//------------------------------// // War Torn (2.2 Edited 25/02/15) // Story: Fear of The Unknown // by Lazy_ //------------------------------// A thousand needles scraped along a bronze landscape, their shrill tinnitus ringing and rattling across their demented landscape as they, with fervent resolution, resolved to drown him out of this hell into a black bile to which he could escape from his woe. Gunfire rattled the air as yet another squadron, broken as his was, fulfilled their promise of sacrifice. This had become a common sight over the months; the once great Equestrian’ legions reduced to a paltry set of scattered survivors, now rebelling more out of habit than will. They would all soon die anyway. Enemy forces now patrolled freely through the streets searching for the survivors they knew to be hiding among the buildings. Not that there were many buildings left. The war had taken it's toll on the once bright and lively town. At one time the streets were alive with ponies selling food, doing shopping or just occasionally going out for the peace of mind the quiet town once provided. Now the only thing left of that life was the occasional picture or painting lying among the rubble. The battle was lost to Equestria in those first fateful 48 hours. The human soldiers hit hard and fast; The guard never stood a chance. The main forces massacred the guard, Equestria must have lost at least 50 guards in the first 5 minutes alone. The humans barely took any casualties at all. He was briefly brought forth from his reflection by the piece of flaming debris that had violently crashed into one of the many craters that now pocketed the once bustling town square, specifically HIS crater. The trademark symbol of their destruction now ironically served as a welcome reprieve to his dank and cold fur which was soaked in some strange black liquid that came from the carriage he shared the crater with. The sudden heat that came from the puddle at the bottom of the crater told him it was time to leave. On the first night a small force of Luna's night guard arrived in darkness and carried out night raids against the invading forces to slow them down. But even the thestrals, trained in the arts of stealth and precision were no match for the humans. They told of some unseen combatant, which kept shooting them from the sky. Occasionally, the human's notoriously loud firearms were silenced by the explosions around town, this foe had been trained in warfare much more differently from the more common ground troops. This foe was accurate, this foe was invisible, this foe was deadly. And there was nothing that theysurviving groups of the guard could do about them. Needless to say, over time the guard was pummeled by infantry, overpowered by artillery and hunted by the unseen soldiers. Even when they used ambush techniques and managed to overcome superior tactics and technology, they would almost immediately be killed by the armoured carriages; They were doomed to die as soon as they fired their first crossbow bolt or magic spell. Ever since the first two days of fighting that's generally how it went. The crackling and sputtering of the dying flames became more apparent as the fighting simmered away, this were nowhere near the all out war that had transpired in Ponyville before, but slowly dying skirmishes popped up every now and again when the broken bands of different guards felt like making a move. But they would ultimately fail against unfavorable odds, and succumb to the same fate as their fellows. Now all that was left of the 800 posted to Ponyville was a small force barely worthy of the name 'Resistance'. No more than 20 or so crippled guards shuffling around and hoping to Celestia that they go unnoticed. It was a dark time indeed. Flash Flood, an Unicorn guard, crawled through the wreckage of a flattened building near to what used to be the center of Ponyville. His body was coated in dirt, dust and grime as he gradually pulled his body forward through the rubble. His shredded torso armour barely protected him anymore and he had lost his helmet to a collapsing building the night before. His fur was matted in places, the blood of his fallen comrades who had been slaughtered in those initial first hours of the battle had stained his once clean white coat. He had no idea why he was here, fighting the war and so on. Once upon a time, humans conversed with the ponies through portal devices and complicated inter dimensional spells crafted by none other than the alicorn princesses themselves. But slowly things deteriorated and it was not known why they did so. In a conference on the relationships between the two species, Princess Celestia said that: "I believe tension and arguments between Human nations are common. Recently thing have become rather heated and I think it wise to distance ourselves as far from these issues as possible. I do not wish to involve Equestria in matters far beyond my control as doing so may bring nothing but ruin" Then one day they arrived in full force, first trying to evict ponies from their homes to take their settlements. Performing threatening acts against Equestria and it's ponies. Eventually the royal princesses took action and confrontation broke out. It had not been wanted by either side, but it happened, none of the survivors spoke of the incident, excepting