//------------------------------//
// Chapter X: The Good Fight for the Union 
// Story: Ordo ab Chao 
// by Integral Archer 
//------------------------------//


“Congress shall pay Due in the Domain of a fallen or wounded Soldier in the Service of the Union, whose Integrity is of the honored Nature.”

—Amendment XII to the Constitution of Meeting Tribes of Immediate Siblings



Thus began the era of conventional warfare. 

Union Army scouts reported that the rebellion had used in the battle an assorted array of prototype rifles and muskets, no doubt stored in the basements of every single household in Los Pegasus: a city, whose citizens had been known for having incessant paranoia, a history of launching constitutional challenges against the federal government, and who felt the need to arm themselves. Thus, nopony was surprised that this city was the first to declare secession and was the first to retaliate against the federal government’s efforts to preserve the Union. 

After they had driven the Union Army from their boundaries, they had raided the camps and had taken a hold of the brand new rifles and ammunition. Like locusts, they only became stronger and healthier the more destruction they caused, and soon they became hungry for their next victory. 

As Stallion’s Manufacturing Company rushed to fill another order of small arms for the Union Army, Equestria breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the war take on a more familiar tone. 

After the first major engagement and the first tactical victory of the Union Army, the Battle of Ghastly Gorge, where the Second and Third Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends attempted to cross the gorge, on their way to either Fillydelphia or to Ponyville, and were repelled by the Twelfth and Nineteenth Manehattan and the First Canterlot Volunteer Infantry Regiments after an hour of sustained rifle-fire—which resulted in two hundred and fifteen rebels plummeting to their deaths, one hundred twenty-eight of them killed by bullets and an additional five hundred twenty wounded in action, while twenty-two Union Army soldiers were killed an action and an additional fifteen were wounded—the general unspoken feeling among soldiers of both sides was one of solace at the fact that the terrible magic that they had witnessed and experienced for the past six months was revocable; and that the new war had a cause, a purpose, direction, and predictability. When a soldier pulled the trigger of his rifle, he exhaled with contentment when he found that his pulling of the trigger caused the hammer to slam forward on the percussion cap, which he had placed seconds prior, which caused sparks to fly from the oxidizers in the cap, which caused the gunpowder to ignite, which caused the bullet to discharge forwards. The Law of Causality smiled warmly down on the soldiers at the gorge, and they smiled back, almost oblivious to the destruction occurring around them. It was destruction, but at least there was a reason behind it.

At least, this was true for the Los Pegasus regiments at the gorge and the Union regiments that had stopped them: Ponyville and Fillydelphia still lay in shadow. 

When the battered Second and Third Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends regrouped after their crushing defeat and awaited for further orders, while attending to each other’s wounds, they already were preparing eagerly for the next battle. Though they had been defeated in body that day, they had not been in spirit: their spirits were still as full as ever of devotion, powered by agitation, at the fact that their friends in Fillydelphia still needed their help, and incredulity, at the fact that there were actually ponies who were heartless enough to stand in their way.

As for the president, who had shut himself up in his office—after he had been forcibly restrained by Princess Luna and Enforcer, when he had rashly tried to leave for Los Pegasus, muttering something about how he would do the magic himself—and who only came out for Congress, the dates of which becoming increasingly irregular ever since the leader of the Royal Party and the official opposition, Princess Celestia, had disappeared, crushing the morale of any Royalists who still bothered to attend the unproductive sessions, he enjoyed a few months of silence; and the only noises he ever heard were Enforcer’s daily visits, which were only minutes long at the most, as the assistant slapped down papers on his desk and promptly left, and the propaganda of the editorialists, some of whom having taken up allegiance with the Friendship, who now spent their days designing posters and writing articles on the necessity of ponies to join the Army of the Friendship to stop Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, who was currently occupying the Horseshoe Office in Canterlot. Despite the fact that this juvenile, but clever, name made the president himself laugh every time, he ordered the arrest of all the editorialists and the dissolution of all news corporations who published “ideas that were a threat to the Union, its citizens, and incited rebellion”—in other words, the ones that found themselves in jail cells that night were the ones who had not been smart enough to conceal their identities.


