//------------------------------// // Chapter 18 // Story: The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood // by Raleigh //------------------------------// The advance of the Prism Guards across no mare’s land resembled one of those paintings that typically adorns the walls of recruitment centres. In fact, a year later I would find a painting of this attack in such an establishment, though the artist had chosen not to depict the ubiquitous gas masks we all wore for fear of discouraging new volunteers. The earth ponies and unicorns all marched out to the thunder of drums, chanting an oath in Prench for Princess Celestia to live even longer (which always came off as a little redundant to me when referring to a pony who is set to outlive everypony currently alive), and under a resplendent banner fluttering proudly in the breeze. Beneath my hooves, the ground shuddered rhythmically with every precise marching step. The pegasi soared overhead with their griffon allies, weaving through the clear mid-morning sky in tight, finely-drilled formations. Polished armour still shone brilliantly even in the dark, oppressive shadow cast by the fortress and the endless dust kicked up by a thousand sets of hooves. It was a sight to stir the heart, if one is into that sort of thing. Until the Changelings opened fire. The foremost companies had reached the shattered glacis, having stumbled over and around the pile of debris and smashed masonry, and crested over the lip of the crater that the mine had torn into the earth. The huge gap in the wall of the fortress, smothered in the putrescent tendrils of that hellish green-yellow fog flowing into the exposed rooms and halls, and the victory it represented was so tantalisingly close. It seemed then and there that all we had to do was reach it and the day would be won, but that assumed that either side in this war operated on sensible, rational means and would quietly give up to avoid needless suffering once it became abundantly clear that victory was no longer possible. War, however, is not a rational venture, regardless of what those who make it their business to attempt to understand it might say. I was further back in the column, still with Second Fiddle and Fer-de-Lance when it all started to go wrong, as I knew it would. The former appeared to be quite enjoying his first little expedition to see the horrors of battle for himself, and indeed there was something of a spring in his step. It was to be expected; knowing him as I do, and I was afraid to say that I did, he was truly looking forward to achieving some of that glory he envied me for. I, however, merely trudged along with them, thankful that I was not stuck right at the front with a lunatic officer once more. The familiar drumming of cannon fire broke my sullen brooding, and replaced it with mortal terror. It came not from behind us, as I had grown used to, but ahead and to the left at the part of the outer wall of the fortress near the other breach. The parapets of that high wall blossomed with clouds of white-grey smoke, each lit from within by lances of orange flame, and mingled with the fading wisps of the gas. From what I could tell from my own limited perspective, as merely another set of marching hooves in the column, most of the fire was directed at the Crystal Guards attacking that breach to our left. Nevertheless, streaks of fire and smoke tore into our column just ahead, the effects of which I could not see, but the shouts and screams of pain left little to the imagination. Then, smaller puffs of white smoke - musket fire - rippled along the wall and even from the breach in the castle keep, and the hail of lead shot plucked at the advancing battalion. My paranoid suspicions about the Changelings’ own preparations vis-a-vis the grotesque art of chemical warfare proved to be horrifically true. Peering through the fogged-up eyepieces, past the clouds of smoke and gas leaking from the hole like pus from a suppurating wound, I could just about make out furtive glimpses of the cross-section of the keep revealed by the mine, and in there tiny figures darted around in the gouged-out remnants of rooms and halls, forming up in serried lines and wheeling in cannons. The element of surprise had not lasted long, whether they knew of our plan or had merely suspected that we might try such a thing it was impossible to say, but the effect was very much the same: the enemy had reacted with the sudden and unnatural speed and efficiency they had always demonstrated. “Oh, Luna!” I heard Second Fiddle exclaim as he saw a cannon ball wreak a bloody streak through the formation. He flinched as shot and shrapnel screamed overhead. I couldn’t see his full expression on account of his gas mask, but the horror reflected in his eyes was all that was needed to move even Yours Truly to sympathy. I took him by the upper foreleg, and said in as reassuring a voice as I could muster given the circumstances, “Stick with me and you’ll be alright.” As cliché as those words were, it was what he needed to hear, and I almost believed it myself. He nodded silently, the gas mask shifting about awkwardly on his face, and we carried on. Still, the fire from the walls and the breach had been rather desultory, and certainly not the hell that I had been lying awake at night fretting over and what Major-General Garnet had been raving about before, but I was more than happy to have been proven wrong on this account. However, as I watched the earth pony companies surge into the crater, my hooves began to itch. For the number of figures standing in the broken shell of the fortress, silhouetted in the toxic mist and swirling smoke that choked the life out of our surroundings, the actual quantity of fire being directed upon the column was remarkably low. They were holding back, and