I should have known it was too good to last; nothing positive in my life ever really endures, as everything tends to settle into a sort of equilibrium of mediocrity, but I had hoped that this short period of peace would last more than a few weeks. The pegasi who escorted us back to Virion Hive after our little problem with the airship, its steel skeleton still smouldering away behind us as we trudged on through the desert, had done their best to fill me in on the big picture, but being a single squadron led by a corporal I did not receive much in the way of new information that I had not already worked out for myself.
“It all happened at once, sir,” said the corporal, flying by my side about three feet off the ground. “More or less. It was just a normal day around here, then suddenly the Bugs were everywhere setting fires and attacking us. They hit the ammunition stores and the airship port. They also got into the castle, so I heard.” Then, holding out his forelegs invitingly, “Are you sure you don’t want a lift?”
“No, thanks, I could do with the walk,” I said. After that reminder of why I avoid airship travel wherever possible I never wanted to leave the safety and security of the ground ever again. The sensation of the sun-baked, dry, solid earth beneath my tired hooves was most reassuring, and short of a lengthy soak in a warm, pleasantly-scented bath and a massage to follow it was impossible to think of anything that I wanted more than to throw myself upon the comforting embrace of terra firma like a demented earth pony.
The corporal shrugged and carried on lazily drifting alongside me with slow, lazy flaps of his wings, knowing better than to question an officer, much less a commissar, even if he was being irrational. For a pegasus it must have been mildly infuriating to have to restrain one’s own natural speed to keep pace with us ground-bound ponies, but given what I had been through I think I can be excused this indulgence, amongst others.
Cannon Fodder, too, had declined the polite offer for a lift, having an even greater desire to keep all four hooves on the ground than even I did, given that he had lost part of his lunch in the immediate aftermath of the escape. In his case, with vomit still stuck in his unkempt beard and his distinctive bouquet barely improved for having finally reached safety, it could only have been a relief to the poor, luckless pegasus who would otherwise have to carry him. As for our guests, Svengallop and Coloratura, they readily accepted the pegasi’s generosity, and were carried by a pegasus soldier each; the former initially expressed a desire for a chariot, but a few ‘slips’ of the hooves of his ride soon shut him up, while the latter seemed to enjoy being held in the strong hooves of a burly guardspony.
There was some method to my madness, however. The information the corporal gave me was vague, and for all I knew there could still be Changelings causing all manner of mayhem in and around Virion Hive. The plumes of dark smoke still rose in the distance from fires still burning, and I wanted to make as sure as possible that by the time we returned that every last cowardly infiltrator had been hunted down and destroyed, as Second Fiddle’s RAID-thing was supposed to be doing. That way I could return to a hero’s welcome for having saved our very important pony, and to a lesser extent her manager, and carry on long enough to enjoy the praise heaped upon me. If I was truly lucky, then I would arrive late enough to hopefully postpone the inevitable crisis meetings and such until the next day, and could thus spend the intervening time helping Coloratura settle into her new quarters for the duration.
I couldn’t have it all my way, of course, for if I did then I’d still be in Canterlot shuffling papers around and retiring to the Imperial Club every evening (and the Tartarus Club on Fridays). When we did inevitably arrive at the great fortress-city, my hooves dragging as though my horseshoes had been made of lead, Second Fiddle, apparently having waited in ambush after presumably hearing that I was on my way, just about pounced on me as I half-stumbled, half-fell through the city gates.
“Just where in Tartarus have you be-” He stopped himself, looked me up and down and, apparently seeing the rather dire state that I could only assume I was in, not having access to a mirror, pulled an apologetic face and sucked air through his teeth. “What happened?”
“Changelings,” I said flatly.
I looked around and saw that the street, a broad thoroughfare that once directed travellers straight into the markets, was absolutely teeming with soldiers of the Prism Guards. Most appeared to be lingering around in their sections waiting for orders, and every so often an officer would gallop up to them, relay a few terse orders scribbled on a sheet of parchment, and they would trot off at the double down the street. Occasionally, I would see a flash of coloured light somewhere in the crowd and hear the distinctive ‘snap-pop’ of a unicorn teleporting. The air was filled with an electric sensation of anticipation, for this many soldiers packed into such a small area would normally generate a total saturation of unrelenting noise: chatter, banter, laughter, games, teasing, and everything else bored young stallions and mares do to while away the dull monotony of military life. It was like the few quiet moments before the start of a pegasus-scheduled storm that had been delayed for several hours.
