Chapter 6:
“The insurgent leader is a stallion standing on his hind legs. You don’t win his heart and mind. You kill him.” —Maj Sean Leach, AWS, 1976, on counterinsurgency
My only thought was that I had to keep moving. I crawled through the darkness, my body too heavy to stand. Flashes of light lit up the horizon, accompanied by booms of high explosives. Occasionally the harsher retort of small arms fire echoed across the plain. My fingers dug into the coarse sand and I dragged myself forward, to where I didn’t know.
A figure cast a silhouette on the horizon, a Marine, but his face was cast in shadow. He yelled to me, but I didn’t hear words. The ground beneath me turned to void and I was slipping, he grabbed my hand, but I couldn’t feel his grip. I slipped further into the void and the figure held my arm. The void gave me nothing to push against, no matter how I struggled, I just sank deeper into the inky blackness.
The figure laughed a deep and ragged laugh as I struggled, his shape morphing into that of a hellhound. He held my severed arm and grinned wickedly, watching with glee as I slipped away. I screamed in pain, but it made no sound. The void took me.
-x-
I woke with a start at the sound of a key being turned in the lock. I felt felt surprisingly good, all the aches and pains of my body seemed to have lessened, even some of the aches I had carried for years. I would later learn that this was a lingering effect of the large number of healing potions the dogs had used to patch me up. Yes, they actually call them ‘healing potions’. I guess being a medic is a hell of a lot simpler when you can carry around cure-all in a bottle.
I tried to sit up and immediately noticed I didn’t have my left arm to push against the floor.
Fido himself was standing in the doorway holding my pipbuck. I didn’t know whether on not to be relieved that my severed arm was no longer inside it. I think some naive part of me felt like if I could just get my arm back it could somehow be reattached.
I nudged Ink Blot who had yet to wake. The colt groaned softly before opening his eyes and realising the situation. The colt pressed himself up against me to shrink away from the hellhound, once again picking me as the lesser of two evils.
“Tell me Devil Dog, how did you come by this pipbuck?” The king asked in his somewhat forced eloquence.
Plot:
Major arcs:
Current arcs (as of chapter 5):
Future arcs:
Chapter 1:
In convoy
Wake up in Equestria
Chapter 2:
First sunrise on Eqis
Scavenging
Stabletec orb encounter
Reencounter skull
Treat Wounds
Chapter 3:
Second Sunrise on Equis
Encounter convoy
Encounter raiders
Chapter 4:
Dream sequence pre-war equestria
Wake to Ink Blot’s question, at gunpoint
Begin journey to nearest settlement to drop off Ink Blot
Encounter Steel Rangers
Dream Sequence, back on the FOB
Awake on operating table in hellhound cave
Chapter 5:
Attempt to bluff
King Fido
Thrown in a cell with Ink Blot, situation unclear
Chapter 6:
The king’s gambit
Mountain ponies:
Mountain ponies are slightly smaller than other breeds, and purebreds are only found in the ‘earth pony’ variety. ‘Earth pony’ is used hesitantly because while mountain ponies also possess neither a horn nor wings, there are certain physiological differences that make them a distinct breed. Their small stature and shaggy coats help them survive at higher altitudes.
Mountain ponies developed from a tribe of religious fundamentalist Earth Ponies that split off from the main herd at around the time of Equestria’s founding, in order to settle the mountainous region to the west of the Everfree forest. Some historians believe that this move was in order to place them outside the influence of the Unicorn tribe, which they felt were making a power grab during the amalgamation (disputed). Another theory (according to religious text) is that they split off during the famine that preceded the amalgamation.
According to mountain pony religious belief, in the beginning times unicorns stole power from the gods and used it to subjugate the Earth Ponies. The Pegasi were originally guardians for the gods, who were cast down and made mortal for conspiring with the Unicorns. The gods punished pony kind for their arrogance by forcing the unicorns to control the sun and moon, and the Pegasi to control the weather. If they wanted the power of the gods, so too came the responsibilies; but in their hubris, ponies did not bow down before the gods’ and admit their foalishness. With their incomplete control the Pegasi and Unicorns couldn’t match the gods’ divine interventions, and soon their crops started to fail. Still the ponies refused to see the truth, they blamed one another for their famine and pony kind was brought to the brink of war.
