//------------------------------// // Chapter 24 // Story: The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood // by Raleigh //------------------------------// It didn’t take long at all for Second Fiddle to blooden his sword in Changeling blood. The very next day, in fact, when he pranced into the officers’ mess gleefully brandishing a sabre encrusted with green, stinking ichor along much of its length like a four year-old showing off a hoof painting to delighted parents, to the confusion and horror of the guests and staff. I had been enjoying a rather pleasant late lunch of cauliflower marsala with Colonel Sunshine Smiles, with a delightful bottle or two of an agreeable Gewurztraminer to pair. Though the former still preferred to eat out of the same troughs as the common soldiery, I had managed to twist his foreleg a little to get him to visit the officers' mess once in a while and at least indulge in a pantomime of the gentlecoltly pursuits of fine food, fine wine, and fine company we both sorely missed. Besides, after two years of war and the honour of the Night Guards proved in battle, the exclusion he and his fellows had been subjected to by the now disgraced or deceased officers of the old-fashioned sort had become thoroughly non-existent. Indeed, if Captain Blitzkrieg could suffer to attend without incident, employing what I had previously taught him about table manners and appropriate topics of conversation over dinner and cocktails, then certainly the Colonel could too. Ponies reading this might consider it odd, or even flippant, that I and other officers would enjoy a relatively luxurious lunch the day after a series of disastrous attacks that had, momentarily, crippled our supply line (and at least the Changelings had the manners not to strike at our mess supplies). I, after all, had yet another all-too-close brush with death and was more than a little on edge. Life, however, goes on in spite of the multitude of miseries inflicted upon us, and ponies take solace wherever they can find it. Even a common soldier might see Prince Blueblood acting pretty much the way he always does, hiding the fact that he’s quickly going to pieces inside, and conclude that it must mean everything is fine. With the delightful Countess Coloratura having returned to Equestria, taking her manager with her in a move that made up for her early absence, things once again began to settle into a sort of stable, but precarious and fragile, equilibrium once more. Lunch being a rather less formal affair than dinner, which on the frontline had lost much of its stilted formality anyway, we were joined by Fer-de-Lance, who had been grumbling away at the bar about how Second Fiddle had been taking far too many of her ‘enfants’ away for his raids. While at first I feared having to make tedious small talk with this uptight Prench lady, she soon bonded with Sunshine Smiles over a shared interest in wine, as her family, like most of the Prench aristocracy who managed to survive that unpleasant experiment in republican government a thousand years ago, owned a vineyard or two in Prance. Whereas Sunshine Smiles expressed a genuine but amateurish interest in some of the finer details of viticulture, and was content to allow her to ramble on at length about climate and soil and the perils of mildew with the sort of depth of knowledge I’d expect from an earth pony than a unicorn. That must have been how he managed to keep up, I thought. I, on the other hoof, was one of those ponies content to simply enjoy wine for what it is with no interest in how it is produced. It was important for any prince to be able to carry a basic conversation on the topic with other nobleponies whose knowledge on the subject was just as broad and shallow as mine, of course, in order to carry on the facade that aristocrats are truly as well-read and refined as we would like other ponies to think we are. Despite learning more about soil aeration than any unicorn has any right to, I was at least grateful for the opportunity to take part in a conversation, however one-sided, that did not involve the war at all. I could even contribute with a few anecdotes about the vineyards owned by my brothers-in-law. “The summer of ‘08 was unbearably hot,” I said. “Almost drought conditions. The poor winemakers were moved to tears, trying to produce drinkable wine from raisins.” “That would be Coteaux de le Sang?” Fer-de-Lance was barely capable of hiding her dismissive sneer. “As you say, raisins would be a better use of those grapes than the ‘vinegar’ they produce.” “Doesn’t that vineyard belong to your sisters’ husbands?” asked Sunshine Smiles. I could not remember if I had volunteered that information before or if that was simply common knowledge now; anypony could pick up various details about myself and members of my extended family from a variety of sources, legitimate and illegitimate. “Yes.” I nodded. “Which means I have to drink that ‘vinegar’ and eat those raisins each time I visit them.” Fer-de-Lance raised her glass in a sort of salute. “My sincere condolences,” she said, and then took a delicate sip. “The ‘92 receives the most praise,” said Sunshine Smiles, turning the half-empty bottle at the table to present the attractive label. “Unfairly, I believe. The ‘93 is a