It's not on any map anywhere in Equestria. Princess Celestia made sure of that. East-southeast of Black Skull Island, towards the Dragonlands. Near the center of the ocean.
A day out from the island, two weeks after the scrap on the ridgeline, our squadron fought a meeting engagement with a pair of pirate schooners.
After the cannonfire ended and the pirate ships burned and sank, the hospital ship I was on sent a pinnace to my company's transport ship. I donned my hooded red cross smock and snuck onto the pinnace just as it cast off.
I climbed up the rigging and jumped onto the deck of the transport.
"Redheart?" Lieutenant Armor said. "Did they release you early?"
I saluted. "No, sir. I'm AWOL from the hospital ship. I pulled up the hood and they didn't recognize me. I heard you all took two cannon hits, so... where are the wounded?"
Major Blueblood trotted up. "Going AWOL to get closer to the scrap? That sounds like Celestia's Own. Welcome back, Corporal. There are wounded on the gundeck. Celestia's Own don't quit."
"Celestia's Own don't quit!" I shouted as I turned toward the stairs. Then I paused. "Wait—'corporal?'"
Blueblood nodded. "Sergeant Suture got his leg crushed when a guntruck recoiled. You're the senior medic in the company. Go!"
Belowdecks, I found Tender Jade. We used tourniquets to save two wounded, splinted several broken bones, and field-amputated a shattered claw.
Neither of us had done an amputation before. I hit the hippogriff with a double dose of painkiller. Jade held her arm and I worked the saw.
It... wasn't great. She screamed and cursed us, Celestia, and the entire pony race, before she passed out. Months later, while I was still in the hospital, I got an 'expletive you' letter in the mail from her. The writing was terrible, since we had been forced to take her dominant claw.
We lost one hippogriff, a mare who looked even younger than me. Wood splinters had pierced her lungs and heart. We gave her a triple dose of painkiller and let her go quietly.
Sweat ran down my back, and into my eyes. My smock stuck to my skin. I don't know the exact latitude, but we were within a few degrees of the equator. The daytime sun turned the gun smoke-choked, blood-stinking gundeck into a sauna.
"Nice to have you back, Boss," Jade said. "Congratulations on corporal. I'll sew the stripes on your smock tonight."
"Thanks."
"You look terrible."
I just nodded. The lung infection was gone and my ribs knitted, thanks to potions, but I still felt weak and I hadn't really been eating since I'd murdered the four pirates. The doctors had told me I was down a stone.
"I'm fine," I said. We moved the wounded to a pinnace, which took them to the hospital ship.
Twenty, thirteen, and four. Twenty saved. That was a good number.
I had no idea what was in store for me over the next two weeks.
The next day, that horrible place—we called it Despair Island, since it has no official name—came over the horizon, all mist-shrouded granite mountains and dark green jungle. Black Skull Island, with its barren volcanic rock had looked bad, but the real evil was here, under that fertile jungle canopy.
The squadron circled far offshore, so I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a hippogriff. I saw the pirates' fortress on the eastern slopes of the mountains. Outlying bunkers and gunpits protected a sheltered anchorage.
I wasn't a trooper, I wasn't a sailor, I wasn't an officer. But even I knew that was going to be a nasty bit of work to deal with.
I bit my tongue and ran a hoof over the new corporal's stripes on my shoulder. That made me leadership—and I had no desire to lead. I didn't know anything about command, and I wasn't trained for fighting, just patching up the mess left behind.
Could I give the stripes back? Now, besides fearing the welfare of my patients, I had to fear for ponies under my command if something happened to all the sergeants.
My stomach roiled, acid churning, and it wasn't seasickness.
Just before nightfall, Major Blueblood called us together on the gundeck of the hippogriff ship. Three of the battalion's six companies crowded together, shoulder-to-cutie mark, sweating in the tropical heat and the warmth of the herd.
"Troopers, here's the plan," Blueblood began, magically amplifying his voice. "The rest of the squadron will stay here, watching the pirate's stronghold. This ship and the Prince Guidestar will break formation, circle to the west end of the island, deposit the battalion, and sneak back before dawn. They won't have any clue Celestia's Own is in their rear, approaching them from behind. Questions?"
"What's our mission, sir?" Lieutenant Armor asked.
"First, we will take out the gun emplacements protecting the approaches, so that the rest of the fleet can enter the bay and land Second, Third, and Fourth battalions. Then, we lead the assault on the fortress itself, free the prisoners, and dispose of the pirates. Easy."
Silence. We all knew what those orders meant. Easy wasn't any part of this deal.
"How are we going to navigate across the jungle, sir?" asked a private.
Major Blueblood grinned at him. "Oh, we'll find a way."
Ponies asked several more questions. I raised my hoof and asked, "How many days of rations will we carry?"
"Ten," Blueblood said. "We're going to depend on you earth ponies, and I apologize in advance."
Ten days seemed like a lot. The island wasn't that big. It would be a three or four hour trot on a paved path. Being a city filly, I didn't know any better.
"One last thing," Blueblood said.
We all quieted. When an officer said one last thing, it was guaranteed to suck.
"Princess Celestia has teleported from Canterlot to the Prince Guidestar. She will be with us, along with Princess Cadance. Keep those two alive at all costs. And if you have to choose one or the other, choose Celestia. Cadance would be the first to tell you that."
