FIRE AND BLOOD
The Rites of Succession
The fires burned, a circle of light in the inky black of the wasteland night, undisturbed and roaring in the still air. Their glow barely illuminated the approaching bodies, but sound revealed what sight could not.
The padding of paws on poisoned earth, the scrape of claws across stones and hard-packed dirt. The fluttering of wings, their owners tense. The soft clicks and clacks of beaks. The rustle of cloth and the clanking of armor as the group moved into position, just outside of the circle. Griffins all, each bearing the armor that marked them as Talons, each called by tradition and duty to bear witness to what would come.
Long, tense moments passed, but not a word was said, none willing to break the sacred silence. Beaks were parted and wings were held slightly away from bodies, the heat stifling, smothering, but they held their positions... until it was time.
One side of the circle parted, allowing their leader, their warlord, to pass and enter the flame-ringed field. Large and proud, the fading of his aged feathers hidden by the blood-hued light, it was easy to forget his age, to believe the weight of years held no sway over him.
He bore no weapons, no blade or bullet. Only his armor, unadorned and plain, save for the sigil of their clan, the outstretched claw forever bared, poised to draw the blood of their foes.
"Let those who would succeed me approach." His voice rang out, shattering the silence and drawing two more figures into the circle. Each was young, barely an adult, but those they passed stepped aside, wary and respectful of the unarmored pair.
They stopped before their leader, eyes shining in the firelight as they each gave him a respectful bow. His face betrayed nothing, cold and impassive as he spoke once more. "Our Traditions are clear that my son, Levant, will take my place as Voyevoda, as Warlord. Linka, you have challenged this. Why?"
The smaller of the two, Linka, stepped forwards. "He is unworthy."
The elder raised his eyebrow, the only outward reaction to the young hen's claim. "What say you, Levant?"
The male, Levant, scowled. "I am a Talon. I fight, and I kill. I have tasted the blood of my foes. Tradition holds that I am to become Voyevoda, that I am to one day lead our clan."
All eyes turned once more to Linka, the hen holding her head high. "I, too, am a Talon. My life is measured by the lives of my foes, and the lives of my kin. Tradition alone does not make one Voyevoda." Her voice began to rise, wings spreading as her passion grew. "To be Voyevoda is more than to lead. It is to know all who fight beside you, to stand firm against all foes, to bring strength and glory to the clan! I would challenge you, Levant! Prove your worthiness to lead us!"
As Linka reared up, screeching her challenge, those who stood beyond the circle of light spoke in hushed tones.
"Enough." Though the elder's voice was calm, it carried a steel edge, and Linka dropped to the ground once more as silence was restored. Still, though, she held her head high. "Linka, you have issued your challenge, but it means nothing from you alone." He raised his voice only slightly. "Who among you will stand beside her? Speak and be known, or hold your silence and shame her!"
All voices grew silent, the tension in the air growing thicker. Would any back the young hen's challenge? Then, a few griffins stepped forward. "We, the Desert Moon squad, stand with comrade Linka."
"Very well." The elder nodded, then turned to his chosen heir. "Levant, the challenge has been heard, and the choice is now yours. Do you accept the challenge, or stand down, never to become Voyevoda?"
Levant narrowed his eyes, glaring at the hen who, even now, stared back, her eyes alight with determination. "I accept."
Linka clacked her beak, eying her opponent. "Tradition holds that you may choose a second to fight in your place, if you wish."
Everyone held their breath, the offer unexpected. To take a second was almost unheard of, the offer alone an insult. A victory taken by a second would be tainted, hollow, but if the second fell, the challenged would find themselves stripped of rank, little more than a servant to the victor.
Levant sneered. "A Voyevoda who needs others to fight his battles is no Voyevoda at all. I will fight you myself."
The elder dipped his head and stepped back, towards the edge of the flickering circle. "Then it is decided. Levant, Linka, ready yourselves." The pair took their places, mere paces apart. Wings half-spread, they dug their paws into the dead soil, tensing for the inevitable first strike, claws flexing, carving small furrows in the dirt. The elder raised his voice one more time. "By Tradition, a challenge has been made. Fight with honor, and know that the victor shall become Voyevoda in my passing. Begin!"