more refined vintage with a more complex profile, due to a summer with longer spells of consistent sunshine.” “I agree.” Fer-de-Lance, contemplatively swirled her glass of wine around. “Alas, we cannot dictate to the pegasi in the weather teams precisely how much sunshine and rain our grapes require, no?” “If we could then we wouldn’t be able to have discussions such as this.” The right side of Sunshine Smile’s mouth mirrored the scarred left in a grin. “All wine everywhere would taste the same.” “Parties would be ruined forever,” I said. “Imagine a party where one cannot criticise the host’s choice of wine!” [Records of duty rosters uncovered by Princess Twilight Sparkle, whose research work in the archives has been invaluable in this project, show that both Sunshine Smiles and Fer-de-Lance were off-duty at the time, hence their drinking alcohol. Prince Blueblood, however, was still on duty, and was therefore in breach of new regulations by drinking on the job. It appears that this behaviour was largely accepted due to his royal title, reputation, and remarkable tolerance for drink.] It was at that point, while I was quietly listening to the conversation and contemplating whether to indulge in pudding before having to crawl back to whatever duties I hadn’t been able to distribute to other more competent ponies, when Second Fiddle made his rude interruption. As the conversation was meandering this way and that like Yours Truly on the way home from the Tartarus Club, he had blundered in, sword drawn, and advanced on our table by the side of the room. I recall hearing some sort of commotion as my two companions indulged in idle chatter, of shocked gasps and mutterings and even a monocle popping out of an eye socket and shattering, but I’d assumed that some other younger officer had slipped past the limits of acceptable alcohol consumption for a late lunch and disgraced himself in front of his peers. “Hi, Blueblood!” The sudden sound of Second Fiddle’s voice from behind gave me a start, and I received a second one when I turned and saw an ichor-stained blade about two feet away from my nose. “What in Tartarus do you think you’re playing at?” I hissed under my breath, aware that ponies were watching. A waiter in formalwear hovered at the adjacent table, ready to pounce and throw him out if given the word, which I was sorely tempted to do. Second Fiddle’s face fell. Dictionaries don’t have pictures in them, unless it is one intended for five year olds, but the entry for the term ‘disappointment’ would have matched his expression perfectly. He stood there, shocked at how this clearly did not go the way he had fantasised about since first donning the uniform, and was silent for what felt like an age. “I got one!” he finally said. “Ran him through.” I looked to my other guests and saw that Fer-de-Lance was shaking with silent rage, and Sunshine Smiles was pretending to read the blurb on the back of the wine bottle as though it contained ancient wisdom on the meaning of life. “I’m very proud of you,” I said, at a loss at how else I was supposed to deal with this diplomatically. “But will you put that away before you have somepony’s eye out?” Second Fiddle’s cheeks flushed a peculiar shade of crimson and he swallowed hard. “Oh, sorry.” He awkwardly rammed his bloodied sabre back into its scabbard. It took him a few tries, struggling to find the opening like a virgin’s first time with a mare, but he eventually succeeded. “Look, you can tell me all about it later,” I said, “but for the love of Celestia don’t go waving that around in the officers' mess. And get it cleaned too, before you ruin your sword.” [Blood, both pony and the changeling equivalent, is corrosive to steel and can cause rust if it is not wiped off and the blade is re-oiled.] He mumbled another apology and cantered off with his tail between his legs, ponies watching and whispering to one another as he passed them. Embarrassment, I had just learnt, can be contagious, and I was feeling some sort of secondary attack of it by merely being involved with that insane display. The awkward silence as my two lunch companions digested what they had just seen carried on for what felt like an eternity, leaving me to stew in the awkward, cloying sensation that seemed to smother me from within. Mercifully, Fer-de-Lance put me out of my misery with her characteristic bluntness: “Mes princesses, where do they find idiots like that?” I didn’t know, but there seemed to be plenty of them these days, or perhaps the ratio of ‘idiots’ to competent ponies has actually been fairly stable through history and it was only now that I found myself in a situation where such idiocy would lead to consequences far more severe than mild annoyance on my part. When I saw him next I resisted the overwhelming urge to tease him about brandishing a bloodstained sword around while ponies were trying to eat lunch. It would have livened up another one of his tedious meetings, certainly, but I was sure that his fragile ego would take what was intended as light-hearted ribbing as a serious attempt to undermine his authority. Still, for those curious, the best joke that I could think of was asking if we should still be paying our mess fees if their food was so tough one needed a heavy infantry sabre to cut