one who shared the story with Celestia so that she could finally get to the bottom of what was happening. Nopony knew what had been shared in their common privacy, but the guard emerged from the throne room in tears and Celestia refused to talk about what had been said. He had heard so many stories behind the curtain that he had to conclude that few ponies in Equestria really knew exactly why, except for the Humans and princesses of course. The reasons he had heard included: The humans had sapped their planet dry of natural resources and their technology, as advanced as it was, was not able to adapt fast enough to the few readily available natural resources of energy they had left. And that they were constantly fighting over oil fields and such. Other ponies told that the population of humans had spiraled out of control and their world could no longer support them. Causing land wars between neighboring countries. And then there was the theory that it was a mixture of the two, with a few variables added in. He had thought about these stories and what they implied, It seemed to him that the human race was old. Old to the point of surpassing their civilisation that amounted to around 3000 years of age at their current point in time. And judging by the technology they wielded, he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. The evidence was not just in the physical things though. Flood could see the experience in their tactics; Cold, Calculated, Machine-like. The smell of Burning copper and ash filled the air and tickled his snout as he shuffled slowly through the chunks of wood and brick that was arranged in a discordant mountain. Bits of glass dotted the ruins and bore sharpened edges simply daring Flash Flood to crawl across them. He avoided them where he could and clenched his teeth shut when he couldn't. He reached a sloped piece of rubble and he grimaced. He was too tired to be dragging his body around like he was, let alone start hauling it up a pile of rusty nails and splintered wood. He crawled up anyway. It was wide enough to act as a support, but he questioned its stability when his full weight bore down on the structure; It creaked painfully, and swayed with the slightest breezes he’d previously foolishly ignored. The peaks exaggerated gyrations making him feel nauseous, he elected to scramble up quickly before he was noticed. Before long he reached the top and lay there with a limp body and exhausted mind.He struggled to keep a content sigh trapped, fearing the attention of the enemy which lay not fifty yards ahead. He counted twenty men; some of whom were drinking from their canteens as others stood watch. Deadly weapons at the ready, their eyes scoured over the landscape, guiding their weapons along toward potential prey. He kept a look out for other survivors, using the nylon strap and the magic stick it held to keep the unarmored portion of his body off the shattered remains of lattice and window, he raised him head over the top of the mountain. It honestly smelled of fire and smoke, but the weight it took of the glass made the smell well worth bearing. He’d acquired it from a human he caught off guard "-Heh, caught off 'guard'...-" He thought to himself. "-...How ironic.-" He saw the two fractions of the group switch, the sentries resting to get water, and the drinkers going on sentry duty. That was an incredibly annoying aspect about them, they were very paranoid and you would be tremendously lucky to catch one with his guard down. They were constantly vigilant and rarely rested without an over-watch of some kind. He wanted to take the rifle from his side and kill as many of them as he could. But his hooves began violently shaking mid-way across the sling they used as a guide towards retribution, they began to shake as he remembered what happened to Sharp Eyes. A flash of light rushed forth to meet its target The spell missed, and his failure met with a flash of light and a wall painted with his broken skull. These new weapons, and the mindsets behind them held no honor, no mercy. His friend was dead, there was no time for mourning or comfort. This fact was presented within the painful silence of this uncaring universe so suddenly that the image of sharps cocky smile and obnoxious personality still imprinted on his mind, was trying to attach itself with some sort of grotesque coherency to the mangled and still form that he desperately refused to believe was his friend. However, the fact was, Sharps was dead; he would never know why he made himself the target to such a dishonorable and disgustingly clinical death. 