Levant moved first, taking to the air with a beat of his wings and diving towards his foe. In turn, Linka darted to the side, lunging as Levant struck the ground. They rolled, tearing at one another, slashing with beaks and claws, kicking and striking at their opponent's bellies with clawed hindpaws. A heavy blow sent Linka sprawling, Levant pouncing, his beak open and hungry. A screech of pain, blood spattering the parched earth, and claws made their way to a vulnerable throat.
The sound of ripping flesh, blood pouring from torn arteries, and two bodies lay in the circle of flames.
Silence fell.
The elder approached, reaching out to the one who moved. A bloody claw took his, the victor pulled free of the slain. His mask of neutrality wavered for only a moment, as he closed the eyes of the fallen, then spoke. "By Tradition, a new Voyevoda has been chosen."
Without another word, he turned and moved slowly to the edge of fire, paws tracking blood across the barren soil. Behind him, as the gathered circle drew close to tend to the wounded victor, Linka looked to the fallen Levant with her one good eye, the other a ruined mess where his beak had dug deep.
She whispered, more to herself than any other, "You should have chosen a second, brother."
From the crater called Fillydelphia to the ruins of Ponyville, a legend is told to the hopeless travellers of the wasteland. A pony, a wanderer who roamed the wastes, never stopping anywhere for more than a day or two to solve any problems that had befallen his new destination.
Though many have claimed to see the wanderer, few are confident in describing his physical appearance, though one detail remains consistent throughout all descriptions; his clothing. It is said that the wanderer shrouds himself in a poncho, with white patterns, all but completely faded from the worn fabric. Patches of oddly coloured and textured fabrics were sown into the old poncho, evident repairs of past damages. A battered, dusty cowboy hat sat atop the wanderers head, obscuring his face, leaving only a muzzle to poke out from the shadows.
The wanderer himself is considered a legend, but his mere existence is’t the only legend surrounding him. Some say he’s a ghostly apparition, a spirit of vengeance that has vowed to defend the innocents of the wasteland and destroy the evil that lurks in the hearts of all ponies. Some say the wanderer is no single pony, but a title, passed on from father to son, when the father grows old or perishes. No pony knows the truth behind the mysterious stranger, but their is a truth behind him.
If you were to pull the poncho from the strangers body, you would find a slender frame, with seldom any hair, just pink flesh, scorched from balefire. Removing the hat from his head would reveal few long, curly, brown hairs, dangling from his scarred scalp.
Though many ghouls may clutch to their pasts, the stranger does not, as he abandoned even his own name. A name known by many as a wanderer, even before the great war. A name that brought laughter and happiness as opposed to justice and retribution. A name that was rarely spoken as more than a memory. A legend, now lost to time. Though the legend of Cheese Sandwhich is long gone, he still lives on as a new legend, a mysterious stranger, a horse with no name.
Go That one word, along with its Imperial translation, fired off in Lesius’s mind like a bullet in a gun. It drifted about for a moment before finding it’s mark.
The zebra sat up, his heavy metal-composite plate armor clinking and clanking as he did so. He unslung his canteen from a sling on his side and opened it with a hiss; From the overwhelming stench of alcohol that flooded his nostrils and filled his eyes with tears, he could safely assume that it was at least half full. The drink that filled the vessel was posca- a staple part of any Legionnaire’s diet.
He took a swill, the drink burning his throat on the way down.
“Caesar's* arse, there’s a lot of booze in this.” The zebra coughed, tears streaming down his face. He sealed the bottle and placed it neatly back with his other equipment.
Lesius smiled. The drink had been a celebration of sorts, a reward to himself for completing the first leg of his long flight north. Just mere minutes ago, he had passed from the icy tundra of the suburbs around Arx to the sun-blasted desert of the Verge.
The change could not have been more apparent - the cold, sleet-flinging gales of the Ice City were suddenly replaced by a steadier stream of abrasive sand and scorching heat. All around the armoured zebra, as far as the eye could see, was a massive collection of sharp, rocky crags that peeked up out of the sand layer . They bore a shocking resemblance to an animal’s splintered bones poking out of rotten flesh - every now and then a vulture would circle overhead, undoubtedly flying south from the lush green Equestria as if to feed upon the Verge’s half-stripped carcass.
Lesius stood up shakily, the heavy armor clearly taking its toll on his waning strength. As standard Legionary gear, the suit was made up of thick steel plates overlapping kevlar strips, and covered his entire body save for his head. He had abandoned his plumed helmet long ago, allowing his striped face to breathe and his red-tipped greyscale hair(The mark of a Legion Jezzail) to fall freely across his shoulders.
