How Cloudsdale Came to Be

by The Accursed One

3. Vengeance

        The plan was going along smoothly. The pegasi started building up their supply of clouds, but they weren’t for building homes this time. The clouds were for their final, and hopefully deadliest, attack against the combined army of the unicorns and Earth ponies. The cloud gathering was probably the longest and most grueling part of their attack. The arduous process of taking spare clouds whilst making it seem like natural movement and avoiding their enemies’ bases took hours to gather enough for a small rainstorm. Slowly their storage of clouds grew, taking up almost all of the spare space in the city in the sky. Slowly their storm grew in power, creating what may have been the largest storm in the history of Equus. Finally, after weeks of building, the supercell, dubbed the Cloud Bomb, was completed.

        The afternoon after the Cloud Bomb was finished, the pegasi held a war meeting to make sure they had all the details of their plan in mind. Commander Hurricane, the leader, oversaw her troops as usual, greeting them with simple greetings as they all filed into the building.

        “Tonight, my friends, we shall finally crush our foes beneath our hooves! Our Cloud Bomb has been completed, and we will use it against the boneheads and mud horses! Scorching lightning will crash upon them, burning their homes to cinders. Torrential rain will wash down on them, drowning those unlucky enough to be in the lowlands. Howling winds shall blow, pushing over those weak-bodied unicorns so they get trampled in the outrage! Let no pony survive!” the Commander shouted at her troops, all filled with enthusiasm at the prospect of eliminating their enemies once and for all. She finished her speech simply, “We fly at dusk.”

        The commander’s hoof-picked regiment of her army, popularly known as the Wonderbolts because of their extreme speed and flying ability, were to be the strike force. Instead of pushing the supercell into the target zone, they would be hiding in the storm, preparing it for the attack and then flying out to kill the stragglers after and during the storm. Their job was the most dangerous, so the commander only trusted her best to complete it with minimal casualties.

Night fell. The pegasi involved in the war effort left their homes, uttering their possibly final goodbyes to their families. None of them knew if they were going to survive the night, yet they kept optimistic and hoped for the best. They all assembled in front of their superweapon, performing the final checks necessary to make sure none of them would be killed by a misfire or backfire. The Wonderbolts entered the cloud, keeping their bodies fully inside the cloud and making sure it doesn’t lose shape on the long journey to their destination. The cloud started moving, ponies in black pushing it along to the largest of the unicorn-Earth pony camps five miles away. Their projected arrival time would be midnight.

Life around camp was pretty easy for the average citizen of the Terramagis Legion: three hot meals a day guaranteed, the duties around camp were tiring at most, and there were tons of places to relax and take a nap if one so desired. All in all, nopony felt like they needed more than they had. It was perfect, or at least it was until the leaders started getting antsy and paranoid. They always thought they were going to be attacked by the pegasi, but didn’t know how or when. The citizens started having daily war drills, resentment towards their leaders growing as they drifted farther and farther away from their comfortable life with each passing day.

Rumors jumped around the camp about a coup. Removing Princess Platinum and Chancellor Puddinghead from power was their goal, and they decided to have their seconds-in-command, Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie, respectively, serve as the leaders for their races. Tension rose as the pegasi were beginning to execute their final assault, halting the defense preparations. The next night’s storm would herald the Terramagis Legion’s doom. That is, until one scout caught a glimpse of a pegasus collecting a cloud to finish up the supercell. He warned his brethren that the fear of an attack was real. Everypony started panicking, hoping to find shelter for the rising storm.

The pegasi finished moving their bomb into place above the Legion’s camp, making sure everything would trigger with one solid kick from everypony at once. They let loose on the cloud, sending large amounts of their innate magic into the cloud channeled through their hooves. The magic sparked the storm energy deep within the cloud, and then the first bolt of lightning struck.