Gray's Gone

by ArmOfSorrow

Luna's Assistance

Staring at her, watching for any sudden movements, I inched my hand toward my boot, preparing to stab this pony with my boot knife if she did anything threatening.

Noticing my movement, she narrowed her eyes and spoke “PEACE, HUMAN. WE ARE NOT HERE TO HARM YOU, BUT TO ASSIST YOU.”

Ow. Boy, she spoke really loud. Before I could make a snide comment, another bat pony trotted up to her and whispered into her ear. She mad an ‘oh’ face, and the bat pony bowed and trotted away.

“Our apologies, we believed that the Royal Canterlot voice was appropriate for this meeting.” She looked sheepish for a second, before I spoke up and accepted her apology.

“It’s alright, I guess. Who are you?”

“I am Luna, Princess of the Night, raiser of the moon, and Celestia’s dearest sister. If we may inquire, who are you? I know only that there were two Humans discovered in the Everfree, but not the names by which you are addressed.” At this, Luna began to study me, examining my clothes and body features. “You are more similar to a minotaur than any pony we have encountered.”

“Aye, we aren’t. My name is Corporal Mason Gray.”

“Hmm… You are part of a military, are you not? Corporal is a rank that we have in our own forces.”

"Yes ma’am, hence the camouflage.”

“Interesting. I had not thought the myths were true. Anyway, we must go, I fear that Celestia has already heard of my Night Guard’s attack, and would surely have sent more corrupted guards. Come, we must fly to a safer location. We shall speak along the way.”

“Corrupted guards? Myths? What to you mea- HNNNG!”

Before I could finish, Luna levitated me onto her back, dropping me from about six inches above her back, just enough for a rather… painful landing. Unfortunately, Luna couldn’t fly because my legs were blocking her wings, so she ordered two of her guard to levitate me as they flew, instead. Before long, we were following a small trail through the Everfree Forest.

Speaking to Luna as we flew, I asked, “So Princess, you seemed to already know what species I was, and mentioned something about corruption and myths. Care to explain?”

“Well, Corporal, aside from reading Twilight’s reports, I knew because you’re a two legged creature wearing clothes. Minotaurs tend to prefer nudity, and you have an obvious lack of back hooves, so I assumed you were part of a story. Humans are something of a myth here in Equestria. I was about to ask you where you came from, which part of Equestria your people were hiding in, and if we should be concerned.”

“No, I’m afraid I’m not from this world. At least, I don’t think I am. I was brought here by some demon type thing.”

“Interesting… There are some very, very faint stories about Humans conquering this world many millennia before Discord took control. However, those stories are so old… I believe even Discord would consider Humans to be fake, and his reign lasted for several millennia before Tia and I were even born.”

‘That’s kinda cool, I’m supernatural here.’ I thought, weighing the benefits of essentially being a rare creature. “So, how did the stories come into existence?”

“I do not know. As I said before, if it is true, the Human’s reign was so long ago that few common ponies even know of the myths of humans.

“Uh huh. What about… oh, ruins. No creepy, dark, crypts of some old town or city?”

“We have several ruins throughout Equestria, however none of the myths describe the kinds of cities that Humans lived in. We have found ruins made of stone, ruins of caves, and ruins made out of wood. Most are simply dismissed as ancient pony tribe ruins, because the designs are similar to traditional earth pony builds. However, there is one recently unearthed ruin in the Crystal Mountains that has had quite some controversy surrounding it.”

“Oooh, spooky. What kind of controversy?” I asked. Hah, it reminded me of like an old “Mummy’s Curse” type movie, unleashing hell upon all who entered it.

“Well, a large percentage of the population of the Crystal Empire condemn the excavation because of the original mining crew of three hundred, one hundred and ninety-nine of them have been found dead in secluded parts of the ruins.

‘Yeap, Mummy’s Curse.’

Speaking of ruins, when I took a look below me, I saw that we were nearing an old castle ruin, which itself was situated behind a large gorge with a small wooden bridge. The bat ponies set me down, and I began to walk toward Luna, to ask more questions.