* * *


A young Manehattan stallion named Tree Root, whose eyesight was dilapidated to the point where it was considered a disability, who suffered from heart murmurs, and who thusly failed the physical which was required for enlistment in the Union Army, had waved a heartfelt goodbye to his childhood friends as he watched them march away with the Nineteenth Manehattan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. 

It wasn’t fair, he thought. Why am I not permitted to do my part? 

“Is there truly nothing I can do?” he said aloud to himself in the middle of a coffee shop, much to the dismay of the other ponies who were sitting around him. 

This was how he had spent the first few months of the war: if not sulking alone in his studio apartment, then in the coffee shop, wishing that his sicknesses, and the despondency that inherently came with it, would leave him. He felt like an invalid. 

When he had heard that the spell had been lifted from Los Pegasus, he was worried sick for his friends; and he buried himself, overwhelmed by his sorrow and frustration, in his room for an entire week. 

In July, when he had finally emerged, desperately needing groceries, as he was sick of eating ketchup, upon stepping out into the harsh sun of Manehattan and glancing at a newspaper box, he had learned, a few days after the event had taken place, about the bravery displayed by the Union soldiers at Ghastly Gorge—and he saw his friends’ pictures and names in the newspaper.

Such bravery, he thought. Such heroism shown despite being overwhelmed by immorality and terror. 

As he clutched the newspaper to his chest, he felt tears begin to swell. If only . . . if only every single Union soldier could feel the way he felt now, he thought, then maybe they could find the will to decisively crush the traitors, and they could all go home to their families . . . to peace.

And then, in an instant, as if the spirit of the Union itself had seized control of him, his body and mind were struck with a feeling of inspiration. After hastily purchasing what he needed at the corner store, he rushed back to his apartment and stayed there for another week, not in stagnation this time—but in innovation.

When he emerged once again, he went into the headquarters of his local radio station, paid a small fee; and, with a few buskers that he had met on his way there, recorded a song that he had written, after feeling inspired by honor and valor shown by the troops at Ghastly Gorge. 

When “The Good Fight for the Union” played over the radio for the first time, within the first hour, it instantly shot up to the top ten in the list of the most popular songs that month and, within the next day, became number one: 




For concord and virtue,
For us, or for naught!
Down with The Friendship; let’s go, Canterlot!
While we gallop hoof to hoof, noble Justice in our stride,
Fighting the good fight for the Union!


It enjoyed success in all the cities still loyal to the Union, in Canterlot particularly. Over the next few months, one could not turn on the radio or attend a social gathering in any city still affiliating itself with the Union without hearing this song being played. 

A trumpet whined the song’s opening notes and, with it, conveyed the ominous threat, the weight at what was at stake, and the losses that had already been sustained, but as soon as that was replaced by the sonorous roll of a snare drum, one heard the triumph of justice over brute force and the promise of others to come to its support.

Tree Root himself was on the lead vocals. His voice had the coarse, grating accent and tone of a Manehattanite and was technically subpar—as was agreed on by most opera snobs—but when the young stallion launched into the aforementioned refrain, there was so much passion, life, and energy in it that even they did not care. 

After he had duly sung the four verses, each separated by that glorious refrain, the drum roll slowed to a standstill and the trumpet came back. This time, it did not carry the threat of violence anymore; rather, it had a sad, mournful tone—like the crying of a mother waving goodbye to her son who was leaving for battle—and was slightly apprehensive. However, with the just cause espoused in the lyrics before and the implacable sound of the instruments that accompanied it, one knew that the outcome would be satisfactory. 

Tree Root’s voice became the rallying cry of soldiers—whether in spirit or enlisted in a volunteer infantry regiment—of the Union everywhere, and it was the vocalization of all the thoughts and ideals of the ponies that did not have the eloquence to put them into words. This is probably why the managers of every single record factory in Equestria, all of whom employed to produce the single, who had operated their machines for five days straight without rest and manufactured a total of over one hundred thousand records, collapsed with exhaustion when they received the order for one hundred thousand more. 