The rebuilding of the city after the Changelings had torched much of it was slow going; most of the hovels here made the dingiest slums of Trottingham look like my mansion by comparison, so it was not a matter of merely restoring the burned-out mud brick buildings, but improving them as homes fit for ponies. Southern Cross, whose efforts had previously been directed at tearing down parts of the city to facilitate its capture, had declared that he didn’t ‘half-arse’ jobs upon accepting an advisory role in organising the rebuilding efforts. Therefore, looking past the soldiers performing the age-old ‘hurry up and wait’ routine familiar to all who have served, though the ashes had been cleared those buildings that had not been demolished remained blackened, empty husks.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“Changelings,” Second Fiddle repeated. Though he looked tired with the dark rings around his eyes and the dry strain in his voice, there was a peculiar sort of manic energy to him, as he could hardly keep himself still. He barely made eye contact with me, as his attention was directed more at the activity all around us, as though waiting for a pony to emerge from the mob and ask for his orders. “Come on, Market Garden’s been waiting for you. Celestia knows why, though.”
It might have something to do with Luna appointing me her special liaison if I had to hazard a guess, but I ignored the instinct to snap back at his snippy comment. Then again, Market Garden seemed to be under the delusion that my input was both welcome and useful. I indicated to the bewildered and exhausted Countess Coloratura and Svengallop standing around looking lost behind me. “What about our guests?”
“Ah.” Apparently noticing the two civilians with me for the first time, Commissar-General Second Fiddle sucked in air between clenched teeth. “Sorry, but I don’t think the RASEA show will be going ahead. We’ll sort it out later when things aren’t on fire.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” exclaimed Svengallop petulantly, and in his defence he had been through quite a lot in the past few hours. That, and I thought seeing the two argue might be funny, so I let him. “You can’t just leave us here!”
Second Fiddle shrugged his shoulders with just enough casualness to be very irritating to certain high-strung ponies. “I have bigger problems to deal with,” he said, and for once I agreed with him. “Blueblood, you can sort this out later, whatever it is, but Market Garden wants to see you now.”
I pulled a suitably apologetic face to Coloratura and Svengallop, both of whom I could not help but feel some degree of sympathy for even in the latter’s case. “Cannon Fodder will escort you to my quarters for the time being, if there’s anything you require just ask him. I’m very sorry about this mess.”
“It’s fine,” said Coloratura, her voice hushed and strained. “I was just looking forward to singing for the troops. We’ll stay out of everypony’s way.”
Svengallop, however, perked up at that. He had been thoroughly miserable throughout the trudge back here, so much so that for most of the journey he could barely articulate more than one complaint in a coherent manner to all of our collective relief. His fine suit, torn and smothered in dust, soot, and my aide’s expression of gastric discontent, had been peeled off of his body and was carried in a bundle draped over his back, apparently under the delusion that a crack team of exceptionally skilled dry cleaners and tailors might be able to repair it. The transformation back to his old self was astounding, as though he had been discreetly injected with a stimulant.
“A prince’s quarters!” he exclaimed at a weary Coloratura, almost prancing on the spot. “I could do with a nice bath after that horrid experience. It’s going to take so much to get the smell of smoke and vomit out of my coat. Oh, horseapples, my soaps and shampoo were left on the airship, but I’m sure His Royal Highness won’t mind me borrowing his.”
He was in for yet another round of disappointment when he would find out that not only do I not have a bath - the castle and the entire city not exactly having a modern plumbing system installed, so he would have to use the communal bathing areas as I was forced to - but with supply airships given over to such necessities of war as rations, water, weapons, and so on, I also had to make do with basic soap for daily (if that) abutions. Still, as I pulled Cannon Fodder aside to instruct him to look after our guests, I made sure to stipulate that while Coloratura was free to make use of my own personal, very limited, and secret stock of grooming products, fine food, and finer liquor as she desired, Svengallop was most certainly not to be let loose with what took my aide considerable effort on his part to procure for me.
Cannon Fodder escorted our guests away, and so Second Fiddle dragged me to where Market Garden had set up. Her fondness for large marquees persisted, as despite the availability of the castle nearby, she had set up her temporary headquarters under the cover of canvas in the courtyard instead. I would find out later that she was intending on moving it as the frontline advanced, so that she could continue to micro-manage what her generals and officers were doing with greater ease. As with the main thoroughfare beyond, the courtyard too was a veritable hive of frantic activity, with the main difference being that most ponies here wore the dress uniforms of staff officers and commissars rather than the armour of line infantry. While the crowds of ponies rushing across the courtyard ferrying orders clenched tightly in their mouths, tucked under wings, or floating alongside in auras, had the presence of mind to make way for me, I noticed that Second Fiddle had to almost barge his way through them, scattering frustrated office drones and papers in his wake.
