In Golden Armor

"Mr. Ink?"  Red Ink mentally shook himself awake and looked over at the filly who had spoken.  It was Hidden Brush, standing in front of his desk, biting her lip.

"Yes Miss Brush?"

"I..."  She paused and seemed to collect herself.  "I'm enlisting."

Red Ink let his quill fall onto his papers.  "I see.  And, what inspired you to do this?"

Hidden was quiet for a second.  "Because... because I can't bring myself not to."  Red Ink was about to interrupt when she continued,  "I mean, I see everypony signing up, ponies I've known for years and... and they're going off to a place where they'll probably die!"  Red Ink let her continue.  "I want to help.  I'm enlisting in the 107th Medical Battalion.  She spoke the last statement with determination.

Red Ink had taught Hidden for two years now.  She was a straight A student, and she was the president of the Leftovers club, a club at the school where kids could get together and hang out.  She was kind, funny, smart, and a bombshell among the colts.  And there was nothing Red Ink could do to stop her.

"Have you told your parents?"

Hidden nodded her head.

Ink sighed.  "So why tell me?"  He asked, wishing she hadn't.

She gave a small smile and her eyes twinkled with a youthful spark.  "Because I want you to be prepared for when they start erecting statues for my heroism.

Red Ink crawled on his stomach through the field, dragging his bandaged chest through the soft, fertile dirt.  His chest hurt.  The last thing he remembered, we being stabbed in the chest by a griffin recruit.  He'd been flanked and caught without his sword, and then he'd been stabbed in the chest.

He remembered how he'd turned, and caught the griffin with his sword pulled back for a thrust.  The griffin's green eyes had gone wide, then he'd thrust the sword through Red Ink's breastplate, and into his chest.  He remembered feeling the blade passing through his skin and flesh and into his body.

Red Ink shuddered and let his sweaty, bloody head fall the the ground.  He'd fallen unconscious in nopony's land.  During that time, the Griffins had overrun the Celestial Guard.  Red Ink's platoon was nowhere to be found. To follow his retreating platoon would mean to run right into the advancing griffin forces.   However, there was a griffin town roughly twenty miles pas the abandoned griffin trenches.   And so, Red Ink started walking.  He walked past the empty Griffin trenches, and he continued walking.

And now it was night.  Luna's moon shone overhead giving him little visibility.  He continued to crawl, his head dragging in the dirt, until he ran into something wooden.  For a few seconds, Red Ink didn't do anything.  He chose to simply lay there and think about how easy it would be to just fall asleep.  And then he opened his eyes, and dragged himself to his hooves.  He had butted headfirst into the side of a house.

He stared up at the dark windows for a moment, taking in the silence with boundless apathy.  "Don't move."

Red Ink obliged.  The voice then told him to turn around slowly.  Red Ink obliged.  He grunted and wheezed as he rolled himself over onto his back.  A bright light flickered to life from the source of the voice, causing Ink to shield his eyes from its angry glare.  The griffin holding the torch and pitchfork to his neck cursed his griffonic gods.  The griffin told Red Ink that Red Ink was a Celestial Guard.  Red Ink nodded his head and confirmed that he was indeed, a Celestial Guard.

The two sat in silence for a minute, Red Ink, lost in the pain and the griffin lost in thought.  The griffin asked Ink if he could walk, to which ink responded with a shrug.

The griffin stared at him for a moment before chucking the pitchfork into the earth beside him and reaching out with a claw.  Red Ink numbly slipped his hoof into the griffin's grasp and allowed the griffin to tug him to his wobbling hooves.  "Get walking, kid."

Red Ink slowly stumbled a few steps before muttering to the griffin that he wasn't a kid, that he was indeed, twenty-nine, and then his hooves crumbled under his body and he passed out.