it. “So far we’ve uncovered three cells of infiltrators,” he said, pacing about the floor in my office with sufficient force that he might make a groove in the ancient stonework. “They were all hiding among the native ponies, just like I said they would. We’ve killed seven Changelings, captured five, and three got away.” It was a late afternoon, a few days after that incident in the mess, and ostensibly this was supposed to be a social call, except that he invariably brought the conversation back to his work. I made a non-committal sort of noise to show that I was still listening to his rambling, though I was quietly thinking of ways to get him to leave without forcibly throwing him through the door. “The heathens are hiding more of them, I’m sure of it,” he said, and that made me consider throwing him out of the window instead. “Or they’re being used as shields,” I posited, hoping that I might be able to get him to use the brain Faust had gifted him. “We have ‘rules’, after all. If I was a Changeling and I wanted to hide, hiding amongst the civilians would be my first choice.” Second Fiddle finally stopped pacing to glower at me. “It would be easier,” he hissed, “if we didn’t have to follow those rules.” “You don’t really mean that.” “It would be easier,” he repeated. “If a rule stands between us and victory then we should ignore it.” I decided very quickly that this was not a route of conversation that I wanted to travel down to its logical conclusion, especially on what was supposed to be a quiet evening for me, so I quickly abandoned it. Coming up with something else, however, was rather trickier, as all he ever seemed to want to talk about these days was this infernal war. It was always there, hovering over my head like a mischievous pegasus with a small thundercloud, ready to ruin any polite conversation. Failing as I’d always done, for the only other topic he could speak at any length about was our school days and I was getting quite bored of reminiscing about things that happened years ago (and being reminded of how I failed to achieve a high school diploma), I asked him if there had been any more attacks lately. “No,” he answered. “Chameel’s been quiet for the past few days. It’s very odd; I expected more.” [‘Chameel’ was another attempt by the writers employed by the Ministry of Information to come up with another nickname for the Changelings, after ‘Changeling Charlie’ failed to supplant the slur ‘bugs’ that Equestria soldiers tended to use. The character appeared in a number of pamphlets and short animated films intended to instruct frontline troops on identifying infiltrators hiding in civilian populations. These were not well-received and the character was quietly dropped from subsequent information media. The name, a portmanteau of the words ‘chameleon’ and ‘eel’, was considered too much of an abstraction to truly connect with soldiers.] “It makes sense.” I shrugged. “With RAID running around, well… raiding just about everywhere, any Changelings still left behind would have gone to ground, so to speak, if you haven’t gotten them all by now.” “There are more,” he said, and he seemed very certain of that without much in the way of proof to back it up. “I just have to dig them out.” I sat back on my seat, which was really just an old office chair Cannon Fodder had procured for me, and poured myself another glass of brandy as I came upon a thought that I probably would not have vocalised aloud were I sober. “What if some of the Changelings don’t want to fight?” Second Fiddle’s eyes looked as though they might burst out of their sockets. “What in blazes are you on about now?” he snapped. His nose wrinkled in disgust and he shook his head. “You’re drunk again.” “Probably,” I said. “I’m off-duty this time.” He snorted, but otherwise said nothing, so I carried on. “It’s just what they call a ‘thought experiment’.” I think I once heard Twilight Sparkle use that term before. “What if some of the Changelings hiding amongst the native population don’t want to fight and would rather we leave them alone? There might even be Changelings in the Hive who don’t agree with this war Chrysalis started. They could become allies.” “Now see here,” he said, approaching my desk and tapping on it forcefully with his hoof. I stared up at him and drank my brandy as he started espousing his nonsense propaganda once more, in lieu of actually confronting the rather salient point that I had made. “You’ve spent far too much time with that Changeling whore of a prisoner of yours. If I had my way she would have been lined up against the wall in the courtyard and… and shot along with every other bug that surrendered, instead of being allowed to whisper her poison in your ear. Every Changeling wants to see Equestria destroyed and its ponies enslaved, you hear? I can’t allow that kind of… that kind of softness to keep us from carrying out the ruthless prosecution of this war.” “That,” I said, swirling my brandy thoughtfully, “would make us no better than the enemy.” “We don’t have the luxury of the moral high ground in this sort of war.” Second Fiddle turned on his hooves and marched out of the door, slamming it behind him with a heavy ‘thud’ that was sure to wake Elytra from her nap in the room down the corridor. I was left alone