We found Market Garden adopting her usual position at the map table, resting her forelegs on the edge and hunched over maps and papers. At once she looked both tired and energised, with dark rings around her eyes and dark sweat stains under her armpits, but still intently fixated on the job at hoof. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said she used the damned thing for eating off and sleeping on too, using that enormous map of the Badlands as a combination table cloth and blanket. This time, however, she was pouring over a map of Virion Hive and its environs, while staff officers lingered around nearby in anticipation of curt, barked orders. As I approached, I could see that this map was marked with little red crosses within the city walls and without.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, affecting an air of mild annoyance at a minor inconvenience, “I had a bit of trouble with the airship. The Changelings blew it up.” I removed my cap, which had somehow remained attached to my head through the aforementioned ordeal, and placed it on the table.
Market Garden looked up from the map and glared at me. She looked rather surprised at my sudden presence, and, though I have no way of proving it, I strongly suspected that she hadn’t sent for me at all, and that Second Fiddle wanted me around only as somepony to deflect the inevitable blame from him.
“The reason I put you in charge of this city is to stop this exact thing from happening,” she said, “and instead I find you playing around with public works schemes, as though you’re a mayor, not a military governor.”
I was a little put off by that remark and the lack of concern about my well-being, but when I noticed Second Fiddle smirking there by her side, I managed to work out the obvious and realised that he must have blamed me for this debacle while I was busy fighting for my life. Well, I was not about to let him get away with that -- I might be a knave and a cad, but even I have certain expectations of honour and throwing an apparent ‘friend’ in the path of metaphorical stampeding yaks like that crossed a line whose sanctity even I dared not violate (if the yaks were literal then I would have to re-think that). That might seem hypocritical when one remembers that I had left him unconscious in a Canterlot alleyway with pitch painted on his flanks, but that was a harmless bit of fun, whereas this was rather more serious. As far as I was concerned now, after all I had been through and not just on that day, the socks were well and truly off.
“General, you ordered me to look after the city you have conquered so that you might focus on the next battle,” I said. She was always amenable to having her ego stroked.
“Yes, but I must have a firm base from which to launch that offensive,” she said, tapping her hoof on the table for emphasis. “A firm base.”
“I knew he would be too soft,” said Second Fiddle, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “He coddles the natives, you see. We can’t trust them. They must have been helping the enemy; it’s the only way they could have organised all of these attacks to happen at the same time. And he’s been spending far too much time with that Purestrain of his.”
That little twist of the dagger at least made me feel considerably less guilty about what I was about to say next. “I would have thought that RAID would stop an enemy operation of this magnitude,” I said. “Forgive me, I've been a bit out of sorts after the incident with the airship and nopony has properly filled me in, but perhaps Commissar-General Second Fiddle can explain how that many Changelings slipped through RAID’s sights?”
“RAID depends on informants to provide us with leads.” He pointed a hoof rudely at me. “Your heathen natives have provided us with no such leads, so we can only conclude that they’re working with the Changelings. It’s the only explanation.”
“How in blazes can you say that?” I snapped. “They are victims of the Changelings! The enemy has oppressed these ponies for more than a hundred years, and now we’ve brought a war that they never wanted straight onto their doorstep. If you want them to cooperate with our occupation then we must work to earn that trust -- that is the end I have been working towards all this time.”
Market Garden tapped her hoof on the table noisily again, as she does when ponies haven’t paid enough attention to her lately. “I don’t particularly care how it is done,” she said snippily. Then, taking a sheet of parchment scribbled with notes, “If I don’t have that firm base behind me then my army can’t advance. The infiltrators attacked our means of supply. Stocks of food, water, and ammunition were destroyed in raids on depots. The mooring towers, hangars, and offloading facilities at the airship port were badly damaged, but they will be repaired within the week. They demolished a few bridges too.” She frowned at the map. “I could never get the hang of bridges.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said. “No lasting damage, I take it?”
