Applejack tries to stop Big Macintosh from going to war.

It was supposed to be easy. A simple ambush. Jump a flanking force of Sombra's before they reach the battlefield. Rainbow Dash and the rest of the Wonderbolts had done it a thousand times before. She could do it in her sleep.

But then things go south for Dash, and she's taken behind enemy lines. Everypony knows her fate: to be brainwashed into serving Sombra. But what seems to be hopeless may just reveal more about Dash than she knows about herself.

War changes ponies. It can make civilians into soldiers, and soldiers into heroes. But becoming a hero requires a sacrifice, not only of blood, sweat, and tears, but of the soul. For when the dark days come, it's the heroes who bring the sun, and when it returns, they're forever lost in the light.

Being a hero doesn't just mean being brave. It means giving up your life to the cause—regardless of whether or not you die.

First attempt at telling a story through poetry. Might try more things like this if the ideas hit me.
Winner of The Rarity award for EFNW's Scribblefest 2016
Cover art by Sheandog

Soldiers don't just stand there, blindly following orders and throwing their lives away. Sure, some of them do, but they aren't the ones who come back. The ones who come back have spent hours, days in the trenches, waiting for that brief moment of terrible and bloody action. And thinking.

You have a lot of time to think, in a hole in the ground waiting to kill or be killed.

There aren't any trenches in the Crystal War. Sombra throws his soldiers in wave after wave at the enemy, and the bodies of those soldiers only rest when there is nothing left to fight and their master is briefly perplexed about where all the squishy targets went. The Equestrians aren't much better, retreating to tents and clouds and once in a glorious while, maybe a cave. But even without the trench, there is time to think.

And when you might die tomorrow, you don't think in silence. You talk. You ask questions.

They aren't all easy questions.

Rainbow Dash was the Iron Wing. She was a war hero, the Slayer of Shadows, the Liberator of the Crystal Empire, the Wrath of Celestia. And depending on who you ask, she still is.

But the war is over. There's little need for a pony like her in peacetime. So she keeps telling herself that she needs to adjust, that she needs to find a new role to fill in the world that she saved. But Equestria seems content to let her remain what she has become, even though they have no need of a warrior.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be", is something she keeps telling herself. But every time she says it, the only thing she can reply is, "so what should it be?"

One whole year after the close of the war, and Rainbow Dash still doesn't have the answer.

Art by NCMares.

Rainbow Dash contemplates the worth of Equestria's struggle, as King Sombra is sent to the gallows.

Cover art by: sheandog

Pinkie Pie tries to fly internationally. What could possibly go wrong?

Inspired by personal experience.

From the time he first saw one, pulling a stagecoach was all that he ever wanted to do. He finally got his wish . . . but now his lifestyle is being threatened by a train.

Time twists and loops, and it does not always play out again as it did before. In this eddy of time, one rainbow-maned pegasus has been cut out of the loop before she ever existed.

Her name is Wych Elm, but her friends call her Felly. She’s a wheelwright by trade, but rather than take the conventional route of simply building new wheels, she repairs broken ones for the working ponies in Manehattan. She's one of the ponies who make sure that the taxis, hansoms, omnibuses, wagons, and carts can continue on their appointed rounds after breaking a wheel in the busy streets.

Now with a reading by StraightToThePointStudio