the battalion was marching into a hastily-improvised but deadly trap. Colonel Fer-de-Lance apparently noticed this. She stopped suddenly, scanning the vista before us; the foremost company of the battalion, the forlorn hope, had reached the bottom of the crater and were starting the climb upwards, like a dark mass creeping up the side of a rough bowl. The chanting had by now become an animalistic growl, repetitive to the point of inspiring madness. All the while, I wondered what the pegasi and the griffons were doing, thinking that they would have reached the parapets and the breach by now -- I had seen enough demonstrations of the pegasi grenadier companies to imagine the sort of havoc their dropped grenades would wreak on static artillery. I looked up to see the sky almost black with drones, pegasi, and griffons locked in that deadly aerial ballet, and I realised with a sense of slowly dawning horror the trap that we had just willingly marched into. In taking to the skies en masse, the Changelings had stopped our airborne units from rushing forth as planned to quickly eliminate their defences, while leaving sufficient behind on the ground in an easily-defendable position to deal with the unicorns and earth ponies without being interfered with from above. “Shit,” Fer-de-Lance muttered under her breath, but I certainly heard it and it’s typically the very last word one wants to hear from a senior officer on the battlefield besides ‘charge!’. The Changelings had let us march straight into the breach without aerial support, and with the vanguard pouring into the crater they unleashed their hastily-prepared defences. There was a hideous, ear-shattering crash of a battery of cannons opening fire at once, and the entire crater was smothered in flame and smoke. I watched, horrified, as canister and grapeshot flensed the front ranks of the column. The growling, monotonous chanting of ‘Vive Celestia!’ was drowned out utterly by the shrill screams of the wounded and the dying. As the smoke cleared it revealed the crater stained red with blood, and that the enemy, apparently having stored them in this castle keep for just such an occasion, had, in the time it had taken for the battalion to make its advance, wheeled out their cannons into the half-torn rooms where the detonation of the mine had scooped out the outer wall. Those exposed rooms now made the perfect vantage points for the Changelings to spit death at the advancing battalion. Their artillery crews commenced the arduous task of reloading their guns, meanwhile the once-meagre volleys of musket fire grew in intensity and rate, ripping into the column. There, ahead and below us in that crater, those somehow spared by the initial barrage reeled from the blow and then surged forth once more for another attempt. The Changeling cannons roared out again, raking the column with lethal hails of lead. The meal-grinder of the breach had begun in earnest. The tattered remnants of the forward companies rallied, and, pressed on by their comrades in the second wave, drove forth again. I could do nothing but watch, despairing at the horrific sight, as the Prism Guards dragged and crawled their way up the blood-slicked stones of the crater and over their mangled dead. The result was predictable. Yet another volley of cannon and musket fire reaped across the slope of the crater once more, and the charge was hurled back into the base. There, apparently milling about in panic and confusion, the survivors seemed to sink into the shattered, broken earth to take some cover from the awful hail of fire raining down upon them. “Make it stop.” I didn’t realise I’d said those words out loud until Fer-de-Lance looked at me through her gas mask’s eyepieces and arched an eyebrow. “What?” she said. The troops were climbing the slope of the crater again, because sometimes tactics devolve into a state of ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again until everypony is dead’. This time they were slow and cautious, using the shattered masonry and earth for cover as they crept closer and closer to those guns. Again, red flame punctured the formation of the Prism Guard companies. Shield spells flashed in gold, white, and blue flickers of light amidst the column of ponies, but they were not enough to withstand the onslaught. Overwhelming artillery fire tore great bloodied gaps in the mass of gold armour, and yet again their advance was hurled back with grim inevitability. We were battering our heads against a wall, and hoping that our skulls were tougher than solid brick. “This isn’t working,” I said; sometimes the role of a commissar was to point out the blindingly obvious. “Pull them back. Now.” “We can still take the breach!” shouted Fer-de-Lance over the roar of cannon fire. “They’re getting murdered out there!” “We attaque à outrance!” [Prench for ‘attack to excess’] “You butcher,” I snarled. “The victor is the one with the strongest will! The greatest élan will overcome all defences! Every attack must be pushed to the very limit and the enemy will break before us!” Even though I could see that was unlikely to happen, I struggled to think of alternatives. It is the mindless, seething savagery of siege warfare that a frontal assault into prepared defences until they were overwhelmed at staggering loss was the only viable option. The column had by now stopped trying to batter itself against the slope of the crater, and had instead spread out into a skirmish line. Yet the enemy held the advantage in both firepower and cover, and, war having been advanced by technology to the point where victory and defeat was as much decided by mathematical equation as ‘élan’, as Fer-de-Lance called it, this meant that the odds were firmly in the hooves of the enemy. It was those guns. They had to be destroyed somehow, but our