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// Chapter 16- Projected Rain 
// Story: Whistling Rain 
// by Schwabauer 
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The siege had been going on for three weeks now.  Twilight had spent the time teaching every unicorn in the city basic medical spells and water purification. The water had been contaminated, leading to disease beginning to spread through the city. The supply of medicine was not enough to support the number of infected civilians and the lack of unicorn doctors led to a high spread and mortality rate. Shining Armor had ordered all unicorns to be conscripted into the Empire’s Medical Corps and Water Treatment faculties.  

The water was being purified regularly as it flowed through the city and infected citizens have been moved into a somewhat isolated hospital and quarantined while the minimal number of unicorn doctors, perhaps five, alternated between training conscript doctors and slowly healing the diseased. The barrier along the river had to be cleaned regularly to prevent the pile of corpses and feces from flowing into the water supply freely. With the disease-causing agents floating through the barrier, they were forced to station unicorns along the entrance and have them continuously purify the water as it flowed.  

The unicorns weren’t the only pony tribe being conscripted in the face of this new war. Just like the unicorns, the only pegasi inside of the Crystal Empire had moved there from Equestria proper, leaving them few and far between. Combine this with the shield providing a constant summer and a efficient weather system and very few pegasi had any weather training, rendering one of their primary magical abilities all but useless. The only exceptions to this rule were pegasi that lived in the small farming villages outside the shield, who worked to keep the worst of the snow off and away from the small farming communities. 

The conscripted pegasi were all being trained in simple lance maneuvers and the absolute basics of weather mastery, where they learned how to break apart clouds and force them to rain with ease. More complex weather maneuvers like tornadoes and creating clouds were out of the question with the lack of a factory or any substantial training facility in the Crystal Empire. Twilight hoped that soon after this horrible chapter of history closes that the Empire would begin to establish it’s own pegasi academies to combat this weakness.  

Another change to life was the steady growing of the Prussian entrenchments around the city. Several lines of trench work had been dug out, cut from the frozen earth by hundreds of picks and shovels piling it into embankments on either side. Soldiers took potshots at any ponies that ventured outside the walls, shots whisking over head and shattering on the barrier, flying low and blowing into the snow and earth, or if the ponies were exceptionally unlucky —or the Prussians were actually aiming— they’d find a ball of lead bursting inside their flesh. 

Twilight had ventured out once with a couple of guards to retrieve a few refugees that had been pushed towards the city by the Prussian army.  The shot flew out about them, breaking against the barrier as the party broke out to a sprint. Twilight fired off a blast of magical energy off at the Prussian soldiers and sending them tumbling into the trench to avoid the magical plasma. The wall her magical burst hit fell inwards, filling that section until it was just a shallow, snowy dent in the ground. The fire slowed, but increased in accuracy rapidly, soldiers popping up and taking quickly aimed shots at Twilight. One of the refugees beside her cried out in terror as his mind broke, the stress and panic of being forced from his home and loud explosions all around bringing him to his knees, gasping uncontrollably. 

Using part of her aura to envelope the pony, Twilight hauled him into the air and pulled him along with her, as he sobbed dryly through shut eyes. The suppressive magic continued to be launched at the Prussians whenever they popped up, but they still managed to get the occasional shot off, each time getting dangerously close to Twilight, even wounding the guards blocking the refugees with their body.  

And then the freezing chill of the tundra wind was gone, the barrier changing the climate to that of a warm temperate zone. Twilight set the refugee down gently, and began to comfort him before directing him to follow the guards, who were already marching down the street to take the refugees to processing. After a couple minutes, the stallions stood and ran to catch up. Twilight trotted towards a flat plaza in the city. 

The plaza had become an impromptu artillery workshop, ballista being constructed from any spare wood and rope that the workers could scrounge up. With a little bit of help from Twilight they were able to turn low quality scraps into somewhat passable materials. Five mostly completely available ballista sat in the plaza, with three barely started ones being worked on. The only parts missing were wooden cogs that were being hoof carved by local wood workers.  

Four ballista had been completed and were being built into rocky emplacements that had been constructed along the main roads into the city. Side streets and alleyways had their cobblestones pried out of the ground and hauled out to the roads, being stacked as bricks and castle stones. Cheaply made mortar was crammed between the cobble stones, quickly growing brittle, cementing the cobble stones in place. Beside the ballista stacks of bolts were covered by tarps. The bolts were poor quality, made almost entirely of wood, with just a small bit of iron making the tip. Each barricade was manned by four guard ponies at all times, who stood watching their Prussian counterparts in the trenches do the same. 

