//------------------------------//
// House of Whitegold: Nighthooves 
// Story: Equestria Divided Tales 
// by Grenazers 
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MEMOIR


To anyone that is reading this, my name is Blossomforth and I am a Nighthoove.

What is a Nighthoove, you might ask? Well they are basically a specialist unit from the House of Whitegold. The Nighthooves are exclusively pegasus ponies and we perform various tasks for our house.

Scouts, spies, saboteurs, assassins and many other skills, we are trained to be the best agents the house ever had. 

It's kind of ironic really, I originally left Cloudsdale to get away from joining the army. Now here I am, a member of a group of trained killers. What makes it worse is that I am quite squeamish around blood. Yes you read this correctly, I can't stand the sight of blood. 

Now you're probably asking, why the hell did I ever become a Nighthooves if you get sick around blood? Well the reason for me joining is that it was the only other profession available. Ever since I moved to Manehattan, jobs were few and there were many ponies trying to move in. Those that can pay live in The Ivory Tower, those that can't live in the slums.

I only had a couple of bits of me, so I was forced to live in the slums. As the name suggests the slums is a terrible place to live. The buildings were poorly constructed, the place was dirty, and it was crowded.

So, I decided I had enough, I soon heard of an offering for a pegasus. In exchange for a better living condition, I 'll have to serve in the house military. I saw this as a perfect opportunity leave the crappy slums and instantly agree to the deal.

So now here I am a Nighthooves. At first it wasn't that bad, all I did was just scout out Diamond Dog's camps and inform my superiors of their location. Then my career got a little more dangerous, my first major assignment was to infiltrate the House Moon and Star.

My objective is finding any information about the House and assassinate a unicorn commander. My target was a former member of Whitegold, but switched sides when the Moon and Star captured after him. Right now I have to kill him and find any information that he gave away.

In order for me to infiltrate the place, I'll need to pose as one of the many slaves they have employed. To get me prepared I had to starve myself, apparently the slaves are malnourished. They were also beaten harshly, so while I was starving, some ponies had to rough me up a bit. 

The result was me, beaten up, skinny and dirty. So with done I snuck into Moon and Star territory unnoticed and made my way into a slave pen.

When I entered the pen I was disturbed at what I saw, earth  and pegasus ponies starved to the bones, Some barely had the energy to move around. Nevertheless I blended in with and waited.

The unicorn slave master eventually came, he orders all the able-body slaves to line up. Out of everypony in the line, only twenty were selected, one of them being me.

We were then taken to a large mansion where all the unicorn nobles resides. Among them was my target. After being told what do, I perform my task while also scouting the place out. After investigating the mansion, I overheard some of the servants preparing food my target.

I went into the kitchen pretending to sweep the place, while the servants and the chef were not looking, I poured a vial of poison into the food. While most assassins like to go close and personal to their targets, I prefer the poison over the blade. Again, squeamish around blood.

With that taken care of, I still needed that information. Using my wings I flew up to one of the windows on the mansion. I was hovering outside the room of my target. I waited and the servants brought him his meal. The unicorn took the meal and ate it. The poison took a minute to go into effect and killed the stallion.

After his death, I then went inside and searched for the information. Instantly I found it on his desk, the information was a list of all of our spies. It had their names and their pictures. If this has fallen into enemy hoofs, all our operatives would be exposed.

Taking the info and concealing it, I went back to my task. Afterward we returned to the slave pen, then at night I snuck out and made my way to Manehattan. When returned, I was praised for completing the mission and was given a raise in my salary.

After my first mission everything else was just the same. I would go on missions, to either steal, sabotage or assassinate someone. After a while all of my missions just followed the same steps, first infiltration, second is reconnaissance, and lastly is completing the task.

For all my assassination I just used my same method of poisoning them. I recall this one incident when I was 

forced to get close to my target. This happened in a middle of the battlefield, my target an Earthborn commander leading the charge against the forces of Stormwing.

As you can Imagine, it's going to be difficult to assassinate a target in a middle of battle. However, I was given this task and won't disappoint my superiors. I stealthily stalked the commander, I watched him in combat against the Stormwing soldiers. The more I watched the more nervous I got, this earth pony was capable warrior, he slaughtered his foes like they were nothing.

I waited for the perfect opportunity to strike, I watched as my target exert himself. Eventually the stallion needed a moment to rest. This left him vulnerable, leaving me an opening to strike.

Flying silently, I raised my dagger when I got near my target. In one swift movement I plunged the blade into his neck. He reacted by swatting me away with his weapon. He stumbled for a bit, but he soon died from blood loss. With his death I almost freaked out when I saw the blood, spilling out his neck. I then got up and flew away, wanting to get far away from the blood as possible.

After that event I started having nightmares, they were about all the ponies I had killed. I watched how they rose from their graves, seeking vengeance against the pony that killed them. I had these same nightmares for a while now, until they finally subsided. 

Despite them being gone, they left a big impact on me. It made me ask myself why I'm doing this. Why am I killing these ponies? Because someone told me to? For each lives I've taken, I wondered who they were. Were they good ponies in their life? Did they have family or friends? Or did they have any special somepony?

It's moments like this that it reminds how we forget that these ponies have lives. They are not some nameless soldier that fights for their faction. No, they are ponies that have families, friends, and dreams. These ponies are only fighting because they either had no choice or because they actually believed in the cause they fight for.

The more I thought about, the more I got depressed about it. I thought about quitting, but my comrades advise not to. They told me that I know too much about this group, and it is too much of a risk to let me go. So to put simply, I'm trapped.

I write this memoir, in hopes that somepony would find this. I wrote it in case something ever happened to me. The purpose is to show that I'm not some nameless pony to be tossed aside,  I am a living being, I have a name, I had families and friends, and lastly to not be forgotten like the many before me.