This angered the gods and they sent down ice storms to smite the wicked ponies who refused to see reason. The gods sent down a prophet, who commanded the faithful to cross the desert in order to find the promised land, where nature occurred without pony interference, as the gods intended. Though the land they settled was an inhospitable one, that was the gods’ plan for them. The harshness of their land forced them to live nomadically, but this prevented them from acquiring possessions for them to covet and fight over. Death and hardship were not uncommon, but this forced them to pull together, reminded them of their own mortality and prevented them from becoming arrogant as was the hubris of the other ponies.
Strangely enough, though the Mountain Ponies despise unicorn magic, they have their own peculiar magic type, though they don’t refer to it such; they refer to it as ‘evocation’. Certain Mountain Ponies posses the ability to reshape matter and energy on a fundamental level. Unlike unicorns they cannot conjure objects using mana, nor can they transmute one object directly into another. Instead they reshape an object by manipulating the structure of the matter already within it. The objects must be in direct contact with their hooves. These ponies are referred to as the god-touched, and are revered, they bring honor and status to their families. Considered among the faithful to be a gift from the gods for their faithfulness.
Researchers have postulated that this ‘evocation’ is actually a powerful manifestation of regular Earth Pony magic. It has been observed that Earth Ponies possess certain abilities when dealing with earth, particularly with regards to farming, though the exact mechanism by which this occurs is still a mystery. It is different enough from Unicorn magic that it defies classification by any known magical theorems. As a much clearer demonstration of this magic type, it has been suggested that a study of ‘evocation’ would allow a much better insight into this ‘Earth Pony Magic’, that Unicorn scholars have struggled with for generations. Unfortunately Mountain Ponies are an insular society, and their mistrust of Unicorn magic and protectiveness surrounding ‘god touched’ have thus far been insurmountable obstacles to conducting research of this nature.
In the past, the unnamed mountainous territory of the mountain ponies was of little interest to Equestria. Though it went unmarked on maps, their control of the territory was largely uncontested. It’s strategic importance however, led to its occupation by Zebracian forces in the early years of the war (before the Littlehorn incident). Rather than engage the Zebracian forces directly, and risk escalating hostilities, Equestrian spies used Griffonian Mercenary companies to arm the mountain ponies with the training and military hardware necessary to fight a guerrilla war against the occupying forces. The mountainous terrain interspersed with untamed forest valleys proved ideal for this type of conflict and Zebracian were forced to withdraw from the region, suffering heavy losses. Towards the end of the war however, Equestria was becoming increasingly desperate for coal, and other resources. Equestria attempted to trade with the Mountain Ponies, but were flatly refused by the tribal elders. When the Equestrians came to mine the area without approval, the Mountain ponies fought them off with the same weapons and techniques given to them by Equestrian intelligence. Unusable by either side, the mountain region remained neutral throughout the war, and remains relatively unchanged even two hundred years after the bombs fell.
Despite the strong religious leadership of the land, interactions with outsiders have led to a tempering of the general populace. While the older ponies are more entrenched in tribal society, their family ties and responsibilities making exile unconscionable, younger ponies are sometimes known to rebel, and question their country's leadership, even to the point of leaving their tribes. These exiles both voluntary and involuntary have been forced to band together in their own group, known as the Tribeless. The Tribeless are shunned by the ruling elite, but still hold tacit support among much of the general populace, leading to the present state of general discontent with the country’s leadership. The elite hold much of their power through the priesthood, their control the religious texts and the god touched, who are taken from their families to be trained by the priesthood at a young age, once they start displaying signs of evocational ability.
The stability of the region has recently been shaken by a young, yet very powerful god touched who has defected to the Tribeless. With her help the Tribeless have secured a number of weapons caches and freed a number of slaves. News of their victories has swelled their numbers and support even further. At this point the Tribeless are starting to look like a viable resistance to the Priesthood, yet the Priesthood cannot order their extermination without risking outright revolt.
(possibly radioactive fallout resulted in evocational ability, along with deaths)