pegasi, who had the best chance of evading their merciless fire and exacting vengeance upon the artillery crews, who had remained safe save for a few smattering of shots from below, remained trapped in their fight in the sky and unable to come to our rescue. From my vantage point I could see that the only way to reach those cannons was straight through that killing field. Except, perhaps, I saw that the crater itself had formed a ridge of turned earth and debris around it, like a lip. Following this path, it would be possible for a group of ponies to advance to the castle wall and the breach torn into it with some modicum of cover from the deadly volleys. There, our troops would have a much better vantage point from which to exact their revenge upon the artillery crews in the form of lead and magic. More than that, where the crater met the great wound in the stone wall the ground had piled up around it, but it would, in theory, allow perhaps a section or two to climb up and inside the structure itself and engage the enemy hoof-to-hoof. I was surprised and somewhat disturbed to find that I appeared to be the only pony who had noticed this, so single-minded was Fer-de-Lance on using her battalion like a battering ram until either the fortress broke or they did that it did not occur to her to look elsewhere. I pointed this out to Fer-de-Lance and explained it as best as I could manage, as the unique vocabulary that the military uses to explain complex movements of large numbers of ponies was one of the very few languages that I have struggled to learn (another example being whatever dialect of Ponish that Southern Cross uses to very efficiently explain orders to his engineers). A combination of shouting, pointing, and exuberant hoof gestures seemed to help get the message across in the best traditions of Equestrian tourists to Prance. Fer-de-Lance listened in silence throughout as I delivered my little proposal, with barely a nod or anything to signify that she was even listening to me. She stared out at the carnage below, her eyes fixed upon the futility of the horrific slaughter taking place on her orders. I still could not see her expression due to the gas mask, but the sharp, intense glare, like two burning coals in a pit, gave me a decent idea of what the rest of her face was doing. “Fine,” she hissed. She looked at the slaughter of her stallions and mares in the crater, and then, not even bothering to look in my direction as though my proposal to save her battalion was something of an imposition, said, “Go, and take 6th Company with you.” And she expected me to do it for her, of course. It was my idea after all, and few things would have punctured the tentative confidence she had in this nascent, hastily thought-out plan of mine than to have told her ‘no, I’d much rather not, thank you’. At the very least, it would mean that should she take complete leave of her senses and insist upon joining in the massacre in the crater that I would be quite far away from that happening. So, in the hope that the commanding officer of 6th Company was a sensible chap who didn’t expect me to actually lead this venture, I trotted off towards the rear of the battalion, with the fear knotting in my stomach like a writhing snake. I found 6th Company without much difficulty, and when I told their commanding officer, a rather chirpy young Prench stallion by the name of Captain Papillon who just couldn’t wait to hurl himself in front of the Changeling guns next to (and preferably in front of) Prince Blueblood, they were ready to move off and enact my desperate little plan in a matter of mere minutes. Whatever noted deficiencies Fer-de-Lance had as an officer and a lady, namely her rigid thinking, snippy personality, and tendency to offend sapient creatures of all kinds, they were almost made up for in drilling her soldiers to such a point of complete and total mindless obedience that even Changeling purestrains would be impressed. As I was navigating my way around the other troops waiting patiently for their turn in the charnel house that was the crater, the thought had occurred to me to just melt away in the vast, organised mob of ponies that was the battalion and claim that my special talent had betrayed me and I got lost on the way to the crater again, thus taking credit for saving the assault without actually having to take part. Unfortunately, Second Fiddle had decided to accompany me still; his first sight of a real battle not having dissuaded him from his inane pursuit of a splash of ichor on his blade to brag about in the mess later, and so skiving off the rest of the fight was not an option. Papillon practically skipped as he led his company around the lip of the crater. The ridge provided us with some cover, being quite high in places, twice that of an adult pony. There were a few gaps and low points, of course, through which one was granted a glimpse into the scene from Tartarus below -- flashes of flame and smoke, ruined bodies, and stark red blood on the stones. Even when one couldn’t see it, the noise of cannon fire and muskets, of the yells of officers and NCOs trying to drive their ponies onwards, and of the cries of pain were more than enough to give even the most lacklustre imagination sufficient material with which to build a vivid mental picture of what was going on down there. In fact, those glimpses of ponies ripped to shreds by canister shot or merely lying dreadfully still with their entrails draped over the stones, and the living cowering as best they could with terror visible in their eyes even through the masks, were almost a relief compared to the horror that was playing through my mind. There was the smell, too. One would think that after having my olfactory senses ruined by gas and with the mask on that I wouldn’t smell the miasma of