He started north once again, hampered each and every step he took by the soft, mucky sand layer and what seemed to be a solid wall of wind. While he was well-conditioned and fully able to push on forward, a stranger looking on would see him struggling, swaying softly with each slow tread as if the gust would topple him like an unbraced bridge.
The sun shone down- A being cruel, oppressive, and hot as he trudged. It seemed hours, days, years that he was walking, but since the endless nothingness that surrounded him gave birth to only one shadow; his own, he could only register time through its long march.
He walked, it walked. As he continued on, throwing cursory glances at it, it lengthened, slowly. Agonizingly slowly. A testament to the hours passed.
Very little broke the monotony of his trek- only the occasional dune, rising up out of the stand as a towering monolith compared to the relative emptiness that consumed him. They drove him even further, less physically than spiritually though. As he climbed over each dune, it would inevitably collapse, sending him sliding down as the small avalanche surged around him blowing slightly more sand and dust into his eyes than usual, or, more often than not, sending him tumbling, head over hooves down to the bottom. He would become quickly disoriented as his already sandy world gave way to one large shifting mass of long-eroded rock.
Besides the ceaseless miniature avalanches, climbing them was almost - not quite, but almost - more taxing. His hooves sank into the sand practically to his stomach, each step a confused, annoyed waddle as his legs struggled to either force through the seemingly endless sand, a task quickly proving to be far less efficient than pulling his leg all the way over, swinging it horizontally forwards, and plunging it back into the dune he was climbing. For whatever reason, Lesius would never deviate from his path; never went out of his way to avoid dunes, perhaps he merely did not care to avoid them, perhaps he feared his meagre enough strength would not bear him and his armour through the endless miles of dunes he would need to circumnavigate. Whatever the reason, on he trudged. And trudged.
And trudged.
Time soon lost all meaning again. He no longer even looked at his shadow; it would never stretch fast enough. On he marched. Over a dune. Over a crevasse. Over another dune. Into a cactus. Over another dune. But still he never stopped. The march was taking its bloody toll on him now, the baking sun cascading sweat down his body, he noticed his breath was becoming ragged, a rasp for air as he gasped and wheezed along, hacking coughs tormenting him as sand blew down his parched throat and into his-
Wait.
“OW, FUCK!” He collapsed, the pain from his impact into an evil perennial plant finally managing to register in his worn-down mind. His front hooves shot to his needle-studded, bloody face, trying to stymie the flow of his face-blood as his back legs continued to happily plod their pointless journey along through the air.
“Aaaaagh! Why?!?! I ran down down a gods-damned CARGO TRAIN and I’m gonna get rubbed out by a cactus??!?!” He screamed in agony as he lay on the desert floor once more.
Soon enough, thirst kicked in, and it kicked hard. Like a jacked-up, steroidal MMA fighter with a hydraulic metal leg smashing into your balls. Thirty-seven times. He finally realized a miniature desert had manifested itself inside Lesius’s mouth, cracking his lips open like the aforementioned crevasse he had crossed.
“I made it.”
As the sun began to dip below the veiled horizon, Lesius stood alone upon the final hill before his destination. Below and to the north of him, shielded from the sand by the lip of a blast crater, there was a collection of five or six stout-looking wooden shacks. The edge of the deep crater, even though the sun was still mostly above the horizon line, cast a dark shadow over the shacks that dipped them into an inky state of near-permanent darkness. Piercing the black cloth like knives was several rays of ambient illumination from the windows of the larger and more central of the shacks.
The zebra breathed out, an expression of relief crossing over his sand-pocked face. Having ditched his armor long, long ago, he used the last of his fading energy to nimbly leap into the curve of the blast crater, gracefully sliding on his flank towards the shacks.
As he slid to a stop a few yards from the buildings, the sun winked out it’s last ray of sharp light and disappeared. Looking up, he could see that only two of the shacks were lit- the cleanest, tallest one with an electronic white ambience and the second-tallest one with a warm glow and pleasant chatter that spilled onto the thin floor of sand. It was obviously a restaurant, or a bar of some kind.
The scene, bastions of light piercing an infinite sandy plain of shadow, reminded him uncannily of the myths of Pluto he had heard as a child.
“‘Ey!”