//------------------------------//
// Ein 
// Story: Lantern 
// by Imperator Chiashi Zane 
//------------------------------//

Corporal Randel Oland felt himself return as he pressed his hand to the shutter of the lantern at his hip.  He felt the carved flesh where bullets had clipped him, or sunken in.  The no longer agonizing burn of broken bones pressing into torn muscle.  The chill of his own blood dripping down his body.  The lantern had almost claimed him this time.  He knew it, as every time he opened that shutter.  The dirt crunched beneath his knees as he dropped to them.

Voices.  Shouting his name, shouting his rank.  He knew those voices.  They were trying to save him.  Oh how he wanted them to.  But at the same time, that voice in the back of his head, Tote Sie, over and over.  Fear.  His companion for nearly five years.  He knew how much Alice hated seeing him in pain.  How much she feared that she would lose him to one of those tanks.  Oreldo would slap him on his uninjured arm, and call him something mildly derogatory.  Martis would be patching up what he could in the field.  He began peeling off his coat to allow the bookish soldier access to his wounds.  His shirt, but it wasn’t coming off.  Pain flared in his chest.  He looked down, though the scarring in his neck made the movement difficult.  His hand pressed against the spot the shirt was stuck on.  Then in.  He felt his ribs.  Broken clean off.  Not the first time.  Probably wouldn’t be the last.  The metal spars had sheared under the impact of the tank shell.  His lung was leaking and spongy.  He prepared to apologize to Martis.

He didn’t have the chance.
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Alice froze in her run, her anger at his stupidity, her words, stalled in her throat.  The corporal fell to his knees, peeled off his battered, bloodied coat; fell to his chest.  Fell dead.  She knew before Martis reached him, before the young warrant officer pressed his fingers to the corporal’s neck.  Before Oreldo stopped mid-step and turned around.  She was on her knees, held in his arms, crying on his shoulder, snot running down his back.

Martis stared at the corpse, fingers dancing around the scar tissue, trying to find the pulse, hoping, desperately, that there would be one.  The massive hole in the corporal’s back had ceased leaking.  The lantern was smeared with blood.  He tugged it away from the man’s belt.  He had never seen even a drop of blood on it.  Not after the corporal had been splattered by acid.  Not after he had been shot.  Stabbed.  The moment Martis had been close enough to see it happen, on the corporal’s shoulder, back when he thought the man a monster.  The blue glow had seemed to deflect the blood.  Never before had it failed.  He lifted the metal cylinder and made a motion to open the shutter.  Perhaps whatever kept it clean would keep the corporal alive, or bring him back.

The lever didn’t move.  Blood dripped over his fingers, more than could have gotten on them.  Like the lantern itself was bleeding.  He looked at the shutters.  Blood leaked from them for a few more moments, oozing over his hands, cold as ice.  He heard an echo in his head, Randel’s voice.  Tote Sie.  Tote Sie.  Just before he put it down, one last sentence.  Penance must be delivered.  Fate has conspired.  Goodbye Brothers.  Tote Mich.  “He’s gone.  Corpor…Randel is gone.”
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The smell of fresh grass filled Randel’s nose, the watery scent drawing him awake.  He was certain if he had survived, he would have been in the hospital again.  They didn’t have grass there.  That meant he was dead.  But where was he then?  He was too far gone to make Heaven.  Hell was probably too good for him, what he had done.

His eyes opened, and he stared at the grass tickling his nose.  His eyes were crossed, and he stared down at the scar across the bridge of his nose.  It had a nice-ish new mark on it.  His hand brushed across the surface of his face, the scars, so familiar.  His fingers caressed the metal of the Lantern at his hip.  The Doorknocker in his armpit.  They were there.  He felt safe.  He stood and started walking, tugging his coat back, then slinging it over his shoulder.  It was unseasonably warm, especially if he was in Germany.  A grassy hill rose before him, and he climbed it, hoping for a better vantage point.  Not that his two-point-four meter height wasn’t enough of a vantage point.

Still, nothing.  He struggled down the grass covered hill.  How, how did I survive?  It was warm, too warm for his uniform.  Unseasonably so.  He must be in Hell.  He reached a path, a cart path, not quite two lanes wide.  It was rather narrow for being a pathway leading out of a town.  You couldn’t even get a truck down it.  He started down the path.  Either way was going to lead him to a population center.  He was still not in his proper body, but he would figure that out when he got there.  First he had to figure out how he had gotten there.

A pinching feeling at the back of his neck made him stop.  He had picked up the instinct from Alice, and was already going for the Doorknocker.  Then the voice in his head stopped it’s repetition of Tote Sie.  It changed tactics now.  Corporal?  He went to speak, then was stopped, Do not respond.  Ponies will think you’re crazy.  Like HER.
“Wha?”
Think what you want me to hear.  Nopony else can hear me.
Who are you?
You should know me well, by now, Randel Oland.  I have been by your side for five years now.

Randel froze at that.  The lantern.  The Wisp inside, it was speaking to him.  What was he supposed to think.  He thought about what the lantern had spoken, or thought, wait a moment, “Ponies?”
You are not home.  You are not in Hell.  Nor is this Heaven.  The wisps, my kind, have informed me.  We are in Equestria, a world filled with intelligent ponies.
Who is this crazy one you keep talking about?
The wisp with her, it calls itself Stone.  It calls her The Pink Menace.
Randel started walking again, trying to find his way down the path, only to have the lantern speak again, SHE comes.  Do not draw.
Draw?

“HIHIHI!!!NEWPONYNEWPONY!!GOTTATHROWAPARTY!”  The pink streak shot off into the distance.

Was that The Pink Menace.  Yes.  Stone declares that we mustn’t be late.
Why was I brought here though?  How did I survive?  My chest was Gone.  I know.  The scar won’t be there forever.
His feet brought him out of his conversation as the terrain changed from packed dirt to cobblestone.  He stopped and looked around, at the expressions of fear from the brightly colored horses.  He dropped to his knees, moving slowly.  Horses were one of the few creatures as tall as he was.  Now, on his knees, he was shorter, and at their mercy, though these ones were SHORT.  He towered over them even on his knees.  He drooped to sit on his heels, “I can explain.” No you can’t.