Spring Showers flitted from foal to foal, offering encouragement to one and advice to another. The children of Midnight Gardens, Princess Luna’s adopted wards, were stretched out across the summit of a grassy hill under the soft moonlight. Under Spring’s guidance, each foal was busy practicing… well, whatever they felt like.
“Okay, looks like the dream fabric’s pretty loose. So anyway, guys, a long time ago, Luna made something really special for everypony. She called it the Dreamscape! Now, everypony knows who the two Royal Sisters are, right?” The children gathered around him looked up for a moment and nodded.
“Well duh, Spring! Auntie Luna’s the Princess of the Night, and her big sister Celestia is the Princess of the Sun! Just ‘cuz we’re orphans doesn’t mean we never got to go to school.” Paint Petal flapped her orange wings in agitation as she buried her nose in the canvas under her hooves..
Spring laughed. “Who told you guys you were orphans? As long as you’ve got family, you’re no orphans in my book. Remember that. You’ve each got a brother or a sister to your left and your right, and Luna’s always got an eye on you. Now where was I?”
“Oh, uh…” Lily waved a hoof in the air, looking up from her project. “The Dreamscape and the Royal Sisters?”
“Yeah. So like I was saying, there’s the Royal Sisters, right? Celestia is the Princess of the Sun. In the grand scheme of the cosmos, she’s got dominion over the physical world. The birds, the bees, and the apple trees - if it lives and it breathes, she’s the one responsible for its protection. And, in a couple’a cases, even its creation.” He paused for a moment to rub a hoof against his chin.
“Luna, on the other hoof, is a horse of a different color. The Princess of the Night has dominion over the, uh… the metaphysical world.”
Doodle raised a hoof. “What the heck is that? What’s the difference between something… meta-fiscal and, like, animals and trees and stuff?” The rest of the gathered foals nodded in agreement.
“Right, right. That’s a lot of syllables. Sorry. Hmmm…” He landed in the gently-swaying grass and fell to his haunches, considering how to explain. “Well… let’s look at it like this. Luna’s supposed to take care of things that we might not be able to see, or hear, or even feel. Stuff that’s beyond what we can sense. Celestia builds, fixes, and harmonizes things that we’d say exist. But only Luna can change those things’ essence, the stuff that makes them what they are. Are you guys pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down?”
He was met with unanimously blank stares.
“Okay, okay. This stuff might be a little over your grade level. How ‘bout this: Luna takes care of things like a pony’s heart. Her mind, her soul, and especially,” he added, “her dreams.”
Sapphire nodded, her blue mane bouncing around Shale’s hooves as he played with it on her back. “Alright, that makes more sense. So… the Dreamscape?”
“Right! Luna’s greatest gift to ponykind. Heck, not even just ponykind - she made it for all the races of our world to enjoy together.
“The Dreamscape was something that Luna worked on for hundreds of years, way before any of us were ever born. It was a world dictated by thought, where essence was at its most malleable and existence was always alterable! She made an entire universe where there used to be nothin’ but a blank slate - a true infinitely-expanding universe, without the dumb laws that govern the plane we live in.”
He stopped. Yep, lost them again.
Sighing softly, he calmed down and brushed his mane back a bit with a hoof. “Every dream you’ve ever had? It’s a piece of her puzzle. When you fall asleep, deep asleep, sometimes you can find a way back into the world that Luna made for all of us.”
“But… why can’t I remember some of my dreams when I wake up? And what about the bad dreams? Nightmares? Did Auntie Luna make those, too?” Hazel stood up from where he’d been sitting and trotted towards the pegasus colt.
“No! No way! Not even close!” Spring’s rebuttal was frantic. “What Luna worked on for all those years was perfect. A world that you visit when you’re asleep, where anything is possible if you can just imagine it? She never wanted it to be dangerous, or scary. It was a place to relax, to rest, to think and draw and paint and sing and create! But… just as she put the finishing touches on it, the whole thing broke. It was the Nightmare that did it, not her.”
“Auntie Luna had a nightmare?” Lily shivered. She didn’t like nightmares very much.