'why didn't you just kill them sharps, why did you try and become the distraction, you saw what they could do.' A sight Flash Flood would never forget as long as he lived. One second Sharps was alive and well next to him, but the next.... Flood stopped trying to retrieve the rifle as he brought his hooves up to shakily wipe away his brimming tears. The fighting had been so terrible and sometimes he was left in silence to think about the fragility of life and just how quickly it can be taken away. "Oh, Sharps'..." he mumbled quietly to himself. "...I only wish it could’ve been me instead. What am I going to say to them, Sharps'?" He watched the tears roll down his hoof and drop onto the ground below. He held his hoof to his forehead to stop them trembling and squeezed his eyes shut as the thoughts and memories of his old friend rushed through his mind as he desperately tried to hold on to them like the precious treasures they had become. It was that incident, that content smile on sharps face before he died, that taught him, It wasn’t a matter of weather he would ever leave this war, but of weather this war would ever leave him. The memories faded and Flood tensed as he heard gunshots, close and loud. He turned his attention back to the patrol ahead where the sentries were firing on a pair of unicorns casting defensive spells. A high pitched sound blasted across the landscape, following the bullets that made it. They landed in the surrounding area with 'thud's and soon the riflemen stopped firing, seeing the futility of the action. Flood smiled with delight as he thought for a moment that his two fellow guards might get away for once. The two ponies clambered out of the ruins and began to head behind the building to break the line of sight. But then, a low rumbling shook and swayed his perch causing his Armour and stick to grind the glass beneath them in a worryingly loud process. This sound he recognized too well, the noise made by impervious and deadly carriages faded in after the gunfire stopped and around the corner, the huge grey beast appeared. On it's side was the labeling; 'Scorpion'. Flash Flood ducked back behind his cover landing painfully onto the pile so that he could only just see over the top as he reverted his eyes to the desperate unicorns attempting to escape through the back of the building. One was holding a magical shield as the other pushed clumps of debris out of the way with telekinesis. Flood watched helplessly as the vehicle rolled up and stopped next to the patrol of human infantry, it's cannon rotated with an anguishing composure to aim directly at the now panicking guards. The shielder abandoned his now obsolete position in favor of frantically clearing an escape path among the debris. As they scrambled to escape, Flood smiled in relief as the guards looked to have been lucky this time. However the happy expression was wiped violently from his face as the carriage opened fire on the collapsed building before the two could fully get into cover. *Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam* The dust coloured box with sharp angles, indiscriminate extremities of unknown function, and ugly outlines which reached out away from the machine as if bearing down on the entire world with threats groaned as the dirt and debris at the entrance to the escape path exploded into clouds of dust and wood chips, and just for a moment Flood thought he could see a red tint to the dense mist. No, surely they escaped, this was just his mind putting unnecessary labels to red clay. Then there was an eerie quiet as the echo of the explosions sounded off into the distance, bouncing off' the sides of the mountains and drowning out the inferior noises that had been cracking through the residue of war. As the echos slowly faded away, Flood opened his teary eyes with an equally slow pace. For a moment there was silence and he thought that the humans may have noticed him and were creeping up on him as he hid away. But as he froze still and listened for the un-mistakable *Thud-Thud* of the bipedal boots impacting ground, he dismissed the feeling as a product of fear and passed it off. Slowly but surely, he peeked his head over his cover and saw that the humans were inspecting what was left of the unicorns. The odd piece of charred horn or bones with a couple of armour shards here and there. The low rumble of the carriage's engine roared back to full kick as it traveled forward, picking up speed and driving around the ruins of Flood's hiding place and rounding a corner to head off somewhere else in the town. Not long after, the foot patrol made their way off as well. Flash Flood watched in a pregnant silence as they walked vigilantly away, looking all around for any threats to their operation as they went. He watched them travel down the far side of the street and turn the corner to exit the square one by one as they patrolled off to assist others of their kind deal with larger groups of resistance that had now popped up. Once the last of them disappeared around the corner he immediately awarded his right hoof reprieve and collapsed the left side of his body off the gun and onto the splinters and glass, but the shuddering release of the breath he couldn't remember holding and the friction it caused between his body and the shrapnel in his armour soon provided adequate motivation for his re commitment to his portable island. letting his head fall into his hooves as he rubbed his temples forcefully he tried vainly to breathe quietly and keep from crying, ‘it never gets any easier’. His pounding head, a constant reminder of his exhausted state only intensified with the glaring heat being brought down upon his body. The heat was what bothered him most, yes, It was the heat. The heat was universal, it couldn't be removed like the sand, It couldn't be swatted away like the flies, but worst of all It was out of his control; he could at any moment get up shake off the dust from his fur, tell the flies to fuck off and crack his joints in orgasmic bliss, choosing to spend the last moments of his