//------------------------------// // The Longest Day of the Thousandth Year // Story: Friendship Is Magic - Extended Cut // by AdmiralSakai //------------------------------// (♫) “Attention all hooves! Attention all hooves! Secure for hostile fire and report to battle stations! Repeat, all hooves to battle stations! Make ready for hostile fire! This is not a drill!” The voice from the speaking tube yanked Warrant Officer Junior Grade Armillary from a sound slumber and sent him rolling out of his bunk flailing and cursing. The darkness visible from the porthole beside him was his first clue that something was terribly, terribly wrong- as third-shift navigation officer aboard the cruiser R.E.S. Dauntless, he was on duty from twenty-hundred hours to oh-four-hundred and slept from oh-five-hundred to thirteen-hundred; the only reason why he’d be awakened at this entirely normal early-morning hour would be if they were heading into a situation where he might be needed to take over the charts because the primary navigators were injured or worse. Then he saw that the clock at one end of the bunkroom read 09:55, and his confusion only deepened. “Wait, that can’t be right!” he called to nopony in particular. “Raising’s been delayed, that’s all I know,” snapped the sole remaining other occupant, a big oaf of an earth pony Guardsmare whose name Armillary had never bothered to learn. He hadn’t been particularly happy about spending the Summer Sun Celebration on-ship in the Canterlot docks, but orders were orders and if Princess Celestia wanted the Royal Navy to rally and make ready to ship out to parts unknown then rally and make ready they would. The assignment of a platoon of Royal Guard hardasses to their already-cramped living space had done little to improve things, however, not in the least because it was entirely unclear what if anything the Guards were there to fight. Leaving the mare to finish buckling her armor in relative peace, he scrambled into his parachute harness -whose idea was it to require pegasi to wear the things, anyway? They even had wingholes cut in them!- and shouldered his way into the bustling corridor outside. Whatever was happening, he could tell from the regular thrumming in the boards beneath his hooves that they were already under way at maximum speed. Brushing past fellow sailors, Guards, and Royal Army regulars rushing this way or that, his ears caught disconnected fragments of conversation over the general din: “… ‘d you see the moon?” “Hey, what’s wrong with…” “… nopony can reach Princess Celestia…” “… Mare’s gone…” “… wait just now?” “… feels like it’s been like that for hours at least but that doesn’t…” “… like a dream or something…” Then he was up on deck, fighting against the wind, and struggling to find the fastest route to the bridge through the barely-controlled chaos of too many ponies trying to move too many extremely dangerous things in too little time. There were more airships visible off to either side of the deck keeping pace, frigates by the look of them, but those weren’t what caught his attention- true to scuttlebutt, the Mare In The Moon had indeed disappeared. “Gangway!” At the shouted command Armillary dodged to one side, narrowly missing an Army private dragging a trolley full of cannon rounds as an air chariot swooped onto the deck from what he estimated to be a generally Canterlot-ward direction. A rather disheveled older pegasus stallion with half-moon spectacles stumbled out just before it took off again, still clad in a rumpled silk pajama shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the Royal Academy- “Department of History?!” Armillary asked aloud. The stallion stomped off to another area of the deck and began shouting in what looked like a mixture of equal parts outrage and confusion at a cluster of higher-ranking officers which included some sort of small purple lizard creature and… “Is that Commander Shining Armor?” “Oi! Yer some kinda’ navigator, ain’tcha?” Another voice called, and Armillary turned to spot Powderkeg, one of the other Guards who normally resided in his bunkroom, and the only one who’d thus far bothered to give him so much as a how-do-you-do, stuffing ampules of alchemist’s-fire into the pockets of his own parachute harness, “I heard some a’ the other Navy pukes talkin’ just ‘afore we shoved off… the numbers fifteen-point-five-two East by one-twenty-point-three-three South mean anythin’ to ya?” Trying to tune out the chaos around him, Armillary managed to recall the relevant section of charts. “Wait, no, there has to be some kind of mistake,” he said, “That’s right in the middle of Equestria!” (♫) “Flyover just reported back and it’s pretty much what we saw from the ship,” said First Lieutenant Marigold as she took her hoof away from the audio rune on the side of her golden helmet. “Whole lotta’ bodies but not a lotta’ movement. We’re gonna split up into individual squads and check street by street.” She surveyed her troops, both the familiar ones she’d served with for the last two years and those significantly less so. The three six-mare squads of Royal Guards she led were each being tailed by a dedicated Equestrian Army medical unit today. A week ago they’d all grumbled about having to foalsit the medics on whatever poorly-conceived errand of mercy the higher-ups had planned for them, a situation only aggravated by their long confinement together in the cramped belly of a docked airship. Then they’d heard the town they were heading for was right in the middle of the Equestrian