//------------------------------//
// Grimbush 
// Story: Grimbush 
// by Pen and Paper 
//------------------------------//

They had us scout the swamp town of Grimbush for the grindylows, but all we found were mosquito hatcheries and a foul mood. Docks and Grit were half asleep as they trudged behind me, too tired to care about the sludge filling their hooves or the slimy bits of ivy clinging to their armor. Sweat and grime caked their faces like exhausted warpaint.
Grindylows were usually coastal creatures—scavenger pods that lived in rocky shorelines and fought over beached dolphins and dead whales. They were the size of a beefy housecat, and most of their anatomy was made up of an enormous mouth filled with barbed teeth made for gnawing flesh and bone. Fortunately, grindylows were all cowards. Even though they fucked like rabbits, their advantage in numbers was negated by the fact that they were scared of anything bigger than a wagon wheel, making them pests at worst. It only got to be a problem when they snuck upstream and started snatching pets, or, in rare cases, foals. The real pain in the ass was their nocturnal nature. Finding them during the day was impossible.
Our plan was to meander through and around the town to herd them south towards the Taurus estuary, then hopefully the sea. This meant a shitload of walking around Grimbush while being bored out of our skulls. An easy job, but a miserable one.
As a thestral, I should have had the advantage of staying awake and alert at night, but adjusting to the solar guard’s daytime schedule had me just as tired as everypony else. My eyes stung with the desire to sleep.
The heat of the bayou was invasive and choking when mixed with the curling mist from the water. The air smelled of rotten, stagnant plants long drowned, which drifted like shed hair past our fetlocks. Bugs blared low, aggressive rhythms, surrounding us with territorial cries. In the distance, torches from other search parties burned weakly like candle flames, swallowed by the enormous blackness of the forest.
In fact, the entirety of Grimbush seemed like it was ready to sink into the swamp. The town was built on thin, ailing pillars of wood, keeping it ten feet or so above the brackish waters. Vines thick as snakes grew everywhere, tangling themselves into impossible knots. Houses sagged with years of mistreatment, decomposing in the hot, moist air. Lantern light bled through their shoddy walls. It was the only sign that ponies still lived here. 
We’d ordered them to stay inside until we could drive the water devils back, but a few stubborn folks meandered the creaking docks. A fat earth mare the color of dried earwax slouched herself in a rocking chair, torturing it with her weight every time she shifted. She had a slab forehead that squashed the rest of her face into thin, mean lines. An oil lamp hung above her head, creating a gross halo of gnats and moths. Laying in her lap beyond her potbelly was a crude, rusted machete. Grit raised a hoof to call up to her.
“Ma’am, we’ve asked all residents of Grimbush that they stay inside until we get the situation handled,” she said. The fat mare only rocked and stared into the woods. Grit mumbled something under her breath, spreading her wings to lug herself up to the porch where the mare sat. Grit waved a hoof, smiling like there wasn’t enough skin on her muzzle to allow one. “Please make your way indoors, ma’am. If you need help getting there, we’d be more than happy to escort you.”
The mare turned her head, showing off a bulldog’s underbite. Her voice sounded like it had been broken and glued back together again. “You thinks I need protection?” she asked, tapping the hilt of her machete. “I does just fine on my own. Now git, feather-head.”
“What did you just call me?”
I could see Grit working out how she could tip the mare into the mire, so I took a leap to get between them, unfurling my wings. Docks blew a sigh as he was left with the mosquitos. The old mare barely batted an eye when I landed between her and Grit, only raising a wiry eyebrow. Her cutie mark was an ugly toad with a half-dead bug caught in its mouth.
“Huh. I thought you vamponies was supposed to be bigger,” she said. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the worst thing I’d been called.
“Ma’am—”
“And stop callin’ me ma’am. Ain’t no ma’am or mister in these parts. Swamp ponies is just swamp ponies.”
“Then what can I call you?” I asked, trying not to scowl.
“Not a damn thing. Don’t give two shits about no orders or any of your fancy schmancy titles. Swamp don’t care what you call yourself, and neither do I.”
Grit stamped her hoof, knocking something loose into the water below. “Wanna see how much of a shit you give when you’re in cuffs, bitch?”
“Grit!” I snapped, spreading my leg to catch her advance. 
Docks’ voice echoed from under the boards. “Good gods, who cares? Just let the old hag sit in her chair. My fat ass is sinking down here.”
The mare smiled, showing off her graveyard of a mouth, her few teeth gray and weathered like old tombstones. “Listen to that friend of yours down there. He’s got the most sense out of the lot of ya,” she said, peering over the ledge. “‘cept for the fact he’s standing in a leech nest. Nasty little shits, those ones—go right for the balls on a stallion.”
“Aww fuck!” Docks cried, jerking himself away.
“Grit, go make sure our colt doesn’t have any stragglers, would you?” I asked, giving her a stern look.
Grit stared hard at the fat mare for another second before diving over the edge. The mare chuckled, which sounded more like a gargle than anything else. I decided to give diplomacy one more shot. “Listen, we know they typically go after small animals, but it’s not unheard for them to go after ponies. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to be out at this time of night.”
