid-walk. When I turned to face him, affecting the same sort of look that one would give if he had admitted to sleeping with one’s mother, he continued: “We are ready to die for Equestria! For the Princesses!”

He looked rather pleased with himself, as though this display of patriotic fervour was going to somehow impress me. It did not. I directed my look to Sergeant Major Applejack, who took a few seconds to interpret the meaning of said look.

“Now, Book Mark, you know you ain’t supposed to talk,” she said, as though admonishing a puppy that had befouled a rug.

I was about to carry on, but I swiftly decided that this was the perfect opportunity to impart a lesson of sorts. Filthy Rich’s peculiar display earlier seemed to demonstrate a certain inability in these ponies to take the threat as seriously as they truly ought to, and the sooner that I disabused them of that notion the better.

“Are you truly ready to die?” I asked.

He puffed out his chest and stood as tall and straight as he possibly could. “Sir, yes, sir!” he barked. Some ponies make a lot of unnecessary noise about making the ultimate sacrifice, and they are typically the ones who will abandon that thought the moment the time finally comes for them to make good on that grim promise.

“That’s a bit counter-productive, don’t you think?” I said.

This Book Mark fellow pulled a face. “Sir?”

“Dying for your country and your Princesses, I mean,” I continued. “That’s precisely what the enemy wants you to do.” I stepped closer to him, and he flinched somewhat from my approach. Then, raising my voice a little so more would hear: “The Changelings are a few days’ march from here, and until help arrives you are the only line of defence between them and everypony you love. I have seen what the Changelings do when they occupy a pony settlement, and believe me, it does not make for a pretty picture. You, Private, and your friends are what stands between your family and their enslavement. Your Princesses don’t want you to die for them, they want you to kill for them. You are going to violate our most sacred natural law, ‘do not kill’. Do you understand, soldier?”

That seemed to have scared him, and throughout my little speech I could see the slowly-developing understanding of what he had just signed up for and all that it entailed begin to appear on his face. The speech wasn’t a patch on anything that Square Basher could come up with, but I didn’t think that I could get away with quite as much swearing in front of the Princess of Friendship here, but it would seem that I had conveyed the message as clearly as one could. This whole affair inspired memories of those first few months of the war, when nopony took it with the seriousness that such a grave state of affairs truly required. Though the military had learnt those painful lessons, civilians had not, and isolated from the same circumstances that forced out the incompetent and the glory-seeking fools, save for the occasional enemy raid in the more populated areas, they still clung to those old ideas -- that it would be easy, quick, and glorious.

From there we wrapped up the inspection; I had seen enough and wanted to get this next part over and done with quickly, not least because I was still terribly hungry. The militia was dismissed, the ponies filing off to do whatever it was they did at this time of day, and I was escorted inside the castle and led through the winding corridors to wherever this meeting was to be held. Twilight Sparkle attempted some small talk, but I had to convey that I was certainly not at all impressed with the state of the militia and so I gave only short, blunt answers until she understood the message. Eventually, however, hunger got the better of me, and as we trudged up yet more stairs I asked if I could have some lunch.

“Seriously?” blurted out Rainbow Dash. “You’re thinking of food at a time like this?”

“Never plan military operations on an empty stomach,” I said. Then, to Twilight Sparkle, “Princess Celestia told me that, and who am I to question her?”

I was not above invoking the name of her beloved mentor to get what I wanted, and more often than not it worked beautifully. She instructed Spike to bring me something from the kitchen, and he only made a small complaint that was quickly dismissed when Twilight bribed him with some gems to snack on too. However, by that point we had reached what was ostensibly the throne room. It was, as all throne rooms are, designed to be imposing, as a reflection of the power and authority of the pony whose flanks fill the throne itself. Rather smaller than that of the Two Sisters in Canterlot, of course, but certainly grand enough with its incredibly high ceiling. I noted with some measure of foalish pride that it was also smaller than my own in the Sanguine Palace. However, very unusually, it was not arranged as one would expect; at its centre was a large circular table upon which was a spectral map of Equestria, and six thrones, each bearing the cutie mark of the Element Bearer who occupied it at their heads, were seated around it. It looked more like a needlessly elaborate dining room than a throne room, and with the table being round there was no ‘head’ here; I assumed the Tree of Harmony had sought to remind Twilight Sparkle that when it came to the Elements, at least, she was merely one amongst equals, and knowing her as I did she would have agreed.

One pony was already there, going over the various documents scattered on the table like autumn leaves. He was a unicorn stallion whose visage was familiar but I was struggling to place. His coat was orange, with white hooves and a white patch on his muzzle. He wore spectacles and a cape decorated with stars, and when I imagined those spectacles at the bottom of a toilet and the cape pulled over his head and tied tightly around his horn his name finally made itself known in my mind.

“Spotburst!” I called out. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The stallion’s left eye twitched and he grimaced. “Sunburst,” he corrected, and then added a quick, “sir”.

“Wait,” said Starlight Glimmer as she trotted around me, “how do you know each other?”

“We were at Celestia’s school together,” said Sunburst. “We were in the same class, until Prince Blueblood left.”

I was expelled, but I kept that to myself; I didn’t fancy everypony knowing that I didn’t graduate high school, though given where I was I would be safe in assuming that at least half of the ponies present hadn’t either. We were also in the same class because I’d been held back a year or two, which was another detail I kept to myself. “Heavens, how long has it been?” I continued, getting a little carried away with nostalgia for a far happier time in my life. “Good to see your acne finally cleared up. Do you remember when I used to shake you down for lunch money?”

Sunburst swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah, I-I remember,” he said. “I don’t know what you did with it, being a prince and all, you didn’t really need the cash.”

“Oh, I used to throw the coins at the professors and blame somepony else, usually Twilight Sparkle. Some of them even believed me and put her in detention. Can you imagine Princess Celestia’s personal student in detention? It was all in good fun, though. Do you also remember that song my chums and I used to sing as we carried you upside down through the dormitories before throwing you in Princess Celestia’s koi pond? I think it went ‘Spotburst, Spotburst, greasy, greasy, Spotburst!’”

It was at that precise moment when I realised that nopony found my anecdotes as hilarious as I did. In fact, everypony present stared at me with mixed expressions of utter revulsion and horror, especially Starlight Glimmer, whose scowl of utter disdain meant that she finally looked the part of a commissar; she looked as though she was considering how to re-arrange all of my internal organs into an attractive piece of modern art for display in some nouveau riche pony’s particularly ugly mansion. Embarrassment, an emotion that I am not particularly familiar with, welled up within me, and I suddenly felt very warm in what was otherwise a rather cold throne room.

“It was a long time ago,” I said. “You know what foals are like. After all, Spot- Sunburst wore a cape to school, so who can really say who is to blame here?” The judgemental silence, which were accompanied by more accusatory stares, indicated that nopony was buying that excuse. “Well, I’m sure there’s a friendship lesson in there for all of us, but might we deal with the more pressing matter of the Changelings first?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Twilight, as she trotted around me to take her place at her throne. I might have hit a nerve there, and if I hadn’t sunk any chance of sharing a bed with the Princess of Friendship again when I embarrassed myself in the morning after the last and only time, I truly had now. I was about to follow when I felt a small tug on my sleeve.

It was Spike, and he was offering me a plate of hay, which I presumed was the cheapest thing that they had in the palace’s pantry here. He beckoned me down with a claw, and though I wanted to simply grab the meal and then kick him away like a hoofball, I’d already tarnished my good name by excitedly talking about my bullying of a pony I could now safely assume was somehow everypony’s friend, so I resisted that understandable urge and dipped my head down to his level.

“You know,” he said, and I found very quickly that his breath stank, “Sunburst graduated from Celestia’s magic school at the top of his class. He’s a really powerful unicorn who can cast ninth level spells like Power Word: Kill and Time Stop! You might want to go and apologise to him before he casts Meteor Swarm on your head, Prince.”