I side-eyed at Lieutenant Armor. He looked green.
The boats deposited us by the light of the crescent moon. We formed into platoons and companies, waited for dawn, and started off, toward a cut between two of the granite peaks.
Under the jungle's triple canopy, almost no daylight reached down to us. We dripped sweat and stopped for water breaks every hour, our pegasi drawing the humidity into clouds to condense and refill our canteens.
Fungus attacked our ears and genitals, and our camouflage cloaks rotted off our backs.
I shouldn't have been there. I was still weak from my stay on the hospital ship, and Jade ended up carrying half of my kit. It's a good thing he was such a large pegasus. Every night, curled up in our two-pony tent with the zipper sealed against mosquitoes and snakes, I cried into my tail until I fell asleep. He pretended not to notice.
My dreams got worse. No longer content to torture me with visions of patients lost, bleeding unstaunched, those corporal's stripes on my shoulder left me in terror of giving orders, sending ponies into an ambush, their bodies ripped—
That's when I always woke up, gasping.
Jade and I shared that tiny tent, us sleeping spine-to-spine, and after the fourth night, I felt him fighting to hide his own racking sobs.
We lost two troopers and Echo Company's commander to taipan bites, even though all of us wore anti-snakebite gaiters on our legs. If those fangs hit just right, the gaiters weren't enough, and we didn't have any antivenin for that species. We buried them in the rocky jungle soil. Two others were saved by immediate amputations, which I was thankful fell on other medics. After treating the hippogriff gunner aboard the ship, amputations had joined the other nightmares in my nightly rotation.
The damn hippogriff rations were mostly dried fish. It kept us on our hooves, but certainly added to the general aura of despair about Despair Island.
Somehow, we soldiered on.
I think it's because we knew there were slaves to be freed at the end of it, and that only Celestia's Own was capable of doing what needed to be done.
Not one of us would have hesitated to pay any price to free slaves. But the waiting and the interminable heat of the jungle were almost too much.
On the seventh night, or maybe the sixth, when we stopped to make camp, Celestia came to me to get two leeches removed.
"Princess?" I asked Celestia, as I smeared disinfectant over a fresh bite near her left cutie mark. "Why are you here?"
She looked down at me, and levitated off her helmet. It was painted deep jungle-green, along with the rest of her armor. Despite armor and a heavy green cloak, she didn't seem to sweat.
"In Baltimare," she said, "I told you I cannot abide slavery. Many of my little ponies, and innocents of the other races, are held in that castle."
"But why you?" I insisted.
"I fear that my magic will be needed to make the difference between victory and defeat."
I frowned at that. Didn't she believe in us? I said, my voice hurt, "Celestia's Own don't quit."
"Don't think I lack confidence in you and your comrades, Corporal," she said. "But this is not a mission that can be allowed to fail. Every resource at Equestria's disposal must be drawn upon, and that includes my niece, and myself."
Cadance sat a dozen paces away, Tender Jade removing a leech from her underwing. I slapped a bandage to Celestia's wound, and used my nose to squeeze its adhesive against her coat. "All done, Majesty."
"Oh, I almost forgot to mention..." Celestia said.
Cocking my head, I looked at her.
"An anonymous philanthropist established a college fund for your younger brothers."
My jaw dropped. "Princess! You—you shouldn't have done that!"
She patted my helmet with a wing. "I said it was somepony anonymous, why do you assume it was me?"
"I'm no mercenary," I snapped. "Okay, I joined the Guard for college bits—but I'm on this forsaken island because it's the right thing. Not for money."
Celestia smiled. "I'll tell the donor you said, 'Thank you.'"
She walked off, and I plopped down to my bottom in the mud and cried.
I knew I would die on that island—but at least neither of the twins would have to join the guard, either, and put mom and dad through this again.
A few seconds later, a corporal named Cirrus Clouds came up to me. His face was red and he shuffled his wings in embarrassment. He mumbled, "I have jungle fungus under my tail, Doc."
I took a deep breath and reached into my kit for the antifungal salve.
How did we navigate through those dark jungles, around the stinking bogs, finding the easiest passes between the gray granite peaks? How did we always catch the pirates' patrols from behind, cutting off their escape and killing every last one of them before they could send a messenger back? How did we find and disarm every single boobytrap before we stumbled across it?
How did we make even one mile a day, which was a surprisingly good pace through such heavy country?
Well, Major Blueblood wasn't the deputy commander of the best battalion in the world because of nepotism.
His cutie mark is a compass rose. It took us eight days to cross through that horrific jungle, but we might never have made it at all without his talent at sniffing out the path.
He stayed at the head of the column, the single most-dangerous spot, for all eight days. My platoon was on point the seventh day, so I was about twenty yards behind the Major. In the deep shade of the jungle canopy, I could barely see him.
Like me, the Prince has a bright white coat, and he carefully kept mud smeared over anything that his camouflage didn't cover. He's famous nowadays for his thick blond mane, but he had shaved it immediately before we landed on the island.
Blueblood held up a hoof, and pointed at the ground just in front of him. Big Kaboom, our booby trap expert, tiphooved forward and looked at whatever Blueblood had spotted.
