Whitewater was burning. She could still smell the smoke, and other smells she only knew from the time her father had taken her to the county fair. Homestead had warned her then that many visited the market--and so she hadn't vomited when she smelled it. She would've done so now, except that her body lacked the strength.
Meadow Sweet was dying. This did not bother her much--not after what she had seen.
They had come from the sea. Fish that walked, fish that fought with spears and swords and set fire to every home. Sweet was fast, the fastest pony she knew. She had run to the root cellar, as Homestead always said she belonged when there was danger. Honeydew, her mother, hadn't made it out in time. She'd been trapped inside when the fires started. Sweet could still hear her screams.
At first, Sweet had watched from a crack in the cellar door. Watched as things twice as large as any pony shambled through Whitewater. Many of them were still wet, their scaly skin shining in the moonlight.
Homestead was a brave pony, the strongest stallion in the village. He stopped them at his door, demanding they leave his family alone. "My wife and daughter and all I own are inside," he had lied. "You may have me if you leave them in peace."
"We will take you," they said, in a voice like drowning. "But your wife is bound by air, she cannot serve. Your daughter is a child, too weak to bear a yoke. We do not need weak slaves."
Her father had fought them when they tried to put a torch to the cottage. Meadow Sweet saw him fought, and cheered with joy as they began to fall. For a single moment, it was like all things living fought beside him. The earth broke under his hooves, and so did they.
But the strangers killed all they touched. Grass withered, turning grey like chalk. When Homestead killed one, five more rose to replace it. Eventually, they had him on the ground. "Now that you have fought, you too will die," they said.
They came for Meadow Sweet next, breaking down the door and dragging her out before her father and the burning cottage.
They were even more horrible up close. A scent like rotting fish left in the sun, a visage to match, and a touch of corruption. Meadow Sweet had known the earth from her earliest days, and she could hear it scream with their every footstep. It was hard to tell from the screams of the others he had known as they died too.
"I grant the mercy of painless death to the young," said one of the monstrosities, its voice so terrible in her ears that she tried to hide. But she couldn't. "Your creator has taken that privilege from you." They took a knife, dull and ragged, and stabbed her chest.
It did not cut like it would another pony. Sweet felt the earth in her too, and for a moment she screamed the defiant screams of loam and soil. They were both her friends, and they would not see her suffer and do nothing.
The monster kept shoving, until flesh parted and she screamed. Homestead screamed too, begged for her life, yet they ignored him. "Know the price of your defiance," said the voice. "I will leave your daughter here, cut by my knife that your magic can't erase. Her magic will try to heal her, but all it will do is extend her suffering. She may lie here for days before the end comes, until vultures peck out her eyes and the rot that you deserve comes for her."
Things got fuzzy after that. Meadow Sweet watched them kill her father, falling on him like ravenous beasts. They had left the bones, right in front of her, many still bloody or with ragged shreds of flesh hanging off.
Meadow Sweet spent the rest of the night lying there. She couldn't sleep, not while she was in so much pain. Every breath came labored, every heartbeat was a struggle, yet still she fought. Her magic kept her alive even though she did not wish it.
The sun rose, and there were no more screams. No morning church bells, no giggling foals or rumbling of wooden carts to market. No birds, except for a solitary crow. Far away, the distant crashing of the waves sounded like mocking laughter.
Meadow Sweet died with the rest of Whitewater.
But her body kept on going, as the last drops of magic kept her alive. Instead of shivering in the chill of night, she began to cook in the unprotected sunlight. Hours blurred in her delirium, spent alone in the corpse of her village.
Then something changed. She heard marching hooves, the sound of clanking armor. Other sounds she couldn't explain. Voices in the distance, coming down the main road. Her own cottage was along the road. They would pass her.
"Another one?"
"They didn't stand a chance."
"If they made it as far as Eastvale, the coastal villages were doomed."
"Pity. There won't be anyone to save."
All those voices sounded like the same sort of pony--soldiers, the kind who learned to fight and answered the call to war far away. Meadow Sweet had never known a soldier, though she had seen them at the fair many times. They always told the best stories.
"There is." That voice was different in a way she couldn't explain. "Just ahead. Whoever they are, they're barely alive."
The steps started to run. Sweet wanted to hide herself away, but she lacked the strength even to move her hooves. She could turn her head, and look up as the voice came around the bend.
They were not like the soldiers she had seen before. Those ponies had worn mostly chainmail, or sometimes sturdy leather studded with bits of metal. She had seen drawings of great lords among ponies who wore plates instead, armor that cost more than her whole village was worth. These ponies wore armor like that, though it wasn't made from metal. It was reflective and half-clear, like the stained glass at her village church. Why would anypony wear glass armor?