“Stocks can be replenished, airship ports can be repaired, and casualties can be replaced for now,” said Market Garden. “But the further we advance, the greater the strain on our logistics, and these attacks will make a difficult situation even worse. Without a functioning logistical framework to sustain it, 1st Army will wither on the vine and die out in the Badlands. We have seized the initiative, and every delay will see it slip through our hooves.”
“Have there been any civilian casualties?” I asked, peering over at the map. I recognised the airship port, now marked with the largest of the red crosses, and only a few of the other marked locations as places where supply stores were located both within the emptier, burned-out portions of the city and out into the desert.
“None,” said Market Garden. “They’ve exclusively targeted our means of supply. Blast it all, we’ll have to rely on more pony-drawn wagons until the airship port can be repaired. They’ll need escorts, too.”
A dry, sarcastic chuckle rose from Second Fiddle’s sneering lips. “More proof that the heathens are in league with the enemy.”
“The Changelings regarded these ponies as food,” I said, wondering if my friend and superior officer had ever paid attention to anything that I’d said or had Cannon Fodder write reports for on my behalf. “Mere ‘livestock’, Hive Marshal Odonata called them. They won’t want to harm their only potential source of sustenance, not while their entire race faces a slow extinction by starvation. It stands to reason they’ll want to avoid civilian casualties.”
“Oh, how so very noble of them.” Second Fiddle laughed mockingly, shaking his head with a sarcastic grin that made me want to leap across the table and remove it by way of repeated slaps with my right forehoof. “Prince Blueblood, you have spent far too much time with that Purestrain whore of yours. It’s starting to make me wonder just whose side you’re on.”
I didn’t respond, not immediately at least; I had duelled ponies for far lesser insults in my time, but Twilight Sparkle’s new regulations forbade us settling this matter on the field of honour as a thousand years of royal blood in my veins demanded of me. Perhaps I was merely tired, or perhaps more than two years of this infernal war had altered my perspective somewhat, putting things into focus amidst the grand scheme of things, as it were, and whatever part of my biology that cried out for satisfaction was hushed with the assurance that his inevitable downfall would, must, come eventually.
“If we are to defeat the Changelings then we must understand them,” I said, dredging up and then mangling a quote from some long-dead pony whose utterances were nevertheless deemed important enough by others to be worthy of remembrance. “It would be a betrayal of my duties as a commissar not to take advantage of this gift that has just fallen into our collective laps.”
“The enemy understands only violence and force,” said Second Fiddle. “We don’t need to understand more than that in order to kill them.”
“Then kill them,” said Market Garden with a flippant wave of her hoof. “That is your job, Second Fiddle. And I expect the two of you to work together on this, instead of passing the blame around like a tennis match.”
As I stood there, my aching limbs insisting that I lie down and let them finally rest, looking at the general and the commissar-general and the uniformed ponies all around, Odonata’s grim warning, which had sounded so ridiculously fatalistic when I had first heard it, echoed like the clanging of a great cathedral bell in my head. As much as I did not want to admit it, the war was changing the natures of those who fought it -- it could do no less with us, and not for the better. Second Fiddle was not the same pony I had run into in Canterlot just a few months before, and I started to wonder just how much I had changed, too.
“I’ve mobilised the Guards Division,” Second Fiddle continued, heedless of the minor crisis of philosophy I was still working through. “The Changelings who did not die in skirmishes will have gone to ground. Our fillies and colts are sweeping across the entire city as we speak, going door to door, hovel to hovel. Once every area of the city has been checked we’ll expand our search to the surrounding shanty villages. RAID will leave no stone unturned -- we will find the cowards who did this and they will be destroyed, as will any native found to be aiding the enemy.”
“So much for due process,” I muttered, vocalising a thought I had not intended to sound out.
Second Fiddle boggled at me, “Says the commissar who executed an officer without a court-martial.”
Major-General Garnet, who had hitherto remained silent at the table and was therefore unnoticed until he deigned to draw attention to himself, cleared his throat. I was more than grateful for the interruption. “I would like to know when I can expect to have command of my division returned to me,” he asked with the air of a pony politely requesting the use of his croquet set after loaning it to a stingy neighbour.
“When we have purged Virion Hive of Changelings and traitors,” said Second Fiddle.
“I see. I will be a general of division sans division for some time now.”
Market Garden did not look up from her map, and instead her whole attention seemed to be absorbed entirely inwards on her own thoughts. I couldn’t blame her, if that was truly the case, sometimes the best one could do was simply withdraw from reality. However, her ears twitching in the general direction of Second Fiddle showed that she was actually paying him at least some attention.