I hadn’t considered that, but in fairness I hadn’t had much time to fully explore the ramifications of my actions some ten years ago or so, especially given the rather more pressing matters to attend to here. Besides, aside from saving my hide from meteors falling on my head, I suppose expressing some remorse over my prior treatment of him would be the grown-up thing to do. Furthermore, perhaps having such a powerful unicorn on our side, alongside Twilight Sparkle of course and Starlight Glimmer if her stories about casting forbidden spells were true, could make up for the deeply severe deficit caused by the apparent incompetence of the local militia here.

It was on precisely that matter that we needed to discuss, and rather urgently. I took the plate of hay from Spike, briefly inspecting it for anything that he might have added to poison me, but it appeared that good sense had overridden his strange, one-sided feud with me and it was simply what it appeared to be, if perhaps a little stale. Carrying it with me, shovelling portions of it into my mouth with my magic as I went, I joined the rest around the table.

There were quite a few of us there, so we had to bunch up a bit around this map table, which, like every other map table, had bits of paper scattered all over it. There weren’t enough seats either, so most of us, including me, had to stand. The stylised projection of Equestria on the table was still visible around the massed piles of paper, with Mount Canter and Canterlot poking out amidst the barren plains of paper. I spotted Ponyville quite easily on the map, because a representation of my cutie mark was circling over it.

“So, this is the map that summoned me?” I asked nopony in particular as I approached it.

“Oh, yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “Whenever there’s a friendship problem in Equestria it makes our cutie marks light up, then the map shows us where to go to fix it.”

“Does it do it often? It seems rather presumptuous and inconvenient.”

“I’m more confused why it thinks a Changeling invasion is a ‘friendship problem’.”

The prime spots around the table next to Princess Twilight Sparkle were already taken by Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst, leaving me having to take a position between Applejack and Pinkie Pie. The latter of which, apparently having quickly gotten over her reaction to the revelation of how much of a terror I used to be as a foal, greeted me with a cheerful smile and a perky, “Hi, Bee-Bee!”

“Prince Bee-Bee, if you don’t mind,” I said. I was about to respond with a similar contraction of her own alliterative name, but when I quickly realised what that would come out as I refrained.

“Thank you all for coming,” said Twilight Sparkle, apparently keen to get this meeting started. Spike hopped up on the table itself, sat down, and started scribbling notes. “This is a grave threat to Ponyville, possibly even to Canterlot. Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood has been sent here by Princess Luna herself to help us organise the defences of the village.”

[Copies of Spike’s notes are available upon request from the Royal Archives. While thorough, they are accompanied by his idiosyncratic commentary on the subjects discussed and on some of the participants of the meeting. He had also drawn an unflattering caricature of Prince Blueblood, complete with stink lines.]

Applejack lifted her hoof in the air. “I ain’t questioning the Princess’s judgement,” she said, “but why did she send just Prince Blueblood here?” She then turned to me, and said, “No offense, but we’re going to need more than just one pony to help us defend the village from a horde of Changelings.”

She had a point after all, one that was universally acknowledged by everypony present save Filthy Rich, who said, “I believe she only sent him here to witness our militia’s victory over the enemy.”

The expressions on the faces of everypony else gathered around the table reassured me that nopony else was convinced by his nonsense at all, and at the very least I could rely upon saner heads, for a given definition of ‘sane’ as far as Twilight Sparkle and her friends were concerned, but all present seemed to be too polite to point this out. I gave Starlight another look from across the table, expecting her to do what a commissar is supposed to do and put him in his place, but she merely pulled an apologetic face and remained silent.

“A regiment is en route,” I said, deciding that the best thing to do was to simply ignore the fool for now. “It will take a few days for them to arrive. However, the militia may have to defend the village alone should the enemy attack before then.” I looked over the mess of papers in front of me, trying to look as though I knew what in blazes what I was doing by furrowing my brow in concentration. “The map, please,” I said to nopony in particular, and Applejack obliged by passing the requested item to me.

It was not a military map, of course, for until that day the cartographers had little reason to create such a detailed map of this rather empty part of Equestria. However, the one that was provided to me, apparently intended for tourists judging by the array of ‘interesting’ facts about the village and recommendations on sights to view and activities to do, sufficed for what I needed to do, which was pretending that I was the competent commissar that everypony seemed to think that I was. Therefore, I made a big show out of carefully examining the map.

“Where is the enemy?” I asked; that sounded like a good place to start, I thought.

“To the east,” said Twilight. “They’ve set up an encampment in the area just north of Ghastly Gorge.” I spotted the area marked out with a messy circle drawn in red ink around said area, which the blurb on the map stated was known for its stunning views and rather hostile wildlife; just when I thought Ponyville already had its fair share of monster-infested areas with the Everfree in close proximity, I found out that there was another apparently within a few days’ march. The map did not appear to be to scale, for none was provided, but it seemed that there was a lengthy march across relatively open terrain, if the map was accurate, in order to reach the village. Sweet Apple Acres was between Ghastly Gorge and Ponyville, and further to the west was the Everfree Forest, and the text for that area simply read ‘Do Not Enter!’. The railway line, which the ponies in Celestia’s War Council had believed was a potential target of the enemy’s latest daring and potentially suicidal scheme, ran from north to south.

“Any indication as to their numbers?” That seemed like another obvious question to ask.

The ponies present looked to Fluttershy, who flinched from everypony’s gaze and almost tried to hide under the map table itself. “Oh, the scouts say that there are a lot of them,” she said.

I didn’t know the militia had scouts, and at first I thought she meant the Everfree Rangers, until a small bird, likely a sparrow of some sort and wearing a tiny beret on its head, hopped onto her shoulder and tweeted insistently and authoritatively. Fluttershy translated for us: “Corporal Lightfeather says there are approximately two battalions of Changelings camped a mile north of Ghastly Gorge, led by a Purestrain. They are all armed with muskets and have field artillery. The initial sighting was at oh-nine-hundred hours, and the Ponyville Aerial Reconnaissance Squadron made two additional flights in the past two hours. They were setting up their camp, a large array of tents and temporary stores of food and ammunition. The enemy has sent scouts ahead, but has made no other offensive action yet.”

[Astute readers may wonder how said scouts were noticed at all, given the nature of Changelings, but it should be noted that a small village like Ponyville is very closely-knit, where most if not all ponies know each other to start with. Add to this unique considerations such as the local wildlife acting as scouts the Changelings couldn't plan for, and Pinkie Pie's preternatural ability to sense any new arrival to Ponyville, and one begins to understand how they had such difficulty infiltrating the town.]

“I see,” I said. I had hoped that the reports sent to Canterlot had been grossly exaggerated by an excitable and over-eager band of backwards ponies who probably saw a wandering band of goats out in the countryside and mistook them for Changelings, but alas what vain hopes I had were dashed once again. However, I was also surprised that birds could be that articulate. “This ‘Aerial Reconnaissance Squadron,” I continued, “are they all birds?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Oh yes, my animal friends were the first to spot the Changelings.”

I had to concede that it was a marvelous idea, using animals as reconnaissance; the enemy wouldn’t think to worry about the animals spying on them, and if they had somehow worked out that the birds in the air and the squirrels in the trees were monitoring them closely and returning information about their numbers and disposition there was still very little that they could do about it. They could either ignore it, and we would be privy to almost their every move, or waste far more time and resources trying to hunt down the local wildlife than any benefit that activity might grant them. The only problem that I could see was that there was just one pony who could make sense of their chirping.

“What I want to know,” said Rainbow Dash suddenly, “is how did so many Changelings get this far into Equestria?”

“And with weapons too!” interjected Rarity. “My shipments of cloth never arrive without having been opened and inspected, and those inspectors could stand to learn a thing or two about how to correctly handle cashmere, so I can’t imagine how they could smuggle that many of those vile muskets here.”