“It’d be a surprise if the lot of ya made it to morning, thinking like that. I been born and raised in Grimbush. I know what this place does to things that stay here too long. Changes them. Turns ‘em desperate. Turns ‘em cruel. And lemme tell you, colt—those two ingredients always make for something more vicious than you expect. These water devils ain’t no exception, either. They’ll take anything pea-brained enough to be caught slacking out there.”
I became very aware of the noise my friends were making, as well as the sound of my own heart beating in my chest. “How long did you say they’ve been here, again? The report we got said the grindylows took somepony’s hound a few days ago.”
The mare looked me in the eyes, and I saw for the first time how cloudy hers were. 
“You’re not speaking a lick of sense, colt. Ain’t no Grimbush pony dumb enough to keep a mutt in these parts. Whoever called you here simply don’t exist.”	
I was itching to get back to Docks and Grit, who were thankfully still alive and complaining. “I’ll…keep that in mind. Thank you,” I said.
She only nodded and stared at me with a stoic grimness that she’d worn all her life before leaning back into her chair.
Swooping beneath the town, I found Grit with her muzzle dangerously close to Docks’ package.
“You’re sure you didn’t see nothing down there? My right nut’s been itching for a while,” Docks said, craning his thick neck under his barrel like an overweight swan.
Normally, I would have laughed at a scene like that, but the night had suddenly turned untrustworthy. The darkness felt like a stranger now, unwilling to share the comfort of familiarity with me. A shiver moved up my spine like a zipper, tightening my skin against my body. Standing as tall as I could, I barked new orders at my friends.
“Grit, get your head out of Docks’ ass. Eyes up, both of you. Docks, you’re on torch, Grit, you take spear. I’m on point. No more than five paces apart until we’re out of this shithole. We aim for the other groups without deviations until we hit officer Time Lapse. Something’s not right here.” Both looked taken aback. I’d never spoken to either of them like that before, and I had a feeling that the tightness in my chest was only going to get worse as the night went on. “Let’s move it, then,” I said.
With that, we pushed ourselves through the heavy air, hunting for specks of light to let us know we weren’t alone.

***

Using the butts of our spears, Grit and I jabbed the murk ahead of us to point out sinkholes for Docks. His nub tail twitched like an anxious paintbrush whenever we had to stop. Both of my friends were grimly quiet after I told them what the mare had said. The idea of dying out here in this Luna-forsaken rot-pile was somehow much worse than getting burnt to a crisp by a dragon bandit or smashed by a rhino ogre. I imagined sinking into the ground, Grimbush swallowing every piece of me to never be found for the rest of time. I wondered how many ponies died here, whose bones we might have been walking over.
Finally, I caught sight of another orange light. The iron grip in my chest loosened by only a fraction. It was enough to let out a sigh of relief, though.
With a hurried, cautious pace, we ducked and weaved our way through gnarled roots and curtains of moss until the glow of our torch met theirs, briefly expanding the confines of our bravery.
The other soldiers snapped a salute, but let their legs fall flaccid once they made out who we were. I winced when I realized who we had the misfortune of running into. The pegasus in charge, Stepping Stone, hated my guts. He and his earth pony friend, Lucky Shot, were in a contest to see who could make my life more unbearable. Their third member I didn’t recognize—a short, white unicorn with wide eyes and plenty of baby fat still left on her. Her armor was crooked and dingy, even for having been dragged through a swamp for the past four hours. I could barely make out her cutie mark through the grime—a brown rope tied in a neat knot. Stepping Stone rolled his eyes and snickered at his lug-head partner.
“Wow, the bat actually looks just as miserable as we are, Lucky. Here I thought he’d feel welcome with all the blood-suckers,” he said, swatting mosquitoes ineffectively with his tail.
Lucky Shot grinned, but he always did that when Stepping finished a sentence. Call it a goonish reflex. “Yeah,” Lucky agreed thickly. “Freak.”
“Two words in a row, that must be a record for you,” Grit said, flapping her wings to gain some height over the stallion.
“Fuck off.”
“Aww, maybe one day you’ll get to three if you keep at it.”
I pushed my wings out to their full length, cutting into the conversation with a sharp snap. “As much as I’d love to sit here and count words all night, we need you to pass along a message to the others if you run into them. I don’t think anypony from Grimbush actually called us here. Something’s off.”
Stepping Stone yawned. I wished a will-o-wasp would fly right down his stupid throat. “Don’t be dense. We’d be here letter or no letter. It’s probably just the Crystal Empire using us to clear out this sun-forsaken dump so they can build another backwater colony where your kind tends to spawn,” he said, capturing the three of us in a lazy circle of his hoof. Docks puffed out his chest and stomped the earth, only to sink up to his knee in slime. Lucky grinned another empty-headed grin.
“Stepping, I’m asking as a fellow soldier. We’re supposed to look out for each other,” I said, but he blew hot hair down at me from his nostrils.