again, and feeling rather unhappy about it too. He never did recount the epic tale of how he lost his battlefield virginity to me, but, as ever, I had heard off-hoof from another pony who had taken part in that gallant mission, a young corporal of the Prism Guards who was very impressed that I could converse with him in his native Prench, that it was not quite the heroic saga for the ages. I had run into him while he was providing me with temporary bodyguard duty (which Cannon Fodder seemed to think he could handle by himself, but after that whole unpleasant thing with the airship and all of those other attacks I was not about to take any more chances) as I attended a meeting a few days later with a number of the local elders of Virion Hive and the other native tribes. “We had a tip from one of your natives,” he said, while we were standing around waiting for everypony else to show up to the meeting. “The Changelings were hiding out in one of the abandoned bunkers, so we raided it. We took them by surprise, but they fought hard, sir, so we had to kill them all.” The Corporal glanced around us to see if anypony was eavesdropping; they probably were, but he carried on anyway. “The Commissar was at the back giving the orders, and when he thought we weren’t looking he stabbed one of the dead Changelings and trotted away.” There it was, the truth, and I filed that neatly away in the great binder in the library of my mind titled ‘blackmail material’. Just in case, of course; one could never have too much information on other ponies to exploit, I find, as they’re more than likely doing the exact same thing themselves. As for the meeting, the city might have been under the even tighter grip of martial law following the Changeling attacks, but the necessary business of governing the damned place could not stop. I had a theory, and it was largely based on observing my father’s failed attempts to get the natives of Coltcutta on his side during his disastrous stint as viceroy there, which I was rather desperate to avoid as food riots can get quite ugly for all involved, that getting the locals at least somewhat included in the tedious job of governance instead of shutting them out would help keep them all nice, sedate, and immensely grateful to Equestria. It was more for show than anything, as I’d learnt that allowing the commoners at least a pantomime of having a say in how their lives are governed, while I and my ilk cling on to the last vestiges of regal power through more subtle means, works wonders for their well-being without letting them loose with political power. The natives of Virion Hive still lacked initiative, having had it more or less eliminated from them by a century of Changeling occupation, but with a bit of gentle nudging from the few politicos I’d brought in just for this purpose, they had organised themselves into constituencies, which were formed out of districts of the still-inhabited parts of the city and the shanty towns around it, and elected representatives from their number. These formed a small parliament of sorts, so that they could represent their interests in dealings with the Equestrian government as represented by Yours Truly. Thus far, however, their interests lay predominantly in both surviving this war and hoping that the Changelings did not return to reassert their cruel tyranny upon them now that they had tasted freedom and harmony. That those two things aligned perfectly with my own aims in this war, moreso the former, certainly helped in my dealings with them, and anything else was merely a case of them muddling through this new and terrifying prospect of (limited) autonomy. In addition to these representatives, under the stipulations of the treaty Princess Celestia had hashed out with the other Badlands pony tribes, Earthshaker of the Rat Pony Tribe and Bitter Salt of the Agave Tribe would often make appearances. That day was no different, and as my entourage and I filed into the marquee set out for this meeting, I could tell by the glare he gave us, the representatives of the Twin Crowns of Equestria, that Earthshaker was going to make this meeting a particularly difficult one, again. [Blueblood does not seem to think it is important to mention, but after the Changeling attacks the location of this Council’s meetings changed with each session to maintain security. Most were held in random locations under a portable marquee out in the desert.] Most of the Council, as it grandiloquently called itself, had already arrived, either taking up their spaces on the large set of tables in the middle or taking advantage of the refreshments. I was under the suspicion that most bothered to turn up only because of the offer of free food. Before I could take my seat at the head of the table I was subjected to the usual battery of counter-illusory spells and tests, as the one hit with the now ubiquitous Changeling reveal spell was no longer considered sufficient after this latest spate of attacks. Now that I was here and everypony present was satisfied that I was not a Changeling we could proceed. However, when the attendees took their positions I noticed a couple of empty seats in the corner, and when I inquired about them with one of the guards I was informed that the delegates of the Medusita clan, as