Spring shook his head and stared at the horizon, trying to compose his thoughts. “It wasn’t a nightmare, Lil’. We’re talking The Nightmare. The very first one. Luna had worked too long, too hard. She stretched herself pretty thin trying to build her vision of perfection for everypony to enjoy… and another part of her took advantage of her weakness.”
“The thing she’d spent so much time honing and shaping, down to the last tiny detail… The Nightmare shattered it in an instant.” He raised his eyes to the group that had now gathered around him in a loose circle. “Whenever you have a happy dream, that’s just a little piece of Luna’s gift that you’ve managed to latch onto. When you have a nightmare… well, that’s a part of her that was never supposed to see the moonlight.”
Shale slipped off of Sapphire’s back and rolled to face up at Spring.
“Dream!” He waggled his hooves, wanting to take a ride.
“Heh, that’s right, squirt.” Spring lifted Shale up onto his shoulders, flapping a few feet above the ground to the colt’s delight. “Broken or not, we can still have some good dreams together.”
From a grove of trees at the base of the hill, a tiny blue bat fluttered its way up to the crest and flew in a tight circle around Spring’s head. Shale swung at it, nearly losing his balance before Spring nudged him back up. The animal gave a quiet screech before continuing off down the opposite side.
“Alright, alright; that’s a story for another night. I’ve gotta get going. Make sure you all keep practicing what I’ve been showing you! And don’t forget to show Luna everything you’ve done so far. I know she’ll be proud of you guys.” He set Shale down in the grass, rubbing his mane and blowing a raspberry at the foal before lifting off again.
“Hazel, you’re comin’ with me. We’ve got an appointment to keep.”
The little unicorn colt frowned. “We do?”
“Yup,” Spring nodded. “C’mon. I’m gonna introduce you to another friend of mine. Like a sister to me, really. She’s got something to show you. Now let’s go!” He turned in a neat backflip, coasting down towards the bank of thick trees the bat had emerged from.
Shrugging to his brothers and sisters, Hazel took off down the hill at a quick trot to keep up with his feathery blue friend.
-----
The cramped cab of the transport always smelled funny. Birch was busy fiddling with his signature golden helmet of the Guard, doing his best to resist throwing the massive metal doors open and letting the slipstream clear the stench out.
Looking around the cab, he took a moment to reflect on the squad he was traveling with. Near the back was the team of earth ponies - Sledge and Rubble, two nearly identical slabs of muscle that kept trading glances. Looked like they were trying to decide which of them would be responsible for waking their team leader up once they reached their destination.
The Guardspony in question, Sergeant Cliff Jumper, took up nearly an entire bench himself as he reclined for a quick nap. Birch was always amazed that the stallion he had trained and fought alongside had never lost his ability to nap anywhere.
Sitting in the middle of the transport was Snap Freeze, the gifted arcanist that had been in Birch’s team since he’d been promoted to the position. He was fiddling lazily with his saddlebags and watching his teammate struggle towards the front end of the cab.
Snap’s companion, Bootshine, was stuck unfurling a series of maps and notes for the mission brief. He was still pretty fresh, but Birch felt confident in the kid. He’d given him the responsibility of passing on their orders to the rest of the soldiers in the bay.
And sitting directly next to him was…
“Soldier. What’s your name?”
A pretty young unicorn mare, lean and toned from months of difficult training, sat next to Birch. Her blue mane spilled out from the rear of her helmet. As the transport jolted through a quick bout of turbulence, Birch could have sworn he saw her mane turn from the standard blue to a strange mix of brown and orange. Huh, he thought. That’s way too long to be in regs. Gonna have to check the enchantment on that helm, too.
“I asked you what your name is, private.” He glared at her from under the brim of his headgear.
The unicorn turned towards him and stuttered, nearly banging her head on the armor plate behind her. “Oh, sorry about that, sergeant. My name’s Autumn Winds! Don’t you remember me?”
He couldn’t say that he did… though her name was beginning to sound increasingly familiar.