“We’re supposed to do what we get paid to do, and I get paid to listen to Officer Lapse, not somepony who grew up in a cave like a fucking pliohippus.” Stepping leaned over me. I tried not to let our difference in height shake me. A cruel glint filled his eyes as he gazed at the tip of his spear. “Evening Sonnet, fuck-up extraordinaire. Always making more work for the good, honest ponies of Seventh Company. You know, I bet nopony would mind if you stayed in Grimbush. I think it would be poetic if you decided to make a home here with the rest of the parasites.”
It suddenly occurred to me how alone we were out here. Stepping and Lucky had always kept their annoyances relatively tame, but the way he stared dreamily at his polearm had my heart in my throat. It could be so easy to have a little “accident” out here, away from anypony we knew. 
Lucky grabbed Stepping’s attention with another dull joke. Turning tail, I looked at the unicorn, my last hope of getting the message across.
Really staring at her, it dawned on me how young she looked. There was no definition of hard-earned muscle on her. Those wide eyes were filled with unchecked paranoia, not the restrained nervousness of a soldier.
“Don’t listen to these assholes. If you run into anypony else, you tell them to keep their eyes open and pass it on to Lapse if they can. We need to regroup back at the town center and figure out what we’re doing next. Can you do that for me?” I asked.
Her voice was like a water droplet quivering at the end of a branch. “Yeah, I think I can do that. Sir,” she added, then saluted with the wrong leg. Her ears pinned themselves to her skull. I put a reassuring hoof on her shoulder.
“What’s your name, soldier?” I asked.
“Sinnet,” she whispered. 
“Nice name,” Docks said. “Those two aren’t giving you too much shit, are they? I’ve been looking for an excuse to knock their helmets off.”
Sinnet shook her head. “No, uh, they’re not too bad when they’re ignoring me.”
Grit showed off a winning smile. “You can always come with us if you want. These two dumbasses make for pretty good company.”
She looked back at her comrades, who were busy carving something crude into a dead tree. “You can just…do that? Change search groups?” Sinnet asked, bewildered.
“Nah, not really.” Docks shrugged. “But dish duty would be worth it if we had a new friend to help out with the punishment.”
Sinnet looked like she wanted to turtle inside of herself. Her hopeful expression hid itself back under general dread. “Oh, I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Grit nodded. “Understandable. Come find us in the barracks after we get out of this mess, though. We could use another mare in this group.”
“I thought Evening already filled that role,” Docks said.
I punched his shoulder, which had the same effect as punching a brick wall. “Ignore him. Just promise me that you’ll let the others know, alright?”
The snowy mare only nodded before saluting, again with the wrong leg, and trotted over to Stepping and Lucky. The other two didn’t even look at us before they plodded off into a patch of reeds, the glow of their torch dissolving among the dark trees.
“I hope she’ll be alright,” Grit said.
“Yeah, the filly’ll be ok,” I said, hoping the words would hoist the ugly feeling out of my stomach. “Let’s see if we can find somepony else besides those two jackasses, though. I’m sure it can’t be that hard.”

***

Almost an hour later, despair had made a comfortable nest in my brain, and was busy feeding its offspring of anxiety and doubt. Even with my excellent night vision, I hadn’t picked up the faintest glimmer of another search party. The rolling cloud cover didn’t help, teasing precious moonlight before smothering it again. I was tempted to ask Grit to fly up and clear the weather, but the idea of splitting up for even a few minutes rang every alarm bell in my head. Back when I was with the lunar guard, we never traveled the caves alone. The buddy system was practically a way of life for us thestrals. There were too many threats lurking about to risk solo heroics. That was how you got yourself killed.
“We should head back to the middle and wait,” Docks mumbled behind me.
Out of the three of us, he’d had it especially rough. Ironically, the land here was not kind to earth ponies. He was covered up to his neck in mud after Grit forgot to mark a trench, leading to a lot of struggling and panicking. I could tell that his nerves were about as frazzled as mine were, especially with the bog getting this deep. We were up to our hocks in water.
“I don’t think that’s going to work. We all started there, so everypony else is going to be around the fringe territories. We have to see somepony soon,” I assured him.
“Easy to say for a guy who doesn’t have leeches in his balls,” he muttered.
“Enough about your fucking balls, Docks,” I snapped. “There’s bigger shit to worry about.”
It probably wasn’t the best idea to piss off a clydesdale already in a bad mood, but his constant moaning made it hard to think. I couldn’t remember if we’d already passed the same patch of cattails, and our maps were painfully outdated as it was. I couldn’t even use the stars to tell which direction we were headed in. Frustrations stacked into an unstable tower, the next mosquito bite or tangled hoof threatening to knock it over.
Docks got right up in my muzzle. He was so much taller than me that I could see his forest of nose hairs as he stared down.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have fucking wings, Evening. I haven’t eaten anything and I’m tired. You two can at least flit around all this bullshit, but if I step in the wrong place, I’m going to drown. No offense, but you two aren’t strong enough to lug me out if I get stuck again. We’re out here chasing nothing, and I’m not going to die for that. I’m heading back whether you’re coming with me or not.”
“Dammit, we can’t go back to town. There’s nopony there!” 