they had started calling themselves after one of the types of cacti that grow here, were nowhere to be found. Be that as it may, I was in no mood to wait, and as far as I was concerned, if they didn’t want to express enough of an interest in how I was running their city, then they had no right to complain if I decided on something that they then disagreed with. It was not as though much came out of these meetings anyway. I asked the Corporal if he could send a pony to deliver a message, and after too much time going back and forth with his commanding officer, concluded that they simply couldn’t spare anypony from their all-important duty of guarding this meeting. “Saguaro!” I called out, and the young colt, who had hitherto been sitting out in the desert and drawing pictures in the sand with the tips of his wing feathers, trotted on over with his usual damned eagerness to please. “I need you to go and find the Medusita clan, there’s a good chap.” He saluted in a clumsy imitation of the soldiers he’d been observing marching in the castle courtyard and trotted off merrily out into the desert with his task. One might think that it was a risk to send a colt out on his own like that with the recent attacks, but thanks to those same attacks the entire area was positively crawling with soldiers on Second Fiddle’s RAID duty. If Saguaro was smart enough, which he wasn’t, he could have invoked my authority and politely asked one of the patrolling soldiers to go and find the Medusita clan for him. We proceeded - the initial welcome, a heathen prayer to the spirits led by Bitter Salt that I went along with out of politeness, a recap of the previous meeting we had, and then the business at hoof. I won’t bore whoever reads this document with the details, because not only was it tedious and dull in the extreme, but I have largely forgotten the vast majority of what was discussed. None of it was particularly worth remembering, really, and would only be of interest to the sorts of ponies who also think that the collecting of stamps or the spotting of trains are worthwhile hobbies. For the most part, the representatives of each district, clan, or whatever group of natives would voice their petty concerns, worries, complaints, and so on, and I would make some noise about how we would find a way to deal with it. Cannon Fodder would then take a note in the minutes and it would be filed away somewhere for somepony else to deal with later. All of this served the illusion that I was actually taking my appointed job of governing this place seriously, and would, in theory, plant me in good stead with the ponies back in Canterlot -- the more paperwork I generated for them, the better. That is, with the exception of Chieftain Earthshaker, whose suspicion of Equestria, being somewhat justified in light of subsequent events I might add, had hardly abated with the raising of our flag above Virion Hive. In fact, that flag itself still fluttering in the hot, languid breeze from the castle spires still remained a significant point of contention for him. “You said you come as liberators,” he said, standing with his forehooves up on the table and glowering at me from across the marquee. He projected his voice well, and despite the distance I heard it quite clearly. “But you come as conquerors instead. Your flag with your Tyrants of the Sun and Moon still flies from the castle. Your soldiers spend more time harassing our brothers and sisters in Virion Hive than fighting the Changelings. You teach these ponies your ideals and customs, turning them into subjects of Equestria. When this war is over I fear you will not leave.” I was starting to feel that way too, to a lesser extent of course, but my fear that the decisions of some ponies in distant Canterlot, who were rather keen on colouring a new bit of the world map that pleasing green colour, would end up causing even more pain and misery had only grown stronger with that visit from Chancellor Neighsay. Perhaps a year ago I would have agreed with them in their belief that all ponies everywhere really wanted to live under the enlightened, divine rule of the Princesses, they only had to overcome their foalish pride and realise it, but experience has a way of changing one’s perspective on things, for if it didn’t then one was more a hollow shell than a living pony. The scars on my back had taught me that some groups of ponies were best left to their own devices after all - ‘Harmony’s Burden’ be damned. [‘Harmony’s Burden’ was a term coined by advocates of Equestrian imperialism, who had taken Princess Twilight Sparkle’s message of spreading the Magic of Friendship as a justification to expand Equestria’s borders. Though the son of an arch-imperialist, Prince Blueblood would oppose this view, famously stating that ‘one cannot make friends at the point of a bayonet’.] The other ponies around the room remained in a sort of awkward hush and stared at me expectantly as though I might have something to say about this. They were new to this whole ‘autonomy’ thing, and even when I asked for their opinions on minor topics such as favourite colours or taxation policies they would still defer to me. “I’ve explained this before,” I said, “Their Highnesses’ government has no intentions on formally annexing the