Boomie used her hooves and a small trowel held in her mouth to dig into the ground and remove... something. Her wings trembled.
I sat down and took a drink from my canteen. Like most of the mares, I had a bladder infection from not enough water and too few pee breaks. I touched my forehead and the fever scared me.
Once Boomie had the booby trap cleared away, Major Blueblood started off again, a slow walk, his nose almost to the loam, his horn dimly illuminated, literally sniffing the ideal path for us.
I stood and followed the column, walking in his hoofsteps. I've listened to Rarity rant and rave about the Prince several times. And, have no doubt, he's an utter prat in the flesh. I would break his ribs rather than have a conversation with him. But he saved those slaves' lives, and our battalion's. I would love to break his ribs, but then I would shake his hoof and buy him a beer. Or whatever snooty expensive crap he drinks.
Just after dark on the ninth day, we approached the gun positions that covered the harbor. We worked our way down to the edge of the water, mangrove roots tripping us with every step. About eighteen hundred feet away, across a thin neck of saltwater, was the far side of the harbor mouth.
One of the pirates' gun bunkers was to our left, and the other ahead of us, across the water.
Celestia stood tall and flared her wings. She didn't move, I wasn't even sure she was breathing, but over the next two hours a thick fog rolled in from the ocean, the smell of fresh salt air slowly displacing the jungle stench. I started to shiver as the fog dampened my cape, smock, and fur.
"Here's the deal," Lieutenant Armor told us. "Pegasi will work in relays to carry the unicorns and earth ponies to the far side. Bravo company'll assault the far gun emplacement, and Alpha Company will take the near one. The other companies are then going to clear the beaches so that the squadron can land the rest of the troops before dawn."
I insisted on going with the first wave. Jade carried me, panting and struggling, because of my weight.
"Don't drop me," I said with a fake laugh. "Last swim I took ended with the PoW medal, and these fellas don't take prisoners."
He just panted, wings beating against the thick fog. He dropped me on the far side, under another mangrove.
I listened. Waves lapped against the mangrove roots, and jungle animals called or hooted. My spine tingled, and I knew this would be a terrible night. Even with surprise, even under cover of dark, attacking entrenchments would...
I shook my head, clearing visions of failed attacks. I really needed to talk to the major and give back my stripes. Let the actual NCOs and officers handle that.
The pegasi made several more round trips, and at last Jade landed next to me with both our bags. He gasped and sat down. "Whew."
"Redheart, Jade," Lieutenant Armor ordered, "you two set up your aid station here, just above the high tide line."
"Yes, sir," Jade and I replied.
"We can't spare you a security detachment," Sergeant Flash said. "Don't hesitate to defend yourselves."
I nodded and Jade shuffled his wings. We both wore camouflage, of course. No laws of war, no rules, no quarter. No protection from the red cross.
I hate slavers.
Princess Celestia flapped down near us, her armor rattling softly, before disappearing into the mangroves.
Lieutenant Armor said to Jade and I, "Cadance is with Alpha. Celestia is with us. When you hear the music start... stand to and be ready."
"I want to come with the company, sir," I said. "Be with the assault."
"No."
"But—"
"No."
I ground my teeth. "Yes, sir."
The company disappeared into the bush. Even with the sun down, the heat pressed on us, the cool ocean breeze a forgotten memory. My entire body dripped, and I could no longer tell what was sweat and what was fog. My own stench surrounded me, along with a hint of fishmonger from all the hippogriff rations. I hate to admit it, but the fish jerky was starting to grow on me, by that point. I still eat it to this day, since it is nutritious.
Patches of dark fungus grew on Jade's face and ears, which combined with his jade coloration, actually made him about the most camouflaged pony in the whole battalion. I was jealous.
The moon was full—another Celestia special—and the thin canopy above us allowed just enough light down for us to organize our supplies and lay out three blankets for the inevitable wounded. I lit a small lantern, but left its shroud in place.
"Hey, Boss?" Jade said.
"Yeah?" I whispered.
"Help me get my wingblades on."
We got the blades onto his wings, and I carefully removed the leather covers to expose the sharpened killing edges. The leather tasted musty and old in my mouth, and Jade smelled just as bad as I did.
We sat and listened.
"Boss?" Jade said.
"Uh-huh?"
"You killed some pirates."
"Don't remind me."
"I don't think I could."
I remembered the ridge. I'd hesitated, unwilling to stomp the life out of that hippogriff, until Sergeant Flash had screamed his command at me.
"It wasn't easy," I said.
Jade grunted.
"Jade," I said. "No harm will come to our patients while we're alive. Accept that right now. Make them step over our dead bodies to get our patients."
He grunted again.
I still had my eyepatch from the hospital. I tugged it out of a pocket. "Help me get this on?"
"What? Why? Your eye is bothering you?" Jade said.
"No... no. When Celestia starts the music, I bet it ruins our night vision. I'll keep one eye dark adapted. You close both of yours until I tell you when it's time."
Foul-smelling feathers brushed my face as he fit the patch over my left eye.
"Cover your eyes with your wings," I ordered.
We waited in the dark.
I'm guessing it was an hour, or maybe an hour and a half. With the fog covering the stars, I wouldn't tell.