Grit said something behind me, but we were getting too intense to care. I spread out my wings in a pathetic attempt to look bigger. The argument devolved into bitter, hissing statements. Just when I thought he was going to knock my head off, Grit’s voice cut in with the last question I wanted to hear.
“What the fuck is that?”
Something brushed against my leg. 
Docks leaned to look around me and recoiled. Only when I turned around did the smell hit me. Bumping against my hindquarters like an incessant foal was the floating carcass of a white-tailed deer. 
I don’t remember the words that left my mouth, but I do remember inhaling a lungful of swamp water trying to get away from the thing. The stench was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was mildew mixed with dung and wing-curling rotten meat. Vomit threatened the back of my throat. One of Docks’ thick legs wrapped around my waist, hauling me up.
“Celestia’s teats,” he swore, breathing hard.
The entire left side of its chest was gone, broken ribs jutting down into the gaping hole. Pink guts trailed out of the wound like jellyfish tentacles, leaking blood and fluids. It looked like someone had set off a bomb inside its stomach. Its head was submerged, which I was grateful for.
“That’s not water devil work, is it?” Grit asked.
Before I could answer, my ears caught the sound of wet crunching. My friends heard it, too, freezing still. I motioned for Docks to pass me the torch, which he did without a word. Slowly, we stalked towards the noise, careful not to let even our breathing get too loud. It felt like an eternity, carefully picking our way through poking sedge and brambles until we came to a lake. Leaning willows surrounded the shore with conspiratorial closeness. Disturbed ripples hit the edge of the lake like the water was trying to flee from whatever was causing it. 
I could hear it with disgusting clarity—the sound of something feasting, gorging itself full. Raising the torch, the light reflected over the biggest cragadile I had ever seen.
It must have been at least two and a half wagons long, and just as thick as one. Its enormous forearms ran the length of a cannon, armored in ancient, black scales. It was its own landmass, floating there in the middle. I watched in paralyzed awe as it tossed its massive head back, opening its jaws wide before snapping them shut over the chest of another dead deer. Bones and organs turned to mush with horrific ease. Two more corpses bobbed against its massive stomach. 
My brain finally connected to my legs, letting me take a whimpering step back. Docks and Grit did the same, all of us looking back and forth between the beast and the torch in my hoof. Grit motioned for me to put it out. I shook my head. I might have been able to make do with stray moonbeams, but those two couldn’t afford to lose their only source of light.
Like a rising serpent, the cragadile’s tail flexed skyward. The creature sank low into the bog, tilting its head towards the clouds. Its chest expanded, filling with air before it let out a massive growl. 
Or what I assumed was supposed to be a growl.
It sounded more like the belch of a god—deep and hollow. Water jumped and dirt shook, vibrations rippling through us. My teeth felt like they were going to rattle out of my muzzle. I couldn’t even feel how fast my heart was beating. 
I didn’t need some fancy ability to communicate with animals to tell what it was saying. It felt like we were threatening its territory, and it wanted to let us know he was ready to defend it, tooth and nail. We’d managed to back ourselves behind a wall of willows, but it did nothing to make me feel any safer.
Grit pointed at my torch again. “Put it out, Evening!”
“What about you two?” I asked. Grit scowled.
“Unless you want to use that to get a better look at the inside of his guts, we don’t need a beacon leading him to us. You’ll have to be our eyes until we can get out of here,” she said. 
There was a great splash as the cragadile jerked its huge body, hissing in our direction. I jammed the torch into the muck, plunging us into darkness. 
It took me a few seconds to adjust, but I was surprised to find things stunningly clear. Looking up, I realized there was a break in the clouds, the waning crescent moon sharing ample light for my sensitive eyes. My friends’ faces looked especially pale. Docks gripped my shoulder tight, his breath hot against the top of my head.
“Is it still looking at us? What’s it doing?” he asked. 
I pried myself from his hoof, leaning around the trunk we were hiding behind. The wood was warm and mushy, like withered fruit left out in the sun. Peering around the corner, I looked to see something else go horribly wrong.
Part of the lake was boiling.
Pockets of air burst along the surface in a violent gurgling. A shifting black mass as big as a rowboat writhed, stirring up silt and detritus. Slick scales broke the surface, glinting like cold steel under the moon.
The mass grew, then grew again, swelling in size, bigger than the cragadile, whose bellowing was drowned out by the frantic splashing. 
A sleek shape was spat out of the middle, flying through the air like an arrow before landing on the cragadile’s back. The reptile recoiled at the sudden intrusion, gnashing wildly.
It was the unmistakable shape of a grindylow, but not like one I’d ever seen before.
Long, thin arms unfolded from the tiny creature, revealing a set of diabolically curled claws. A hideous, dumb smile showed off rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its body was sinewy and starved, morphing from the waist down into a dress of tentacles instead of legs. Its eyes shone with the most brutal form of intelligence, only aware enough to express a twisted joy in hunting. Serrated fins flexed open, vibrating as it let out a shrill warcry, stabbing down into the hard scales. They sank to the knuckle with ease.