heartland, and had all hoped quietly that the medics wouldn’t be needed. Then they’d seen the bodies in the streets and hoped much more openly that the medics would still have anything they were able to do. It wasn’t Marigold’s job to worry about that, though. Her orders were simple. “Alpha Squad, you’ve got Farrier Street!” she barked, tapping a gold-shod hoof at the map spread out on the folding table in front of her, “Bravo, you take Founder’s. Canter, you’re with me; we’ll head up Carousel and all meet up with Lieutenant Ratcatcher and Second Platoon in that big market square. Understood?” There was the expected chorus of “Yessir”s, although Corporal Subtle Spark was notably not among them. “Sir,” the small blue-gray unicorn asked, shifting nervously on his hooves, “They got any idea what was up with that flash?” “Dauntless’s gonna be heading over where it came from with some Academy eggheads pretty soon, but from what the Captain told me before we landed they think it was just a big surge of free mana or something, like breaking one of those enchanted spinny-tops times a couple million.” Marigold had a husband and two school-age foals back home in Baltimare; she was thus painfully familiar with how well cheap carnival enchantments held up under the pressure of a pony’s hoof. “Long and short of it is, it’s not our problem.” Corporal Spark seemed unconvinced. “Sure, fine, but if it turns out to be one of those slow-acting curses I keep reading about, I’m gonna make extra sure I’m in slopping-range of your stampbook when we all start melting into puddles of goo, okay?” “Sparky?” “Sir?” “Can it.” “Yessir.” “Now move out!” They started down from the small hill where they and three other platoons had been dropped off and moved into the raggedy outskirts of the town proper, advancing slowly and cautiously. It was deathly quiet in the streets, the first rays of the rising sun painting everything a lurid red-orange- smashed Sun-lanterns and torn banners, halfway-boarded-up windows and collapsing excuses for barricades; a Summer Sun postcard from Tartarus. “Bodies. Out in the street.” whispered Private Aqua Regia from the front of their formation. They fanned out and established a loose perimeter while Marigold and the medical squad’s own lieutenant- a gangly white earth mare named Salmon Salt- peered down at the equine forms that lay slumped over in the middle of the dirt road. They were both clad in odd, curving, tooth-edged blue armor that looked as though its best days were well behind it, and both had weapons nearby, but there was no sign of a struggle. As near as Marigold could tell, they’d both just keeled over while walking side-by-side down the middle of the street. One appeared to be a pegasus and the other clearly wasn’t a unicorn; beyond that they were in too bad of a condition for the Lieutenant to say much for certain. “What’s wrong with those wings?” asked Private Parhelion, gingerly unfolding the exposed one in her telekinesis. What Marigold had initially mistaken for a regular if featherless wing proved itself to be bony and membranous, with four long fingerbones. “I don’t know,” said another of the medics, “Look at them, they’re practically mummified, it’s like they’ve been dead and buried for a hundred years.” “Well, obviously,” Salmon Salt countered, “that one’s skull’s smashed in, and the other one has a half-dozen arrows in its chest cavity. There’s clearly necromancy behind this, but that doesn’t explain the wings…” Out of the corner of her eye, Marigold spotted something moving in one of the ground-floor windows of a cottage on the other side of the street. “Quiet!” she hissed, and then motioned with her hoof. Aqua and Parhelion quietly slipped into position on either side of the door, blades at the ready. Then at Marigold’s signal, Aqua reared up on her hind legs and slammed forward, effectively pulverizing the flimsy wood surface. They both charged forward into the interior- and pulled up short just before they would have simultaneously impaled and trampled the small gray earth stallion with a spiky black mane, who had been peering through the keyhole on the other side. “Whoa! Hold up!” shouted Parhelion, then stuck out a hoof to where the stallion was hunkered down with his hooves over his head. “Easy, easy! We’re not gonna hurt you…” It took him about a second to look up, and take the offered hoof in his own. “S… soldiers?” he asked as Parhelion pulled him back onto all-fours. “Yeah. It’s OK, you’re safe, we’re here to help,” said Aqua Regia, and gingerly guided the stallion outside. “Can you tell us what happened here?” Marigold asked. The stallion cocked his head, blinking bloodshot eyes. “Not… really? I… had a little too much to drink at the Celebration, so Berry walked me back home around… I dunno, one o’clock, maybe, and then I fell asleep and when I woke up those things were already crawling all over town. Then that light happened and they all fell over and… then you all showed up.” Another voice echoed in Marigold’s helmet. “Lieutenant, it’s Chamomile. We caught one of those weird gray rutters still on his hooves, but I… think there’s something wrong with him.” Marigold stepped away from the bewildered local and tapped the rune that would allow two-way communication. “You captured one alive?” “Well, capture’s a strong word,” Sergeant Chamomile continued, “He was just leaning up against a wall, looking right at us like he didn’t care.” “Can he talk?” “He… mumbles. Same thing over and over again: ‘The Moon has set. Our light