"Hey, Jade?" I said.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"You're a good friend, okay?"
"You too."
"You remind me of my little brothers."
He laughed. "I'm four years older than you. And a pegasus."
"Still, though. Hey, look. If I... you know... can you keep an eye on my brothers?"
"You've got it."
A few more minutes of silence.
"Why'd you join Celestia's Own?" I asked.
"I'm an idiot," he replied.
"Huh, me too. Wanna be twins?"
The horizon and forest lit up, bright yellow, and a second later the ground bucked, knocking me off my hooves.
The false sunrise dimmed, and then to our left, a bright pink flash, more distant, swelled and ebbed. A second, smaller, ground shock ran up our legs, followed a moment later by crashing surf.
"Show started!" I snapped, and tossed the eyepatch off. Jade stood and pulled his wings off his eyes.
“Wow,” Jade said, looking at the dimming flashes.
"Celestia first," I guessed, pointing at the fading yellow glow, "then Cadance," and I pointed at the pink flash. "I bet they opened those bunkers like soft-boiled eggs."
We stood there, tail to tail, so we could watch all directions at once. He flared his wings, wingblades ready, and I stretched my legs, ready to buck.
Spells sparkled in the directions of the two bunkers, but the fog and offshore breeze meant we could hear nothing.
My heart pounded, and Jade's body heaved against mine with his shuddering breaths. I looked, sniffed, twisted my ears left and right.
The world was nothing but the two of us and a thick blanket of foggy mist. That bit from basic training really came back to me: You will be scared. What matters is if you still do your job. They must have said that to us hundreds of times. They really knew what they were talking about, huh?
By Celestia and Luna, was I ever terrified!
Hooves crashed through the underbrush.
"Stand to," I whispered to Jade.
Crescent Pop, the unicorn private I had fought alongside on the Black Skull Island ridge, emerged from the jungle. Cirrus Clouds, the pegasus corporal I had treated for jungle fungus on his nethers a few days before, was slung over Crescent's back. Cirrus had been so embarrassed, apologized to me fifteen times as I treated him, but all the stallion medics had been busy, so I had assured him it was fine.
Well, this time, he wasn't fine.
"Spell to the chest!" Crescent gasped, and levitated Cirrus down to one of our blankets.
Cirrus squirmed and writhed, biting on a fetlock to keep quiet, blood flowing everywhere.
After flipping the shroud on my lantern open, brightening our aid station, I took one look at Cirrus and knew he was going to die. The spell had punched through his armor and into his left lung. A university hospital trauma center could have saved him—but two medics in the field? No way. Just... no way.
Cirrus stared up at me, eyes wide and begging me.
"You'll be fine," I said. "Let me get you a painkiller."
Twenty, fourteen, and four. Another life lost, and I felt the bile in my mouth. My ears wilted and my tail tucked. I pulled an ampoule of painkiller and prepared to sedate him enough to pass peacefully.
Jade looked at me, eyes dripping tears. I nodded slightly to him, and felt my own tears forming. I plunged two syringes into Cirrus's thigh, then pushed their plungers simultaneously.
His eyes closed and his fetlock fell from his mouth.
Crescent lowered his head and sobbed.
"Horse apples," I whispered. "Crescent, get back to the line. There's surely somepony else by now you need to bring us."
"You... you didn't even try!" Crescent screamed at me. "You didn't even try, you just put him down like a pet! Are you a medic or a veterinarian?"
Crescent's horn lit, and his sword moved an inch in his scabbard.
A deer and a griffon burst out of the jungle, into the light of my lantern. The deer—an eight- or ten-point buck—slashed at Crescent, goring him in the neck, lifting him and tossing him aside.
The griffon tackled me, slashing with a sword. I hunched my shoulders, ducking my head, and the sword rang against my armored withers and rebounded, flying from his claw.
He grappled, grabbing my forelegs in his claws. I landed on my back, under him, and tried to buck him off, but this griffon was twice the size of the female griffon I'd killed on Black Skull Island. He was my weight or more.
Everything else disappeared. Crescent, Jade, the deer. Even the mist dropped from my awareness as I focused on him. I think a marching band could have paraded past us right then without me noticing.
I flipped, twisted, and rolled, getting myself on top of him. He snapped with his beak, trying to tear out my throat. He only cut my cheek, the pain feeling like the slightest brush of a feather.
I yanked my head back and spit in his eyes. That startled him, and I rammed my head down, smashing with the forehead of my helmet, fracturing his beak. I smashed down again, and a third time, his beak now hanging in pieces, held together only by the skin covering it.
He squawked, spraying my face with blood. His tail grabbed my right-rear leg, but I got my left-rear leg up and stomped my hoof down, smashing between his rear legs with an awful splat. I still shake when I remember how that felt… it still makes me sick, to this day.
He screamed, arching his back, and his claws released my forelegs. With my newly free right forehoof, I stomped his larynx, once, twice, thrice. He spasmed and died, drowning on his own blood.
I ran to Crescent Pop. The unicorn writhed on the ground, his magic clamping a wound on his throat, but his aura began to splutter.
Looking up, I saw Jade squared off with the deer. Half the deer's antlers were gone and blood soaked Jade's left wingblade.