Yet even stranger than their armor was their leader. She towered over all of them, standing on two legs as the shambling monsters from the water had done. Yet instead of rot, she smelled of lightning. Instead of scales, she had pale skin like a newborn diamond dog. No fur, but a long black mane cascading down the back of her plumed helmet in an elegant braid. She wore a breastplate of a dullish metal, along with a loose-fitting white robe that exposed much of her strange legs. She carried a spear in her hand, a spear that flashed and glowed like an angry star.
Yet when she saw Sweet, there was only gentleness in those gray eyes. "Continue on without me," she ordered, gesturing down the road with her spear. "There is another village to the north. It may be attacked next." The ponies galloped off at her command, but there were so few of them. Only a dozen.
"They shouldn't..." Sweet said, her voice a pale whisper. "There were so many here... enough that I couldn't see the ground."
The towering alien with her flat face dropped onto the ground in front of Sweet, setting her spear down beside her. "My knights have finished them already. They will kill any they find to the north as well."
"Which God are you?" Sweet asked, her question coming as a single hacking cough.
The woman smiled "I am Pallas Athena. Have you heard of me?"
"No," Sweet admitted. "T-that... must be why you... punished us. You're here to kill me too, right? We worshiped the wrong god."
"No," Athena's amusement was gone. "What good would your worship have done me?" She reached out, resting one hand on the back of Sweet's neck.
Her contact brought something very strange: a cool feeling, spreading from the point of contact, deading the pain. It was the cold numbness of death.
"O-oh..." Sweet started to cry again. She hadn't known she could still do that. She could speak again too, and breathe again. It came much easier now, as she knew it should in the moments before death. That was how all the stories went, anyway. "Y-you're a kind angel... Father Polis always said that Idyia set her angels to watch over the helpless. You're here to take me with you."
"Yes," Athena admitted. "But not if you will not come willingly. I don't offer a peaceful rest to men, as death does."
"Men? What's that?"
Athena ignored the question. "What is your name, child?"
"I-it was... Meadow Sweet..."
"Meadow Sweet. I have known many of your kind--few could see a horror like this and still speak with me. Mortal minds are warped and damaged by the void, and only madness remains. But you are stronger."
"I..." she was still crying. Athena didn't seem to mind, so Sweet didn't try to stop. It was hard to do anything else. "I..."
"Listen to me, child," Athena leaned in close, her voice very quiet. "I offer you a choice," she took the spear in one paw, holding it out to one side. In the other, her paw was empty. "On my left is oblivion. I will not leave you here to suffer, so take the left-handed path and I will let you sleep. You will not wake again. When you close your eyes, your existence will end without more pain.
"On my right, I offer something else. I will heal you, make you strong in ways you never knew. In time, you will wear the armor of one of my knights. I will show you my wisdom, I will guide your hooves in every heroic endeavor. You will shatter the shackles of the slaver, burn the lies that darkness whispers to the sorcerer, and keep the tide from rising."
Sweet considered for a long time, looking between Athena's spindly paws. She had known so much pain in the last few hours--lost everything she had ever known. Even now, she struggled to comprehend the enormity of her loss. "Why... me?" she eventually asked. "I know you said I'm strong, and maybe. But why not teach everyone to fight? Whitewater... if we could fight... might not be burned."
Athena sighed, her expression growing somber. "There are rules that govern even the gods, child. I cannot interfere with your lives when you live them in your own way." she set down the spear, pointing at the knife-wound to Sweet's chest. It no longer pulsed with blood, as it had before Athena arrived. Sweet supposed she didn't have much blood left to lose. "You have been cut by the unmade. No skill of unicorn of men could heal you now. As I see it, you are already dead. Your life now ended, I may do with you as I please."
"So... why even offer me the choice? Why not just take me?"
Athena set down her spear. "Ponies and men look out at the world around them, Meadow Sweet, and they see a sturdy fortress. But this is a lie. The universe is not a castle, it is a rickety wooden shack. Last night, you saw the winds howling at the walls, battering the broken timbers. You saw the storm roll in and tear away a precious piece of our home, one we will never get back.
"Slaves and servants can't hold the house together. I have better slaves at my command than you could ever hope to be, slaves of metal and wheels that obey without question and have no lives to lose. Yet I have learned these are poor weapons against our common enemy. The storm is the true master of pounding rain and overwhelming winds, he cannot be beaten with numbers." She reached out, poking at where Meadow Sweet's cutie mark would be, if she had one. "There is no enemy more dangerous than one who knows he is doing the right thing. My knights bend creation to its own service. No slave could do that. But a volunteer could." Athena extended one of her paws again. "I need your decision. Join my service or refuse, but I need to know. I cannot sustain you much longer."
Meadow Sweet remembered the screams. She saw her village burning, remembered how helpless and afraid she had felt. She had not been able to fight.
Meadow Sweet took the offered paw. "I'll do it."