“I transferred to your unit just two weeks ago, so we haven’t had a chance to run a mission together yet. Do, uh… do you mind introducing me to the rest of the guys?”
Birch rubbed the back of his neck. Yeah, she might as well get the ins-and-outs of the squad.
“Okay. Hey, let’s hear it, Boots.” Bootshine nodded and began relaying the brief to the rest of the cab. “Alright, Autumn. The greenhorn reading off our mission plan for the day is Bootshine. He’s still a little scrawny, but he’s smart as all hell. Good guy to keep around.” Autumn nodded as he continued.
“The unicorn that looks bored out of his mind right there, that’s Snap Freeze. He might not look like it, but he’s a pretty good spellslinger. He and Boots work pretty well together, even if the two of ‘em get on each other’s nerves every now and then. Mine, too. Speaking of which…” He waved at Snap, getting his attention. The Guardspony had been harassing the private up front.
“That’s enough, Snap. I’m sorry the BC specifically decided to ruin your day with a frag-o. Private Bootshine, please continue. So, where was I… oh, right. The bump on the log over there, sleeping on the bench, that’s Sergeant Cliff Jumper. He’s in charge of the earth pony chuckleheads in the back. He’s got a sick kind of humor, so try to steer clear of him until you get to know him a little better.
“The two brick walls up against the back of the cab, that’s Sledge and Rubble. Hardly ever see one without the other. I wouldn’t call ‘em the brightest matches in the box, but they’re strong as hell and great at what they do.” He finished up, tapping his new team member on the helmet.
“That just leaves you, kid. What’s your story?”
Autumn shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“Well,” Birch continued, “The usual. Where you’re from, what you did before you joined the Guard, do you have any family, et cetera, et cetera. Come on, Autumn, you’re a blank slate. Give me something to work with.” He chuckled and moved to give her helmet another flick.
Autumn’s white hoof moved to smack his out of the way before he could knock her upside the head, earning another laugh from the larger stallion. The roll of her eyes contrasted with the slight dimples forming at the corners of her mouth.
“Fine. Since you’re so interested. I grew up in Yoke Province, about a day’s walk north from Canterlot.”
“Wait, Yoke?” The name seemed off, and Birch prided himself on his grasp of geography around the kingdom. Moving from place to place, assignment after assignment, gave him a good lay of the land after his last few years with the Guard. “You mean New Yoke, right?”
New Yoke was one of the fastest-growing cities in Equestria. While it didn’t have the architectural brilliance of Fillydelphia or match the booming trade market of Manehatten, New Yoke had become a cultural icon for artists of all races and creeds over the past decade. Griffons, minotaurs, immigrants from the Zebrican city-states, and even a few of the friendlier changelings and diamond dogs had started taking up residence in the sprawling melting pot. The bustling city now boasted the largest multicultural population in Equestria.
“Oh! Right. Right,” Autumn groaned. “New Yoke. Memorial Grove, and all that.”
A rising commotion picked up from the front of the cab; Boots and Snap were about to start a fight over nicknames or something equally stupid. Hell, sometimes they didn’t even need a reason. One argument in particular over the proper polishing technique for a breastplate had left the better part of a dining facility scarred by magical flame and shards of eldritch ice. Birch groaned and shook his head.
“You really care about them, don’t you?” The sergeant turned to find Autumn looking at him with something like admiration in her eyes.
“Haven’t got much of a choice, the way I see it. But yeah, I do.” He smiled as he watched the two soldiers bicker. “A squad’s like a family, Autumn. You can’t always choose ‘em, but you can always find something to love about them. These guys… I wouldn’t want anypony else to be out here, watching my back for me.”
Birch paused to wipe a tear out of the corner of his eye. That was strange. Why would he be crying?
“That’s sweet, sergeant. I knew I had you pegged right from the start. I’m glad I could be here with all of you.” Autumn kicked her hooves out in front of her as Birch stood up to throw the bay door open.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Welcome to the family, kid.”