life in that suspended state of celestial nirvana. However, no matter what he did, should he blow his cover he would still die hot, burning with the ember fog which advanced over the landscape from the direction of the latest explosion. There he sat, counting the seconds of torturous conditions as he dreamt of freedom, but dreams would get him nowhere, now was the time to embrace reality and come to action. The chances of escaping were slim, Enemy eyes were everywhere, miles away in the nearby plateau, hidden in plain sight and their eyes peering through the lattice fences, looking down from through windows, and through their aims, ‘his muzzle remorselessly pointed at sharps eye’. And with the carriages and the silent hunters stalking the streets there was so little possibility that he could make it out alive there was almost no point trying. He felt so so tired, the heat wasn’t that bad was it? "buck..." He shouted under his breath , adding yet another set of marks to his mental tally. How many had he seen meet this fate? He had lost count before the end of the first night, but he realised it must have been an extortionate number. ‘...Why did I join the guard, It was never meant to be this way’ He mentally recited the Rules of combat as well as infantry tactics. They had gone over it extensively but they never covered warfare like this. “No, I won’t give up, not like this” He whispered with all of the determination and conviction he could muster, collapsing as the last reserves of control he had evaporated on the breath of that last assurance and floated up to dissipate amongst the smoke, and embers. He rested there wondering How the war had ruined his life. He could have been sitting back home , drinking wine , laughing at his uncles worn “jokes” on the state of dads mane, stealing his sisters piece of cake when she wasn’t looking, with sharp eyes help of course, and of course trying to suppress a headache around the innocent persona sharps put around his family to make him look bad. But these things were not to be, as here he was fighting for his life in a war he barely understood. He chuckled to himself and picked his weary body off' the ground and took a deep breath. "-Come on, Flash Flood! Pull yourself together!-" He thought to himself. "-You're a guard not a cry-foal, think about what you're doing!-" He considered all avenues of survival, no matter how low they were, and came to think that if he stayed he would die anyway. So he decided it was worth giving it a shot, besides, somepony had to get back to the Ponyville FOB a few miles northwest toward Canterlot to let the superiors know of the situation. He gingerly lowered himself from the rubble and steeled himself as he steadied his breathing to make sure he was ready to undertake an escape attempt. He took a look around the town square and contemplated his surroundings; Four exit-ways out of the town center existed and considering most of the buildings were either flattened or unstable , he was going to have very little cover. He leaned out of his cover and looked northwest, where he needed to go if he was to escape as quickly as possible. There were a few out-standing buildings still managing to hold themselves up among the plethora of rubble piles that lined the streets. Most of these buildings were situated on the left side of the street so he made the decision that he would head there first. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out of the relatively safe hiding place and out into the open. The sniper rested in his birds nest at the top of a bell-tower, at the northwest end of the town. His weapon rested in-between two sets of sandbags that he dragged up to make some cover for himself. He scoured the streets shadowing the squadrons as they diligently searched the town leaving no rock unturned as they checked and double checked every single part of the town he could provide support for from his hiding spot. His crosshairs left the flattened area east of the town center to look at the center itself. The scopes field of view transitioned slowly over the many houses and piles of rubble that dotted the square, as he kept his wits about him, prepared to lock onto anything his ever sharp eyes ever caught sight of. As he arrived at the remains of an old confectionery store dead center in the middle of town he spotted a team of infantrymen and an machine moving out of the area to move on in their patrol after eliminating a small group of guards hiding in a half destroyed building. He watched them leave and as he was doing so, he thought a light had shone into his scope, standing out from the embers reflected lights which twinkled from the glass littered streets through it’s strange properties. It reached him through a crack in the monolith of rubble opposite the building. His spotter must have seen it too, as he pointed at the rubble and whispered a quick notice to him. To which he confirmed and both rested their sights on what was left of the building. He moved his crosshair over to get a better look as he remembered the golden armour worn by Equestria's day guards. As his focus increased, he soon saw that the gold patch had some texture and moved rhythmically with what could be described as a body breathing. He exhaled and steadied himself, he knew he had found a target after hours. He lay there