blood, burnt powder, and raw fear that soaks into every single battle that I have had the misfortune of participating in, but even with those deficiencies, it was still overpowering. It could have been in my head, filling in the gaps as it were, but it felt all too real there. It is to my continued astonishment that we made it without being attacked. I feared that either the drones in the breach or the ones in the air would spot a full company of earth ponies marching around the lip of the crater, but somehow we escaped their notice. The fight in the air and the slaughter in the cauldron appeared to have absorbed the enemy’s full attention, and as we marched on at a brisk trot, I prayed that their fortunate inattentiveness would hold -- as ever in war, the lesson that hubris leads inexorably to defeat is a painful one, and if the Changelings believed that they had us held in both the sky and the crater, then it would be their turn to learn this. Two of the platoons climbed up onto this small ridge into a position where they might fire on the Changeling gun crews, where they would not have a completely unobstructed view of the enemy but their volleys would at least give them pause in loading and firing their cannons. The third platoon was to continue sneaking around to the breach itself, where I had seen that a small number of ponies could squeeze through the gap between the drop to the crater below and the shattered wall. The reader may have up to three guesses as to which one I ended up following. Despite shivering from fright and having ample opportunity to leave with what passed for his dignity intact, Second Fiddle still wanted that elusive ‘glory’, and the only place to find such a thing on the battlefield was where the greatest danger is. As Cannon Fodder’s absence from my side continued to be a great sucking void next to me, I decided, despite my better judgement, that he would have to serve as a substitute for now, albeit an inferior one. If I couldn’t keep him out of harm’s way then at least I would make certain that he wouldn’t get in the way of the soldiers trying to do their jobs; there was as much a risk of him getting it from Equestrian bayonets as much as Changeling fangs if I left him unsupervised with them. Our gallant little platoon crept forwards, closer and closer to that gap. I was at the head of our little group, precisely where I was expected, of course, leading from the front with a thoroughly star-struck lieutenant. Second Fiddle trotted just behind me, taking up the position my absent aide would occupy. The ponies were eager to get ‘stuck in’, as Sunshine Smiles would put it, to the enemy, who were still too preoccupied with their gruesome, murderous task to notice our intrepid little band sneaking up on them. The fortress loomed up above us, receding seemingly into infinity from our tiny perspective at its base. Where the crater intersected with the wall was a ramp of rubble and debris that reached up to the first floor, and would have to be climbed for any of us to enter. I, being tall, could climb up a little and rear up on my hindlegs to just about peer over the top, and see into the shattered room we were about to launch ourselves into. Now that I was closer, I could see into this exposed cross-section of the keep more clearly, though the cloud of white-grey smoke and yellow-green gas swirling around still obscured parts of it. The Changelings had set up their cannons and infantry on three floors, from the ground floor up, across a series of rooms. Just over and beyond the mound of debris I was peering over must have been a small hall, probably once used for minor parties and events by the castle’s original owners. Part of this floor had collapsed onto the ground floor below it, so that what was left of the hall formed something of a gallery above it. What the Changelings had previously used this for I could not tell, as it was in a state of utter ruin from the mine. Whatever furniture and indeed drones and captive ponies had been inside were all but obliterated by the blast, judging by scattered debris and the curious green and crimson smears on the ground and walls. Some of the blasted masonry and broken wooden furnishings were cleared hastily, shoved aside to make room for a large cannon. I could see, just a short jump away from this ridge, a crew of drones going through the processes of sponging out the fouling in the barrel and readying the next charge of grapeshot. There were ponies too, scurrying back and forth carrying bags of powder and shot from the large open doorway at the far end of the room. Changeling and pony all wore masks like ours, albeit each with a sort of metal canister with holes around the mouth and nose that I took to be some sort of filter. So that would explain how they survived the poison gas. Somehow, the vindication of being right yet again did not taste quite as sweet as I had hoped. I dropped down before they could see me, praying they wouldn’t hear the rubble being dislodged as I slipped down the ramp with the chunks of debris scratching against my backside, but fortunately they all seemed too engrossed in their murderous work to notice somepony taking a look at them. The presence of ponies actively helping the enemy, though I reasoned that they must have been coerced into assisting their oppressors against their prospective liberators, was a disquieting one. Looking back at the Prism Guard troops with me, hate visible through those glass eyepieces as they clenched their guns and waited for my order, it seemed doubtful that they would be particularly discerning in whom they exact their revenge upon on behalf of their slaughtered comrades. “Sir?” said the Lieutenant, rearing up on his hindlegs and balancing on them as he tried to look over the top of the mound. “An artillery