I grabbed one of my precious few magic tools, another arterial repair appliance, between my hooves, checked its charge, and gripped it, holding it over Crescent's wound.
The deer feinted with his remaining antlers. Jade faded back, left wingblade high, Jade's right wing limp.
The deer stumbled, and Jade raised his wingblade...
...hesitated...
...hesitated...
"Kill him, soldier!" I yelled.
Jade slashed and split the deer's skull, just below the antlers. It went down.
"Drop your spell, and I can seal the wound." Crescent glared at me, and then cut his aura. Blood spurted across my chest as I squeezed on the grip and the spell flashed and sealed his torn carotid artery, the magical tendrils stitching the wound.
"Hold still," I said. "I'll bandage you."
I looked at Jade. He had by then wrenched his wingblade from the deer's skull, and stood over the corpse, ashen and shaking. "Jade. Jade!"
He looked at me.
"You did good," I said.
Jade vomited and collapsed to his belly, legs limp.
"Jade, you didn't kill him, okay? I did. I gave you the order. I'm the corporal. It's on me."
He covered his eyes with his good wing, muttering, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry your mother what'll I tell your mother I'm sorry..."
I patched up Crescent's throat, then stitched and splinted Jade's right wing.
"Jade?" I said.
He stared at the dead deer.
I remembered how Sergeant Flash had gently laid a hoof on my withers after I killed the pirates on the ridge, and spoken quietly to me. I put a hoof on Jade's withers. "Jade," I whispered. "Are you all right?"
"No, Corporal," he said, "I am not fucking 'all right.'"
Almost exactly what I had said to Flash.
"I need my number one medic back," I told him.
He stood up. "Yeah, Boss. Okay."
"I'm ordering you evacuated as soon as the boats come in. The surgeons need to clean those wounds. This jungle is filthy and wings are delicate."
"Okay," he said. He shook. "Boss... I'm okay now. I can work. I don't want to be evacuated."
I looked at Jade, and remembered the bitter taste of my own evacuation on the river barge, when there had still been fighting to do. "Yeah, I need your help until the boats can get you. Get to work."
I dragged the deer's body away so that Jade didn't have to see the corpse. That was just in time for Sergeant Striker and some others to bring in the next batch of wounded.
It was a long night.
By dawn, my score was twenty-six, seventeen, and six, if I counted Jade's kill against me, since I'd given him the order.
Most of my cape and half my body was red with blood when Celestia raised the sun, and other than the beak-slash on my cheek, none of the blood was my own.
I looked at the griffon. His face was dark in the light of dawn, unmoving and dead.
I didn't feel like puking.
That scared me worse than possibly anything in my life.
I had just killed yet another creature, hoof-to-hoof, stomped the very life out of him, smashed his throat and crushed his genitals... ordered another killed, tossed off the order as easily as ordering a hot chocolate at a cafe... and I didn't feel a single thing.
That's when I knew the Redheart who had first gone to war, early that last summer, was dead.
And I didn't even know who had replaced her. Celestia knew that my family would never recognize this replacement Redheart, if she ever lived to get home.
I got back to work, checking blood pressures and plasma drips.
The fortress still towered above us, its cannons firing occasionally into the jungle to keep us jumpy and nervous. Relays of hippogriff sailors flew in, carrying slings, to evacuate our wounded, which included Jade and Crescent. By dawn, I was confident Crescent would live. Heck, he'd be back on duty in a month, thanks to how quickly I closed his carotid artery.
He was still cursing me for losing Cirrus as they carried him away.
I was still cursing myself. With Jade's evacuation, I was the last medic in the company. The entire Battalion had only three of us left, for eight hundred troopers. I wasn't sure what happened to the other medics. Nopony I asked knew.
We hunkered down that day, hidden in the mangroves. I treated two more snakebites, and I saved both their lives, although at the cost of amputations: one foreleg, one tail.
Twenty-eight, seventeen, and six. I was getting practiced at amputations, and I hated myself for it. I felt more like a carpenter than a medic, with all the sawing I was doing. I told myself that once I got back to Equestria, the doctors would be doing the amputations, not me. I still prefer not to assist in an amputation, to this day, unless it’s a dire emergency. The rest of the crew at the hospital doesn’t know why, but they know just enough of my history to understand.
After dark, boats came in, carrying the next three battalions. They dug into the jungle overnight, surrounding the fortress, and Celestia's Own was able to pull back a thousand yards up the beach and bivouac in semi-peace.
I flopped down and passed out.
My bladder infection, with its burning urge to urinate, woke me well before dawn. When I opened my eyes, I saw Cadance curled up near me. She cracked her eyes and looked at me.
"Corporal Redheart," she said.
I stood up, a little wobbly. "Princess."
"You did well yesterday night, defending your aide station and saving Crescent Pop's life."
I sat down, and my throat felt thicken. I coughed to disguise a sob. "Don't remind me."
Cadance took my head between her wings, and looked into my eyes. Her horn glowed dimly. "You're deep into combat fatigue. You weren't even recovered from your wounds when you improperly returned yourself to duty, and it shows."
"I'm just tired. I'm not sleeping. Bladder infection is keeping me awake. I've got jungle fungus on my... bits... which itches like you wouldn't believe, but the other medics are stallions, so I haven't..."
