The moon rose high overhead in the night sky, bathing all in it’s silvery light, save where the sparse few clouds blotted out it’s graceful light. The verdant greens of the rainforests here were made a deep blue by the night’s dark, and the bright, brilliant near-white of the desert sands to their south were grey and still. The winds were picking up as clouds rolled overhead, some coming in from across the desert, where the ever present wall of Storm clouds that separated the south coast from the rest of the continent.
It was on this night, in this place, that a lone Pegasus stood watch atop the battlements of a recently constructed outpost, a guard tower placed on the border of the large Kingdom of Equestria. The aptly named Night Watch was on duty for this stretch of the night, in the early hours of the morning, just minutes past midnight itself, and he was cold- as was to be expected on the edge of a desert at night.
Ruffling his feathers, Vigil Watch sighed, and quickly adjusted the strap of his helmet for the third time that morning, the strap having decided that halfway through his watch would be the best time to start coming loose.
The scuff of a hoof on stone behind him brought his attention to the approach of a fellow guard, a thestral called Bright Eyes, named for the way his eyes always seemed to reflect the light in the way that many predators did.
“Who goes there?” Watch asked with a small grin, ears flicking as he regarded the ruffled and matted fur of a bat-winged pony who had been unable to sleep properly.
“Bite me, Night.” Eyes snapped, stretching his wings and shifting some of his own armour plates a bit to stop them from chafing. The leathery sound of his opening wings was something that the ponies on the Night shift had gotten used to, as the Thestral’s ususal duties were performed at night, to account for his nocturnal nature. “Anything interesting?”
“Not a thing. Remind me to kick Ser Thunder in the flank when I rotate out of here, for suggesting these border stations to Princess Luna.” Vigil replied, his grin turning a little vicious. “You want some coffee or anything? Something to help you wake up a bit?”
“Eugh, no. Then I’ll just be buzzing all night with nothing to do.” Bright groaned, taking up a position not far from where Vigil was standing. “And I don’t need to be tired and buzzed with nothing to do but stand here for hours. That would suck all kinds of-”
Eyes cut off suddenly, looking up at the sky with an uncertain look on his face, his cat-like eyes narrowed and focused.
“What is it?” Vigil blinked, eyes searching the dark sky with a frown, before turning to look at his fellow guard. “What’s wrong?”
Bright Eyes blinked, then shook his head. “For a moment, I thought I saw….”
Vigil raised an eyebrow.
“It’s probably nothing. Just my eyes and my tired brain playing tricks on me.”
“You sure you don’t want that coffee? I’m sure you can find someone willing to whip up something-”
Bright cut Vigil off with a smile and a shake of his head. “I’ll be fine. Besides, the storm will wake me up when it finally gets here.”
“Storm?” Watch looked at the slowly gathering clouds overhead. “You sure it’s going to be a storm?”
“Yeah, you can smell em coming if you know what you’re looking for. And there was a flash of lightning a little while ago, just over there.”
As Bright Eyes spoke, a flash broke the dark of the sky above, followed by the rumble of thunder. “And there we go, it’s a storm.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” Vigil rolled his eyes. “I’m an unobservant moron, I get it.”
“Uh-huh, well, I wish that I hadn’t been looking that way. I’m seeing spots now.”
“Now who’s the moron?” Vigil snorted, tightening his helmet strap again.
“I am. Ugh, that’s nasty. Heard that Princess Twilight once got hit by a bolt of lightning once. Not a nice feeling.”
Vigil blinked in surprise, staring at Bright with wide eyes. “Seriously? I didn’t realize that Alicorn’s could take a bolt like that. Thought that only Pegasi could.”
Bright Eyes stared at him incredulously, waiting for him to make the connection.
“Oh, right. Magic of all three races.” Vigil facehoofed, and another lightning bolt flashed above.
The conversation petered out for a bit, and the clouds rolled in overhead, covering the moon and darkening the world in a deep shadow.
“Greeaat….as if it wasn’t boring enough.” Vigil groaned, turning his gaze up.