Outside, the pegasus flight crew was busy beating their wings in perfect sync with one another. Peering through the rushing wind, Birch could see the two heavy draft pegasi pulling their transport forward as the mountainside rolled away far beneath them. He almost jumped when he felt a hoof come to rest on his shoulder.
“Sergeant… before we start, I need you to understand something, okay?” Autumn pulled him away from the horizon and stared straight into his eyes.
“Sure, Autumn. What do you want?”
She held her breath for a moment before drawing him into an awkward hug.
“It’s not your fault.”
The soft thwip-thwip-thwip caught Birch’s attention even as the sudden physical contact made his hair bristle. He looked back outside to see one of his flight crew hanging lifelessly from his harness, riddled with crossbow bolts. Realization sparked as he threw Autumn away from him and spun to face the rest of his squad.
“Shields up—!”
-----
“Hey, don’t worry about it, bud. You’re doing a great job. I know I didn’t get a proper shield working my first try, either.” Birch scratched at his chin for a moment, reflecting on his first magic lessons. “I think I actually set my teacher’s mane on fire when I tried, heh heh.”
Shifting awkwardly in the silence, Birch tried again to get his son’s attention. Hazel sat in the grass next to him, his eyes looking into the distance of the New Yoke public park and seeing nothing.
Even three months after his wife Cotton had passed, Birch felt like he was losing ground against the tide that threatened to carry his son away. Hazel rarely spoke these days. When he did, his quiet voice carried the undertones of shell-shock the stallion had seen many of his coworkers struggle with. There was no sense of wonder or excitement behind the colt’s eyes anymore.
“Hey, pal, come on. Climb on my back. I want to show you something.” Lowering himself to the ground, Birch shifted as his son stepped over his tan withers and gripped a hoofful of his close-cropped blond mane.
“Do you know why I decided to join the Guard, son?” He trotted briskly from the edge of the park towards the center, bringing them closer to the heart of the New Yoke metropolis. “When I was about your age, I heard a story. It was about a lot of very brave ponies that lived a long, long time ago. Way before your mother and I were even born.
“These ponies, they lived during a time when they had to fight every day just to survive. Sometimes they would get hurt, and sometimes… well, sometimes they would die fighting. Or even worse, live after somepony they loved died instead.”
The scattered groups of tourists and visitors began to thin as Birch walked towards a tall, white statue in the center of the park. From the base to the tip, it was at least eighty hoofstrides tall, soaring over many of the smaller buildings that skirted the edges of the park off in the distance.
“Do you know why they kept fighting, even after all the suffering they had to live through, to grow up in? Why they chose not to just lay down and let the struggle of survival roll over them?” Hazel grunted noncommittally on his back, just enough to show that he was listening.
“Each of them found something,” Birch continued, “something worth fighting for. I’ve heard a lot of soldiers talk about how they’d be willing to die for something. Not a whole lot of them think about what it takes to live for something, though.”
The pair stopped in front of the statue, a monument carved out of a single, massive piece of marble that stood proud hundreds of years after its creation. Atop a raised pedestal, a larger-than-life group of pony soldiers kept a silent vigil as they watched the sunset each evening. Birch set his son down gently in the grass before the monument, smiling as he saw the colt’s eyes widen.
“This is a memorial, Hazel. It was built to honor the sacrifices made by ponies that fought and died for what they believed in, and for the ponies they cared about. A long time ago during the war between Nightmare Moon and Princess Celestia, there was a fortress here that fought off Nightmare Moon’s armies. A lot of ponies died here… but they did so knowing that somepony else would be safe. When I was a colt, just like you, my dad took me here and told me the story of the monument. Do you want to hear it?”
Hazel just nodded, enraptured with the statue before him.
“The earth pony,” Birch began, “ torch in hoof and sword at his side, symbolizes the perseverance of the Solar soldiers and militia members that joined in the final assault on their gates. The pegasus, wings spread above her companions, embodies the vigilance with which they protected their friends and families. Finally, the unicorn, horn and scroll held high, leaves us all with their story.” He pointed at the marble scroll with a hoof, drawing Hazel close as he read.