“I would believe the itch, as it turns out.” She let go of my face. "It won't be long. Morning. Then we can all rest."
"Morning?" Two days before Hearth’s Warming. I guessed Mom and Dad and my brothers would get the news after the holiday. Good.
Cadance stood. "I'm afraid so."
"Princess?" I said.
She looked at me, her pink mane filthy and matted. Fungus covered her camouflage cloak.
"You're younger than I am, Princess," I said, "and you don't look so hot, yourself. Are they at least going to give you a medal for breaking open that gunhouse?"
"Princesses don't get medals. This is just the job."
"Oh," I said.
She kissed my forehead, then curled back up to go back to sleep. "Remember why we're here."
I cocked my head and looked at her.
"We fight for love, and our enemies fight for hate. You love your little brothers, yes?"
"Wha—of course!"
"We're here to make a world where no creature's brother or sister, son or daughter, mother or father, is held in bondage and suffering. Tomorrow will be the worst day of your life, and the worst of mine. Keep in mind that we're here because of love. With my magic, I counted one thousand, two hundred, and four slaves held in the depths of that fortress. My count is sure to be low. Tomorrow—they will be free, but the cost will be high."
I nodded, although I didn't really understand.
"Princess?" I asked.
"Yes, Redheart?"
"Why are you here? You, personally? You're the Princess of Love, not the Princess of War."
"What greater love can there be, than to lay down your life to save somepony else's?" Cadance closed her eyes and covered her head with a wing.
Those damn corporal's stripes were driving me to distraction. I found myself worrying about things I would never have worried about before. Like: we didn't have any siege equipment, so how were we going to break into that fortress?
Sun and Stars forbid I have to step up and command an assault! I was still sick from ordering Jade to kill the deer, how could I possibly order a squad of troopers to kill? Or to die?
The fortress towered above us, carved into the side of the mountain, with towers and battlements built from the same gray granite, dour and majestic above the jungle. The fortress's banners were simple black fields.
Dawn's mist cut visibility to perhaps a half-mile. A breeze from offshore carried the fresh smell of saltwater, instead of the decaying stench of the jungle. A leech hung from my left foreleg and I just... didn't care anymore. I let it suck.
The two largest of the hippogriff war galleons sailed into the harbor, exchanging cannonfire with the fortress.
Lieutenant Armor tugged my camouflage. "C'mon, Redheart. Stand to."
We walked deeper into the jungle and joined Celestia's Own's other officers and non-coms, along with both alicorns, in a small clearing.
Celestia stood tall, in the middle of a circle of ponies.
I faded to the back of the crowd and sat down. I was only a medic, and the most junior corporal.
Glancing at the other faces, most of us were junior. So many casualties lately...
"The hippogriffs are fighting and dying to make a distraction," Celestia said. She paused a moment as another broadside echoed from the warships in the harbor.
Celestia continued, "We'll approach from the east. Lieutenant Armor and three other unicorns will cast shield spells over Cadance and I, and we two will cast spells to crack the roots of the fortress and open it. This battalion will lead the other three battalions into the assault."
Celestia looked at us, making eye contact with each of us, one by one. "Once battle is joined, all that matters is to reach the dungeons and extract the prisoners. Once they are free, it is a trivial spell indeed to merely implode the fortress on the remaining slavers. Good hunting."
Cadance used her wing to put her helmet back on. "Less than half the prisoners are ponies. You will treat any rescued slave as you would treat a pony, and show no favoritism to our race. Let our love be deep and blind. Good luck."
Our colonel stepped forward. "Forty generations of the Battalion came before us. They are watching, and they expect us to follow their hoofsteps. We will not insult their legacy. You are the officers and NCOs of the proudest battalion in the world. If we lead by example, our troopers will make us proud. Equestria expects that every pony will do their duty."
As we trotted single-file back to the edge of the clearing around the fortress, sweat poured down my back and my meager breakfast of dried fruit and fish jerky tried to come back up.
"Drink some water," Sergeant Flash ordered me. "It's going to be a long day."
Spells arced down from the fortress, which meant there were unicorns or kirins in the pirates' ranks.
That was when I reached my lowest point, I think. We had already taken the anti-snake gaiters off our legs, since they affected our running, and we all knew it would be a day for speed, not caution. I thought that I could probably find a taipan and induce it to bite me, maybe on the tail: an amputated tail wouldn't be a life-changing disability, just bother your balance, mostly, and I would get evacuated to the hospital ship off-shore, away from the fighting...
But no. No. I'd seen those three fillies aboard the ship. Freeing those slaves... I think the moment when they hugged me, and I carried them out of that cage, I think that was the single best moment of my life, at least until my own foals were born.
And there were, according to Cadance, over one thousand more slaves under that fortress.
Remembering those three fillies' hugs… I was going to be a part of that. Even if I died, dying to free slaves—yeah. Cadance was right. What higher love could there be?
My cutie mark is a red cross and hearts. It was obvious to everypony from nine-year-old me's day of marking that I would be a medical professional of some sort, but exactly how to read my mark still left room for interpretation.
I had always interpreted my mark to mean mercy. I hadn't been able to show mercy to those six pirates I'd killed, but by Celestia, I would be there for the pirates' victims. Who knew how much medical treatment they would require?