Ponies suddenly looked at me, apparently the expert on such things. “The Changeling always gets through.”

“Yeah, but this is a lot of Changelings!” said Rainbow Dash. “I mean, two battalions is like… like… uh, help me out here, eggheads.”

“Two thousand,” answered Sunburst. “Approximately. Changeling military doctrine emphasises flexibility and adaptation, which they think is hampered by a formal unit structure.”

[While this was true at the start and towards the middle phase of the war, as the situation worsened and competent officers were either killed in action or executed for ‘cowardice’ and ‘treason’ for making tactically-sound retreats, by this point any semblance of a formal structure had broken down and the Changelings simply fielded whatever able-bodied drones they could muster in ad hoc units by necessity rather than adherence to a doctrine.]

I shrugged my shoulders, pulling the bluff old soldier routine that always seems to go down well with civilians. “For this many to infiltrate past our lines, secure supplies, tents, and weapons, including bloody artillery, this had to have been months in the planning, perhaps even years, and they must have had help from within.”

“Do you mean our security services are compromised?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

“Not completely,” I said, once again making up an answer as I went along. “The Changelings have been attempting to infiltrate Equestria since this war began, and the unfortunate thing is that while we have to be lucky every single time to stop their schemes, they only need to be lucky once. The frontline is ever-shifting and fluid, our coastline vast, and the skies are limitless; we cannot monitor every single possible route into Equestria all the time, so it is inevitable that some will make it through, and the more that do the more our security is compromised. A patrol route misses a stretch of coast at precisely the wrong time, or just one box is missed from a shipment manifest, multiplied hundreds of times. We can worry about exactly how and why once this threat has been dealt with, but for now let us focus our efforts on stopping them. As I said, help is on the way, but we may have to hold out until it arrives. Have you made any preparations?”

The momentary silence that followed indicated that the answer was a resounding ‘no’, and indeed it was Pinkie Pie of all ponies who took it upon herself to take the embarrassment on behalf of everypony else present. “We kind of wanted to wait for the professionals to tell us what to do.”

That was me. Damn. I was the professional; in their eyes I was indeed the renowned war hero, veteran of a number of bloody battles against the hated enemy, the Black Prince that struck fear into the hearts of their soldiers just as it soared the hopes of ours. To be somewhat fair, this was entirely beyond anything they could have anticipated or planned for; it was not practical to train every able-bodied pony in Equestria to the level of a professional soldier nor was it possible for everypony who found themselves in charge of a militia unit, either through choice or because nopony else would volunteer, be a master strategist. The militia was intended to merely delay the enemy, should they somehow attack Equestria directly, for long enough for the real soldiers to come to their rescue. It also meant that they expected me to have all of the answers, but, as I’d found in the many times I’d had to pretend to be more intelligent and competent than I really am, which remained something of a novelty as prior to my military career I’d often have to do the opposite to get out of scandals, the easiest way to do that was to ask questions and allow everypony else to draw the conclusions from them. That way, not only does it look as though I’ve contributed my considerable ‘expertise’ to the discussion, they also feel that they’ve taken part in the decision too, which has the added benefit of them shouldering the blame should it all go horribly wrong.

“The militia look well-equipped, at least,” I said, knowing full well that was about the only thing they had going for them. “Can they be relied upon to stand and fight?”

“Oh, they’ll fight, sonny,” said Granny Smith, fixing me with a glare. “They may not be fancy Royal Guards, but they all know they’re protecting their homes and families. They’ll stand, sir. By Celestia, they’ll stand!”

Of that I had no doubt, but whether or not they would still be standing by the time this was all over was very much up for debate. After all, history is replete with examples of bands of civilians taking up arms to defend their homes from a horde of foreign invaders, but successful examples of such tend to be much rarer. Oh, they are still remembered by ponies who wish to take solace in the thought that their sacrifice meant something in the long run, if only as some glowing ideal of the underdog giving the powerful enemy a bloody nose just before being smashed to pieces, but I was quite keen to avoid such a fate. Remembrance is for the living, after all, and I intended to count myself among them to do the remembering.

“And they have the best weapons that money can buy!” announced Filthy Rich, apparently keen to be seen to be taking part. “Barnyard Bargains brand muskets and armour. Soon, the Ministry of War will be begging me for a contract!”

“‘Bargain’ is not exactly what I want to hear when it comes to military equipment,” I said, knowing full well that such contracts are typically farmed out to the lowest bidder. War is a terribly expensive business, and with a war such as the one being fought what mattered the most was that we had more weapons and equipment than the enemy. How well they worked remained a concern, as well as getting them there to be used in the first place, but those problems were less troubling when replacements were so plentiful.

“Sir, as Equestria’s fastest growing retailer of home goods, Barnyard Bargains is in a prime position to supply and sell materiel to the Ministry of War. A victory here will prove the efficacy of not only the quality of our goods but the efficiency of our model of supply.”

“I’ll send a letter to the Secretary of State for War on your behalf once this is over,” I said, both because I wanted him to shut up and because I knew full well that during this time of total war, the government had placed the profits of individual companies involved in vital war work at the very bottom of its list of priorities. Ponies of the tinfoil hat-wearing persuasion labour under the common misapprehension that war is somehow good for business; I had picked up enough from my time doing desk work in the Ministry of Supply and in the Commissariat to learn that this assumption is largely false, for not only is much of the able-bodied workforce off fighting or otherwise engaged in essential war work elsewhere, but the government will quite happily introduce measures to acquire what it needs without much concern as to profits. That, I started to understand, was his true motivation; if I felt particularly suspicious, I’d also suggest that he didn’t really want to be the militia’s commanding officer at all, but that the ponies here had granted him that rank because he’d already paid for everything.

“Fancy muskets are all well and good, Filthy,” said Granny Smith, as she drew a long bayonet from a scabbard. The ponies around her flinched as she brandished the old, rusty length of once-sharpened steel. “But when it comes down to it, our colts and fillies best be prepared to get in real close to the varmints and run ‘em through. They don’t like it up ‘em!”

“Indeed,” I said. While Applejack coaxed her grandmother into putting the bayonet away, I pressed on with the appalling matter at hoof. “We must be prepared for the possibility that the enemy will attack before help arrives.” The precise manner in which that help would arrive I decided would be left for the end. “I won’t lie, from what I have seen I wouldn’t rate the Ponyville Militia as soldiers.”

That brought a scoff from Applejack. “Well, thank you for your honesty,” she said, with a voice that was dangerously close to sarcasm.

“It’s nopony’s fault,” I continued, trying to be diplomatic here, “they’re a civilian militia and they were never intended to fight the enemy in a pitched battle like this. The best weapons in the world are useless without the training and the will to use them, and we have only a matter of days at best before the enemy makes her move. Fortunately, the Militia only needs to hold out until relief arrives.” I turned to the ponies standing before me around the table, and said, “We need every advantage we can get. You know this land better than I. We must position the Militia on the most defensible land between the village and the enemy and hold it. Where is that?”

“Here!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, jabbing her hoof on Sweet Apple Acres on the map. “There’s lots of hills there, and from Applejack’s barn you can see for miles and miles all around!”

“I’ll have to see it for myself,” I said, rather surprised that Pinkie Pie of all ponies was proving to be the most tactically-gifted out of everypony present, but I supposed the best military minds out there tended to be on the eccentric side, and none were more eccentric than she. “But it would make sense to station the militia there. Preparations to fortify it must be made immediately.”

“Now hold on just a minute,” interjected Applejack. “That’s my family’s farm y’all are talking about, and y’all want to start digging trenches all over our fields and orchards?”