“I need the Guards Division for my offensive,” she said finally. “They’re a damned good division. Damned good. They’ll be needed.”
“RAID are organising a special task force for the occupied territories to take over anti-infiltrator duties,” said Second Fiddle. He then looked at me with a glare that I expect he intended to be taken as a warning. “Until then, we’ll need to borrow the Guards Division for a while longer as we carry out our searches, which I will be leading personally.”
And will be personally accepting the responsibilities and consequences that come with it, I mentally added. For his sake, I hoped that he was prepared to deal with those when they were finally dropped onto his lap. Unlike Yours Truly, he still had yet to discover the merits of delegation as a means to diffuse blame, as I had clumsily done here with Market Garden, and instead his desire for all of that hard work that he liked to say he had put in to be rewarded would be his downfall. I just didn’t expect it to come in quite the manner it did, but I’m getting ahead of myself here -- one thing at a time.
“Very well.” Market Garden pushed the map of Virion Hive away, apparently done with this whole affair, and sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “Nothing else I can do about it just now. But remember what I said, Second Fiddle, Virion Hive is to be our staging post for future offensives into the Badlands, so it is vital to our final victory in this war that our store of provisions here is kept safe. The enemy is still out there in force, and I intend on forcing her into battle -- a proper army battle too, with none of this beastly deception and manoeuvring business getting in the way of it all.”
Then, she looked at me and cast her eye up and down over my sagging form, which I had to prop up by leaning on the sturdy map table. “You need a bath, sir. You smell like an ashtray, more than you usually do, and you look like a Diamond Dog. I can’t win a war with my staff running around looking like tramps.”
Having my appearance and fragrance suitably admonished by a mare who clearly cared nothing about hers, I was dismissed and free to slink off in search of a bath. As ever, I judged that I would only get in the way of the ponies here actually doing their jobs, and so I could quietly disappear without much guilt on my part, not that I ever really felt guilty about skiving off as I remained confident that my presence was only a burden unless I was getting shot at, kicked, or bitten. That said, I did not feel particularly up for a dip in the communal bath in the officers’ mess, no matter how much sweat, filth, dust, and smoke was clogging up my once-white coat, as I felt I the solitude required to fully process all that had happened was more necessary to my well-being than to have to make small talk with whatever off-duty officers were already making use of the facilities. Nevertheless, a surreptitious sniff under my foreleg told me that Market Garden’s assessment was actually very generous, and if I still wanted to keep Coloratura company then I ought to fix that pronto. I could have taken a dip in the River Vir, perhaps, but I recalled a certain cultural taboo amongst some of the native pony tribes that forbade immersing oneself in one of the rare sources of freshwater around; after all, nopony would want to drink it after I’ve been swimming in it.
I was about to stumble off in the direction of the officers’ bath when I spotted Second Fiddle standing off to the side, apparently taking a moment to himself. He sheltered behind a row of filing cabinets as though he was taking cover from a storm, and as I observed the staff officers and soldiers coming and going in this courtyard I found that metaphor to be particularly apt. Leaning against the unforgiving metal, he clutched at his stomach with his hoof and coughed and wretched uselessly at the ground. When he looked up and saw me staring at him, guilt fell across his face like a veil. I was probably the last pony he wanted to see him like that, so I trotted on over anyway.
“Have you eaten anything?” I asked, acting on a hunch.
“There hasn’t been time,” said Second Fiddle, wiping the spittle off his lips with the back of his hoof. His head hung low to the ground, but he tilted his eyes up at me. “How in Tartarus do you do it, Blueblood?”
“My aide always leaves a few ration bars in my pockets, just in case.” I retrieved them from my inside breast pocket and offered them to him.
Second Fiddle looked at the three ration bars floating before him, the light of my aura glinting off the wrappers, and I could almost see in his eyes the argument between his sense of pride forbidding him from accepting and the more immediate feelings of hunger. A loud rumble from his stomach, enough to make him wince with the accompanying pain, prompted him to make a decision; he grabbed one, ripped the wrapper into glittering shreds in his aura, and tore a bite out of it with relish. I did the same with the other, albeit with a slightly greater sense of refinement.
“Thank you,” he said, spraying crumbs everywhere within a few inches of his mouth. “I mean, how do you do this?” He swept his hoof out to point behind me, where Market Garden was still holding court with her advisors and generals. “How do you make those decisions that affect the lives of so many ponies and just carry on? It was so much easier when I worked in Canterlot with Princess Luna.”
