//------------------------------//
// There'll Be Another Time. 
// Story: Memories Of The Flask 
// by WindigogoGadget 
//------------------------------//

"This isn't a place for a hero."

"I'm not a hero."

"This isn't a place for a 'better mare'." 

"So then what am I supposed to do? Run away while the rest of you die?!" 

"...Yes. Go Home."

That final conversation played in her mind again. Orders to abandon home. Head eastward into friendly territory. But she was a soldier, born and raised from the start even though her mother told her it would be unnecessary. The changelings would handle it. The angels could handle it.

Mud and pebbles stuck to her ash-blue fur as she crawled out of the ditch she'd been thrown into. Her horn ached. Felt like it would've been taken clean off. Still intact at least. Limping she hauled herself on her own four hooves, taking in the empty village surrounding her. Market stalls hurriedly picked clean, doors kicked inward, smoke from fireplaces unattended. It was all perfect before they showed up. 

She had found a dented blade in the gutter, and scorched armor from an unlucky fool who had fought back. It was all she had left now. The barracks were burned. She was relieved of duty early. She was going to go home, spend some time with her nephew. Now all she had were the scraps of her brothers and sisters in arms and a place that wasn't meant for a hero.

Spells bombarded the town square. Her objective. What was she fighting for? She knew what she was fighting against. Psychopaths. Raiders. A Royal Army. She saw the insignia. The sun, glinting off of iron as fire scorched and boiled. She had to be dragged away from the grisly scene that she'd almost ran blindly into. Hauled away howling towards the outskirts of the town. Evacuation. 

Heartstring was suddenly aware of the melted chitin that rubbed against her fur. It comforted her, in a disturbing way. She wasn't really alone. Her friends were still with her, not in the way she wanted, not in the way she would like, but they were still there. It brought her heart down to focus on the itch, on them. 

She ran back to the town center. Ran straight at the golden sods and took one of their heads clean off with pure strength, and plunged the edge of the gladius into the heart of another pony. Red spilled everywhere. Moving faster than she had thought she could, the repeated the movements like a deadly dance and killed two more, and the group of solar bastards was dead.

And there was more to come, sooner or later. Her sword, dented and chipped was raised up high in her magic, freeing her mouth for a grand scream.
"Come out ye golds and steels! 
Come out and fight me you old mares! Show your wives how you win medals like a coward!
Tell them how a loner ran your way from the green and lovely lanes of our horizons!"

She was not a pegasus, blessed with grace or an earth pony with stamina, just a mortal unicorn. Her movements were limited, her existing injuries making themselves known with every grunt and cry to match each death cry of her now fallen enemies. With no time to spare, she continued her hunt with the remains of friendship on her pelt and the consequences of mercy around her. She pushed on with her friends as one by one she cut down the invaders. She believed that maybe, she could route them, that the world would look kindly upon her efforts and she could save her home.

Her magic sputtered and her horn felt close to burning off as her chipped and stained sword forced its way down through the throat of a charcoal-colored earth pony, watering the sooty earth with its blood. She would water the fields of peace with the blood of the enemies that had attacked them without warning, without mercy, and without reason. Emulating the dark protectors she abandoned her magic and continued striking without true form, choosing to hold the blade in her mouth or in her hooves as her jaws grew tired and her breaths turned ragged in a dynamic combat style fueled by revenge and survival. Plates dented and gave way as her deteriorating weapon stuck an incoming soldier like a pig, letting them bleed out on the ground. 

"Come tell us how you slew those poor children two by two!
Like the changelings they had spears and spit and arrows,
how you bravely faced one with yer sixteen pounder bow, and you frightened them poor angels to their marrow."

Blood stained her mane and hooves, and speckled the rest of her fur like stars. 

She wished she could make use of all the spilled blood, the useless lumps of meat, and their armor, but there was no way she could ever catch a moment of rest to even begin to scavenge the armor of an enemy, and her pride in being herself would simply not allow it. The wandering patrols and lone guards were banding together, turning her around as she was forced to run, to think. Spells and spears missed her fur by hairs lengths, and she thanked the presence that watched over her immensely, the ghost of her friends. 

She'd like to imagine them smiling upon her, leading her on. She slid behind the remnants of a ruined home, her mind briefly entertaining the idea of it being one of her neighbors as she kicked up dirt and soot and tile as her explosive bursts of speed were stopped abruptly. She had to be quick, in this fight there were only two remaining. The quick and the dead.
Then with her heart pounding, she was compelled to shout- to scream- to defy. 

"Come out you golden flanks! Come out and without your rods!
Show your wives how you win medals being cowards!
You murdered sixteen then, you won't do the same again, so get out of here and take your bloody army!"