Badlands.” “At this time,” he said, completing that oft-repeated statement. “We have a treaty,” I said, and I could not resist adding, “which you were personally present for and signed.” “Treaties are little more than words on parchment, and words can be ignored. One day your war with the Changelings will end, and when it does will you and your flag finally leave us in peace? Your treaty was with seven pony tribes of the Badlands, the descendents of those your Princesses cast out a thousand years ago for refusing to kneel before them. But what of this city? Equestria has tasted victory and conquest, and in this war there will be more of that to come. In the end you may decide to hold onto these conquests, and the ponies here will have exchanged one tyrant for two.” I wanted a quick end to all of this fighting so I could go home and try to claw back some semblance of a normal, regal life, not have it dragged out because a few ponies in Canterlot thought they would like to be remembered for making Equestria slightly bigger than it was before. Those ponies, however, were the ones who potentially held the keys to my continued safety as the governor of Virion Hive, so I could hardly say as much, as holding onto the position I had been desperate to keep meant that I had to be uncharacteristically careful in what I said. This was not the same as drunkenly ranting to a journalist that if common ponies were to get the vote then we might as well extend the franchise to cats, geese, and donkeys -- this mattered. It was Bitter Salt, the elderly and allegedly wise leader of the Agave Tribe who was once again the quiet voice of reason here. “The sands have drunk deeply of Equestrian blood,” she said, her voice deep and sonorous, and even a blowhard like Earthshaker clammed up and listened when she spoke. Hers was a voice that demanded attention; she could have been speaking utter nonsense and ponies would still listen as though it was divinely-inspired wisdom. “So soon have you forgotten the meaning of their sacrifice. The Changelings are our true enemy, not our fellow ponies from the north. It is inevitable that Queen Chrysalis would have moved to enslave our tribes, and yours and mine would have gone the same way as this once-great city. Our fate, our survival, as free ponies is now inextricably linked to Equestria’s victory in this war.” Earthshaker glared, his eyes like burning coals and his jaw clenched tightly. “Equestria started this war,” he snarled. “Chrysalis started this war.” Bitter Salt’s voice never wavered from its calm, melodic tone. “And when she casts her hungry eyes on your tribe, would you rather face the Changeling hordes alone or with Equestrian steel by your side?” She then looked at me, who was sitting awkwardly at the table and fiddling with a quill while she spoke. “The Prince is a peacemaker; it was he who uncovered the spy within your tribe, and it was he who stopped a needless war that neither you nor Equestria could afford. Whatever stories of the Tyrants of the Sun and Moon you tell your foals to keep them obedient are now just stories. After more than a thousand years, how can either of them still be the same monsters that drove our ancestors from their homes? Think of how much a pony changes through their lifetime, and consider how much an immortal must change through eternity.” ‘Peacemaker’ might have been a bit of a stretch, especially when it was Princess Celestia who had done the actual work in sorting out that treaty, and I dreaded to think how tense and awkward those negotiations must have been between her and Earthshaker. [Chieftain Earthshaker was actually very polite during those negotiations, even a little shy and quiet. For all of his complaints about the ‘Tyrant of the Sun’ to everypony else, finally meeting me in the flesh was another matter entirely.] “These are discussions for after the war, not during it,” I said, knowing that in reality the debates in Canterlot were still raging, which was why I kept receiving conflicting reports from various government ministries, which I largely ignored anyway. “What you intend to do after this war will affect how you fight it,” said Bitter Salt, turning that age-old wisdom on me. I could not help but wonder if she was just making it all up as she went along, and it only sounded profound coming from a mare that old with that accent. “And as that treaty states, we fight this war to protect all ponies from the tyranny of Queen Chrysalis. I will do all that I can to see to it that Equestria honours that.” It was short of giving my word as a prince of the realm, and I had to be very careful about using those exact words lest I find myself honour-bound to do something I didn’t want to do again, but it seemed to be enough to get Earthshaker to shut up for now so we could carry on with the rest of the meeting. Those sorts of conversations always happened whenever he deigned to turn up, and I made a mental note to ask Cannon Fodder to think up some ways of encouraging him to avoid attending so we could wrap these up sooner in time for tea. I imagine that he did this not out of any genuine concern about the pony inhabitants of Virion Hive, but out of a self-aggrandising scheme to ensure that I, and by extension Equestria, continued to think of his tribe as