“You mean you didn’t have to see the consequences of those decisions?” I posited.
In truth, I can’t remember why I thought to give Second Fiddle that sort of attention when he had just tried to direct the blame for these Changeling attacks onto me; perhaps Twilight Sparkle had rubbed off on me in a way that was more than just physical, or I sought merely to hold onto the scant few positive things left in this increasingly barren existence, or, as is more likely, I cynically thought that keeping Second Fiddle somewhat sane and balanced would ensure my survival in the long run. Taking the high road, despite requiring a greater degree of effort and sacrifice on my part, had the benefit of deflecting the usual pointing of hooves when things invariably go wrong.
“There were always consequences,” he continued. “Princess Luna has no tolerance for fools, and she expected the very best out of all of us. It was difficult, but I could manage it; I learnt what she wanted to hear and how to deliver. But here…” Second Fiddle paused, then breathed the deep, exasperated sigh of a pony relieving pent-up stress like a boiler. “You’re right. You have an annoying tendency to be right about these things. Back in Canterlot we made decisions that affected thousands of ponies and set policies that would affect thousands more in the future, but we never saw it. It’s one thing to read about it in a report, but to see it all unravel before my eyes and know that so many ponies are depending on me making the right call is something else. How do you do it?”
I wasn’t sure that I did ‘it’ in the first place; everything that I had done thus far and would continue to do was a matter of bumbling my way forward and hoping for the best, while trying to make sure that I looked good in the process and had a way out on the very likely chance that it all went to Tartarus in a hoofbasket. That was the manner in which I approached most things in life and it largely paid off quite well for me. Perhaps, I started to consider, that was the secret behind it; that all of us, even Princess Celestia herself, likewise bumbled through life while trying to make the best of the awful situations we found ourselves in. It was quite liberating to think of it in such terms, in a way.
“I just do,” I said, rather unhelpfully. “Everypony has their part to play for victory, and they’re all depending on everypony else to do theirs. Do your duty, and that will be enough.”
Useless platitudes as usual, but I find that most ponies have already made up their minds and just need an authority figure like Yours Truly here to validate it. These tended to be vague enough that said ponies could easily project their thoughts and feelings onto those empty words quite easily.
“But it isn’t enough,” said Second Fiddle. “Not for me. They’re all counting on me to stop this happening again.”
“Nopony expects you to do this by yourself,” I said, while Second Fiddle carried on wolfing down his ration bar. “No war can be won by just one pony. When I stormed the breach at Virion Hive, I did so with dozens of ponies at my back. So it is with this. Trust in the ponies in RAID, as I must trust the ponies by my side in battle.”
He winced when I mentioned that little incident, where he had hidden himself away as any rational, sensible pony would. Nevertheless, I knew the memory of it would sting, and the reminder that I knew the truth of what had happened then. That’s why I mentioned it.
“Dammit if you aren’t right,” he said, greedily swallowing the last of his ration bar. “But it’s not just that. I requested a frontline post to gain some of the glory for myself, like you. There’s none to be found behind a desk in Canterlot and I still can’t find it shackled to Market Garden’s map table!”
“I never really wanted-”
He carried on in a stream of thoughts, ignoring my half-hearted interjection. “The RAID task force will take time to set up, and it may be too late and the war will be won. But I can accompany the requisitioned Guards Division raiding parties, and then ponies can see that I’m taking an active role here. Who knows, I might even run a Changeling through myself!”
“But what I mean to say is-”
Second Fiddle clapped me on the shoulder, which released a small cloud of ash that had become embedded in the wool there. “You’ve been a great help to me,” he said. “I can see why Princess Luna chose you to be the first regimental commissar. Heavens, I should start preparing now if I’m going out in the field! I think my sword will need a sharper edge for cleaving Changeling skulls.”
[The Commissariat was slow in adopting ‘hot weather’ service uniforms for commissars, even though the Ministry of War had already developed service uniforms for staff officers at the front made of a lightweight cotton drill. Though cotton drill was judged to be too informal, increasingly high cases of heatstroke amongst commissars prompted the Commissariat to allow cotton uniforms. These, however, were still black.]