crew of six Changelings in the hall,” I said. “There are more in the adjacent rooms, and in the ones above and below.” “We can take them, sir,” the Lieutenant growled. “See how they like it -- Equestrian steel right through ‘em.” I looked up at the rubble mound again; the gap between the drop below and the fortress wall was quite tight, and ponies would have to climb up one, perhaps two, at a time. As ever, ponies seemed to have forgotten how to make decisions for themselves in my presence, and I’d have to give the orders again: “Send a runner back to Captain Papillon. Tell him his platoon is to fire one volley into that hall there, then we’ll go over the top and finish them off.” “Sir!” The Lieutenant saluted by slapping the brim of his helmet with his hoof, making a dull ringing noise, and cantered off to do just that. The order was passed down the line, back to Captain Papillon with the remainder of the company. After a full minute longer of having to listen to the incessant crash of artillery and the screams and cries of the wounded, with nausea writhing in my guts and threatening to bring up the scant breakfast of oats into my mask, we heard the distinct ripple of musket fire from behind. That was the signal. I peered over the top of the rubble pile again to see that the volley had hit the gun crews hard. Bodies of Changelings had dropped under the huge, smoking barrel of the cannon, bleeding ichor into the stones. However, there were a few left alive, and those survivors were frantically turning their guns to aim at the ponies on the ridge firing at them. It should be enough, I hoped. Second Fiddle was staring out at the massacre in the crater below, his body tense and as still as one of those curiously lifelike statues in the gardens of Canterlot Castle. Kicking him gently nudged him out of his stupor, and when he looked up at me I could see the raw fear in his eyes. He started shaking in his horseshoes. Seizing him by his shoulder, I leaned in close to him, masks almost touching, and whispered: “You do exactly as I do, and you’ll get through this. Do you understand? I want you by my side when I go over that ramp.” He didn’t respond, staring into space again, so I gave him a firm shove which caused him to stumble on his hooves. When he righted himself, he nodded fiercely. He was about to get precisely what he wanted, but whether he would like it was another matter entirely. Drawing my sabre from its scabbard with a steely rasp, I jumped onto the rubble pile, stumbling a little as a few stones cascaded down the slope under my hooves, and raised my sword as though to stab the sky above. The platoon had gathered at the base, with each soldier positively chomping at the bit to dive in and kill. Armour clinked and rattled, and ponies stamped and snorted. Second Fiddle was directly below me, struggling to tug his own sabre out of its sheath with a shaky aura from his horn. “Twilight’s Own!” I screamed above the din of war. The sound of guns, shouting, and screaming seemed to fade away in that moment, and time itself stood still. “Fix bayonets and follow me!” There was a great cheer behind me as I hurled myself over the pile of rubble. I dropped over on the other side, landing in a stumbling flail of hooves and masonry dust. The Changelings, those that were still alive, turned and saw me apparently alone and very definitely outnumbered. They rushed towards me, and in the half-second that it took for them to close the scant amount of distance, wings buzzing as they skimmed over the piles of debris and the holes in the floor, I had just enough time to re-evaluate my choices in life before the closest drone was almost upon me. A huge brute of a drone charged at me, wielding the large, heavy stick with a steaming wet sponge on the end for cleaning the cannon’s barrel like a club. The others hung back a little, letting the stronger of them reduce me to a little red smear. I stumbled back, slipping on the loose rubble behind me, and raised my blade up in a sort of guarding motion above my head. The staff came down, but my panicky fencer’s instincts saved me. The heavy, butcher’s blade of a sword chopped straight through the wood of the staff clean through, sending the sponge end dropping to the ground with a wet, sloppy ‘thud’. Again, purely on instinct, I pulled the blade back and, violating the apparent ‘rule’ that sabres are for slashing and not piercing, plunged it straight into the drone’s chest. The armoured chitin cracked and splintered under the force of the thrust, and the blade dug deep into the soft flesh beneath. I twisted the blade with a sickening ‘squelch’ of tearing flesh and tugged the sword free with a splatter of stinking ichor on the stones and my uniform. The drone collapsed into a bleeding, twitching heap on the floor. The others were still coming, though they seemed a tad hesitant after seeing me run their swabber through. Another was even more reluctant, and seemed to be fiddling with the cannon’s touch hole. [The drone was likely spiking the gun, rendering it inoperable to the enemy by driving a metal spike into the touch hole. This could be reversed with some difficulty.] I yelled incoherently in terror, which was muffled and distorted by my mask to sound more like one of rage, and swung my blade left and right in rapid succession in a blur of shimmering steel. This checked them, as despite outnumbering me, whatever instincts for self-preservation they still possessed appeared to override their urge to kill. And where in Tartarus was Second Fiddle? Cannon Fodder should have been with me, as he had always been through every scrape I had survived thus far, and I felt his absence even more acutely there. I’d rushed into the fight as though he was by my side, watching my back as is his place and gutting any Changelings who