“I would not suggest such a thing if it did not contribute to the defence of this village,” I said. The rather primitive map here did indicate that there were hills all over this side of Ponyville, with Sweet Apple Acres occupying much of that area. I had certainly picked up enough over my years in this stupid job that taking the high ground was generally a good idea, generals were obsessed with it after all, and these militia ponies needed every single advantage that they could get should the enemy make their move soon, which, if they weren’t entirely without wits, they would do sooner rather than later. “However, if there is more suitable defensive land between the village and the enemy, I would like to hear about it.”

There were a few other suggestions from the assembled ponies: Fluttershy suggested that the Everfree Forest itself would be an excellent place from which to hide and fight a guerilla campaign, but that would involve abandoning the village and was deemed unacceptable except as a last resort; the village itself could be turned to our advantage by luring the enemy into its streets and using the old buildings to blunt the enemy’s superiority in numbers, weapons, and training, said Starlight Glimmer, but again the ponies felt queasy about the potential damage to their homes in the ensuing fight; and Rainbow Dash, backed up by Filthy Rich, posited the suicidal idea of sallying forth to meet the Changelings on the field and defeat them in open battle. I do not think that I need to explain why the last one was shot down by clearer heads almost immediately.

“Now, Applejack,” said Granny Smith, once we’d gone through the increasingly outlandish ideas and returned back to the subject at hoof, “the Apple Family and Sweet Apple Acres has always endured, through Timberwolves and Diamond Dogs and those ponies from the tax office my pappy chased away with the pitchfork. Whatever may happen, we’ll rebuild.”

Applejack sighed. “Y’all got a point,” she said. “That don’t make it any easier, but we gotta do what’s necessary to protect this here village.” The apple farmer looked to me, and carried on, “Pinkie’s right, from our barn you can see all of Ponyville and the countryside all around for miles and miles. Y’all can do what y’all need to do with it, so long as we’re all still here to fill in the craters and re-plant all the trees.”

And bury all of the bodies, I thought grimly to myself.

“Thank you,” I said, though really it ought to have been the other way around. The enemy were hardly going to care about such niceties as defending the rights of property and all that, and the sooner that the ponies here understood that and could overcome their own squeamishness, the better for them. “There will be a chance that the enemy will attempt to go around Sweet Apple Acres to take the village, however, when help arrives we will be able to fire upon them. That said, we may need to settle in for a brief siege should they attack early. See to it that the farm is stocked with provisions and ammunition.”

“But can’t all Changelings fly?” said Rainbow Dash. “What’s to stop them going over the farm?” She helpfully demonstrated the point by swinging her right forehoof in a wide arc over her left.

Once again, ponies looked to me for the answer. “They still need to land,” I said, once again making up said answer as I went along and hoping that it sounded convincing to the room full of amateurs and the one, other ‘professional’ here. Twilight Sparkle nodded, which reassured me that I was on the right track. “Changelings cannot maintain sustained flight and fight to the same extent as pegasi, their little buzzing wings aren’t built for that. Besides, if surrounded we form square atop the hill and skewer any drone that comes close.” I looked to Sergeant Major Applejack, and asked, “Can the militia form square?”

“They can form any shape y’all like,” she said cheerfully, which meant ‘no’. “Triangle, circle, square... Uh, help me out here, Twilight.”

“Make sure that they’re drilled properly so they can do it in their sleep.”

It was going well, thought I, and surprisingly so; they had, after some prompting, identified a sensible, defensible spot where they’d make their stand, and I liked to think that I had successfully impressed upon them the severity of the situation at hoof. Granted ‘well’ was a definition that had to be tempered with the acknowledgement that these ponies were untrained civilians, but by and large most of the ones gathered around here seemed to be getting the hang of things now that I was there to look imposing. While the other ponies bickered about the minutiae of organising the defence and how to handle the large number of civilians in the village, I took care to observe Filthy Rich, who had grown rather quiet; indeed, much of the old swagger of a seasoned salespony had evaporated as it must have inevitably dawned upon him that this was rather serious, which, I hoped, would make what I had instructed Commissar Starlight Glimmer to do to him much easier for all involved.

The rest of the meeting went by without much in the way of further incident for the most part, as we largely dealt with the tedious details of going over the numbers and provisions that the militia possessed, which allowed me a chance to finish off the rather monotonous lunch that I had been served. I would not say that I felt at all confident in our chances, and as Princess Twilight Sparkle bored ponies to the point of inducing sleep in Rainbow Dash as she explained the interesting modifications that she’d made to the bayonet lugs that would later become socket bayonets, I continued to turn over the possible escape routes in my mind. Immediately hopping on the next train to Canterlot was the first thing that came to me, and though I tend to dismiss the very first idea as being much too obvious, it occurred to me that it was precisely the opposite of what anypony expected the great and heroic Commissar Blueblood to do.

It was as the meeting was starting to draw to a close that Princess Twilight Sparkle asked me in what form the expected help was going to come sweeping to our rescue, and I had hoped that this awkwardness could be avoided by Princess Celestia sending her a letter via Spike explaining everything. That, to my annoyance, had not come to pass.

“Is it the Night Guards?” asked Spike, butting in before I could make a response. “They’re so cool with their dark armour and those bat wings!”

“Pfft, they’re overrated,” said Rainbow Dash, clearly still bearing a not-unjustified grudge over her mistreatment by them before.

“I do hope it’s the Prism Guards,” said Rarity. “Those uniforms are so elegant and so very chic! And Colonel Fer-de-Lance was such a delight when I met her at the party here a while ago.”

This was getting a bit out of hoof, so I cleared my throat loudly and said, “The Guards Regiments are still at the front, but don’t worry, a crack regiment is mobilising as we speak. They will be here in a matter of days.”

“The 403rd Catering Division?” posited Pinkie Pie. The bizarre outburst threw me off, and I blinked vapidly at her. “What? They served Princess Celestia with distinction during the Great Cake Craving of ‘92. Mr and Mrs Cake earned medals in that campaign.”

“No, Pinkie Pie,” I said. Then, puffing my chest out as though I had a degree of pride in what I was about to say, “They are a regiment of disciplined, trained, experienced soldiers, each a veteran of the fiercest battles of the war, led by a ruthless and dedicated commander who will stop at nothing to achieve victory.”

“Who? Who! Tell us who!”

I might have over-egged it, but it was too late to come back now. “The Free Changelings, under the command of Odonata.”

The silence that followed was so total, so perfect, that it seemed to muffle ambient sound, like a veritable black hole. The ponies gathered around the table wore identical expressions of complete shock; that empty, vapid expression as the equine brain gives up on organising the facial muscles as it tries to parse the information that it has just received. Jaws hanged loose, eyes widened and almost bulged out of their sockets, and slowly brows furrowed as the full understanding of what I had just said began to dawn upon them, some faster than others.

Princess Twilight Sparkle, being the most astute amongst their number, was the first. “Changelings,” she said, her voice pitched up slightly to make that half a question.

“Free Changelings,” I clarified.

“I read the former Hive Marshal was putting something together,” she said, still in that curiously calm tone. “Well.” It was more of a sigh than a word, really. “This is going to be one tricky friendship lesson for the whole of Ponyville.”

“That, I imagine, is why the map summoned me.”

Chapter 4

“They can’t be the only regiment close enough to help,” said Rarity. “I can’t imagine that the Princesses would leave Equestria so undefended!”

“The War Council had to make a strategic decision,” I said, feeling rather annoyed that these country bumpkins thought that they were fit to criticise the decisions of their betters. “A regiment guarding central Equestria from a potential invasion that may not come is one not actively contributing to the defeat of the Changelings on the frontline. They had made a calculated assumption that the enemy would prioritise defending her hives over another daring scheme.”

“Looks like the War Council’s ‘calculated assumption’ was wrong, then,” said Rainbow Dash dismissively. “Changelings love their ‘daring schemes’.”