I nodded to myself, gritted my teeth, and trudged toward the fortress.
Toward my duty.
Toward the worst day of my life.
Batponies from Second Battalion and pegasi from Third and Fourth hovered far above the battle, summoning denser and denser fog to screen our attack and protect the two warships. After all, the warships could hardly miss something the size of a fortress, even shooting blind, but the fog definitely handicapped the pirate gunners' return fire.
The equatorial sun burned high in the sky. I felt a pang of agony for those poor batponies, and I hoped they all had sunglasses.
One of the fortress's cannons fired a random load of grapeshot. It sliced into the jungle canopy, and Sergeant Striker went down, cursing and gasping. I ran to him. The lead ball had struck the meaty part of his thigh. A bloody and painful wound, but nothing a few weeks in a hospital wouldn't set right.
"You lucky so-and-so," I told him as I cleaned and stitched the wound.
Celestia looked at Cadance. "Sooner begun, sooner done."
Cadance frowned at Striker, then nodded. "Delay benefits them."
We continued to move forward and dropped into freshly dug trenches. Striker hopped on three legs with us, rather than delegate a trooper to carry him to the aid station.
I threw away my camouflage cloak. It was already in tatters from more than a week in the jungle, anyway, and I dug my gray medic's smock from the bottom of my bag and pulled it on over my armor. If things were going to turn out as badly as I expected, well, I wanted the red cross on my back when I died. I was a medic of Her Equestrian Majesty's Armed Forces, and I would look like one.
The trenches were shallow. Roots and buried rocks made the ground almost impossible to dig. The trooper next to me was a donkey, and her shoulder flash read Third Battalion. The shovel and sledgehammer across her back meant she was a sapper.
"Hey, pal," I said.
She looked at me and flicked her large ears, and spoke with a strong Manehattan accent: "Cranky Celestia, what happened to you?"
"Try to avoid the jungle fungus. If it gets on your mare parts, watch out. You know a Third medic named Sapphire Bolt?"
"Oh. He's dead. Sorry. About three hours ago."
I bit my lips and nodded. "What happened?"
"Booby trap. He never knew what hit him. It was fast."
"Oh." I wanted to be sad. I kinda liked Sapphire. I'd been thinking about asking him out for drinks when we got back to Canterlot, although the corporal's promotion would have complicated that, since he was a private. "Thanks for telling me."
More grapeshot slapped into the jungle canopy. I cocked my ears, but heard no screams of pain or cries of Medic up!
The warships really were distracting the gunners. Almost none of the cannonfire was directed at us. The hippogriff sailors paid a high price, but they made our job possible.
Spells snapped back and forth, and cannonballs screamed over us as the hippogriff ships fired into the fortress. The fog thickened by the minute. I squinted to see into the distance.
Lieutenant Armor and three of the other unicorns climbed out of the trench and cast a combined shield spell. It hummed like a million bumblebees, the noise deep and grating. The spell crackled, changing colors and shimmering like a captured aurora. It smelled like... nothing. Even the stench of the mangrove jungle and the smell of the donkey next to me disappeared as the sidelobes of that shield spell washed over me.
I rubbed my suddenly dry eyes. The spell's crackling left them feeling like somepony poured a salt shaker over my face.
Celestia and Cadance teleported in, underneath the unicorns' shield. The unicorns made a square around the two alicorns and they began a slow walk, one pace every three or four seconds, into the fog, toward the now-invisible fortress. The dense mist glowed with the auroral light of the shield.
A pony splatted to the ground just in front me, bursting in a gout of blood. He must have fallen from thousands of feet in altitude, and I had no way to tell what had knocked him from the sky. No medics ran to him. There was obviously no point.
Celestia and Cadance looked at each other and nodded.
My mane and tail prickled. I've struggled for years to decide what this was like, how to describe what I felt. It wasn't the feeling you get in a lightning storm, where the hairs stick up because of the static. No, it was deeper and... more fundamental.
When alicorns are preparing big magic, drawing on the forces that shaped the cosmos out of the chaos... you're going to feel it in your very cells, down to the marrow of your bones. It was like standing in a corridor with the door open at each end, and the wind rushing through. Cadance and Celestia were consuming so much magic that more had to rush in from the world outside, and rush past us to fill the vacuum and feed their furnaces.
A tingle filled my hooves, my muscles, my bones, since that's where earth pony magic sits. The pegasi were flicking their wings, and unicorns shaking their heads and rubbing their horns.
My mouth was clear, but it tasted full of blood again, hot and metallic and sour as the magic rushed past us. The jungle fungus growing on my ears and privates tingled.
The princesses' horns didn't even glow—that was the scary part. Maybe being just an earth pony, I couldn't perceive what was going on, but my goodness, it affected me. My teeth ground and my ears perked straight up, so erect they hurt. I stared into the mist, and for the only time, I could feel the damage in the back of my right eyeball, despite the surgeries.
Even the donkey's ears perked up and trembled, and donkeys don't have magic. Imagine what it took to make her feel it. The ground shook and shook again. Earthquakes on command? What fresh hell was this? Bad enough cannons and spells! I pressed my helmet down to my head.
