A War of Words - The Opening of the Guard — Sequel! · 4:45am Nov 24th, 2014
The story ‘A War of Words’ has bounced around the upper end of the Top list (currently ranked 171) ever since about two years ago when I both published it and got it accepted on EqD. I’ve always wanted to do a sequel about the four mares who are selected to enter the all-male workplace of the Royal Guard, and over the last year it has slowly taken form.
And now it’s here.
Starting Monday and every day at noon afterwards, I’ll be posting a chapter of ‘The Royal Guard - Night Mares’ on FimFiction, as well as putting it over to EqD on the story updates as a sequel until all eleven chapters have been posted. As proof, I give you the screenshot:
Special thanks to my editors: Peter, MSPiper, Featherprop, Seether00, GameKnut and Tek, and a very, very special thanks to Muffinexplosion for the fantastic cover picture, a homage to the iconic 1917 J.M. Flagg poster of Uncle Sam, done in proper pony style.
And now, a sneak peek at what you’re going to be seeing over the next week and a half:
The Night Guard - Night Mares
Taking Measure of the Steel
Academy Commandant Snowy Peaks regarded the three dangerous creatures before him with icy contempt. They represented chaos. Disorder. Destruction of all he had held dear throughout his entire service in the Royal Guard, from the time he walked through the gates of the Academy and took his oath of office until this very moment. In mere minutes, he was about to betray all of that, the infinite honor of the Royal Guard through centuries cast aside for this… frivolity.
Regrets were one thing, but he had pledged his word to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and that word — along with a direct personal order — was the only reason he even considered allowing these three onto the Royal Guard Academy training grounds. No Royal Guard had ever gone back on his word of honor, and he would not become the first, no matter the cost. But this price was high indeed.
At least his heart was lightened by the fact that one of the four had already failed to show up, leaving only three who would need to be ‘encouraged’ into abandoning their foolish quest. The Royal Guard were the best of the best, the finest stallions who had ever trod the soil of Equestria. It should only take a few days to make these weak, pathetic pretenders quit in disgrace, and return the Royal Guard to what it had always been.
“Oh, sorry I’m late! Really sorry! Sorrysorry!” A stunningly pink pegasus in a Canterlot police officer’s uniform fluttered down out of the darkening sky with a cascade of brilliant orange mane flowing out from under her cap and sweeping down her neck in a shortened tangle of braided plaits twice as long as any serving guard ever wore their own mane. Although her matching bright-orange tail was woven into a police regulation short plait, it was tied in a very non-regulation neon-pink bow with little yellow flowers on it. The constant flow of apologies from her did not stop even after she made a perfect four-point landing next to the other three uniformed mares standing outside the Commandant's office. “He didn’t want to get up this evening and it took forever to nurse and the pump wouldn’t seal, but I promise this will be the last time and once he gets used to my new schedule, I’m sure he’ll… I’m sorry?”
A hint of bafflement flickered across Commander Peaks’ stony expression as the rest of the assembled Academy training staff behind him chuckled almost below hearing range. He would have turned on them to unleash the anger that knotted his back, except that meant he would have to turn his tail on the four visually discomforted mares standing in parade rest on the Academy assembly area. Other than the new arrival, the unwanted interlopers had already been holding their positions for over an hour, and yet he recognized the same experienced set to their shoulders as his own staff displayed. If Luna had somehow forgotten about the ceremony, he could see both sets of ponies remaining standing out on the parade ground for hours, determined to outlast each other until the last one standing declared some sort of obtuse victory of the genders.
It would be a stallion, of course.
Still, it was unlikely Commander Peaks would be that lucky. Unlike Princess Celestia, whose precise schedules could be used to set a watch, Princess Luna had proven to be slightly more creative in her scheduling, although her arrival at a scheduled event was just as inevitable as the moonrise.
Not that she was late. The Lunar Princess was never late. Other ponies were early.
The schedule had originally called for the Princess of the Moon to arrive a half-hour ago for the purpose of giving some sort of encouraging speech to the four transferring policemares before they were officially sworn in as ‘Auxiliary Officers of the Royal Guard, Night Division’ and assigned to Princess Luna’s Personal Protective Unit. As much as he hated the idea of being forced to accept mares into what had been the exclusive domain of stallions for centuries, there was a little corner of his mind that had some sympathy for saddling them with that assignment. It took a particularly odd mindset to request duty inside Luna’s Domain of Darkness and Chaos, and although there had been no shortage of volunteers within the Royal Guard Academy, some of them seemed determined to frustrate his desire for a long and uneventful career that eventually would lead to becoming the Commander of the Night or Day Royal Guard like nearly every Academy Commandant before him. At least the ones who left the job with their sanity intact.
His frustration only grew when he considered that the entire disastrous idea had been triggered by some addle-pated idiot guard in the palace who lost his nerve when bringing Her Royal Highness an emergency roll — of all things — of toilet paper. Just because Princess Luna spooked some stupid stallions with her habit of casually slipping out of the darkness behind them, particularly from the long sort of shadows that had begun to creep across the training grounds as the sun slipped closer to the horizon, did not grant permission for an officer of the Royal Guard to hesitate in carrying out the simplest of tasks that even a foal—
“Good evening, Commander.”
Commander Peaks most certainly did not let out a shriek, whirl around in a flurry of loose feathers, and pant in delayed panic at the sudden appearance of Princess Luna at his side. He might have uttered a small noise, turned carefully, and had a slightly elevated respiration rate at the close proximity of Her Highness to his left ear, but that was all. There was certainly no excuse for the rest of his assembled subordinates to break out in poorly stifled chuckles, and after a single glare brought them all back to proper military discipline, he turned to Princess Luna with a sharp salute.
“Your Highness, welcome to the Royal Guard Academy. As per your orders, the mares you have selected for your personal protection unit have arrived.”
Hell yeah.
Looking forward to it!
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