“Here did we fight to the last
Against the curs’d Dreaming tide.
Our spirit did ne’er waver
Neither did our light falter.
May the darkness remember
Our strength til’ the end
And tremble.”
Wriggling free from his father’s side, Hazel trotted closer to the monument and stared up at the soldiers that - one thousand years ago - had pushed through their own pain and suffering to fight for those close to them. Resting a hoof on the polished stone, he choked a bit before speaking for the first time that day:
“I think... I know what I wanna be, dad.”
-----
The last few trickles of blood seeped down Boots’ hooves and fell to the dusty ground. Birch held his soldier’s charred body against his chest, rocking quietly in the dirt and lost in his own mind.
I think I’d… want to be you… Birch.
“You could’ve been so much more, kid,” he whispered. “You, Sledge, Rubble… none of you had the chance.” The sound of hooves behind him shook him from his thoughts for a brief second.
“It’s not your fault, Birch.” Autumn sat down next to him. The sounds of battle, shrieking metal and screams of agony, seemed to fade into the distance as she looked at the broken body in his hooves.
His muscles tensed and shook inside his skin as rage started to cloud his vision. “No?” He spat. “Not my bucking fault?” He set Boots’ body down carefully, rising to his hooves and bristling with anger. He was angry at the griffons for killing his squad. Angry at Autumn for telling him he couldn’t have stopped it.
Angry at himself.
The battlefield came rushing back like a freight train, tearing into his senses and washing his field of view in crimson. Snap Freeze was still locked in combat with a black-feathered griffon scout, dodging her shots and parrying her claws with the fading light of his horn.
His hooves were carrying him forward at bone-crushing speed, the dozen cuts and wounds he’d already suffered screaming at him in a symphony of pain. He couldn’t feel a thing.
“NOT MY FAULT!?”
The griffon screeched as Birch’s horn pierced straight through her armor, doubling over him and falling limp as the unicorn gave his neck a sudden twist. Keratin scraped away from the tip of his horn against his enemy’s spine.
“They died because of me!” The creature’s limp body rose up into the air, suspended magically by his telekinesis before slamming into the ground with a heavy crunch. “They trusted me to protect them!” Crunch. “I should’ve been there! I should have been killed instead!” Crunch. “Why can’t I die?”
Snap tried to lay his hoof on the sergeant’s shoulder, only to have it thrown back in his face. Birch wheezed as the glow above his helmet diminished. The battered body of the griffon fell to the earth, wings twisted awkwardly and blood pooling beneath her armor. He collapsed under the weight of his own fatigue, sobbing fitfully into his hooves. The ocean of rage inside him had cooled, replaced by an expanding flood of anguish.
A faint cloud of dust kicked up and tickled his nose. He lifted his head silently, finding a pair of white hooves dominating his field of view. Autumn stood above him, shaking visibly but still managing to crack a smile.
“Please get up, sergeant. We’re… we’re not done yet. There’s still so much left to do. So many more ponies you need to save. Please.” Birch found himself dragged back to his hooves, surrounded by the tan-tinted field of magic spreading from Autumn’s horn. She reached for him with a trembling hoof, steadying him as he stood up straight. “It’s going to be hard. I didn’t know how hard it was going to be, but I knew when I met you that you were going to make it through this. You just need to remember. Why you fight, who you fight for… please remember, Birch.”
“Sergeant!” Snap shook Birch’s shoulder, drawing him out of his daze and bringing him back to the battle at hoof. Griffon corpses dotted the mountainside, mingling with broken bits of pegasus light armor and his fallen comrades. The sergeant’s jaw worked wordlessly, trying to catch up with his mind. He turned to his soldier, shaking his head as he muttered to himself.
“I… I need to remember…?” Birch grunted, pressing an armor-sheathed hoof against his eyes as a sharp pain pierced through his skull. He’d been here before. He wasn’t supposed to be here. There was somepony waiting for him—
“Look, dad! I’m just like you!”