came too close with his now-obsolete spear. My rump was against the pile of rubble, the stones scraping against my flanks as I tried and failed to retreat further, and just as I was wondering what in blazes was taking the other ponies so long I heard the sound of hooves scrabbling on the rubble and a whole lot of cursing in Prench. Dislodged stones fell on my hat and shoulders. A burly stallion dropped down next to me, brandishing his musket tipped with a wickedly-sharp bayonet. Looking up, I saw the rest of them, laden down with their heavy armour, dragging themselves over the pile of rubble in ones and twos. Well, it was about damned time, thought I, but while that encounter with the swabber might have felt like long, fear-soaked minutes to me, only mere seconds could have passed. The small mob of Changelings began to fall back; apparently realising that their position was hopeless, they slowly retreated step-by-step, still facing us and hissing as though that might ward off the ponies. However, after watching their comrades, their friends and brothers and sisters in blood, being slaughtered in the crater, our soldiers were not inclined to the virtue of mercy. Without prompting, the crazed ponies in golden armour rushed the retreating drones, trampling over the still-warm and twitching corpses and slipping on the congealing ichor, to hack them to pieces with bayonets and swords. It was quick, over in an instant, and the gun crew were all dead before they could reach the door, but the thirst for revenge could not be sated with the blood already spilt -- more was needed before it would be enough for them. The platoon had become a rampaging mob, spurred on by their enthusiastic lieutenant, and before I could do anything they poured out through the doors and holes in the walls to find more Changelings to kill. I slumped against the rough pile of debris, panting for breath through this damned mask and finding each and every one a struggle to get enough air in my lungs. With the thrill of life-or-death combat over, at least for now, the customary feelings of nausea and exhaustion almost overwhelmed me. My mouth was dry and my head was swimming, but I still daren’t remove the mask to sip water as the corners of the room were still shrouded with the clouds of that dreadful gas. The room was now devoid of ponies, or indeed of anything else living save for me; the still, mutilated bodies of drones were splattered and smeared across the floor and rubble in morbid, sickening displays of violence. I could stand to see it no longer. Peering over the side where the mine had ripped open this hall, I could see the crater below. The drop was dizzying, but I pushed through the ensuing vertigo. It was filled with ponies, living and dead, but those still alive let out a sudden, bestial roar of triumph as they saw their comrades kill the defenders, and the battalion, looking more like a Changeling swarm than organised units of Equestrian soldiers, rushed forwards in a vast, equine tidal wave. This time there was no volley of shrapnel and shot, no thunder of artillery and ripple of musket fire, and the cries were not of pain and agony but vengeful triumph. I watched them, feeling much like an invisible observer looking down from on high, as the attacking force, under the stained and torn banner of the Prism Guards, struggled up the slope and rushed into the keep itself through the ground floor beneath me. The breach had been taken and the fortress would fall. Despite the relief washing over me like the cooling waters of Seaward Shoals, I had been in enough scraps like this to know that the Changelings were rather sore losers and would continue to make sure that our victory was hard-earned. The castle itself would have to be cleared, corridor by corridor and room by room, along with the streets and houses of the city too. There was no point sitting around here for it, though I imagined that I’d done rather more than my fair share of participating by this point. I wasn’t even supposed to be there if it wasn’t for Second Fiddle. Speaking of which, now that the rush of fear and adrenaline had subsided to the point where I could almost think clearly, I started to wonder where he had gone. He certainly didn’t follow me over the mound of rubble and I couldn’t spot him at all in the mob of ponies tearing through the breach, and, even with my exhaustion and field of attention narrowed into the solipsist view of mere survival, I liked to think that I would have spotted a pony whose uniform made him look like he should be dangling from the ceiling in a discotheque than on a battlefield. I could only assume that he had run away and was cowering somewhere, and I will admit to a feeling of betrayal, which was as cutting as it was hypocritical. Nevertheless, there was still work to be done, and he could go and cry somewhere like a little filly for all I cared; Odonata herself was still in the fortress somewhere, and I fully intended on collecting the debt owed for the scars that marred my back. There was motivation enough in the thought of my revenge thwarted to will my tired, aching hooves into motion and lead me straight into the waiting, gaping maw of hell. I dragged myself up off the ground and picked my way gingerly around the eviscerated drones, and though I tried desperately to avoid looking at the bodies, each in varying states of mutilation, that surrounded me I still found, even after having seen such sights far too many times before, that I could not help but stop and stare and wonder just what the point of all of this was. Some ponies say that they got used to such things and that after a while it no longer bothered them, but not I. The sounds of the ongoing battle were distant and muffled; it was the song of the siren, drawing me closer and closer to my inevitable