SBMS082
The first inkling we had that something was wrong at the Trollbridge blockhouse was the night made brief day by an emergency flare sent up by the section on guard. The flares were only to be used when a unit was in imminent danger of being overrun. The ponies at the southern watch-tower reacted according to protocol, and sent one runner to alert the main fortress, and one down towards the Trollbridge to investigate and report back. While the runner took her time alerting each post along the ramparts as she trotted for the southern sally port, the night was split again and again by a series of detonations in the general vicinity of the Trollbridge blockhouse, blue and orange explosions that ruined dark-vision and clearly announced to anypony slow on the uptake that the flare had not been the result of error or horseplay.
The section holding the ramparts was supposed to hold their positions until relieved by a section from the reaction force posted in the main fortress. The corporal commanding the section tossed protocol into the ditch, and led half of his ponies at the double-quick along the walkway, and left instructions for the rest to follow as soon as they saw anypony who even looked like relief.
And so it was that Corporal Orange Blossom of the rampart watch was the first survivor on scene, which was mostly on fire, those parts which weren't strewn across the bypass road or flung smoldering into the Withies. The wooden portions of the bridge were on fire, and the stone framework was shattered and in the process of collapsing upon its spans in two places. Schwejk, the caribou buck sent from the watch-tower to investigate the emergency, was in the process of dying, burnt horribly across half of his body, and bleeding out from a terrible wound across his haunch. He also had buried his lance deep in a peculiar body laying sprawled across the bypass roadway.
Orange Blossom couldn't stop to evaluate the peculiar tableau, as behind the two figures were a mass of ghouls meandering aimlessly about the flaming wreck of what had been the blockhouse fortifications. While the corporal evaluated his situation, several of his ponies joined him at the scene, and they formed a skirmish line against the undead raiders. Inside of ten minutes, the half-section was consolidated, and began advancing to retake what was left at the bridge. And this was when Tickle Me led the pegasi and griffins of the reaction force in a flyby over the fiery mess. Between the lances and axes of the watch-ponies and the javelins and wingblades of the aerial reaction force, the ghouls went down with troubling ease.
Troubling, because it was glaringly obvious that ghouls couldn't possibly have caused this sort of damage, let alone ghouls as confused and disordered as this band proved to be. The rest of the sections on guard as well as the ground elements of the reaction force arrived to secure the breach, with Tickle Me taking command as the ranking pony on site. With all of the fires scattered throughout the scene, Company darksight was rendered useless, and it took them a while to make sense of the remnants of Trollbridge.
Piles of ghoul dead and deceased Company armsponies were found on the central span of the bridge, where the guard was overwhelmed by magefire and a ghoul rush. This is where they found the remains of the earth pony stallions Spanner and Grill Pit, the jack Ronchonneur, and the doe Mutterschlachterin. The roasted remains of Corporal Hussar of the sword-stallions and the jenny Yew-Barrow were found in front of the blasted gates at the end of the bridge, where it appeared they had been drawn away from their posts, possibly to engage with a visitor.
Corporal Hussar had a half-burnt set of copies of the authorization documentation the Bride had left for us to use for demonstration of our bona fides. Nopony had thought that they would be necessary without any advance notice at one in the morning. The storming party had just appeared out of nowhere as far as we could tell.
The earth-pony mare Artesian Well was found at the controls of the war-engine they'd mounted on the roof of the blockhouse, or at least, the smashed, charred fragments of the spring-driven ballista were found in proximity to Artesian Well, along with the crushed remains of what had to have been the earth-pony mare Penstock. She was the only missing member of the section guarding Trollbridge that night, and was Artesian Well's constant companion in all their years with the Company.
Later that morning they found Pollard Ash, laying at the base of the embankment across the bypass from the blockhouse, with blunt force trauma to her head, and the splintered remainder of her half-emptied quiver scattered across the face of the embankment. The rest of the bowmare's arrows were found, along with three bolts from Artesian Well's ballista, shot through the strange figure that Schwejk had finally cut down with his lance.