Twilight set to work making more bolts for the ballista, behaving like a well oiled steam powered machine. Every bolt was near identical, with only a few imperfections here or there. Within the hour she had produced fifteen more bolts, with a hundred more well on the way. Twilight settled into the routine and worked away the entirety of the afternoon, certain that her friends were doing the same. 



 

The Bavarians had finally arrived. Two full armies had landed in port two weeks earlier, escorted there by a small fleet of loaned Prussian ships. The ships were now being sent down the coast in search of another harbor to blockade. The Bavarians spent a single day in the colony’s capital, organizing their supplies and soldiers before setting off. Behind the long forests of steel marched a horde of horridly  hurriedly trained militia marching in a shambling fashion, weapons slung casually at arms. They escorted the regiments of howitzers constructed for the siege, marching steadily. 

Two weeks after first landing in port, the Bavarian blue of their uniforms formed a fine contrast to Prussian blue, as the armies began to fill in the trenches. Secondary and tertiary lines were dug, as now there were enough men to support the siege. The militia companies split, half of them filling reserve rolls with the three armies, the other half marching back into the colony as a last line of defense, should the siege fail.  

General Karlson sat in a simple wooden house that had been constructed in the logistics center of the Prussian army. About a dozen or so wooden structures had been built, acting as barns, kitchens, and barracks for his men. The house Karlson resided in doubled as the command center, and he held frequent meetings with officers and civilian officials, discussing tactics to try and break the siege. He had received reports of the wealth and technological capabilities of this ‘Empire’s’ ally to the south, reportedly rivaling their own. If they managed to march up to the city with a sizable army the European armies would be doomed to fail. No amount of strategic superiority would save them if the enemy had local superiority and technological equivalence. And then the strange magic some of the enemies could manage. That was another problem in of itself. New strategies and tactics would have to be made to counteract this one-sided advantage. The sooner Karlson could force a surrender, the better.  

The Bavarian armies had just arrived and were settling in, their infantry and artillery seamlessly replacing the Prussian troops. They were models of peak efficiency, the drills rivaling that of Prussia. Karlson knew the moment they arrived that they deserved some kind of reward, regardless of how the war ended. He immediately set to writing a letter to his commanding officer, urging him to plead the Bavarian case to both the administrator of the colony and the Prussian king. 
With the newly arrived artillery, six batteries of howitzers with the Bavarians, four batteries of howitzers freshly minted, and four cannon batteries with the Bavarians, General Karlson’s plan was ready. He called the Bavarian generals to his office to disclose what would begin tomorrow. 

The next day, at five fifteen in the morning General Karlson stood with his staff and the Bavarian generals, watching the trench line. The men in each of their armies were at full alert, their bayonets attached, ramrods ready. They could see musketmen’s heads gently swaying to and fro as they marched through the trenches.  

At Five thirty all of the soldiers stood still, waiting in organized lines in the firing trench. Every gunner stood beside their howitzers and cannons, the officer standing with the firing hammer in hand. General Karlson checked his watch. Five thirty-one. He raised a whistle to his mouth and raised his hand with the watch. The Bavarian generals mimicked him. At five thirty-two he dropped the hand and blew the whistle. The whistle signaled his military band, who began playing with thunderous bravado. They fired dozens of shells up towards the shield, arcing down and smashing in from above. His cannon lobbed solid ball of iron straight ahead, bashing into the sides and sending shrapnel everywhere. At five thirty-three the Bavarians gave the same order, the one in command of the closer element beginning immediately, while the one that commanded the far element had is order relayed by the same whistle blast around the city, delayed by almost exactly a minute. 

General Karlson nodded at the sky, looking up into the cloudless sky before quietly saying to his Bavarian counterparts, “What a beautiful day out today. Such a shame there’s rain. Thankfully it should have dissipated by the negotiations next week. We don't have the time to reschedule.” 

And with that, he turned and walked back to his house, popping a smoking pipe out of his breast pocket and stuffing some tobacco into it, igniting it before he pushed his way into his office. Closing the door behind him, he returned to drawing up plans for future battles as a thin haze filled the room.