Tree Root, who lived in a studio apartment with a roommate, became a millionaire within the week and bought one of the most expensive and most prolific mansions in Canterlot. Enforcer, who was walking by this house, as usual, on his way to the Presidential Mansion, groaned when he saw who purchased it on the building’s sale listing. 

It was not that he hated the song—on the contrary, he thought the Union and its patriots needed it; it was that, ever since it was released on record, the president had been playing it incessantly and as loud as his record player would allow it, such that Enforcer could hear it from the floor directly below the Horseshoe Office and behind three closed doors, to the point where he was getting sick of it. He wondered how Princess Luna managed to get any work done from her office across the hall from the president’s, though a possible explanation was that she was coming into the mansion less and less often—and when she did, she was coming in quite late in the afternoon—and she was doing visibly less work while somehow looking more stressed than when she had first became vice president.

Enforcer was even more dismayed when, after he had finally found a quiet room in the mansion to get some work done, he was called up to the Horseshoe Office. For five minutes, he stood there in front of the president who shouted his instructions at the top of his lungs, in an effort to be heard over the music. Enforcer nodded and smiled; and, as soon as he saw the president stop talking, he flew out of the room as fast as he could, shut the door behind him and, grasping his temples, tried to rub away his splitting headache and stop his ears from ringing. 

He had missed quite a few words the president had said, but he had the general idea: the president wanted Enforcer to bring Tree Root to him so that he could ask the composer his permission to bestow upon him the title of Colleague of the Union—the highest title a civilian in Equestria could receive.

Enforcer, obviously, had no problem getting in contact with Tree Root and had no problem convincing him to see the president. And, after an eight-minute conversation with the president, Tree Root skipped out of the Horseshoe Office with an expectedly huge smile on his face.

The ceremony was to be in a week. The president had obtained Tree Root’s permission to hire writers to adapt the song for an orchestra, under his explicit guidelines; and he ordered Enforcer to hire the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra and their choir, at any price, and the most prominent opera singer of the time to sing the lead. Enforcer, in his infinite ability, got them together with little trouble, and he himself even arranged the decorations for the garden. 

Coming from an aristocratic and traditional breed of family, Enforcer had been taught that females had a certain je ne sais quois that made them experts in situations such as this, so he looked for Princess Luna—ostensibly, to ask her what she thought of his decoration plans but, in reality, in order to break the bubble of silence she had shrouded herself in—but she was so difficult to find around the Presidential Mansion during these times; and, when he did find her, she would always brush him off with an “I’m busy—not now” or would flat out ignore him with the coldness that he saw her display in the foyers before and after the presidential debates during the days before she was vice president. 

Three hours before the orchestra was to set up and the singers to take their places, Enforcer, in the garden behind the Hall of Congress, took a step back and looked at the arrangement of the seats, the orchestra pit, and the decorations. He took a deep breath and exhaled with a smile of contentment; it had been a long time since he could take a pleasure in his work.

And he would have been lying to himself if he had said that the ceremony and the performance of the song was not impressive: hearing the song live, a new rendition that was written to be played by the greatest orchestra in Equestria and sung by its greatest voices, was one of the most amazing things he had ever seen and heard. This was how the song was meant to be played, he thought: on a scale which was larger than life and played by the most skilled performers with the finest instruments, that only a grandiose song about victory and justice should be performed.

Tree Root, on the other hoof, who sat next to the president on the stage where he was to be given the medal representing his title, was slightly disappointed when he heard that the president had chosen to remove the threatening trumpet at the beginning, which took on a melancholy tone at the end, and replaced both sections of it with an equally as gallant arrangement as the rest of the song. He felt that a lot of the necessary juxtaposition he put into the song was now lost: if there was no threat of failure and despair, what were they fighting for? But he did like how the song he wrote sounded when it was not being played by five poor amateur musicians from Manehattan—four of whom probably homeless—and he liked the addition of the string section, so he did not mind too much.