Except that wasn't the end of it. While two pegasi from the reaction force were trying to save Schwejk's life, buying time for me to get on scene, they were startled by the bristling 'corpse' suddenly heaving off the surface of the roadway and lurching towards – well, who knew what? It was pierced by a score of arrows and multiple ballista bolts, and dragging Schwejk's lance behind it, driven deep into the figure's ribcage. And, yet it still moved. The two pegasi – Feather Fall and her wingmare Supercell – snapped to attention and gave the figure the business, flanking it on both sides, and cutting into it with their 'blades.
I arrived to find the two of them dancing around the heaving side of meat, both of them absolutely soaked in its gore. They were keeping it off balance, but nothing they could do seemed to put it down. I almost grabbed my axe and joined in on the fun, but then I spotted Schwejk, remembered myself and my oath, and circled around the commotion, trying to stay out of the mares' way. They were leaving the prone caribou behind in any event, and I knelt beside him, trying to do my best for the dying Schwejk.
I quickly realized that he was too badly burnt, and that the only thing for it was to give him a laudanum overdose. I sat with him as his shudders subsided, and he let out a deep sigh. I held him up a little so that he could watch the two pegasi perform a perfect, final raqs al-saif, one with a moving, bleeding balk for their focus.
And then I noticed other members of the reaction force standing back, watching like the dying Schwejk and I, and the moment was past, and Tickle Me came bulling through like her tail was on fire and her pinions were catching.
"Don't just stand there, you dullards! This isn't a pas de trois, it's your sisters trying to put down a monster! Get in there, damn it all!"
And suddenly it was a flurry of blood and gore, and bits strewn all over the roadway. They literally carved the struggling figure like a chef carving roast of pork for a griffin banquet. It was a testament to the fundamental professionalism of the Company's armsponies, that none of them managed to catch a brother with a back-swing, the mass of stabbing, slicing ponies were so crowded about the target.
Soon enough, it was a limbless mass of unmentionable filth and horror, and somehow, it still twitched. Tickle Me waved forward three caribou and earth pony lancers, and they impaled the thing as if they were making a tripod, and leveraged it up off the roadway so that it could get no traction.
Distracted by the grotesque butchery, I missed Schwejk's last breath. When I looked down, he was gone. I closed his eyes, and got up.
Then I went over and examined some of the lumps of meat strewn across the bypass. They weren't moving. In fact, they seemed to be dissolving into the bloody muck as I stood there watching. I looked around, and realized that the stench was increasing, and that there was a sort of mist rising up out of the gore. A red mist with a distinct flow to it – towards the disgusting mass of brutalized meat held up by its tripod of lances.
"Tickle Me, we need to get some fire and accelerants over here, this thing is reconstituting. Where are the warlocks?"
"Right here, Sawbones. And you're right, that thing will rebuild itself in about two hours at the current rate."
Gibblets had snuck up behind me while I was taking in the regurgitation and a show. I'd have said something, but my capacity for outrage was mostly overloaded by the ongoing horror.
"Great," said Tickle Me. "Witch this thing dead, Gibblets. We've chopped ourselves exhausted, and it's still moving. It's magic time. Wow us!"
"Fire is a good first step," the frog-faced mage observed, and stole a bottle of antiseptic from my medical kit. He emptied it out over the horrible thing, blood and gore boiling in reverse, and lit a magical fire over the spitted roast before the alcohol washed away in the gore. It was… less than impressive.
"Try harder, Gibblets."
"Wish Bad Apple was here. This shit takes it out of me."
And he lit up the night again, and conjured proper magefire over the horrible thing. The smell of burnt horseflesh almost overwhelmed the terrible stench of gore and filth. And yet his flames didn't seem to be doing much to the thing. I made a decision, watching fire fail to put an end to it.