Birch dropped his hoof to the carpet and boggled at the sight of his son, prancing around their living room in a gold-plated ceremonial helmet. The metal caught the midday sun through the window perfectly, gleaming bright against Hazel’s scarlet coat and the white, enchanted hair beneath the helm.
He tried to speak, reaching awkwardly towards the colt with a shaking, bleeding hoof. Blood. He was still covered in a sticky mess of red, some of it undoubtedly his. Hazel giggled as a single drop fell from the end of Birch’s hoof and stained the tan carpet a dark brown.
“Do you think I could be a soldier some day too, dad? You could teach me how to do all those cool moves and spells and stuff!” Hazel jumped up to a chair at the lacquered dining room table, face puffing with effort as he charged a miniscule bolt of light at the tip of his horn. “See? I’ve been practicing!”
The battered Guardspony gritted his teeth and smiled through his injuries, content to just watch his son try increasingly awkward and dangerous feats of magical ability. He took a deep breath, stretching his aching limbs and feeling more at ease than he had in… how long had it been? Weeks? Months?
Hazel managed to conjure a flickering, half-solid shield spell around himself before magical backlash scorched the tip of his horn, knocking him backwards and into the splayed claws of a dead griffon.
What…? “Hazel, get away from there!” He almost shrieked as he moved, scooping his son out of the clutches of the battle-scarred corpse that rested across the small coffee table in the middle of his living room. “How… what!?”
“What’s wrong, dad? I’m fine. Still trying to get the hang of it, heh. Sorry if I scared you.” He chuckled and hopped out of his father’s hooves, trotting over to the couch and sitting next to the body of a pegasus with a railroad track of crossbow bolts from flank to face.
A two-meter-long Scorpion bolt ripped through the drywall above Hazel’s head and buried itself in the center of a family photo on the opposite wall. Small bits of debris and flecks of paint settled to the floor in a thick cloud, dusting over the foal’s coat like snowflakes. Outside the apartment, Birch could hear the faint noises and commands of a fire team loading another missile into their siege weapon.
“Hazel… I need to remember. I need to remember my son. Let me have my son!”
“Fight it, Birch! These are your memories, your dreams. Pick yourself up and focus!” Autumn burst into the apartment behind him, tumbling in a heap as she tried to dodge a griffon scimitar. Her armor was scarred and burnt in several places, showing the wear of the battle that continued to rage outside the borders of Birch’s concentration.
A wicked, curved piece of forged steel swung into the room after Autumn, wielded with terrible precision by a wounded and bloodthirsty griffon. The door frame buckled and split at the sides as the creature forced his considerable bulk through the entrance. His wings unfurled with a crack of lightning, the bladed tips tearing deep gouges in the battered wood. Unlike the concealed, spring-loaded blades the pegasi guards fit their primaries with, these were massive implements of deathly sharp metal.
Birch moved quickly, putting himself between the gigantic mass of muscle and his son. Ignoring the pain settling deep into his skull, he lifted the table from the dining room and threw it with a blast of telekinesis. The heavy wood collided with the griffon, knocking him to the floor and buying Birch the few seconds he needed to rush to the couch and pick his son up in his hooves.
Angry roars and screeches rose from under the splintered table, drawing Birch’s attention even as he cradled Hazel against his chest and wheezed in pain and fatigue. The spear-tipped bolt embedded in the wall above the couch, heavier than the table had been, tore itself out in a field of weak, flickering magic. Birch heard the griffon smash his way out of his prison. Heard him stand up, growl in irritation, and flick the tips of his wingblades together to test their edge.
He heard his enemy move, and he spun to meet him. There was a splatter of fresh blood, a deep gurgle through a pierced windpipe, and a strangled gasp from Autumn across the room.
“S… srrrgnk…” Snap’s tear-filled eyes locked with his sergeant’s. Birch gaped, horrified, as the young unicorn looked down to see the wooden shaft of the bolt emerging from his throat. Another choked mewl crept out of his mouth before his body collapsed, dragging the spike to the blood-stained carpet with him.