A week after the song shattered every sale record for a single, an anonymous writer changed the lyrics to take a pro-Friendship message, so the soldiers of the Army of the Friendship could sing it too: 



For love and understanding,
For your homes, we will spring!
Away with the chaos; come on, let us sing!
Discord, up in Canterlot, will tremble when he sees:
That there is a power in our Friendship!


When Tree Root had first heard the grating voices of the tone-deaf rebels singing, over the radio, this song—his song—his heart began to race and he clenched his teeth so hard which caused one of them to crack. To him, this new version, with its awkward iambs and its discordant syllables, which poorly matched the accompanying music, which took a proud message for a cause he believed passionately in and changed it to mean the destruction of that cause, was so profoundly evil that it nauseated him. 

He hired the fiercest, sliest, and most expensive lawyer he could find in an effort to crush the insulting theft of property and its perpetrators while causing as much pain as possible to them. The attorney, the most skilled in his practice, found, within days, the well-hidden parodists and the news corporations that supported them. He was about to draw up the papers, when he found out that they had already been arrested on orders of the president, who cited that the arrest had been made “for egregious violations of copyright law resulting in an endangerment to the Union.” 

Normally, an arrest like this would have been accompanied by incredibly vocal cries that the president, by ordering these arrests, was violating Amendment VI of the COMTOIS; but, after the president had suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and after the CEOs of the ten biggest news corporations that had been known to frequently speak out against government policies and which were, coincidentally, all operated and funded by the royal family, had been arrested along with eighty of the most prominent journalists working for them, the only outcry that the president heard was from an old United Party member—the most revered and respected in the group and who, in less frantic times, probably would have become its leader—who said, in a particular congressional session, a session which felt even more uncomfortably empty than the last, that with this arrest, the president violated both the COMTOIS and the values for which his party stood. 

At this, the president, standing erect behind the podium at the front of the hall, leaned closer toward the crowd, which resulted in everypony recoiling reflexively and unconsciously, and said: “My dear friend—surely you’re not suggesting that the federal government upholds the rights of those whose sole intent is to destroy this right-upholding institution? That would be a fatal contradiction.” 

The old stallion pulled at his suit’s collar to let the air in and sat back, hunched, in his seat, trying to make himself invisible.

Two weeks after the battle at Ghastly Gorge, while jovially singing “The Good Fight for the Union” and polishing their rifles, the Union soldiers looked up and saw the Second and Third Los Pegasus Infantry Regiment of Friends marching up the ridge leading to the gorge. They smiled, grit their teeth, and cocked the hammers on their rifles. Not one of them had a single iota of fear in their hearts: they were ready; they were waiting, and they intended to wipe out the rebellion here and now.


* * *


Situated to the east of Canterlot lay the besieged city of Fillydelphia. To Canterlot’s east-southeast, lay Baltimare and, to the northeast, lay Manehattan. On the map, Canterlot was in the center of a wheel, the rim of which was made up by the rest of the major settlements. Perhaps this was the reason it was chosen to be the capital city: all the roads, with their twists and turns, all merged into a single road going into Canterlot—the perfect metaphor for the Union. 

The path to Canterlot leads from the base of the mountain’s southern—that is, the side that faces the city of Ponyville—and was scouted around one hundred fifty years ago by troops of the Union Army, under the auspices of Commander Hurricane; and, as far as it was known, was the only way up the mountain. 

Canterlot is built on an enormous mountain; and, any attack on Canterlot, given the fact that there is only one road up which one can travel to the city, would be suicide no matter the army’s training, no matter its size—if the city had not been, more or less, razed. It was a perilous climb for a pony on foot, especially if said pony was not to be permitted to enter by the sentries near the city’s gate, but it was the only way up. 

Truly, the prime piece of real estate was Ponyville, which General Sherbert had been prudent enough to recognize for its importance to the Union Army: it was almost indefensible by any regiment garrisoned in it, making it easy for an invading army to take it, and its location made the city a perfect spot for an invading force to set up its artillery units in order to bombard Canterlot.