is lost’, whatever that means.” “Creepy,” muttered Corporal Sparks beside her. Marigold ignored him. “Sergeant, have a medic and two of your Guards run that prisoner back to the landing site. I want at least four eyes on him at any time, understand?” She didn’t wait for a response before cutting off the listening-spell in her helmet and gesturing to Private Parhelion. “Sundog, stick around, guard our friend here, and see if he knows where anypony else might’ve hid. Rest of you, form up!” The street narrowed and made a sort of zig-zag up ahead around a particularly large shopfront. Judging by the signage it might up until recently have been a bookseller’s; now it dealt primarily in smashed timber and broken glass. Aqua Regia leaned around the corner, then looked back at Marigold in confusion and motioned her forward. A single blue-armored pegasus was standing in the middle of the road amidst a pile of discarded shields and collapsed mummy-troops, a pike still held in one odd, bat-like wing. She was gray with a dark blue mane, just like the dead husks that surrounded her, but seemed relatively… well, alive. Cautiously, Marigold stepped out into the open. “Halt!” The gray pegasus shouted in a rough, fillyish voice. She brandished her weapon in a stance that would have been much more threatening had there been even a single other pikemare to back her up, and if the tip wasn’t shaking like a leaf in late autumn. “Thou shalt not pass!” The Lieutenant stepped forward, calmly and slowly. “We’re not trying to hurt you,” she said, “we can offer you medical assistance and get you to safety. Put that weapon down, and we can talk this over properly.” “Nay. Nay!” the pegasus snapped. Her eyes were bright yellow and slitted like a cat’s, something Marigold would probably have noticed a lot earlier had the pony’s head not been jerking around constantly in panic. “We will never parley with the forces of the Sun-Tyrant! ‘Tis blasphemy to the memory of Our Sovereign!” The mare was practically screaming now, swinging her pike back and forth between the Lieutenant and the Private. Her armor rattled, too big for her bony frame and not well-put-together in the first place. “Nopony’s gotta die today,” said Marigold, and took another few steps forward. As she did so, one of Subtle Spark’s crossbow darts buzzed over her right shoulder and struck the slit-eyed mare square in the forehead. It shattered on impact, the liquid inside splattering over her fur before rapidly sublimating into a faint green mist. “Ha!” She yelled, apparently having expected the projectile to have been tipped with something much stronger than glass. ‘Tis but the bite of… a… flea…” She gave an oddly relieved-sounding sigh as the sedative draught overtook her system, and crumpled forward onto the cobblestones. The rest of Marigold’s squad moved up to join her, as the medics hung back. “It’s an aerosol, Sparky. You didn’t have to hit her in the head,” she admonished, then decided she had more important things to worry about. “All right, get her restrained and-” “Hey! Lady! Hey!” Somepony called from up ahead. “Oh, now what?” Marigold heard Aqua Regia mutter. Another mare rounded the corner, this one a violet earth pony clad in the sort of older, mismatched armor common among the smaller town watches and militia. Her muzzle scrunched up for moment as she registered the sheer number of sharp, explosive, and magical things pointed her way, and she wisely backed up a few steps. “Oh, thank the Sun! Finally, they sent somepony to help us!” As she talked, more and more chatter was starting to come in through Marigold’s helmet. “It’s OK,” Chamomile was telling somepony, “he’s a healer, he’s just gonna take a look at that hoof-” “Listen. All those freaky gray guys are heading into the town square…” “- No, no, you’re free to go, we just wanted to make sure you’re all right; can you tell us where your family might be?-” “… but we managed to get all the wounded out and back up to the hospital before they started to get their act back together…” “- That’s it, nice and slow, now kick it towards me-” “… that one Major who got herself hypnotized says she’s fine now, but…” “- gonna need a couple more stretchers over here -” “… some of the ponies from Celestia’s security detail reckon we could just surround ‘em and keep hitting ‘em from range until they’re all gone…” “- must’ve taken some real guts to show yourself, looking like you… well. Let’s see if we can get this little scamp back to his parents-” “… but now that you’re here to back us up…” Marigold silenced the militiamare with a raised hoof. “I’m sorry, what? This is a search-and-rescue mission. You didn’t think we usually bring this many medics with us, do you?” The mare blinked, confused. “But… we’ve got the upper hoof…” Something rustled in the forest still visible on the other end of the street. Three more of the gray ponies stepped out from the underbrush, a bat-winged mare and a unicorn stallion with a weird curved horn supporting another bat-stallion over their shoulders. Marigold watched Parhelion and the rest of the rear guard draw their blades and fan out, but all the new arrivals did was lay down silently in the street with their hooves in front of them. The one in the middle looked to be in particularly bad shape, and at Marigold’s nod Salmon Salt and her crew began assembling their supply of canvas stretchers. She turned back to the militiamare. “Private, I think we need to have a long talk with whoever’s in charge of this… seige you’re trying to assemble.”