Cannons fired, and grapeshot bounced off the unicorns' shield while the two alicorns stood tall, regal, umoving, staring their hatred toward the fog-hidden fortress. What in Equestria was making the ground shake? I lifted myself up, out of the trench, staring into the mist.
To our front, a huge chunk of the cyclopean masonry dropped through the mist and crashed into the ground, mud and debris splashing. The shock punched me in the gut and lifted me up a few inches, then dashed me back down.
I lost my helmet in the bouncing. I looked left and right. More chunks of stone fell from the fortress and smashed into the ground.
"Sweet moon..." I muttered. "That's magic!" Celestia and Cadance were tearing the fortress down, stone-by-stone.
A few dozen steps to my right, another body fell. A tree branch caught it across the belly before it bounced and slammed into the ground. I jumped out of the trench, ran to the body, slid to a stop, and recoiled—it was a pirate, not one of our pegasi or batponies. I didn't have a clue what the species was, at least not at that time.
All these years later, I now realize it had been one of the Storm King's creatures. I guess he changed his banner from the black field to the blue double-tined fork after Despair Island.
It rolled its head on its neck and whined in the back of its throat. A pool of blood spread around its ruptured guts. It must have broken its spine, as unmoving as it was. Dark eyes, so alien, looked at me, but I could feel its agony.
Had I met it standing, able to fight, I would have killed it in its tracks, bucked it in the sternum and crushed its heart and then congratulated myself—this was a pirate and a slaver, and we asked and offered no quarter.
But now? My heart twisted that there was nothing I could do. It mewled pathetically as it died. I pushed an ampoule of painkiller into its thigh, and stroked its furry cheek until it passed. It didn't take long.
More rock fell. Grapeshot glanced off the unicorns' shield as the two princesses' spell intensified.
I crawled away from the dead creature and hopped back into the trench, near Major Blueblood.
"Redheart!" Blueblood shouted at me. "What were you doing, you lunatic? Why aren’t you behind the lines with the other medics?"
I started to reply, but a griffon with a Mountain Battalion flash fell from the sky, flared her wings, and landed right in front of the major. "Sir! Two airships are pulling out of the fortress!"
More chunks of rock fell, faster and faster, the ground shaking continuously. Where, oh where, was my stupid helmet?
Blueblood looked at the griffon. "Tell the weather teams, 'Take those airships.'"
She shook her head and raised a bloody, ruptured wing. "I can't, that landing was all I had left."
I trotted to her, grabbed some gauze from my bag, and started wiping blood from her wing so I could see the wound.
"Thanks, doc," she said to me.
Crouching in the trench, I stitched her wound, a ragged tear. Broken ends of bone grated together while I worked. She gasped and cursed.
"You're done for this scrap," I said. "Let me have your helmet."
She lifted it with a talon and dropped it onto my head. "Good luck, Doc."
"Were you on the south marches five, six months back?"
"Yeah," she said.
"There was a cave full of prisoners..."
"Yeah! I covered the team that snuck them out that back. They said a Household medic...?"
I set her broken wingbone. She screamed.
I taped the bones into place. "Yeah, that was me. Hey, thanks for saving my friends."
"I didn’t do much."
I patted her on the butt. "Hunker down and head for the beach when there's a lull. Get outta here and to the hospital ship, doctor's orders."
"My legs are fine. I'll stay." She peeked over the edge of the trench.
I peeked up, too. Arrows and grapeshot bounded off the shield protecting the Princesses. The Princesses still stood tall. It shamed me to be hiding in a trench.
While I had worked on the griffon—I never caught her name, did I?—Blueblood had hopped from the trench and run across the artillery-raked open ground to the shield.
He spoke to the princesses. I was too far away to hear his words, but after some discussion, Cadance took to her wings and surged upward, through the shield, into the mist. Blueblood ran back to our trench.
The fortress was really crumbling, now. Celestia glared at it, unalloyed fury and hatred I had never before imagined our good-natured monarch, the big sister to the entire pony race, was capable.
Then the disaster happened.
Well, we should have seen it coming when the Storm King invaded Canterlot. His guards had those anti-magic shields and armor. The petrification grenades that went clean through Cadance's shield spell.
It seems like, seems to me, but what do I know? I'm just a nurse, it seems like after we kicked their flanks on that worthless little island, they must have gone off somewhere, gone off and sulked, and developed all of those anti-magic metals, made enough shields and face masks and cages to equip an army. It also seems like they already had the basic idea, two days before Hearth's Warming on Despair Island.
The fog thinned. Fast. With the weather team off in pursuit of those escaping airships, the tropical sun burned the mist away.
The outer curtain wall crumbled as Celestia cursed in a final magical exertion. I had never imagined Celestia knew those words, really. She tossed in dozens of others in languages I didn't know.
Just as the floor beneath them collapsed, a gun crew on a high parapet fired their cannon, a last gasp of hatred before they fell, to be smashed by the collapsing stone.
It wasn't solid shot or grapeshot, but a load of metal junk.
The cannon load was the same anti-magic metal the Storm King's weapons and shields would be made of, twelve years later in Canterlot.
The unicorns' shield spell flickered as the cannon's load sliced right through it. It killed two of the unicorns outright, left Shining Armor and the other unicorn unharmed—
—and cut Celestia down in a spray of bright-red alicorn blood.