-----
The transport rocked in the buffeting wind. Birch fiddled absentmindedly with his helmet, ignoring the sick, coppery stink of the bay. It smells like blood, he mused as he struggled. Death and decay.
A rather attractive mare wearing dented, blackened armor sobbed quietly on the bench next to him. Her mane spilled out of her helmet through a wide split up the back, blue one second, and a shifting, stuttering mess of orange and brown the next. Orange and brown… like a pile of fallen leaves. I like it, Birch thought. He smiled and cleaned the fresh streaks of blood from his saber. They would be there soon.
He wasn’t sure where, he realized. But he maintained a positive attitude about it and agreed with himself; yes, of course, they’d reach their destination in no time at all.
“How… how long have you b-been doing this to yourself?” Wiping her tears away with a bloody hoof, the mare beside him tilted awkwardly with the turbulence. A smear of red stood out on her miserable face like a splash of paint on an empty canvas.
“What? Oh, uh, are you one of mine? Sorry about that, soldier, my mind gets away from me sometimes—” Birch stopped mid-sentence, pausing to see Bootshine begin his brief.
The private flipped through a few pages of notes before staring directly at his sergeant. “He’s moving again. Queue up the methohexital, please. Quickly.” His carefully-written annotations skittered around the diagrams and maps next to him like a swarm of angry ants. They usually didn’t do that.
“Look at me, Birch!” He felt a hoof on his face. As he turned, a pair of bright green eyes filled his vision. Or were they blue? It was hard to tell.
“Did I… Get your name, private?” He wasn’t sure he had seen her before. Was she new?
“Don’t forget again, dammit! Focus! You can’t die here, not like this!”
Cliff Jumper stirred from his bench, rubbing at a knot in his back. “Get more alfentanil. Double the dosage.”
“Heart rate is dropping,” Sledge groaned from the back. Dozens of crossbow bolts erupted from under the stallion’s skin as he wiped his nose.
A strong pair of hooves gripped Birch by his helmet, dragging him forward. He found himself trapped face-to-face with the mystery mare, her expression shifting from hurt to horrified to absolutely livid.
“Stop it! Do you have any idea what you’re doing to yourself? I tried easing you out of it, Birch, I’ve been trying for days. But if you keep this up, you are going to die!” She shouted at him, shaking the helmet around his head and breaking into a new fit of tears. “You didn’t kill them! You don’t deserve this… this poison… and you damn well didn’t leave your son all alone just to die here and never come home!”
“My… my son?” His head swam with flickering beats of memory. Hazel nuzzling his chest, barely three weeks old. His first few awkward steps across the den floor. A single marble, suspended perfectly in the air next to Hazel’s proud, beaming face and gently glowing horn.
A double-bladed griffon battleaxe, buried in Rubble’s body. The crackling feeling of Boots’ burnt skin against his hooves, like a scorched sheet of parchment. The scent of blood. Blood. So much blood—
“Dad…?”
Birch’s eyes refocused. The one word seemed to echo around the interior of the cab, simultaneously whispered in his ear and shouted from outside the transport’s thick ballistic armor. He tore himself away from the stunned mare beside him and followed the sound of his son’s voice.
“Daddy!”
All around him, Birch’s world shattered into a million blood-stained shards of glass.
-----
“Dad… I found you. I finally found you. You’re… you’re gonna be okay.” A small, lanky bundle of red gripped Birch’s chest as he came to. The unicorn groaned as he rolled from his back to his side. His world swam around him when he made the movement. Wherever he was, he must have had a hell of a time getting there.
As his eyes focused, he realized that he had no idea where, in fact, he was. A blank, warm whiteness stretched around him in all directions. The light seemed to come from every direction at once, leaving him with no shadows and no landmarks to judge distance. He reached down with a foreleg to find his hoof come to rest on a black mane just below his chin.
“Hazel? Is… is that you?”
Blinking through a haze of tears, Hazel looked up at him and buried his face into the stallion’s chest again. “It’s me, dad. I’m here. You’re gonna be okay,” he repeated. The colt pressed up against him was warm, and he could feel the burning heat from the child’s teary eyes as they rubbed into his coat.