More tore out of the water, clamoring over the cragadile like a horde of spiders. Their legless bodies wriggled feverishly as ten, then twenty, then forty smothered the dying beast, ripping into it with sick glee. 
And the numbers didn’t stop there. 
I didn’t understand. Grindylow populations were never bigger than a few dozen due to infighting over resources. This tribe was already looking to be three times the size it should have been, and twice as aggressive. 
Grit and Docks huddled into me. They were saying something. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the lake as it filled with strips of flesh and scales. The cragadile’s bellowing stopped, but raucous waves splashed everywhere. Grit’s hoof cracked against my helmet, jolting me out of my trance. She shook me hard.
“Evening, what the fuck is going on?” she yelled. 
There was an explosion of chittering from the grindylows, then the rushing sound of movement. I grabbed Grit’s hoof and wedged it into Docks’ armor before taking the other side myself. 
“Docks, get your flank in gear! Grit and I are gonna boost you. I’ll be the eyes, you just listen to my voice and run like hell. Let’s go!” I shouted, taking off. Grit and I hoisted our friend onto his hooves, flapping like electrocuted pigeons as we pushed ourselves back the way we came. Behind us, deranged cries tore through the night. I didn’t dare look back.
Instead, I focused on leading Docks along the shallowest path, directing him towards anything that looked like solid earth, which wasn’t much. I wanted to give the grindylows as much terrain to crawl over to slow them down while conserving Docks’ energy. His breaths were already ragged, strides uneven as we crashed through another thick bramble. I could smell the blood from his cuts oozing into his coat.
Grit and I weren’t faring any better. I had to call out low-hanging vines and jagged branches, which cut into our wings. Every stumble drove my heart to beat faster, my throat to become drier, my muscles weaker. The only thing we had going for us was the clear sky, which let me know exactly where we were going. I was going to need it to remain clear if we had any hope of surviving this. I couldn’t hear the grindylows anymore, but I didn’t know if that was because we were pulling ahead or if the blood pounding in my ears was loud enough to drown them out.
“Hard left!” I yelled. My wings clipped against Grit’s as we yanked our stallion through a plot of tall weeds. I was beginning to recognize where we were when Docks was torn out of our hooves. Braking hard, I whipped around expecting to see my friend getting dogpiled and torn to shreds. Instead, I found that he had shrunk to the height of a normal pony. No, not shrunk.
Sank.
Docks was up to his cutie mark in mud, straining to remove himself from the sinkhole he’d fallen into. Grit’s wings beat in a panic as she tried to see past the darkness.
“What happened? Where is he?” she asked, her desperation raw.
“He’s alright, he’s just stuck in a hole. Few feet down to your left.” I took her hoof and we glided down together.
“I am not fucking alright!” Docks said.
“Don’t dig yourself deeper. Stay still so we can get you out,” I said.
“Hurry,” he pleaded. It was the most frightened I’d ever heard him.
Hell, both of them had probably been thinking the same thing I had all night—that dying in a place like this was somehow worse than dying anywhere else. Grimbush would swallow our bodies and our histories. All that would be left would be nameless bones.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
There was a crash of branches and plants being trampled. Grit and I drew our spears. Docks whimpered. 
Three grindylows stalked out of the brush, dragging their bodies with serpentine clumsiness. Their long claws slapped the shallow pool as they slithered towards us, rasping animal signals to one another.
We were already down a stallion, and our best fighter was blind as, well, a bat. One of them pushed off the ground with incredible force, launching into the air.
“One above!” I hollered, and Grit, bless her quick instincts, swiped her spear over Docks’ head. It was a miss, but the grindylow landed and retreated instantly. I thought they might see us as too much trouble and call the rest of the pack, but these three seemed dead set on having us for themselves. Two of them broke away, starting a slow circle to surround us. Grit might have gotten lucky with one, but there was no way she would be able to handle all three on her own.
The stench of mildew and meat floated into my nostrils, fueling a foul idea.
“Grit, stick tight to him. I’ll be right back!” I said.
“What?” she asked, but I didn’t have time to explain.
Circling back, I followed my nose instead of my eyes, racing around trees and ducking branches. My head swiveled so fast I thought I was going to give myself whiplash. It had to be here somewhere. Precious seconds ticked by. Tracking the rancid smell finally paid off, and I was presented with the sight of the dead deer from earlier. Taking a deep breath, I hugged the corpse, flapping hard as I raced back to my friends, praying to Luna that this was going to work. 
Docks roared in pain.
I beat my wings harder, resisting the urge to breathe until I burst into the clearing. Letting go of my rotting cargo, the deer sailed overhead—guts and all—before landing with a soggy thump. Two of the grindylows closing in on Grit, who had gotten separated in the dark, pounced on it immediately. They became a whirlwind of claws and teeth as they fought for the right to eat us.
The last one sunk its jaws into Docks’ flank a second time.
Through his cries, I barreled straight into the bastard, sending it flying. Its head smacked wetly against a branch before it fell to the ground, face down and unmoving. Just as I was going to congratulate myself, a searing, stinging heat raced from knee to pastern. Looking down, I saw a river of blood running down my leg, the limb already tingling with numbness.