some sort of regional power that needed to be respected. There had to be ways he could do that without wasting my time, I thought. We wrapped up very quickly, around mid-to-late afternoon, and I had planned on beating a hasty retreat back to Virion Hive before the other ponies decided that they wanted to speak with me about something private when Cannon Fodder cleared his throat noisily, drawing the attention of everypony else still in the marquee, and said, “The Medusita didn’t turn up, sir.” And neither did Saguaro. I assumed that he must have been distracted from his task and wandered off again; he was an eager young colt, yes, and very keen on serving his new overlords, but being fourteen years old meant that he was not terribly reliable. He liked to explore, which I imagined was him taking advantage of a level of freedom that he was not quite used to. That was why I only gave him those tasks that I, in truth, would not feel particularly put out if he did find himself lost along the way and therefore failed to complete. Whether or not the Medusita did turn up was immaterial as far as I was concerned, for they rarely had anything of worth to contribute, except to ask when they could finally see the Princesses apparently responsible for their liberation (as if the soldiers all around them had nothing to do with it). With all of the chaos of the past few days I started to fear the worst, and that sending him out alone was a mistake. Usually, I trusted that he would either turn up of his own accord when he got bored and hungry or when one of the soldiers would catch him trying to explore somewhere where he shouldn’t. However, that the delegates from the Medusita clan did not arrive either was disquieting, and, knowing that I only had more paperwork and bureaucracy to look forward to back at the castle, I could afford a little detour to their collection of tents and hovels along the way. The shanty towns were quite well spaced out, so it was a bit of a walk to get there. Even though the Changelings had done their damnedest to stamp out all that was equine within them, the apparent need to divide themselves up into herds seems to be thoroughly innate with ponies. To my right were the towering city walls, with the large gaps pummelled into it by Equestrian artillery still yet to be filled, and to my left was the ridge, criss-crossed with trench lines and pock-marked with those stubby little grey blockhouses. Where Cannon Fodder and I walked along had been No Mare’s Land not too long ago, and were I in the mood I could have looked up to my left and spotted the place where I’d come the closest so far to the sort of martyrdom certain ponies expect of me. The land itself seemed wounded by the gas attack and had still yet to recover; the birds and animals avoided it as though they knew what had happened there, and hardy grasses and shrubs present everywhere in the Badlands failed to reclaim their hold upon the slopes. It was a hot day too, though it was going to get a little cooler as the afternoon turned into evening, so we stopped off at a few of the shanty towns along the way for a few quick rests and some water. The whole ‘sharing water’ business was one of the first traditions, apparently one of the few common to all of the disparate tribes here, that we had sought to re-introduce to the Virion Hive ponies. Walking across a barren desert under the hot sun had demonstrated to me perfectly just why this tradition was so ubiquitous, and I was thankful that they had taken to it whole-heartedly. The ponies there said that they hadn’t heard from the Medusita recently, but they rarely had many dealings beyond their little groups anyway besides the Council. They tended to stick to their own for the most part, in spite of our efforts to encourage them to open up. They had, however, seen a group of Equestrian soldiers led by a ‘stallion in black and red’ marching in that direction, and some had seen a teenaged colt making his way there not too long before them. These ponies couldn’t tell me exactly how long ago that was, lacking any means of measuring the inexorable passage of time more advanced than looking at the position of Celestia’s sun and making a guess, but it seemed like I wasn’t too far behind them. We carried on with a renewed sense of urgency. It was probably nothing, I told myself; Second Fiddle might have been an ass, but the soldiers he had been ‘borrowing’ from the Guards Division were consummate professionals who served with honour and dedication, so they would never have allowed him to do something daft under their watch. Still, the anxiety that Saguaro had been caught up in that damned glory-seeking peacock’s increasingly desperate and unhinged plans to prove to everypony that he could be a hero still lingered, and when I spotted the black columns of smoke rising from precisely the direction we were headed it appeared that my worst fears had been all but confirmed. It would turn out, however, to be far worse. Cannon Fodder and I broke into a half-trot. There were no other shanty towns in the vicinity, save the one we had just passed behind us. It felt too damned exposed and isolated out there, as the gaps between these settlements were much wider than they appeared on the map. However, as we neared the smoking