He was with his son again.
“Goddesses… it is you,” he breathed. Part shocked and part joyful, he threw his forelegs around his son and pulled him even closer. “Is this another dream?”
“It is a dream, Birch. But Hazel is here with you, and I guarantee that he is very real.” Out of the stark white landscape, a curiously familiar mare trotted towards Birch and his son.
“Autumn!” The mare looked awful; blood ran from the corner of her mouth, and her once-pristine white coat was marred with several burns and cuts. Apparently heedless of her injuries, she walked forward and settled to the ground a short distance away from them.
“I’m glad you finally remember me, Birch. I can’t tell you how aggravating it was trying to pull you out of there and having you forget me every time you relapsed.” She smiled warmly as Birch opened and closed his mouth in disbelief. She batted a hoof at him playfully while he fumbled. “Don’t worry about me, I’ve been through worse. I’m really just happy that Hazel here managed to help you when I couldn’t.”
“What happened? What did my son do?” Fighting against the slowly-clearing fog that covered his thoughts, Birch began to remember everything since that griffon’s bolter had smashed into his face. Memories of the mission, interspersed with snippets of his life and his family, replayed through his mind in a continuous loop. Throughout them all, Autumn appeared - sometimes on the sidelines, and sometimes directly.
“You were hurt badly during your last engagement with the Guard,” Autumn whispered. “Reinforcements found you before you could slip away, but aside from stabilizing your injuries, the medics couldn’t do much for you.” She drew a breath, pushing aside memories of her own.
“You’ve been asleep in New Yoke Memorial Hospital for nearly six months,” she continued. “I’ve been trying to bring you back to us for… well, a long time. Much longer in here than it would seem out there. Your dreams and your memories were at war with the rest of you, Birch. We’re both very lucky. If Hazel hadn’t pulled you out of this coma, your mind would have been the end of us both.”
Birch swallowed and laid his head on the white, featureless ground beneath him. “How did Hazel find me here in the first place?”
“Your son was transferred to the Midnight Gardens home in your absence,” Autumn explained. She ran a hoof through her brown-and-orange mane, letting the blood-matted hair settle against the back of her neck. “The children there have formed a family of their own in place of the ones they’ve lost. And they have been receiving certain lessons from Princess Luna herself, along with a few of her… friends. Including me. Some of these lessons include the ability to shape and channel dreams.”
She gestured with a hoof towards Hazel, smiling again as she did so. “Your boy is something of a quick learner. I asked that he be brought here to help me get through to you, but he took control and dispelled your nightmares almost immediately. I didn’t even know he could see what we were doing.
“I knew you were a fighter, Birch, and I can see Hazel’s inherited a bit of that as well. He forced his way into a network of memory locks that I couldn’t break over months of work. You should be very proud.”
Hazel raised his head and grinned, wiping away his tears and turning towards Autumn. “Dad told me I had to find something to fight for,” he said. His voice wavered as he stood up on his hooves. “And I found it.”
Birch rose to his hooves beside him, suddenly feeling very weak and almost painfully tired. Despite his exhaustion, he felt… whole. The colt at his side awakened something that had almost died with him half a year ago.
“Thank you, Hazel. You saved my life, son. And even if I don’t completely understand how… well, I’m still damn proud of what you did.” He tousled the colt’s mane and turned to the mare in front of them. “And thanks to you too, Autumn. I’m sorry I put you through the trouble—”
“Oh, hush,” she nickered. “It’s my job, and seeing the two of you together was worth fighting for.”
Autumn rose to her feet and smirked at Birch’s sheepish grin. Hazel mirrored it almost perfectly. Turning on her hoof, the mare began to march off into the white landscape, fading slowly as she moved.
“Hey—wait! I still don’t even know who the hell you are! And what are we supposed to do now?” Birch called out after the unicorn before she completely disappeared.
“You’ve had a long enough nap, Sergeant Birch Nut,” her voice called out from every corner of the landscape. I think it’s high time you woke up.”