I couldn’t afford to worry about that now. Racing to Docks’ side, I called to Grit. She galloped over, out of breath, mane slipping over her eyes.
“Did you just throw a dead deer over our heads?” she asked.
“Yes, now help me lift.”
Grabbing the straps of Docks’ armor, we flapped with all our might while he moaned.
“Little fucker bit my ass!” he grunted.
“Funny,” Grit said, grunting with exertion. “You never complain when I do that.”
A giggle bubbled out of my muzzle—probably because of the blood loss, but it was funny. The sound of snarling grindylows seemed distant, more like two foals fighting over a toy. It might have been because the bigger of the two was pinning the other into submission, hissing its superiority. 
“Guys,” Docks, his voice raising an octave or two. “Pull harder!”
“Pulling isn’t working!” Grit said.
Something clicked in my brain. “Because we need to push. Grit, your spear. Butt-end in the mud. We use leverage to pop him out!”
We snapped into action, stabbing the soft earth until we had the shafts against his armpits, pushing frantically. My foreleg gave out twice, the pain moving from paralyzing spasms to debilitating agony. Still, I forced it deep, securing it under Docks’ carriage. 
The quarreling grindylows screeched when they realized we were trying to steal a fresh meal from them. The bigger of the two pointed a bony finger at us, barking something to the smaller one. The two crouched on their arms like bastardized frogs, springing after us.
Grit and I reared up, stomping down with all our might. The impact was dizzying, sending a crippling jolt through my body.
With a disgusting pop, one of Docks’ legs broke free. He yelled with pure triumph, just in time for the smaller grindylow to land next to him. Docks sent out a wild haymaker, crashing his hoof into its chest. It skidded away like a skipping stone, disappearing into a bed of ivy.
“That’s what you get! That’s what you get! Who’s next? Where is he, Evening?” Docks asked.
It was a good question because I had no idea. The last one had vanished into thin air. 
Then, a rustle from the canopy. It could have been mistaken for an animal fleeing the general chaos, but I listened as it skittered overhead towards Grit.
Without a second thought, I leaped over Docks at Grit, tackling her in the knick of time to avoid the plunging claws of the grindylow. It shrieked with rage as we tumbled away. I was much slower to recover than Grit, laying in the mire and nursing my bleeding leg. My head spun on a strange, unstable axis.
I felt the pull of the swamp—a call to lay there and let this place claim my tired body. The mire tasted me, murky water lapping at my cheek like a cold, dead tongue. I felt the blight that had been consuming Grimbush for Luna knows how long. This gripping mud was an open invitation to the festering maw of decay. For release. All I had to do was accept.
Something grasped my good leg with a barbarian grip. I shivered as a slippery goo coated my limb. It felt like warm snot and sap mixed together. Tilting my head, I met the awful rictus of the grindylow as it silently began dragging me into the reeds. A cry for help clogged my throat. I couldn’t speak, too weak to call out to my blind friends. I was out of options and out of time.
Above me, through the trees, the moon cut its presence in the night sky. When I was a colt, my people taught me that the waning crescent represented the beginning of new life. It was the embodiment of potential and growth, the first step towards something prime.
Right then, I thought it looked more like a closing eye, like Luna herself was lamenting the end of my story.
What a shame, the moon said. Her voice was like sorrow dipped in honey, sad and sweet.
It felt selfish to die, then, when I had ponies depending on me. I tried to comfort myself in the fact that I didn't have a say in the matter. A knotted serpent of frustration coiled in my chest. I didn’t want my life to end out here.
I was jolted out of my despair when something stamped right next to my head with the force of a falling anvil, ending with a gut-wrenching crunch. The claw on my leg went slack. 
“I really hope that wasn’t your head.” Docks’ voice was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard at that moment. My own voice found itself in time to let out a sputtering laugh.
“This is probably the one time I’m thankful for your shit aim,” I said. “How did you get out?”
Docks nudged his head under my barrel, rolling me onto his back. I found Grit there as well, hunched over with exhaustion. She smiled in my general direction. “I finished the work your lazy ass couldn’t. Classic you, always trying to get out of pulling your fair share,” Grit said.
Somewhere in the distance, the grindylow horde mobbed its way towards us, no doubt attracted by the fight.
“Glad you’re not dead,” Docks said. “Now help us get the hell out of here.”
Steering Docks towards the middle of Grimbush, we took off with renewed speed. It was much easier to call out directions when I didn’t have to worry about Grit at the same time. The worst part was the roughness of the ride, threatening to make me keel over with pain alone. That, and the dread of murderous creatures chasing us down. Thankfully, Docks’ second wind was putting distance between us and them.
Out of the corner of my eye, there was a flicker between the trees. It was as small as a match flame, yet it lit a bonfire of hope in me. 
I tugged Docks’ buzzcut mane, pointing ahead. “There!” I shouted.
“I see it! And stop pulling my mane.”
“Funny,” Grit repeated. “You never complain when—”
“Shut it,” Docks said with a maniacal grin.