destruction, and yet I could not resist. Congealing ichor stuck to my hooves as I stepped in the spreading puddles of it, leaving prints on the stone floor. I tasted bile rising up my throat, but swallowed the disgusting mess down lest it ruin my gas mask. After a few minutes of aimless wandering I came across a group of stragglers from the bloody assault on the breach -- tired, battered, and emotionally drained, they would be of little use in a fight now except as a physical barrier between the Changelings and my soft flesh. However, they pointed me in the direction of Colonel Fer-de-Lance, who had commandeered what might have been a servants’ dining area to use as her ad hoc headquarters for now. I thanked them, ordered them to get some rest, and trotted off to find her. The room was dark with no windows, which is why I suspected that this space was once reserved for servants or whatever the Changelings have to do menial errands for them. This meant that while the air was stale, it was at least cool, and given that my coat and clothes were utterly drenched in sweat as usual I almost felt a chill coming on. The crudely-forged metal chandelier lacked candles, so Illumination was provided for by a soldier standing in the corner who had lit his horn with a light that was ever so slightly too bright for my eyes, but not so much that it might make me squint. Nevertheless, it allowed me to see that the walls here were bare stone, with no sign of that unnatural Changeling-stuff plastered over the rest of the castle’s exterior. Fer-de-Lance sat at a primitive wooden table as her sergeant uncorked a bottle of wine with a sommelier’s flourish and decanted it into a waiting crystal goblet. The colour guard, led by a young ensign whose face was still covered in greasy spots, lounged in the corner with the singed and torn standard of the Prism Guards wrapped up for safe keeping. Tall, broadly-built sergeants armed with halberds and clad in ceremonial armour who guarded both the flag and the pimply teenager who carried it with their lives sat on wooden boxes, and eyed me warily as I staggered inside. Having successfully taken the breach, in spite of her obstinate adherence to a long-outdated Prench military tradition resulting in far more casualties than strictly necessary, it looked as though Fer-de-Lance thought that the battle was pretty much done and dusted right there and now was the appropriate time to celebrate. She had pulled her gas mask down, so that it dangled by its straps from her neck like some sort of morbid scarf, and I could see her eager expression as the dark liquid filled her glass. As she and her staff were not choking to death on chlorine gas, I took this to mean that the air in this part of the fortress was safe and gratefully tugged down my own mask. After having worn that horrid thing for far too long, even breathing in this stagnant air unfiltered by chemical-soaked cloth was thoroughly invigorating to both body and spirit. Judging from the deep purple-ish tinge to the wine and the faint aroma of dark fruit wafting around in this enclosed room, I identified it as a malbec. While I am always ready for a drink to steady the nerves and silence the monsters in my nightmares, even I, a self-confessed high-functioning alcoholic, thought that this was a tad on the premature side. It was quite early in the morning and the blood was still flowing in the crater and the halls as freely as the wine from the bottle, not to mention the castle was probably still crawling with Changelings. The appalling sight made me reach for my hipflask and take a swig of a brandy. “Ah, Your Highness!” greeted Fer-de-Lance with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. She turned to her sergeant, and said, “Another glass for the Prince!” “Certainly, ma’am.” The stallion lit his horn and a second crystal glass appeared with a flash of ice-blue light. I made a mental note to myself to insist that Drape Cut learn this spell so that we are never caught short at a picnic again. “Your friend is not with you?” she asked as her soldier-servant carried on. It took a second or two for me to realise that she was referring to Second Fiddle, and I’d have assumed that in the madness of taking the breach that he would have crept on back to Fer-de-Lance. “I expect he’s returned to Market Garden,” I said, trying to be diplomatic there. “To report on our success.” “It is magnificent, no?” Fer-de-Lance continued. “In taking the breach, our colours will have their first battle honour: Virion Hive.” Her sergeant poured the drink and levitated it over to me. I accepted the glass and made a show of performing the relevant things an oenophile was supposed to do - swirling the glass, holding it up to the light (in this case, the other unicorn’s brightly shining horn), sniffing it - before finally allowing myself the pleasure of actually drinking the damned thing. I was right, it was a malbec, and a rather nice one too. It seemed to make her happy though, and likewise I was relieved to learn that my sharp nose for such things had not been too blunted. “There’s still the rest of the castle to go,” I said, ever the one to ruin an officer’s shiny good mood by smearing cold, hard reality on it. “And the city too.” Fer-de-Lance scoffed, her premature optimism proved to be positively stainless even after the debacle in the breach. “I have sent sections out to comb the castle keep itself. It is slow business but the enemy has nowhere else to run, they will give in.” She grinned at me, and that rare sight instantly made me consider that I would have been better off doing what Second Fiddle must have done and hidden myself somewhere. Her glass swirled in her aura, the crystal glinting in the harsh light and the red wine within sloshing around as though in a storm, and she