Los Pegasus is on the far southwestern borders of Equestria, far removed from any other major settlement, and the rebelling city could not have been placed in a more inconvenient position. A Friendship soldier marching straight to Ponyville from this city would have to pass by the White Tail Woods, in which Union soldiers could take up a covered position, or would have to walk by Los Pegasus’s mountains, on which the Union soldiers would have the upper ground. Regardless of what avenue of attack he took, he would eventually have to cross Ponyville’s river—which, as is said in any credible military manual, is inherently treacherous—before attacking the city itself.

An easier route would be to go past the southern side of Los Pegasus’s mountains and then either to Ponyville or Fillydelphia. This is not to imply that the route did not have any obstacles; for what the route lacked in tangible obstructions in comparison to the direct route, it was made up in Union Army encampments, conveniently placed, for the purpose of guarding Fillydelphia. The only major obstacle, save for the aforementioned fortifications, would be Ghastly Gorge, which the Friendship would be forced to cross while taking fire from the Union Army from the other side.

For this reason, the ponies of the First and Fourth Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends had breathed a sigh of relief when they had learned that they were not to go by Ghastly Gorge and were to, instead, fight straight to Ponyville. When they had heard the crippling defeat that their friends had suffered at the First Battle of Ghastly Gorge, they walked on in silence which was composed of two parts: one part in reverence and mourning for their fallen comrades—the other part deliberately keeping their mouths shut, lest the selfish gratitude each one of them felt for the fact that it had not been them that had plummeted to their deaths become known.

It was not until they had reached the White Tail Woods, met the Union Army hiding in the trees, that they had found that their rifles had deteriorated from spending days in the marshes around it, and they were unable to defend themselves from the relentless barrage of cannon and rifle fire from an innumerable amount of invisible enemies—that the First and Fourth Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends had envied their friends at Ghastly Gorge. 

When they ran for cover, they found that either there was none, or it was occupied by Union soldiers. When they tried to fire back, their water-logged gunpowder refused to ignite. When they tried to surrender, they were executed without pity. When they tried to flee, the bullets ran faster that them. 

General Sherbert spent the two days following the Battle of White Tail Woods trying to figure out why these two regiments decided to take this route—this route that, no matter how it was drawn on the map and in what color pen, would always lead straight to a grave. Perhaps it was their lack of any formal ranking system and their lack of seasoned and educated military strategists, or perhaps it was the brazen nature of young ponies from Los Pegasus, who believed themselves to be immortal. Whatever the reason, after the Battle of White Tail Ridge, the First and Fourth Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends crawled away with six thousand, two hundred sixty-two killed in action and seven hundred forty wounded in action: a casualty rate of over sixty percent.

No matter their resolve, no matter their determination, and no matter their desire to win, there was no escaping the fact that the Union Army was better equipped, better trained, better supplied, better numbered, and better commanded. 

After the near extermination of two infantry regiments and the wounding of two others, the beast of the rebellion was bleeding from its artery; the only thing left for it to do was to squirm in the dust and try to crawl away from the Union hunter, who only had to step on its neck to acquire another trophy. This was what was on the mind of Second and Third Los Pegasus Infantry Regiments of Friends, as they were torn away from their mother while they were still lapping her wounds and thrust into the waiting sights of the Union hunter, who they could see grinning hungrily on the other side of Ghastly Gorge, anticipating the taste of its next meal. The news of the defeat at White Tail Ridge was still fresh in their minds, and the horrors from the First Battle of Ghastly Gorge was still plaguing their dreams and robbing them of sleep. No matter how much their leaders assured them that failure was impossible this time, they had little confidence in them, these leaders who had led them into the face of death not too long ago. 

But even as the first volley of rifle-fire from the other side of the gorge hit them, one thing was for sure, and this kept them smiling: They were friends—and there was nothing that Discord or his legionnaires would be able to do about that. And because friends do not abandon each other, even in their darkest of hours, they were going to cross that gorge, on to Fillydelphia, on to Ponyville—or they were going to face the enemy’s bullets head-on, their last breaths being that of defiance. 

They were going to live as friends or die as friends, they thought, as they stood looking down into Ghastly Gorge for the second time.