We thundered through the thicket, disturbing frogs and turtles and all manner of creatures with our frenzied racket. Slowly, that blossoming light grew until we were bathed in it. With an enormous leap, Docks vaulted over a dilapidated fence and onto the Grimbush lakefront. Hooves hit cobblestone. We tore around the corner of a crippled longhouse, coming to a sight so gorgeous I nearly cried on the spot.
Our entire company, almost 200 mares and stallions, stood in a loose group, holding a field of torches among them. Flames wriggled vibrantly above their heads, coating them in a sunset orange. Armor gleamed a star-shine yellow. The cacophony of aimless chattering never sounded so welcoming before.
Muzzles whipped in our direction as Docks charged through, skidding to a halt at the edge of the group. Grit and I slid gracelessly off his back, landing like dead fish. It was stunned silence for a beat, and then a flurry of activity and commotion. Somepony told me to lie down, which was probably the easiest order I’d ever followed in my life. 
The crowd parted to make room for Officer Lapse, his barrel-chest demanding space. His stern jaw looked like it was going to give under the weight of the rest of his head as he glowered at the three of us. For a second, I thought he was going to skewer me with his horn.
There was the sting of a disinfectant charm, a tight bandage, and a lot of questions. Where the hell have you been? What happened to your leg? Why do you smell so terrible? Ignoring the last one, I explained everything I could. 
Hooves got shifty when we told them about the cragadile being devoured by the grindylows. “Did any of you run into them besides us?” I asked, only to be met with a sea of shaking heads.
“Tell me again what the mare said about the letter,” Lapse said.
A voice squirmed its way out of the back of the crowd. “Come now, you can’t honestly believe them. They’re just trying to get out of trouble for slacking off while we did all the hard work.” Stepping Stone leaned against his spear with obnoxious boredom. “I mean, look at them. It’s clear they’re just too embarrassed to admit they got lost and scared by a bit of high water and vermin, ironically.” He let the last word drip from his muzzle like spittle. Some of the other soldiers muttered amongst themselves, narrowing their eyes. 
I was too woozy to get up in Stepping Stone’s muzzle. Luckily, Grit did it for me. 
“You’re gods damned right we were scared! You know what didn’t help that? The fact that the only ponies we ran into out there were you and your brick-head friend. You wouldn’t lift a hoof to help us when we found out something was wrong. The only pony who actually did something was Sinnet,” Grit argued, pointing at the young unicorn.
 Near the back of the group, next to the decaying pier, Sinnet looked like she was trying to let her mane swallow her head. For once, I wasn’t the one on the receiving end of Lapse’s infamous stare. It didn’t make me feel any better. 
“Is that true, private…Sinnet, was it?” he asked.
“It was, um, sir, I think it was—”
One of Sinnet’s back legs flew out from under her, landing the unicorn hard on her stomach. A couple soldiers laughed, thinking she’d slipped. There was a moment where time held its breath. I saw realization strike Docks and Grit. I saw disbelief and terror warring to express themselves on Sinnet’s face. I saw two wretched claws digging into her cannon. 
The surface of the lake popped like an infected blister. A chain of grindylows rose from the shallows, linking each other by their thorny arms, all the way to Sinnet’s leg.
“Grab her!” I yelled, but the nearest ponies were addled in confusion. 
Sinnet turned her head towards me. I saw everything in her eyes. It was the same dread of dying in some shitty nowhere town barely worth its dot on the grand map of Equestria. I knew her head was flooding itself with images of her own death, a grand disappearing act from the consciousness of everypony she knew. I watched as she shot backward, belly dragging in the mud as she scrambled for purchase. 
Other soldiers sprang into action too late, somepony missing her hoof by only an inch as they dove for her. Our unicorns fired sizzling bolts of magic into the growing mass of grindylows, something they quickly found to be useless. Sinnet wasn’t doing well, either. Every time she tried to grab hold of a dock post, the tugging got stronger. The pier creaked whenever she was ripped free, only made of moss-slick wood and old—
Rope.
My leg was shot. All I could do was take a deep breath and pray she heard me over the commotion. “Sinnet!” I cried. “Tie yourself down!”
Her head snapped up, eyeing bundles of the stuff. Sinnet’s horn lit a fierce aquamarine as she shot her spell into the rafters. In an instant, the mass untangled, lashing out like a chameleon's tongue before tying a quick knot to her fetlock. It jerked taut, halting her at the lake’s edge. The structure sagged with ailing agony. Twisting violently, the grindylow took her leg into the surf.
Sinnet screamed. It was the type of wild, unrestrained scream that made hope shatter like glass. Officer Lapse bellowed over her.
“Pull! Pull her out now!”
Two earth ponies grabbed the other end of the rope and yanked. The thrashing on Sinnet’s end only got worse, and so did the screaming. Water ran red.
“Fucking pull!” Lapse ordered.
Grit flew in and chomped her teeth over the line. More soldiers rushed in. Together, they stomped their hooves into the ground defiantly. It was like watching a macabre tug-o-war. Sinnet had gone silent by then, face planted firmly in the murk.
Our side toppled over as the line went slack.