“So what’s your opinion of the matter?” I asked, wondering why the mine hasn’t been shut down yet.

“I feel that there should be a large security force to continue the unearthing, because ancient pony tribe ruins are too rare to simply be ignored. Alas, Cadance firmly believes that by simply casting repeated love and calming spells over the mines, the deaths will cease. I cannot actually do anything about it, you see, because although Cadance is our niece, the Crystal Empire is not our territory.”

‘That’s stupid.’ I thought. “On Earth, miners deaths are more often than not an international event, and something that several countries come together to investigate and correct.”

“That makes your world sound rather peaceful and cooperative, contrary to Twilight’s reports.”

“Only because the deaths are civilians. Any death that isn’t of an unarmed citizen is pretty much either covered up or blamed on other countries. So what about the corruption that you mentioned? You said that Celestia might send more corrupted guards.”

“Ah, yes… the source of the problem, right now. It started about a month before your arrival, I believe. Celestia began to have nightmares and hallucinations, screaming for hours and once even having an entire conversation with the air about trees. Soon after, she would jerk her legs in awkward positions, to which she claimed she had no control. Eventually, she even began to get angry at the servants and guards, something I have never seen her do. This, in combination with her hallucinations and involuntary movement, led me to believe that she was magically diseased. I once brought up the topic with her, but she snapped at me and nearly attempted to attack me. I have not brought it up since.”

“So what about the guards? How did the guards become corrupted?”

“Well, it’s really only her personal guard that were infected too. It eventually spread to her Solar Guard. They suffered similar symptoms, along with several of them becoming ataxic. One has died, that I know of.”

“How come you or your guards haven’t been affected? You seem to have been in close contact with the Princess throughout her troubles.” This was starting to sound really weird, almost like it was a zombie movie.

“I do not know. None of my guard have exhibited this behavior, and none of the common guard have either. It seems to be restrained to only Celestia and her personal escorts, along with the Solar Guard.”

‘They shouldn’t be too hard to overpower then, I don’t understand why Luna hasn’t assumed control already.’ I thought about the situation for several minutes, considering what I had been told. “How big is Celestia’s personal guard?” I asked, for the sake of answering a question in the back of my mind.

“Tia’s personal guard and Solar Guard total about one-hundred and fifty guardsponies, all elitely trained and are now quite aggressive. They locked down the palace and claim to have orders from Celestia herself to execute any ponies that attempt to gain access. While I could easily take them on, I would rather not harm my sister’s bodyguards.”

Contemplating the situation, I turned around and began to walk toward the ruined castle. As I thought about possible reasons for the “magical disease”, a batpony lunged forward and began to push me towards the castle.

“Hey, what’s the deal? What the fu- hmph.”

Princess Luna herself had clamped a hoof over my mouth, silencing me. Leading me behind one of the few remaining stone pillars, she slowly released her hoof and whispered into my ear.

“Quiet. There is a corrupted guard coming to land, and he nearly saw you. Be still, and do not make a sound.”

Moments after she finished talking, a white guardspony landed in the courtyard. However, this one seemed crippled, in pain even. It landed awkwardly, extending it’s hooves to land at the last second, before crumpling to the ground. Slowly, it began to stand up, and I took a good look at the “corruption” that Luna spoke of.

The guard’s coat was a similar off-white like other guards’ coats had been. His mane was streaked with grime and what appeared to be blood, giving him an evil, demonic look. He stumbled around the courtyard, staring off into space and muttering gibberish to himself. Turning sharply, he began to walk towards Luna and I, who had sunk to the ground to try and be less visible. The guard’s eyes were glossy, like he was about to cry, and there was bloody foam around his mouth. He had scrapes all around his head and neck, many of which were bleeding freely, and at one point, coughed up a torrent of bloody phlegm which landed just a couple of feet away from Luna and I. Glancing at his back legs, I noticed that the skin beneath the coat was dark, glossy, and oozing a putrid yellow color that soaked the fur around his hooves. ‘The dark spots that I saw earlier must have been disease marks.’ I thought, scrunching up my face in disgust. It appeared that the meat of his legs was infected with a flesh destroying virus, but he seemed oblivious to any pain.