He patted me on the shoulder again and trotted off into the crowd, disappearing into the mass of uniformed ponies. I had wanted to explain that his work with the Princess in setting up her Royal Commissariat was honourable enough, and that he shouldn’t throw away a perfectly good, if very boring, career in the pursuit of some vague, ephemeral concept that, ultimately, mattered little in the grand scheme of things. It might not be glamorous, but he would at least be able to hold court in a gentlecolts’ club or a royal party and explain how he had helped Luna set up the organisation that ‘won the war’, or some such rot like that.
I stood there, somewhat bewildered, but I quickly concluded that he would either grow bored of following a section of soldiers around as they searched hovels and failed to find anything, or they’d tire of the commissar getting in the way of their jobs and tell him politely to leave and let them get on with it, or he would finally find the ‘glory’ he sought and therefore put an end to this nonsense. Yet ponies have a tendency to be stubborn when they have set their minds on things, and whatever his very obvious shortcomings were as a field officer, Second Fiddle was not the sort to give up easily. He would ‘work’, as he had put it earlier to me in the mess, as he has always done, except the madness of war was not one that rewarded merit in the way high-minded philosophers and other drains on society believed life should. A setback was not a warning that perhaps this was not the right path to take, as I would have seen it, but an obstacle to be overcome and conquered. And should he finally soak his blade in Changeling ichor, he might find the ‘thrill’ of battle to be as intoxicating as a fine and experienced mare and thus seek it out again and again.
That was a problem for another day, and one, I hoped to Faust, that I would not have to deal with personally. As far as I was concerned, however, I was finished, and the only duties I had left to perform, having performed my part for Princesses and Country already in that damned airship, was to have a bath and then make sure that Countess Coloratura was suitably well-looked after. Therefore, seeing that I would be about as much use to the ponies here actually working as a hole in a parachute, I resolved that the best thing that I could do for everypony else’s sake was to go away.
I had the communal bath all to myself, as most of the officers were otherwise on duty. The soldier-servant on hoof seemed somewhat put out that I had interrupted an usually quiet afternoon for him, necessitating a break in reading the latest Daring Do novel to draw me a bath. However, a lengthy soak in warm, soapy water did much to alleviate the aches and pains in my limbs and clear the fog from my mind. When I finally emerged from the water, I found that my coat had been restored almost to its once-ivory colour, and the water itself had turned a rather unpleasant grey-brown shade.
On the way back to my quarters, my dirty uniform in a bundle so it could be cleaned, I decided to stop by Odonata and check on her; as my prisoner, I was beholden to those ancient laws of parole to keep her safe, assuming that she had not used the chaos to escape. Being on the same corridor as my own humble dwelling, it was not too much of a diversion at least. Two guards stood outside, clutching their bayonet-tipped muskets a little tighter than usual, and as I approached they assured me that while the prisoner and her spawn were safe, they were still ‘cleaning up’ inside.
With that ominously vague warning in mind, I slipped inside through the door. The first thing that caught my attention were two more soldiers scrubbing the floor, sponging away furiously at large dark green stains that were smeared over a good portion of the stone tiles there and across some of the walls and furnishings. Odonata was in the corner of the room, lying on her back on the undersized military cot and playing some sort of game with Elytra that involved tossing her into the air and catching her. With each upwards launch, the nymph’s back plates opened and her wings buzzed, slowing her descent back to her mother only slightly. The high-pitched chirping seemed to imply she was enjoying it.
I stepped around the stains and the ponies wiping them off the floor, and up close I saw that the smears had a gritty, viscous texture to them. One of the soldiers confirmed my suspicions when I heard him grumble to himself as he dipped his sponge back into the bucket of soapy water, “Join the Army, they said. You’ll get a Guards regiment, they said. See the world and defend Equestria, they said. Nothing about mopping up entrails.”
“Looks like the guards arrived just in time,” I said.
Odonata caught Elytra for the last time, and let the tiny thing rest on her armoured chest. She lifted her head up as I approached. “I killed them myself,” she said. “They disguised themselves as the books I requested, and attacked when your guards delivered them and left. I knew Queen Chrysalis would order my assassination after my surrender, but I didn’t think her pawns would be quite so bold or foolish to face me directly. By the time the guards came to my rescue I had already dispensed with the assassins.”
That explained the mess; even the most violent soldier of the Equestrian Army was not capable of the pure savagery that had coated the floor, walls, furniture, and even the ceiling with blood. “How did you kill them without magic?” I asked, tapping my horn with a hoof.