continued: “I do not know what is going on out there. Have the other breaches been won? Are our comrades in arms celebrating in the streets outside, embracing the ponies they have liberated from the tyranny of the Changelings? Or are they dying as we once were before your gallant charge saved us? In truth, your bravery has put me to shame, for I have forgotten that an officer ought to lead by example. My sword has yet to be bloodied, and my ancestors must be shaking their heads in disappointment in me.” “I simply did what was required of me,” I said, sipping my wine. My mind was still quite unsteady trying to put together the juxtaposition of the hell I had just waded through and the relatively pleasant sharing of a drink between two fellow officers, so it was not quite as sharp off the mark as is usual for me. Otherwise, I might have picked up on what she was getting at, made an excuse, and rounded up some stallions myself to go looking for Odonata. “This castle is the highest point in this city,” Fer-de-Lance carried on. “It is a symbol of the Changelings’ oppression, and their hated black flag still flies from its tallest spire.” She drank deeply from her goblet, the purple-red wine staining her lips to look as though they were bruised. “You and I, we will lead the colour guard to the top of the tower, tear down their banner, throw it into the dirt, and raise the flag of Equestria as a symbol of our inevitable victory. It will embolden our soldiers, bring hope to the ponies living here, and fill the hearts of the enemy with despair.” Ponies love a good symbol; after all, that’s the only reason why I continue to live a life of privilege and luxury paid for by tenants and taxpayers, despite contributing very little of material worth to society beyond keeping a select few bars and brothels in business. There was, however, one severe problem with her idea, or potentially thousands of smaller problems that compounded together like individual instruments in an orchestra to produce a symphony, and that was the unknown number of Changelings still inside this castle who, even if it has become clear that their defences must inevitably break under the Equestrian onslaught, would spitefully insist that their slow defeat is as drawn out and painful to us as possible. And, of course, Odonata might still be around, if she hadn’t fled already. Though I had fantasised about taking my revenge upon her while lying awake at night in that hospital bed, my lungs burning with every breath and my mind playing out scenes of such horrific torture that even Auntie Luna would have paled at the thought of them, now that the appointed time was approaching and my bloodlust was subsiding I wondered if it was truly worth the risk of Fer-de-Lance’s obstinance and arrogance ruining everything again. It would not do to find myself upon the cusp of realising my revenge in the best traditions of my family line, only for her to do something to get us all killed first. Fer-de-Lance, however, took that I would tag along with her foolhardy venture as a given. I suppose it was only expected that Commissar Prince Blueblood would leap at every single opportunity to fight, nevermind that, upon reflection, he might like to stay behind and keep drinking wine until he was no longer capable of conscious thought, thank you very much. She rose from her seat and threw her now-empty glass against the wall, whereupon it shattered into a thousand glittering shards of crystal that scintillated in the harsh horn-light like frost. That none of the other ponies in the room jumped, aside from Yours Truly, implied that this sort of behaviour was hardly new to them. “Come along, mes enfants!” she said cheerfully. Trotting past me, she snatched my half-drunk glass of wine out of the air, took a rather lengthy sip of it, and carried on with my drink bobbing along in her aura with her. Her soldiers followed on, and I, rather stunned, fell into step, if only out of a desire not to be left alone in this dreary, deadly place. I did not fancy leaving her unsupervised either, lest she squander the hard-fought success of taking the breach. Rather annoyed and somewhat shocked by this, I reached again for my hipflask; if liver failure didn’t take me then surely the foolhardy ventures these officers dragged me into will. Fer-de-Lance halted suddenly in the corridor and turned to face me, shoving her ensign into a wall in the process. “What’s a butcher?” she asked. “Pardon?” I blurted out. She peered over the rim of her glass of wine at me, eyes narrowed. “You called me a butcher,” she said, before draining the last gulps of my glass of wine, the stains of which upon her lips looked like the lipstick of one of the courtesans I liked to frequent in happier times. “What is that?” “Oh.” I tried to think of something quickly. “It’s a griffon term of endearment.” Fer-de-Lance glared at me, clearly not believing those words, and then pulled her gas mask over her face. The hideous, blank-faced figure chuckled grimly, distorted by the layers of cloth. “If we win this, I will forget the things you said to me before.” The aura around the glass vanished, and it dropped to the ground and shattered into a thousand sharp slivers and splinters of crystal. I could almost see her self-satisfied smirk under her mask, as the fabric shifted slightly with her facial expression. Fer-de-Lance held that stare for a moment longer, almost daring me to look away, but my dull-eyed, vacant expression of quiet bewilderment held and she gave up. She marched on and I followed, stepping carefully around the broken fragments of glass, though they soon faded out of existence to be returned to whatever magic they came from. As we proceeded into the darkness, guided by a now-dimmed hornlight, I had the awful feeling that we’d only really just started.