We put down New Leaf before he could lengthen any more. I was the one to do it. I just... drove my pike through his heart. He was already in too much pain to feel it.
After that, we carefully pulled the crystal from his throat. It was a good one, so I gathered three or four more from the Children's corpses for the few zappers the village had managed to get its hooves on while the others wrapped New Leaf up in Flitterwing's spare cloak. Then we burned the bodies, left our normal caution signs— we thought we'd be by next spring to make sure there were no dangerous shards left— and went home.
The incident shocked the village. We planned a burial, gave him a short service, and lowered him into a grave that was just a little larger than normal. There was barely a word from anypony, and there wasn't much conversation at all for days after... but I wasn't thinking about what we had lost.
I was thinking about the danger we were all in.
Ashen Children always attack in waves. I don't know what drives them, but when they attack somewhere, it's only a few at a time, then hordes. If you're especially unlucky, they'll have a machine with them. Ashen Children always follow each other, and they'd found another way into our valley.
It was some positively, absolutely rotten luck. I don't know what happened, maybe a pass opened up earlier in the year and we didn't notice, or maybe the Children had made one themselves. We'd heard stranger stories from the traders that came by Snowhaven once a year or so.
The point is, it wouldn't be long for the Children to figure out where the village was, and the wall we had wouldn't do us any good. I went to Hammerhoof's forge first and told him what I thought was going on. He agreed with me, because he's always been sensible, and told me he'd be bringing both his apprentices in and begin making pikes and armor plates as fast as he could. Then I traveled up to where New Leaf had been grabbed, looking for chokepoints. There was one, at a spot where a small cliff gave way to a slope. The trail made by the Children dragging him down into the forest was still there.
With a plan in mind, I called a town meeting. I explained to everypony the danger Snowhaven was in, and what needed to be done. I explained my idea to build a second, smaller wall along the cliff, and to use the choke point to force the Children to manageable numbers. We were all afraid, but princesses damn it, we were a community. And something needed to be done.
Everypony worked double. We cut down trees and dragged them to the cliff, where the carpenters of the town began assembling the wall. I'm not even sure Hammerhoof slept, and it showed. By the fourth day after New Leaf's death, he'd melted down dozens of tools and produced enough plates and blades to give half the village adults reinforced barding and pikes. I was working hard to show ponies how to use those weapons to fight the Children at a distance.
It was then, in the middle of our desperate preparations, that a Rarity appeared right inside Willow and Furrow's home.