tents and primitive mud-brick houses, I spotted a group of ponies making their way from there to Virion Hive. They were off in the distance, but with the dry earth here any sufficiently large group of ponies would kick up a whole lot of dust, especially if they were in a bit of a hurry. As we neared them, I saw the bright sunlight glinting off their highly-polished armour, though one figure, apparently leading them, was dressed in black and red. The group, seeming to notice us approaching them, stopped in their tracks, the dust cloud temporarily obscuring them all from view. They crowded around one another, and what looked like a heated argument broke out. I could even hear their voices, muffled by the distance and my hearing damage, that quickly died away as soon as I’d come close enough to have a chance at understanding their words more clearly. “What-ho!” I called out to them as I approached. “Second Fiddle! Is that you?” Second Fiddle stood there with his mouth agape in shock, as though I was the very last pony he had hoped to see out here. Indeed, he stumbled backwards on his hooves as I trotted on over. His once-pristine uniform, with its pressed tunic and shining gold and silver baubles, had become covered in a thin layer of that grey-yellow dust. Here and there were small rips and tears in the woollen fabric, a piece of braiding had been ripped loose and dangled from his cuff, and his hat had been knocked askew from its usual position dead-straight on his head. Sweat had soaked into his uniform, forming dark half-moons under his armpits and slicking down his fur. He held his blood-stained sabre in his aura, and had apparently been brandishing it at the other ponies for whatever reason. A section of ten unicorns of the Prism Guards stood around in a sort-of loose huddle. They too had just seen battle, that much was certain, as their armour, though still shining in the light thanks to Fer-de-Lance’s insistence on maintaining the highest standards of uniform, was tarnished in places with scuffs, dust, and splatters of blood that had already been baked on by the hot sun. None appeared to have suffered injuries more severe than light scratches and bruises. A few turned to watch me approach, while the rest continued to mill about aimlessly and seemed to be doing their very best to avoid meeting my gaze. This was not unusual behaviour on its own, as most of the common soldiery do their utmost to avoid drawing the attention of a commissar in case they found something to complain about, but instead of doing the usual thing of staring into space, at their hooves, or up at an interestingly-shaped cloud, these ponies turned away completely from me. They were all clearly agitated, pacing around with raised tails and pricked ears, and some with their heads low and staring into nothing with glazed-over eyes. “What happened here?” I asked. The quick back and forth with the Changeling-reveal spell ‘hoofshake’ assuaged the most obvious of my fears. “More Changelings,” said Second Fiddle, pointing at the ruins burning away behind us. His ears were tucked back and down, and his eyes looked just about everywhere except at mine. “They attacked that shanty town over there and killed all of the ponies. We were too late to stop them, but we avenged them.” My mouth went dry all of a sudden, and it wasn’t due to the heat or the trotting I’d done. “Did you happen to see Saguaro?” “That colt who hangs around with you?” Second Fiddle shook his head. “Sorry, no. Didn’t see him.” He then took a furtive glance at the soldiers gathered behind him, lingering on the Corporal of the section, who returned the look with a curious glare of pure, unfiltered poison. “We have to get back to Virion Hive now.” The frogs of my hooves itched. My eyes were drawn to his sabre, which still floated by his head in his pale aura. I knew his knowledge of weapon safety was lacking, since he mainly treated it as a fashion accessory instead, but after that incident in the mess he should have known better than to wave it around like that, especially in front of a group of soldiers who were obviously very upset about something. The blade itself was drenched in blood as he clearly hadn’t listened to my earlier advice to wipe it down after use, and some of it was congealing and drying into dark rusty stains already- “Why is the blood on your sword red?” I blurted out, pointing at it. Second Fiddle dropped his sword and stared at it on the ground as though it had turned into a venomous snake, the Corporal muttered a litany of expletives under his breath, and one of the soldiers broke down and started sobbing. The Commissar-General tried to say something, still not meeting my gaze, but though his mouth moved only queer choking sounds that were stillborn excuses came out. Try as I might to find the hope that there was an innocent explanation for this, there was none to be found - only one possibility, so disturbing that my mind fought to keep it unacknowledged, remained. With this revelation came a wave of nausea and utter dread; I felt as though the blood had fled my body in horror, leaving me weak and dazed. I took a few unsteady steps towards Second Fiddle, who trembled in his horseshoes as I approached. “What have you done?” I demanded, hissing through set teeth.