It was then that a bolt of lightning coursed through the clouds high above him, lighting up the layer of water vapor beneath it.
And revealing the fleet of dark shapes inside the clouds and the ones slowly dropping down to the fort.
Vigil and Bright Eyes gasped, both stepping back several paces, before they broke, already screaming. “BATTLE STATIONS!!! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!!”
Lightning flashed again, with Vigil galloping as fast as he could, heading for the barracks, to wake the guards and start fighting back. His wings flapped intermittently, giving him bursts of speed as he charged towards the barracks.
Even as he did, he heard the growing sound of something roaring, like the engine of a train as it sped along the tracks.
Then, in a shower of stone, the outer wall of the small fort exploded in, revealing the thick wooden hull of an airship on the other side, a cannon pointed directly at the huge hole in the masonry. Being bathed in stone dust and pebbles had blasted Vigil into the opposite wall, his helmet coming off and falling to the floor with a clang. Scrabbling to his hooves, the hapless soldier stumbled back into his gallop amid the cries of the guard ponies, all trying to quickly arm and armour themselves.
But it was for naught. There was another cannon sound, and the rooms directly ahead of Vigil lit up with the light and deafening noise of cannon blasts, and the screams of dying guards.
Vigil skidded to a halt, before turning tail and thundering away from the barracks, instead hoping to find Bright Eyes, and send a message back to Canterlot, to warn them of the danger.
The corridors ahead collapsed under the bombardment of more cannonfire, forcing Vigil to turn into another room, and head through the mess hall. He flew past abandoned meals and overturned tables, all dusted with stone fragments, or crushed by chunks of the ceiling.
Barging through the doorway to the courtyard, Vigil once again forced himself to a dead stop, looking at the courtyard now full of small boats, unloading giant, monstrous creatures in full armour plating and carrying both swords and spears. They were easily three times his size, and heavily armed.
There was no way he could fight them all.
Vigil spread his wings and took to the skies, before they could truly notice him amid the thunder of the cannons that tore apart his home of several months, and killed his friends with hot metal.
He soared high into the sky as the night fell, hoping to all hoped that Bright Eyes had already fled, and that he would see his friend again.
Pain blossomed right between his right foreleg and wing, between the joints as something thudded into his side with the horrid, wet sound of punctured flesh. His right wing stopped working, and he plummeted back down, landing hard on something flat and slightly uneven, his unprotected head striking the cold stone with a painful jolt.
Dazed, and looking around, he realized he was lying on top of the small, squat tower that made up the bulk of the border fort, where the unlit signal fire sat. And there, lying next to it, a flickering, sputtering torch in his hoof, was Bright Eyes, still and breathless for the arrow sticking into his flank.
Horrified and angry, wounded and gasping for breath, Vigil managed to stand himself up, armour rattling as he limped to his friend, and gently, but shakily, took the torch from Bright’s limp hoof.
Limping to his goal, and ignoring the sounds of many approaching footsteps, Vigil raised the torch up, and put it to the signal fire, not caring about the second arrow that suddenly sprouted from his dock, having punched clean through his armour.
The fire caught the wood, oil drenched and dry as tinder, lighting the pile up in moments, and sure enough, in the distance, as Vigil had wanted, other lights lit up the night, lighting hope for his country against this foul invader.
He turned, his blurring vision showing him the giant figure of the invasion’s leader, a twelve foot beast, holding a strange staff that was topped with a bright blue gem. He was dressed in armour plates like his soldiers, but instead of a helmet, wore a massive horned crown above his grinning, fanged face, with eyes of the same, crackling blue as the crystal.
“Now all of Equestria will know you're here.” Vigil said, in a quiet, weak, and defiant voice.
And as Vigil felt his life trickle out of him, he saw the invader reach across to a banner that had flown atop the tower since the final day of its construction, depicting the two sisters, Celestia and Luna flying around the sun and moon, surrounded by stars, and simply snapped it free of it’s mooring. The flag dipped into the flames of the signal fire then, the invader beaming cruelly at the dying guard as he slowly toppled over.
“Perfect.” Said Gaul.