“Be that as it may, we cannot defend every square inch of Equestrian soil and bring the fight to the enemy. It’s one or the other,” I explained; civilians, I found, tend to have a rather inflated view of what the military was capable of, and it was very easy for them to sit back in their armchairs and say what ought to have been done with the benefit of hindsight and a more complete picture than the one officers had at the time.

“Yeah, but…” Rainbow Dash trailed off a bit as my unassailable logic sank in. “Changelings, Prince Blueblood, Changelings. Led by Odonata. She tried to kill both of us.”

“And me,” interjected Cannon Fodder, who had remained dutifully silent throughout the entire meeting thus far. He usually kept his thoughts to himself, if he had them at all, but I could assume that he didn’t have a particularly high opinion of Rainbow Dash.

“I haven’t forgotten about that,” I said, as if I could ever forget about that particular near-death experience. Those damned flogging scars on my back continued to cause me trouble, even today. The blasted thing was that I now had to defend the sneering whore in order to survive this latest mess I found myself floundering in. “However, she and her Free Changelings have dedicated themselves to our cause of bringing Queen Chrysalis to justice.”

“That’s what she says, but what if she’s just playing the long game?” I suppose I should have expected that the Bearer of the Element of Loyalty would have some problem with trusting a known traitor. However, Rainbow Dash had a point there, and though I knew that Odonata faced certain death should the Queen of the Changelings get her grubby hooves on her again for her failure to defend Virion Hive, the thought that this was all part of the most needlessly elaborate plot ever devised remained a persistently stubborn suspicion that couldn’t be dismissed with rational arguments. One tries to avoid falling into simple stereotyping, and that’s a lesson that hadn’t quite sunk in by that point, but, let’s be uncharacteristically honest here, the Changelings had hardly done much to undo their particular reputation for stabbing everypony in the back at any given opportunity by that point, so perhaps paranoia was really the sensible option.

It was Spike who came to the defence of Odonata, and rather unexpectedly too. He had hitherto spent the entire meeting taking notes, and I’d ignored him as I would any other servant, maid, or assistant, except when he giggled to himself inanely over some simple thing that amused his foalish sensibilities. “Remember Thorax?” he interjected. “If one Changeling can change, then so can the rest of them. Even a Purestrain!”

I never thought that I’d see Spike of all creatures being the voice of reason here, but stranger things have happened in times of war. At that time I hadn’t even heard of the future King of the Changelings, but the name seemed to mean something to the other ponies there, and from what I gathered he was one of the very few drones who had defected who hadn’t been first captured as a prisoner of war. If they were expecting Odonata to have fully embraced the way of Harmony and the Magic of Friendship, ‘gone pastel’ as she had explained was the term they used when drones undercover amongst ponies start feeling a sense of belonging with their unwitting prey, then they were in for a shock when they would finally meet her. This damned affair was about to become a whole lot more complicated, should I survive to see it.

“That’s what we have commissars for,” I said, giving a pointed look to Starlight Glimmer, who squirmed uncomfortably. “We will watch Odonata carefully, but unless she proves otherwise, she and her Free Changelings will be treated as any other loyal regiment of ponies.”

“Perhaps we can ask the Free Changelings to take on the forms of ponies,” said Rarity, “just until this is over.”

That thought had occurred to me, but unfortunately I knew rather too much about Changeling physiology than I would have otherwise liked or needed to. “Maintaining a disguised form like that requires more love,” I said, and I received another encouraging nod from Twilight Sparkle as though I was her student delivering an assignment. “Unless we allow them to feed on the ponies here, they won’t be able to keep their shapeshifted forms for very long. It would be better to tell the ponies now and get it over with, rather than try to deal with the outcome of a failed cover-up later.”

“It will be difficult for ponies here to accept,” said Twilight Sparkle with a defeated sigh, “but we don’t have a choice. Prince Blueblood, thank you for your honest assessment of the Ponyville Militia; it’s clear that we need the Free Changelings if we’re to win this, but I’m sure that the ponies of Ponyville will accept whatever help is offered, even if it is from a very unlikely source.”

That remained to be seen, for the ponies here still remained a rather insular lot, despite their new Princess’ best efforts. There was one other point that I had wanted to raise, and that the fact that I was the one raising it implied that the other ponies had either also considered that same thought and dismissed it or had somehow ignored the completely obvious thing that would have resolved this issue without problems.

“What about Discord?” I asked. He was officially ‘neutral’ in this war, as he had demonstrated when the Prime Minister at the time, that rather grey and boring fellow White Hall I believe, asked him if he might intervene on our behalf. I was not in Canterlot at the time, but had heard that Discord loudly declared that he was not the ponies’ attack dog that they can point at a problem to make it go away, and then turned the Prime Minister into a Prench poodle with cotton candy for fur until Princess Celestia demanded that he turn him back in time for the next cabinet meeting. I’d have hoped that the Prince of Chaos would make an exception now that it was his home and the ponies he supposedly called his friends now under threat, and he would simply banish the Changelings to an alternate dimension or turn them all into sheep or whatever solution his depraved mind could dream up.

[Blueblood is correct here. Discord expressed personal disgust at the thought of being used as a weapon and refused to help with the war effort in any way. However, his refusal to interfere went both ways, and aside from the incident that Blueblood described, where after the casualty figures from the Siege of Virion Hive were reported White Hall all but demanded that Discord do what he could to end this war as soon as possible, he did not hinder it in any way.]

The ponies gathered here looked to Fluttershy, who I understood was effectively his guardian here, responsible for keeping him from backsliding into old habits. “He’s on vacation,” she said.

“What do you mean ‘he’s on vacation’?” I asked, rather perplexed. “He doesn’t have a job.”

Fluttershy appeared to be trying to disappear under the table, as she shrank somewhat from what I thought was light inquiry, but I suppose the rather intimidating qualities of my uniform had gotten the better of her. “Oh, he takes spreading chaos very seriously, so sometimes he needs to take a little break.”

I struggled to wrap my head around the concept of the demi-god of chaos requiring a ‘break’ from his nature, but when it comes to that particular menace it was best not to think too hard about any sort of thought or drive behind whatever it was he did. “Can we get him back here?” I asked, it was worth a shot.

“I’m sure he’d be very happy to help us out,” said Fluttershy, and I remained sceptical of that claim, “but I don’t know where he is. He said he was returning to ‘the primordial darkness that has existed before time itself and from which all chaos flows like an ever-flowing stream’, but I don’t think we can reach him there.”

So much for that idea. I knew from the moment that it first sprang into my head that it was simply too good to work, but I held onto the vain hope that there would be a neat and tidy little solution to this problem. If we could just aim the omnipotent embodiment of chaos at the enemy and have him turn them all into fluffy, harmless bunny rabbits then the entire problem would disappear in an instant, and I could go back to Canterlot and carry on ‘advising’ Princess Celestia. ‘Neat and tidy’ are concepts that simply don’t exist in the messy world of reality, not when the universe can contort its way into making life needlessly difficult for me; it was a rather unfortunate coincidence that Discord had chosen the time when we really need him to go on a holiday, and were I of a conspiratorial persuasion I’d have suggested that there was no such coincidence.

I had paid close attention to Filthy Rich when Twilight Sparkle called my assessment of ‘his’ militia ‘honest’. Of course, had I been truly honest in my appraisal I’d have likely been thrown out of the meeting for using unbecoming language in front of a Princess or for physically assaulting the stallion when my words failed to encapsulate just how unlikely their chances were in a straight-forward battle, if there was such a thing. He did not protest, as I would have expected any other officer whose ego vastly exceeds their competence would when the latter is called into question, but maintained the sort of blank and neutral expression that must have served him well either in a board meeting or at a poker table. It was a good sign, thought I, and when the meeting finally came to an end, just as my legs had grown stiff from standing still for so long, I calmly asked him for a quiet word in private with Commissar Starlight Glimmer.

