Loyalty is such a funny thing.

Sometimes it goes to the highest bidder, other times it goes to whoever holds the most power. It can be given out of fear, or an eagerness to please. It’s earned through hard work and strong leadership, or used as a deadly weapon to hurt the ones you care about. Loyalty is something hard to earn, but easy to break.

It can also go to somepony you fall in love with; a pony who knows loyalty better than you do.

I thought I knew what it meant to be loyal, but I clearly didn’t.

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Everything was a lifeless, mundane routine for the young glassy-eyed Lieutenant Ashen, a member of the Nightwing clan of Queen Luna's loyal nightbreed soldiers. That was until the day his home country, the technologically advanced Twenty-Six Territories of the Lunar Confederacy, was attacked, unprovoked, in the dead of night.

The prime suspect? Their eastern neighbor Equestria.

Ashen is then sent on the most important mission of his life, which at first seems as simple as it sounds, to escort an ambassador to Equestria and initiate peace talks. However, the mission turns into anything but. As he unravels the conspiracy behind the attacks, so too will his sanity, and a rainbow-maned pegasus will challenge what he has ever known about Equestria, as well as himself, and put his loyalty to the ultimate test.

A storm seems well on the horizon, but the ultimate question is this: Can he stop it in time?

~~~

Cover Art by GenericDrawfag/Carnelian (FIMFiction Profile)

Proofread by Pissfer, NotATree, and Nonameknight.

It took years for Quills to finally find the inspiration to write, but now that he has, he realizes the story he was creating has a lot more meaning for him, as well as the pegasus who inspired it.

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This is the semi-sequel to my previous short story "A Writer's Inspiration," where I wanted to take another slice of life inspired from my own trials and tribulations as a writer, and just how much of an impact Rainbow Dash was to me just as much as she was to Quills.

Quills always loved stories, so much so he knew he wanted to be a writer, but never knew what he wanted to write for the longest time in his life. Good ideas of stories to be were thrown away, put on hiatus, and he was never able to summon the right words to tell a story.

He was ready to give up on this lost cause until one fateful day he met a pegasus that would change his life forever.

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This is a story inspired from AbsoluteAnonymous' "A Writer's Lament," ( http://www.fimfiction.net/story/25573/A-Writer%27s-Lament ) a story which helped me break my own writer's block, as well as a story inspired from my own life when it came to writing, and how much I struggled until I found something I cared greatly for, even love, and wanted to write all about. Much like Quills, this pegasus changed my life as well, so this story comes from the bottom of my heart. Hope you enjoy it!