Sinnet slid towards us. Madly, they reeled her in. 
A victorious whoop died in my throat when I saw her leg. Sinnet’s cutie mark on her left flank was gone, gouged out by so many cuts it looked like a foal’s scribbles. Below that, muscle turned to loose, dripping ribbon. Below her hock, there was nothing.
The surgeon at my side took off, supplies in tow. Our entire medical team swarmed Sinnet. The remaining unicorns laced their spells together, inflating a thick, pearlescent bubble over Seventh Company.
Everypony else had their eyes on the lake, transfixed by the army of grindylow emerging from the tide. They snarled and beat their fists against the shield, molesting it with their oily tentacles. Their ink-black eyes focused intently on us, drool spilling stupidly from their open jaws.
Officer Lapse strode to the edge of the barrier, unflinching in the face of the growing horde. He scanned over them with a sneer, tail flicking with what could only be seen as annoyance. I tasted the magic before I saw it—like lilac and gunpowder and pine layered on my tongue. 
A bronze ember of light flickered at the tip of his horn. Ember jumped to flame. Flame swelled to inferno. Raw magic bloated and condensed, collapsing on itself like a dying star. Air and gravity buckled under its presence. Strange, synchronized patterns pushed their way through muggy air. His magic developed a heartbeat. A steady rhythm echoed from the center, thudding against the mob with menacing potential.
They froze, and for a moment I thought they would rush our makeshift fort. One by one, they slunk back into the murk. There was something eerie about how gentle their retreat was. I’d only seen them raging and tearing and destroying. This was just as hateful, but the silence was…wrong. Officer Lapse dropped the spell as soon as they were gone, sweat caking his brow.
In the gloom of Grimbush, we were left to listen to the sound of water returning to its dead, unmoving state, as if what we’d seen was merely a trick of the swamp.

	***

We abandoned the town. We abandoned its citizens. They just stood in the doorway to their shacks and homes, staring at us when we asked them to evacuate. We didn’t have time to interrogate anypony about the letter that brought us there in the first place. A new uneasiness was sown into our ranks as we trekked well into the morning. Some of us tried to ask Lapse about the orders, but he was far too focused on Sinnet to care. He was the only one besides the medical team who could get close enough to see her.
Rumors flitted like butterflies around us when we hit the Marewari forest, where we finally felt solid rock under our hooves.
Sinnet wasn’t her real name—it was Clove Hitch. We heard she’d snuck into the ranks from the Crystal Empire.
We heard she wasn’t even 18.
It occurred to me that she almost died as Sinnet. We would have tried tracing her back to a family that didn’t exist, recorded her name in the Book of Honor, and closed the pages, turning her from lie to ghost. No remains, no mementos—just ink on faded paper that nopony would ever look for.
We returned to our post at noon, groaning over abscesses and saddle sores, but alive. Before we got the chance to say goodbye, Clove was whisked away to the Crystal Empire for emergency surgery. Grit, Docks, and I promised ourselves that we would write her.
After getting clean, of course.
The showers ran black with grime the rest of the day. 
There were no chores, no off-time duties from Officer Lapse. I watched him march right to his tent, mane still dripping water. Veins pulsed on his neck like furious worms. 
Late that night, I sat around a fire with Docks and Grit. We watched it burn and drank beer and said nothing for a long time. 
“I’ve got family in Manehatten,” Docks said. He didn’t look at either of us. It was the first time he’d told us about them.
“Really? I have a cousin out that way,” Grit said.
“It’s a good place. My folks are good, too. Been there forever. My dads work at Chelshire Piers. It’s where they met. They live in a little apartment on Bronco and West.”
“I hope we can meet them at some point,” I said.
“My mom lives in Seaddle.” Grit took a swig from her bottle. “I hate it there. Cloud homes were always so damp. I could never get used to the sound of rain.”
“Think she’ll stay there?” Docks asked.
“‘Till the day she dies. Furthest cloud home on the west side.”
I don’t know why we started talking about home. None of us had ever told the other anything detailed about our personal lives before. Not like this. It was nice, though, to reveal those little connections we had over Equestria. Those ponies had nothing to do with me, but it made me feel a little safer—that if I didn’t make it, there would be more creatures out there who knew I had existed at some point.
“What about you, Evening? Your parents still part of the picture?” Grit asked. They stared at me with easy grins.
“They’re both alive and kickin’. You’ll have to go waaaay down south, though. Hollow Shades is pretty similar to Grimbush, actually. The caves are cooler, but they’re not very friendly to ponies without wings. Or night vision. Or echolocation.”
“Do yourself a favor and don’t go into travel sales if you quit the military, Evening,” Docks said.
“Hey, we’ve got a budding tourism industry down there. I’ll take you two so I can have an excuse to hit up my favorite places,” I said.
“Deal,” my friends said.
We walked to the barracks that night a little tighter than usual. Grit would let her wing brush against my side like she was checking to make sure I was still there. Docks’ hooves were so close to mine that he almost stepped on me.
Our pace was slow, keeping the new blanket of anxiousness at bay with bad jokes and the security that we weren’t alone.