Judging by the mortified look that came over his face, he had worked out precisely what we wanted to tell him; when two commissars ask for a ‘quiet word in private’ it very rarely means anything particularly encouraging in one’s near future, after all, our entire profession is dedicated to making sure that officers do their jobs properly and punishing the ones that don’t. Filthy Rich was all nerves and anxiety when we found a small, empty room near the throne room but away from anypony else, which, given the vastness of this castle that the Tree of Harmony had apparently thought that Twilight Sparkle had needed to execute her royal duties, was not particularly hard to do. I suppose that I could have found a rather less threatening place to do this than a dimly-lit and cramped store room deep within the bowels of the castle, lacking any windows so as to make it all the more claustrophobic for everypony involved, but, like everything else related to this whole ridiculous affair, I wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible.

“What’s this about, sir?” he asked, much of his boardroom bluster having evaporated now. I expected that the dim light from the too-old light in the ceiling had cast my face in a dark shadow from the brim of my peaked cap. It was just the three of us there, as I’d ordered Cannon Fodder to go and find the best available room in the castle for me, and given his surprising knack for procuring things for me and his stubborn personality that treated every command from Yours Truly as though it was divine edict from Celestia herself, I trusted him to do precisely that. I would not have put it past him to attempt to evict Twilight Sparkle from her chambers to make room for me.

Starlight Glimmer looked almost as nervous as Filthy Rich here, and therefore didn’t do what I had expected her to do immediately. Therefore, I had to prompt her, “As commissar of the Ponyville Militia, Starlight Glimmer has something to tell you.”

“Oh, um…” She trailed off, mumbled a bit, then after pulling another one of her anxious grins she said, “You’re fired.”

There are two schools of thought when it comes to delivering bad news to ponies. The first is to do so with kindness and empathy and understanding, which requires patience and time on behalf of the messenger to spare the feelings of the recipient, and the second is to simply get it out in as quick and efficient a manner as possible with no regard to the emotions of the individual on the receiving end, in the hope that they ought to be able to come to terms with it themselves quickly enough. Commissar Starlight Glimmer proved to be a student of the latter, and to a degree that surprised even me, who has been forced to work with ponies for whom manners was a concept that was for others to learn for longer than a prince really ought to. It was no bad thing, of course; her bluntness would allow me to swoop in with a profuse apology, perhaps with an investment in his business that I could cover by asking Auntie ‘Tia for more money or the promise of a Royal Warrant for his shop to help smooth things over, which would allow me to both remove Filthy Rich from his position and look like the better pony compared to Starlight here. However, more fortuitously for me, that was all unnecessary.

“Phew,” he said, smiling. “I was waiting for you to do that. Though am I to understand that Prince Blueblood put you up to this?”

“I may have nudged her in the right direction,” I said, giving her another look. “So you wanted to be removed from the militia?”

His smile faded, and a look of justified wariness came over him. “Now hold on, did you really think I was being serious when I said that nonsense about not needing to change into my uniform?”

“I had an inkling,” I said, lying as usual; I’d met far too many incompetent officers in the first few years of the war to ever give another one the benefit of the doubt, not when I had seen the bloody outcome of their stupidity and had been at least partially responsible for it for failing to act when I could.

“I don’t understand,” said Starlight Glimmer. “You wanted to be fired? Couldn’t you have just, you know, stepped down?”

“I wanted us to have a frank discussion about this,” he said. “It’s my wife, you see. All of her friends’ spouses bought their commissions when that was still allowed at the start of the war, while I stayed back to re-align Barnyard Bargain’s business model to better serve its customers in the new economic reality of the war. As a result, we have…” he reeled off a staggering array of numbers and statistics that were utterly lost on me, but they were big numbers so I made the safe assumption that they meant everything was going well for his company, “...so, as you can see, not only has Barnyard Bargains survived under these circumstances, but thrived. Securing contracts to supply the Ministry of War with weapons, uniforms, rations, and everything else a modern army needs to get the job done will be the next step in growing our business.”

Some ponies might call that war profiteering, and I would be one of them, because Filthy Rich was precisely the sort of the new breed of aspirational, grasping, middle class commoner who didn’t know his place that I rather distrusted. He, much like Fancy Pants, had not inherited his wealth and prestige from generations of nobility dating back to when Equestria was a twinkle in Princess Celestia’s eye (though I’d later learnt that he in fact inherited his business from his father, who in turn had received it from his father, but that still didn’t go far enough to count), but had done so through what he might call ‘hard work’. Whatever position, money, and power that he might have ‘earned’ through his business would never be enough for his sort, constantly demanding more and more, and with none of the decorum, grace, and tact that those who have their positions through right of birth possess. They will always be jealous of our kind, the nobility that have guided Equestria since time immemorial in Princess Celestia’s name, and yet feeling inferior for lacking the very qualities that we possess.

“She’d rather you seek glory on the battlefield?” I asked. Something could always be arranged, I thought; a penal battalion somewhere would always need some luckless officer to keep the scum not suited for frontline service in check. Still, it was an old, predictable sort of story, and though I felt the urge to tease him about what was presumably a nagging wife, on this occasion I suppressed that bullying instinct of mine and held my tongue.

“I’m a bit too old for that, you see,” he continued. I would have guessed his age to be in his late thirties or early forties, which, while being rather late to start a mediocre military career, was still young enough to enroll in the Royal Academy, if he didn’t mind sharing classes with ponies half his age. “Commanding the Ponyville Militia was an acceptable compromise. We protected the new Princess of Friendship and the village from Changeling spies, though most of them turned out to be ordinary ponies going about their daily business. It was all funded by myself and supplied by Barnyard Bargains, and that gave Spoiled something to brag about to her friends in her weekly book club and mimosa meetings.”

The final pieces of the puzzle fell into place to reveal a perfect picture of the tedious and vacuous social politics of a tiny, provincial village; he had been content to parade about as the commander of the militia, after having financed much of it, and collect the rather dubious credit for it without actually needing to put any real work or effort into the whole thing. I almost admired him for the scheme, and he might have carried on doing that were it not for the unthinkable happening and he would actually have to lead ponies in battle, which was something that he, to his dubious credit, acknowledged was something that he was incapable of doing properly.

“And it would help you get the lucrative deal to supply the Ministry of War,” I said.

“Wait, hold on,” said Starlight Glimmer. “Wouldn’t being ‘fired’” - she made the gesture that I believe the youth call ‘air-quotes’ with her forehooves - “be more of an embarrassment than quitting the job voluntarily?”

The easy grin of a seasoned salespony was quick to return to Filthy Rich’s face. “I thought we could make a deal,” he said. “After all, keeping my shops supplied with all the goods a pony could want at a discount price is much like supplying an army with weapons, ammunition, food, and all that. Indeed, the Ponyville Militia is the best-equipped militia unit in all of Equestria. Nowhere else can boast a home guard where every single member has a modern musket, and that’s all thanks to Barnyard Bargain’s efficient procurement and supply chain.”

[Militia units were primarily supplied by the Ministry of War, but as frontline units received top priority the local defence forces had to make do with what was left and what they could scrounge up themselves. Some, like Ponyville, were able to gain funding from private individuals, but most rural settlements of similar size were equipped only with a small number of muskets, homemade armour, and whatever other weaponry they could improvise.]

“That’s all very impressive,” I said, feeling anything but. “What does it have to do with you stepping down?”

“Spoiled Rich would be very disappointed if I lost the command of the militia; I’ll never hear the end of it. But, if I could have that contract with the Ministry of War, then that would keep her happy.”