Lead down twisted streets she paid little attention to the ruins and destruction that continued to surround her. The way the bodies were piled outside their homes, not even sprinkled with soil, the blood of friend and foe that pooled in-between stones, all of it all blended together into a blur as she sped past the consequences of actions done by ponies she would never know. Or so she thought. She leapt out of her hiding spot and lunged at an unfortunate mare, slitting them with a blade in her jaw. She ran past them and never looked back as she ran to another broken home to hide in. Her heart was pounding, her blood felt thick in her veins as she suddenly and dreadfully began to acknowledge the fatigue that was building in her bones, weighing her down. 

Her world. Her beautiful, colorful world, looked white. Pure white soot and ash littered the town, heavy in some spots and lighter in some, but all around was a strange powdery fuzz that covered everything like snow. Then, she turned her white world red with the blood of her enemy, and another enemy fallen. She didn't care how she killed them. She just cared about taking the fool's helmet, looting the body, and fumbling with her mud-slicked hooves to unbuckle the straps before finally using magic to strip them bare and take the armor for herself.  She was a lion in wolves clothing, and she had come to reap the sinners.

Then, the world turned white. Demonic flames descended from the heavens in pillars, vaporizing anything in its way and turning the soil into bloody glass. She stopped and dug her hooves into the ground, narrowly avoiding the solar blast and subsequent death by disintegration, but her stolen armor went flying from the loose fitting and her dusty blue fur, now exposed to the merciless and cruel light of the sun, had been bleached white by the intense, hostile radiance of the beam, not even her cutie mark. Irrelevant.

"A pony?" A voice said, heralded by a flapping of wings, of an alicorn of light. The betrayer. Celestia. She stared at Heartstring, maybe even through her. She was nothing like she was described to her once upon a time. Her eyes were cold, and her alabaster coat held no warmth or kindness. It was as if she stared at a statue sculpted from marble, a mannequin posing as a pony.

"Hm. Indeed." Celestia said uninterested. It seemed that she hardly paid attention to the mortal as she descended in a quiet and slow grace, at least until her eyes widened in surprise, expressions flashed to curiosity, and then her eyes turned sharp and narrowed.  "The blood of your fellow ponies stains your hide. For what reason would you fight so viciously for a homeland that sprouts from death and lies? That would soon see you devoured?"

From Heartstring, her only response was a ragged inhale, and a gurgle and spatter of weakly coughed blood that dribbled down her face and the hilt of her sword.  Then, without another beat for her to spit a bloody word, Celestia continued.

"Whatever your reasons, I must admit, I am curious about you, pony. So before I tear down their cities, and crush the armies of pretenders, perhaps you shall come to see reason."

"Please." Celestia dipped her head slightly, her horn pointed at them as her wings remained high and readied. Her question, her plea, remained open, but Heartstring knew fully of the unspoken. Please surrender, or die.

Heartstring felt her blood boil, and filled with rage and vengeance she spoke, her voice even yet filled with an insurmountable will- need for violence. "Our Town. My friends. All gone, with their families soon to follow. Your kingdom knows nothing but hunger, purging all life in every town, and yet you remain, unsatiated. You've taken everything from me, Celestia, and you expect me to not have nothing but perfect, hatred?

Celestia." She spat, feeling herself empowered by a strength that trickled up from her hooves, across her back, and up the tip of her horn, anointing it with long shadows. "You can break me apart, spray the gore of my profane form across the stars. You can grind me down until the very sparks of my soul cry for mercy, but my hooves will relish ending you, here and NOW!" 

As if her words could fork lightning and her blood, trickling and weeping from cracked and broken skin would turn to wings, she cried out in defiance and raised her blade high in her magic and stomped her hooves into the bloodied dirt below. "BEHOLD! THE POWER OF AN ANGEL-!"

Celestia sighed, and swatted them away with nothing but a wave of her horn and a screen of scorching light. "You are outclassed, pony. You defy the light for mere objects. Not even mortal. Their crime is existence. An imperfection to be cleansed." Celestia spoke. Again, it was an uninterested tone, but she couldn't help but feel the slightest amount of insult as she was talked down by an avatar of the sun. That is, if Heartstring could survive the concussion she took from breaking through three walls of sturdy oak.

Wide eyed, dazed and confused, she stared up at the setting sun over her paradise as it was overtaken by the shadow of an alicorn, who asked her once again to respond to her. Her response, was to smile, to grin happily with a bloodied mouth and spit in the face of a god, as her beaten mind found some sort of peace and twisted joy in her struggle as she tried desperately to force a blade past the armor protecting her sternum, and as her body burned and disintegrated, she still was happy to defy. She died fighting, and she did not go gentle into that good night.