Odonata touched hers, where the nullifier ring still sat, and grinned broadly to show rows of razor-sharp fangs, like a shark. “I used my hooves,” she said, and went back to playing with her infant daughter, who, with the enviable innocence that comes with a foal having no concept of what was going on around her aside from her mother and the potential source of food standing nearby, giggled and waved her tiny, stubby little hooves in my direction.
I beat a hasty retreat through the door, and did my best not to think about how Odonata could probably have made a decent and bloody attempt at escaping even without her powerful magic already. Even if she was captured, subdued, or killed in the process, the fact that my quarters were rather close by would likely mean that she could come for me first. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that she was, in spite of all of my previous dealings with her kind, being completely honest with me when she said that her best stab at survival was indeed cooperating fully with both myself and the Equestrian military. Had our situations been reversed, while I would like to say that I would have given the ‘name, rank, and serial number’ routine and immediately plotted a gallant escape attempt involving digging a hole through the cell wall with a spoon, it’s more likely that I would immediately start spilling every secret that I knew, from Market Garden’s strategy to Celestia’s choice of mane dye. That, of course, would be put to the test much later.
[Prince Blueblood was indeed captured and held in a Changeling prisoner of war camp later in his career, however, the details of this are not pertinent to the events at Virion Hive. Furthermore, I do not use mane dye. It is impossible for my mane to take dye at all.]
When I arrived at my quarters, I found Svengallop had already helped himself to a glass of rye whiskey of middling quality and price, which I reserved for guests of suitably middling quality anyway. Cannon Fodder had positioned himself between my guest and my drinks cabinet, and though he flicked through another one of his favourite magazines with his usual brazen lack of care of what anypony present thought of it, he had, as always, taken my orders literally and warded off this upstart manager with a series of blank stares.
Coloratura had left, and had either taken Saguaro with her or he, an adolescent colt, followed the first attractive mare he had ever seen. Nevertheless, she was kind enough to have informed my aide that she had intended on performing an impromptu recital in the castle’s main hall, and under armed escort to my relief. Cannon Fodder further explained that she had also requested a guitar, which he had somehow provided for her using means that I didn’t bother inquiring about. I’d quite looked forward to a quiet evening with her, and was feeling somewhat put out by this. Still, it was only late afternoon, and there was time enough for that later. The very least that I could do, I thought, was attend this little concert and, I hoped, pounce on her when she had finished, after I had changed into a fresh uniform, of course.
What had been a large banquet hall, once used by a nameless dynasty of long-dead kings and queens forgotten by all except perhaps Twilight Sparkle and a few other such academics, was now a makeshift barracks and accommodated some hundred or so soldiers in rows upon rows of bunks. I could hear the music as I stumbled through the corridor approaching the hall, muffled by the thick stone walls and the newly-installed wooden doors; the strum of simple guitar chords provided the slow and sonorous rhythm, and on top of that, sharpening acutely like an image coming into focus as I nudged open the door and slipped inside, was her voice.
Coloratura was at the far end, sitting on the dais where the lord of this place would have sat. She strummed a beaten old guitar on her lap, while Saguaro stood nearby and tapped out some sort of primitive rhythm on a drum. The rest of the hall was packed with off-duty soldiers, some having just come back from their raids, and they sat on bunks and in the aisles between them to watch the performance.
The song itself escapes me, but I think it was some earth pony folk thing. The lyrics were probably about soil or plants or getting their land back from the unicorns, as they usually tended to be, but that wasn’t important. It was strong, defiant, and melodic, and with it seemed to carry certain emotions within that I had done my best to suppress for much of my life -- of loss, solitude, and longing. The off-duty soldiers in the hall and the few natives who had taken it upon themselves to perform menial tasks for our army were transfixed by the song, as I was. Rarely had I seen troops on their own free time sit quietly for any length of time, for even those few good RASEA shows still tended to get somewhat boisterous. Though I felt as though I was intruding on the scene, I quietly shut the door behind me and took a position out of the way at the back of the crowd.
It was not the loud spectacle ponies had expected, with costumes and lights and energetic music, but out here, on the frontline of an Equestria slowly slipping into the sort of barbarism Princess Celestia had spent a thousand years dragging it kicking and screaming away from, this was what was needed. In some way, and I don’t know if Coloratura had truly intended this, it was a reminder of what we were all out here fighting for, through this shared experience that reconnected each and everypony here with the thoughts of the land we came from and the ponies we left behind. What that bath had done for my body, this performance had done for what passed for my soul.
This wouldn’t last, of course, but I had to accept whatever respite I could get.