Well, as long as it kept his wife happy, I thought bitterly to myself; clearly that was the greater priority here than the horde of two thousand Changelings about to besiege the tiny village. Ponies behave oddly in times of unprecedented crisis, as decades of experience had told me, and part of training to be an effective officer was to learn how to avoid focusing on the less important matters, which ponies will tend to do to put off having to deal with the very large and scary impending disaster in the hope somepony else will do it for them. Perhaps in these later years, when I have had far too much time to think upon these things and wonder if events could have transpired in a different way to another, I feel inclined to be at least a little bit more generous to just some of the ponies who history has judged to have failed in their duties. After all, if another pony had looked a little too closely to what I was doing at the time, I might find myself in the same position. Not everypony, of course, but in this one particular case with this one particular pony standing before me, as grasping and greedy as his sort tend to be, I now can’t entirely condemn him for floundering about uselessly now that the war, with all of its well-documented horror, had unexpectedly arrived at his home. Back then, however, it was damned tricky to keep my temper in check.

“And who would you have lead the militia instead?” I asked.

“Applejack,” he said without hesitation. “As the militia’s senior NCO, she’s already doing most of the job of running the militia for me. She knows almost everypony in the militia, and it’s her farm that we’re fortifying. She’s perfect for the job.”

I found that I couldn’t disagree, but that was only because I lacked any more information about the ponies here. My other choice would have been Twilight Sparkle, were it not for that law that forbade alicorn princesses from leading ponies-in-arms. Upon reflection, her many neuroses and tendency to get bogged down in detail, all of which had helped her lead the inquiry and write the report that led to the reform of the Royal Guard, would not be of much benefit in the rapidly-shifting space of a modern battlefield, but I concluded that she could look after supply lines and count cartridges while other ponies got on with the fighting and the dying. Still, from my position as an amateur whose interest in these matters was entirely against his will, Applejack seemed like a good choice; the Bearer of the Element of Honesty might have seemed like a poor choice given how much of warfare is based upon deception, but it also meant that she could be relied upon not to tell great big fibs for the benefit of her own career like some officers I’d worked with. That it was her home and business on the frontline, as Filthy Rich had said, added further incentive for her to apply herself. I hadn’t had the pleasure of her company for very long, but from what I had heard from others, including Twilight Sparkle, the young apple farmer was as stubborn as they come, which, as I understood it, was a trait most suited for fighting a defensive battle.

It was going to be grim, either way, and I knew that nopony here was in the least bit ready for it. However, nopony ever is until they find themselves thrust head-first into the blood and fire of battle, and even then, though I have waded through the filth and fog of war far too many times than ought to be considered sensible for a single pony, I could never say that I ever thought myself ‘ready’ for it. If I were to find the silver lining in all of this, this unreadiness meant that I kept some measure of my true self intact.

“Commissar Starlight,” I said, and she stiffened in response, “please tell Applejack the good news about her promotion.”

“Oh, um, okay sir.” She made a clumsy salute by slapping herself on the forehead with the back of her forehoof, the wrong one, and trotted out of the room.

“So, you’ll arrange the contract?” asked Filthy Rich, just as I was about to follow Starlight Glimmer. He had moved to block the way out of the room, and for a moment I considered if, after all of the pain and damage inflicted upon my body through these years of conflict and drink and insufficient exercise, I had the strength to push him out of the way. He was an earth pony, and while he had the rather stocky frame of his tribe I thought much of that was merely the padding in his suit. It was unlikely that he regularly performed the hard manual labour that their kind was built for, and he probably lifted nothing heavier than stacks of hardcopy. “Like you said.”

“I said that I will send a letter to the Secretary of State for War, nothing more. I’m in no position to make any sort of promises about future contracts.”

“Of course, sir,” he said, suddenly all rather deferential. The grasping middle classes will do that when cornered by a pony of superior social rank, for though they envy and despise us for our privilege, they will not be above resorting to the deference appropriate to our gulf in station in order to get what they want. “However, you understand that I can’t simply give up the command of the militia without something in return, and their weapons, ammunition, and uniforms are supplied by Barnyard Bargains.”

“And you must understand that I must put the defence of this village above all other considerations,” I said, advancing upon him. “It is well within my right to declare martial law and seize what is needed by force, but I trust that it won’t come to that.”

He tried to look serious for a moment, and though it might have intimidated a junior executive at a tense board meeting it had rather the opposite effect on me. Despite my reputation, I was never what one would call a tough pony, but years of regal training as a prince and the sense of superiority that comes with it have made me immune to most ponies’ attempts to cow me into submission with a glare or by shouting, with or without threats of violence upon me. Or rather, they have made me much better at concealing it than most other ponies, with the notable exceptions of the two alicorn princesses who outrank me. Perhaps two years ago, when I first donned the cap and scarlet sash, I would have been gripped by indecision until events proceeded to the point where I could not ignore the problem, by which point too many ponies would be dead for my failure to act. No longer would I be bound by such inaction, to stand by and watch the stupid and the incompetent waste lives, and besides, I could still blame Applejack and Starlight Glimmer if things went to Tartarus.

“Ponies here won’t stand for that,” he said. “We might be at war, but we still have laws. We would be no better than the Changelings if we allowed the military to seize property like that.”

“If the villagers are still here to complain about my overreach, that means I’ve done my job and they’re still alive and free,” I said, “and they may be more interested to learn about how you have just tried to extort their safety for profit, Mr Rich.”

With that, I pushed past him and strutted out into the corridor. The contemporary accounts, historical records, and abysmal fiction regarding this ridiculous battle for this tiny village make little to no mention of the conversation I’d had with Filthy Rich there, and the few ones that do have him graciously step down as commander of the militia in favour of Applejack of his own accord; the truth rather complicates the comforting narrative of the inhabitants of a small village banding together and prevailing against impossible odds. If you, dear reader, are reading this, then I will presume that you have also read the other entries in this long, rambling screed of a private confession, unless you decided to pick out a page at random and are wondering what on Equus I’m writing about, and are therefore familiar with the idea that the reality is far more muddled and complicated than the stories our nation tells about itself. Nevertheless, that was that, and I’d ejected a pony thoroughly unsuitable for command from his position, and in his stead would be somepony else who was, in theory, better able to lead ponies into battle.

Now that that was out of the way for now, I caught up with Princess Twilight Sparkle and the others out in the castle grounds again. There, a single section of the Ponyville militia, about ten ponies, were ready to show off the shiny new muskets that Filthy Rich’s business had procured for them. To their credit, they performed about as well as I would imagine a group of earth ponies with a dubious background in education would with only a few hours’ practice with the things. Only one of them accidentally fired the ramrod into the air, but by and large they had demonstrated that they knew how to go through the drill manual with a reasonable amount of competence, if not with the sort of speed and accuracy required. One of the ponies even managed to hit the target, and he whooped excitedly. What remained, however, was to see if they could perform just as well with a swarm advancing upon them, wings buzzing, muskets and cannons roaring, and smoke filling their lungs. Some ponies might scoff at the emphasis placed upon repetitive drill, of marching pointlessly up and down the square in formation or standing perfectly still for hours at a time, but all of it is necessary to suppress that natural and perfectly rational instinct in all of us to turn tail and run away from a mortal threat. As Square Basher would put it, all that she demands of a soldier is to stand her ground and fight, which is easier said than done, but performing drill until all the physical motions were entirely automatic certainly helped with that. I would not trust these militia ponies to hold.

After that was finished, Starlight Glimmer broke the good news to Applejack, who gratefully accepted the promotion with a phlegmatic, “Well, I guess someone’s got to do it, and it might as well be me.”

The rather somber mood, however, was somewhat spoiled when Rarity, having overheard the short conversation, loudly declared, “Oh my! You’re an officer now, Applejack! Which means you must have a new uniform to match.”

“Can’t I just swap the stripes for those crown-things?” said Applejack with an exasperated sigh, the sort that indicated that this sort of behaviour from her friend was hardly a surprise.

“Well, yes, you could,” said Rarity, trotting around Applejack with the sort of scrutinising eye one of my tailors would give when I told him I’d like a white mess jacket made for evening wear. “But as an officer you need to look like a beacon of leadership and inspiration to the soldiers under your command. Now, how much gold braid do you think the new Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ponyville Militia requires?”