After several minutes of aimless stumbling and mumbling, the guard spread his wings (which themselves were damaged; the tip of his left wing was nearly severed from the same virus on his legs.) and flew away.

“It’s as if he was dead, but he clearly wasn’t! His mind wasn’t there at all either. He was delirious and seemed to have no idea what he was doing. His mind must have deteriorated to the point where he can only recognize Celestia’s orders; the one thing he swore to obey forever and always.” Luna said, slowly shaking her head in bewilderment.

I could do nothing but gaze in confusion at the spot on the horizon that the guard had disappeared to. He was reminiscent of a zombie, once again, but it was all too clear that he was alive. The incomprehensible muttering proved that to me. “Where the fuck could that disease have come from? I don’t even think we have shit like that on Earth, and we’re pretty fucked up.”

War wasn’t a pretty thing, I knew that already. I had seen enough bodies during previous missions to know that, but this was just strange. The ruler of this supposedly peaceful nation was infected with… THAT, and my best friend in the world was stuck with her. She might have been calm during our meeting, but what about later on? What was going to happen to Matt? I really needed to find out where this disease came from, who it was most likely to infect, and if I could help to stop it.

“I apologize, Mason, but we still do not know exactly where an ailment of that caliber could have originated. I had all of the Canterlot logs being scanned before the castle was shut down, but so far the only place Celestia has visited recently would be the ruins in the Crystal Mountains.”

“Oh. Well. That’s actually pretty obvious, looking at it now. An ominous mine that continuously causes the deaths of workers, and then the Princess and her group of soldiers visit it and suddenly there’s a zombie-type virus going around that exact same group of ponies? It’s coming from there.” 'How cliche.This is gonna be one big clusterfuck of a discovery, if movies are any indication of this type of ordeal.'

Comments

[mcb893]

And this is why you don't get a court martial for not trusting ponies on sight.

[ArmOfSorrow]

2221699 Well, I'm glad that your keeping up with the updates but I do have to at least make one correction: in your last post, you said that they wear ACUs. For the majority of the armed forces, ACUs are the uniform, but USMC Special Forces have reverted back to MARPAT Woodland BDUs. However, thanks for the comments, they help!

[mcb893]

2221816 Wouldn't the US Army be deployed into Russia rather then a USMC SpecOps team? The marines travel with the navy remember?

[ArmOfSorrow]

2221863 Aye, but the Marines tend to take up a lot of ground and inland assignments, arguably almost as much as the Army. Their motto is along the lines of "First in, last out" I believe, and their reaction tends to be specific to the location and severity of the situation.

[mcb893]

2221904 Their motto is "Always Faithful" and they're a rapid deployment combined arms force. They do get inland assignments, what happens is the Army does long term campaigns and the Marines will perform rapid movement tasks. For example, in Vietnam, US Army held the lines while the Marines led the advances before pulling back out. In WWII they took an island, handed it over to the army, and moved on to the next. In Afghanistan, they were the first ones in, securing airports, towns, etc, before handing over main control to the Army. Afterwards, they participated in individual operations but left most of the general line holding to the Army. Just participating in land campaigns isn't enough - look at what they actually do.

[ArmOfSorrow]

2221977 Well, you evidently know more than I do and I think you sort of answered your own question; being a rapid deployment combined arms force would explain why they took the mission instead of it being handed over to the Army SpecOps. Truthfully though, my initial explanation for choosing a marine sniper team was because I like the Marines, and since it's just a fanfiction, then why not? anything can happen in fantasy-land

[Mean Character]

I wonder why this is on hiatus.

[ArmOfSorrow]

2223273 It was until I realized that I had a half written chapter , so I finished it and posted it. Now I'll probably continue it, so I'll remove the status

[Mean Character]

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