In Pursuit of Chaos

by CeresBane

Night 78

Dear Arch-Cleric

I now write to you with the grim acknowledgement of this being likely my last letter. I am cold and hungry and in so much pain, but I will endure. I will tell my story.

I had hoped to see my day to day life pass by uneventfully in my role as a border patrol guardsman. However I now see that that was a naive presumption. It was almost everyday the borderlands were under attack by the forces of the night. They groped about, testing our defences and exhausting our morale with relentless wave after wave. Sleep was as much ration as food then. The raids came without seeming to have rhyme or rhythm. The prospect of attack was a constant thought in our minds, the fear leeching the will to sleep and our weariness draining our desire to function. Even out in the light, the soldiers of the night are as elusive as the shadows they live in.

I will say to you with confidence that no innocents have died by my hand. However due to my lack of intervention, I have cost the lives of many a pony close to me. Do you know how it feels like living everyday with the regret of not saving lives you could have? It's horrible, torturous in fact and I endured. The consequence of this however has contempt cover me in it's dark shadow. Those that use to call me brother accused me of treachery, of insubordination and espionage. They were harmless rumours, hearsays and suppositions. But with each passing day. They began to be facts in the minds of those ponies, as more and more of their number fell and I as ever did nothing but live.

By the time reinforcements came, to their eyes I was as much the enemy as the ponies that haunt them. And so I fled west, hiding my fleeing under the cover of the chaos of battle. Now as a deserter I fear I may never see the empire again. No doubt, I will be hunted like the dog I am. I wish you to acknowledge my apology to the souls I failed.

My complaints of my early days were nothing compared to this. Sure, ponies shunned me, barring doors and listening ears. But in this cold and dark land. Ponies were trying to kill me. I once complained in my youth of how my blue eyes revealed unto the world the lunarian blood in my veins. For so long I've held such contempt to myself for it, wishing upon the goddess to emblazon my eyes much like my coat and mane. Now however I wish the complete opposite.

My solaris body is not engineered to live out in this darkness. In this darkness, the goddess gave no blessing. No energy from the sun to regenerate my wounds nor invigorate my blood. Here my body drained of energy by simply being here, shivering madly as if something were terribly wrong with me. My reactions are sluggish and my breathing is painfully ragged. I know that if I do not get help soon, I will die.

But that is not the worse of it. The border patrol on this side is so much more thorough. Ponies here do not muddle about in rank and file squads of which ponies could stalk past in between the gaps of patrols. They prefer to act as a small loosely formed unit, stalking the darkness and remaining just out of my sight. But you could most certainly hear them. Constantly I hear the dull thud of their hooves or the rustle of bushes and grass, their whispers in the wind and that deep, hallow breathing. They seem to be everywhere at once and I don't know what to do.

I encountered them once and it was one of scariest times of my life. First entering the kingdom I was no where near as cautious, thinking myself safe now that I had come beyond the reach of the empire. Naturally this cost me, within my first hour I had been spotted and instantly the land surrounding me had puffed into an inky black smoke. I complain now about this darkness, but when those smoke bombs they used went off, you are enveloped in utter pitch darkness. And there I was coughing and hacking at the obviously noxious smoke, while these soldiers began to encroach on my location. My first instinct was to flee, however all sides barred my way. Eastward was back to the kingdom that now saw me as a criminal and everywhere else was death by the hands of the other side.

I had to fight.

To my fortune, a single soldier had found me and it seemed that the others were still reasonably far away from what I could hear. I took down the soldier with a good buck to the back of the head, after a long struggle. My original plan was disguise myself as one of the soldiers and escape, however there was no time as the struggle with the soldier had taken too long. The soldier's comrades were near at this point, I could sense it and in my panicked state I found myself running low on reserves of air. Looking at the soldier for something useful I desperately put on the soldier's gas mask.

I regretted it immediately.

It was like breathing in a sub-zero drought of frozen air, draining my body instantly to my currently weakened state. Fumbling for anything to use, I stole the soldier's glowing goggles.and ran. To my surprise, these goggles could let you see heat! Through them I was amazed how easily I stood out in the darkness, my burning solaris blood giving away my position. Further unfortunately for me, the lunarians' blood were too cold to see through the goggles. I was about to take them off and stamp on the useless things until I saw a flash in the darkness, then another and another. Within instants, it followed with cacophony of loud bangs and the whistling of objects narrowly missing me. I took off the goggles and looked out. I found that the lunarian rifle shots were just about invisible to the naked eye, especially with that smoke.

I fled.

With only the flashes to guide me of danger. Thanks to my reflexes, this marvel of lunarian technology and the impractical reloading time it took for the rifles to ready. I quickly gained distance and got away. I feel fortunate that all I got was harpoon to the back leg from those rifles. But as of yet I cannot work out how to remove it due to the barbs they sculpted into them. I fear very soon I will die from several causes. And so I beseech hasty aid to me. I will be heading towards a local border town directly west of Canterlot.

I pray that you find me before I make it.

-Piety