While the two of them bickered, and it went on for quite a while, the rest of us moved onto the next portion of the demonstration. I assumed that Rarity was feeling quite useless in this impending disaster, and indeed there was not much use for a seamstress in a siege unless we wanted to look particularly smart while starving, and so this would allow her to at least pretend that she was being somewhat useful here. It is a rather unflattering explanation, but not an inaccurate one either. They continued arguing about Applejack’s uniform as we carried on towards an open field, and I commented to Twilight Sparkle that it would have been far simpler for Applejack to simply let Rarity make a uniform for her.

“It would,” said Twilight, smiling as she glanced over her shoulder to where Applejack was trying to stop Rarity from taking her measurements. I hoped that she would remain just as obstinate about defending the farm as she was about this rather petty thing.

We arrived at the next demonstration rather more quickly than I had anticipated, located in a field just outside of the village outskirts, and it was here, gathered under the warming Spring sun that I discovered that the most terrifying words in the Ponish language were:

“Behold! The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Deadly and Accurate Rocket Artillery!”

To say that I was alarmed to learn that the militia possessed artillery would be under-selling it - I was mortified that civilians would possess modern weaponry capable of gradually reducing fortifications to rubble. However, over the course of the walk here, I reasoned that any such ‘artillery’ would either be a handful of museum pieces or something they’ve improvised, and either way it was unlikely to be particularly effective. When we arrived, greeted by a showpony whom I did not expect to see here, much less involved in military matters, I saw that it was the latter sort.

“Trixie,” said Twilight, with the sort of tone of voice that one typically reserves for addressing mortal enemies, “those are fireworks inside drainpipes.”

Said showmare scoffed, and trotted around where she had set up a number of black, plastic tubes with various rockets poking out of the end to come face-to-face with Twilight. She had a smug, superior smirk on her face. “Yes, to the unimaginative sort of pony they would appear to be merely fireworks inside drainpipes, but the visiting Commissar Blueblood here can clearly see that this is a fine example of the ‘can-do’ spirit of this little frontier town. Explosives are packed inside a convenient and aerodynamic delivery system, and launched from a sophisticatedly accurate launch apparatus. After all, the only thing that separates a firework from a devastating weapon of mass destruction is what it is aimed at.”

“Of course, Trixie,” said Twilight, forcing a grin. “If, for example, it was aimed at my bedroom window and detonated in my en suite bathroom then it would be ‘artillery’.”

“Progress requires sacrifice. I was calibrating the aiming system and Twilight’s garish castle is the biggest landmark in all of Ponyville. Besides, you shouldn’t have been sleeping with the window open while I was testing the Great and Powerful Trixie’s Deadly and Accurate Rocket Artillery.”

“It was two in the morning!”

“The wheels on the cart of innovation never stop turning, Twilight.”

They were very clearly fireworks inside drainpipes. Trixie, whom I last saw being chased from an RASEA show by an angry mob of unhappy Horsetrailian sappers who had burned down the stage, had half a dozen of these drainpipes, each of varying size and some still with their fittings attached, which implied to me that she had seized them for military use from ponies’ houses and business, propped on bricks and cinder blocks. We stood at the top of a small slope, and at the far end of this field were a couple of scarecrows, dressed in black so as to vaguely resemble Changeling drones, to serve as target practice.

“Nevertheless, I shall now demonstrate the Deadly and Accurate Rocket Artillery for the benefit of our visiting Commissar! Whom the Gracious and Magnanimous Trixie has forgiven for his unfair banning from all military entertainment shows.”

As Trixie trotted away to perform the procedure of lighting the fuses with a box of matches, I leaned in close to Twilight, catching a whiff of her scent, and whispered, “This ought to be entertaining at least.”

“I don’t often hear that word in close relation to Trixie,” remarked Twilight under her breath.

I watched her struggle a few times with the matches, and despite being ‘Great and Powerful’, it appeared that Trixie didn’t know any basic fire spells. A small pile of dead matches formed around her hooves. Knowing a basic one that I used to light my cigars, I was about to go and help when Twilight Sparkle gently touched her hoof to my side and shook her head. I detected some measure of animosity between the two ponies, and Trixie certainly had the sort of personality that could earn the opprobrium of even the Princess of Friendship here. However, while Trixie continued to struggle with the matches, Starlight Glimmer trotted on over and obliged with a few sparks from her horn.

“Fire in the hole!” bellowed Trixie. The fuses were lit, and the flames licked up the length of rope alarmingly quickly. A look of panic came over the two mares, and both turned tail and ran back towards our group. However, in her mad flight, Trixie had knocked over one of the drainpipes. It lurched over to the left, colliding with its neighbour, which in turn tipped over and knocked into the next one, and the one after that. Trixie and Starlight raced back together to arrest the domino effect, gathering up the ‘launch apparatus’ in hooves and magic as the fire raced further up fuses that seemed much too short.

“Trixie!” screamed Twilight Sparkle.

“Trixie is a little busy!” she yelled back. In gathering up some of the pipes in her hooves, she, apparently heedless of her surroundings, aimed them directly at us. Within the three or so that were pointed in my direction, I could see, immersed in the darkness, the nose cones of half a dozen rockets packed into each drain pipe. She finally looked down at the ‘rocket artillery’ in her hooves, the lit fuse, and then the assemblage of ponies who were gradually backing away from her. “Fu-”

I threw myself to the ground just behind Twilight Sparkle, forehooves over my ears, just in time to see her horn light up with a powerful purple glow that spread out as a vast magical shield. Rockets shrieked through the air and detonated harmlessly against the shield, erupting in dazzling displays of glittering sparkles and smoke. But as the cacophony filled my ears and the stench of burnt powder wafted in the air, I clenched my eyes shut and trembled. The noise and the smell dragged up memories that I’d rather have forgotten: a front rank of Night Guards shredded by canister shot at Black Venom Pass when the Changelings turned our own artillery against us; the shattered walls of Virion Hive slick with blood as ponies stormed the defended breach again and again; hiding in a hole atop a desolate hill while the enemy pounded us with cannon and mortar fire…

Somepony touched my shoulder, and I stood with a jerk. I was shaking and felt quite unsteady, my heart pounded, and I saw that the ponies had gathered around me and all wore expressions of concern. Smoke wafted on the thin breeze around us, the grass at our hooves was scorched and littered with the burnt detritus from Trixie’s fireworks. Said showmare had the decency to look a little sheepish for her near-assassination of a Prince and the entire leadership of the Ponyville Militia. Thus far she’d come closer than any Changeling assassin to finishing me off, were it not for Twilight Sparkle’s skill with magic and admirable reflexes. Beyond, I saw that the field was pockmarked with craters, but the collection of scarecrows were entirely unharmed.

I say everypony looked worried, but a certain infant dragon did not. “So much for the great war hero,” scoffed Spike. “Scared of some fireworks.”

A few ponies glared at him. “Spike,” hissed Rainbow Dash. “Not. Cool.”

“Are you okay, sir?” asked Fluttershy. I was a little surprised to find that her concern was genuine, though I ought to have expected as much from the Bearer of the Element of Kindness.

“I’m fine,” I said, dusting the grass from my much-abused uniform. Embarrassment quickly overrode the odd feeling of mortal fear, dredged up from those past battles by being subjected to an unplanned bombardment by Trixie’s fireworks. I regained my composure quickly, standing straighter, and determined to move on and pretend this unfortunate display never happened. “I need to see Sweet Apple Acres.”

“We could have a break if you want,” said Twilight Sparkle. Damn her, I wasn’t used to this sort of empathy from others and certainly didn’t deserve it. So I brushed it off with a shake of my head.

“The enemy aren’t going to take breaks.”