I pulled Tickle Me aside, and muttered to her, "There's at least an even chance this isn't going to work. We should hedge our bets. Somepony needs to go back to Dance Hall and fetch the banner-lance. It's our biggest gun against terrors in the night, and I think this thing clearly qualifies if Gibblets runs out of juice before it, well, runs out of juice."
She nodded, and went over to the mass of nonplussed ponies, cutting out a pegasus who looked least blown, and muttered something to him. He flew off into the darkness. It was the hour of the witch, and dawn was a long time off.
Gibblets stopped flaming the 'roast', and took a breather. It was kind of hard to tell, given the after-images ruining my dark-sight, but it looked like it was still twitching, and there was definitely a sticky, horrible breeze wafting by. All the ponies in the vicinity of the spitted 'roast' looked like they had been wading in an abattoir.
"Gibblets, pace yourself. We've got a backup plan coming. We just need to keep it immobilized."
"F-fine. See if I come running the next time y, you call for me."
"You know what this is, right?"
"One of the le-legates?"
"Most like. Came earlier than expected."
Touch Me walked over. "Which one do you think it is?"
I thought a moment. "Well, if it just started firing, then probably one of the jackasses who sacked Caribou City and decided to make it their personal shambler plantation. No offense, Heavy Bucket."
"None taken," said the jack, shifting his bloodied axe on his shoulder. He had gotten a couple licks in on the spit-roast. "I kinda think this one was originally a jackass anyways. Half the original liches were, and I know for a fact that the Stump was one. The stories always said that the Stump could come back from being hacked into a cube of gristle. How he got his name, y'know? You could hack his tree until he was a stump, he'd just grow it all back."
"But was it just the Stump, or are all the legates like this?"
"I'unno, sir. Not an expert, just remembering what my gran'mere used to tell me 'un mon frere."
After an interminable wait, and another round of everypony playing forty-whacks with the equine piñata, the messenger and a couple of earth-ponies arrived with the standard, complete with, well, the standard. I eyed that damn great length of cloth, and yelled at them.
"Get that bloody banner away from this mess before it gets stained to tartarus and gone! That's right, back off, and take it off. Yes, you, you lummox. You've got it in your hooves, you handle it."
For some reason the new recruit was carrying the pikestaff. I almost asked why, but figured some idiot had asked for "the standard-bearer", and since we hadn't had a standard-bearer for a very long time, some sleep-deprived functionary had wasted time getting the recruit out of his bunk to officiously tote the ungainly thing out to the Trollbridge, standard, banner, lance and all. Probably Broken Sigil, knowing him.
We explained to the lanky orange earth-pony what we needed him to do with it, and he eyed the quivering, blackened mass of flesh writhing on its tripod of charred lances.
"Why does it have to be me?"
Gibblets looked up at the clouds and stars, and made a face. "Technically, it probably has to be the standard-bearer. Sawbones, are we positive this kid is it?"
I shrugged. "Damn, how would I know? But every time the ancients slew a dragon or a hydra with the blasted thing, it was always 'the standardbearer', named. Only time most of those crabbed old nags ever mentioned a pony before their death-notice. You know what? Recruit Cake, repeat after me, holding that standard-lance in your hoof: 'I, your name here, do swear to keep and protect this standard, and symbol of the Black Company, until my incapacity or death renders me unfit to do so'. Make sure to actually say your name, and by that I mean, 'Carrot Cake'."
He swore upon the pikestaff, and - nothing happened.
"Huh. Was kinda hoping for fireworks. Oh, well. Go over there and give that horrible thing on the lances a good stabbing. I'd ask you to not get it too dirty, but at this point, the pikestaff's care and handling is in your hooves."
Carrot Cake shuffled into position to lance the spit-roast, with all the ceremony and grace of a stallion chopping wood for the hearth-fire. The ancient lance-head pierced the charred flesh of the maybe-legate.
And the world exploded.