waiting for the pony to reveal itself, idly noticing the jittery, irregular and sickly way the reflection moved in time with the suns setting. But he was a trained marksman, his patience would not be swayed. His patience paid off as the pony moved out from it's hiding spot to make it's way to the other side of the street. He slowly centered his crosshairs as they swayed gently left and right. It began to walk across the road, it's head darting about to take in it's surroundings as it went. The pony made it to the middle of the road before he could get a good shot. He leaned into his rifle and steadied himself. The crosshairs hovered over the pony's 'upper' body and around the heart and lungs as he prepared to take the shot. He was squeezing the trigger and about to pull it all the way down as something black and noisy interrupted his perfectly aligned shot. He retracted from his optics to see a scout helicopter had just strafed in front of his line of sight. His face of concentration broke apart into one of frustration as he glared at the helicopter and cast a quick glance to his spotter. The spotter looked back at him and shrugged before taking up his tactical binoculars again. The sniper watched the helicopter for a second with an expression of tested patience as he waited for it to move. Flash Flood's eyes went wide as he saw the flying metal beast strafe above a set of flattened houses in front of him and he immediately darted the rest of the way to the opposite side of the street. The loud buzzing unnerved him. As he reached the other side, he leapt over a pile of rubble, lying down on the other side to hide from the flying monster. It hovered there for a short time and Flood simply still as it rotated on the spot and checked the area. The embers and smoke underneath it flowing towards him in waves which he hoped provided cover. "-Please don't see me...-" He pleaded not daring to utter the words, even over the monstrosities rumbling, he had barely gotten across the street and already, he was in danger of being torn apart by the human's war machines. He stayed quiet and frozen like a statue as the drone continued. He was starting to wonder how long the war machine was going to stay when the noise picked up and the machine tilted forward as it sped away over the buildings to go provide support against the resistance But Flood still didn't move, the flying things were even more terrifying than the carriages, Helicopters, he believed the humans called them. They could move fast and hover. Their weapons weren't as powerful as the carriages but their weapon's stupendous fire rate and the machine's maneuverability made them a fearful opponent indeed. It was now he started to lament his, and even Equestria’s place in this war. A few moments later, he popped his head over the small piece of cover and looked around trying to see through the wall of smoke and ash in front of him. Satisfied with the lack of danger he stood back up with a heavy but careful sigh. Walking around his cover he made his way over to the corner, where a house still somewhat intact. He crept up to the door and stopped at it's side, stacking up by himself ready to breach. He took his stolen rifle in his magical grip and poked the barrel through the small gap in-between the door and frame. Levering it open a bit, he put his eye to the sights and rotated to open the door a little. He could see nopony or human inside so he took the barrel out of the gap and instead used it to push open the door. it creaked open painfully slowly and loudly Flood grimaced as he listened to the noise that could easily be the last one he hears. Once it was open he quickly scooted inside and hid behind the door silently, listening for the approach of enemy troops. Luckily for him, the silence was still just as prominent as before. The 'Ratatat' of distant gunfire rattled in the air and Flood blinked tiredly. He turned around and searched the thankfully smokeless room, and saw an unblocked staircase leading up to a second tier, and seeing no other route away from the building, he decided to go up. He walked over and tested his weight on the stairs. He decided to use the old 'side of the step' method in order to make as little noise as possible when climbing. And up he went. Each step revealed the worn history of the steps as he made his way upward. He managed to make it to the top without incident and peeked his face over the lip of the stairs to make sure it was clear. The room upstairs was just as barren, grey and dusty looking as if it hadn't been cared for in centuries. Flood stepped onto the upper floor and looked around for anything valuable, but once again there was nothing of interest. He walked to an open doorway trying to quiet his thudding hooves and peeked around the side of the room, the sight making him groan with frustration. That part of the building had completely fallen away, leaving only a small shelf space which bridged the gap between the two doors, it looked to be an unstable platform which by the look of it, may just be able to take his weight. He walked into the doorway and over to where the floor fell away. He took a deep breath and rose up onto his hinds as he leaned his underside as close to the wall as he possibly could. Shuffling sideways, he edged his way closer to the other side incredibly slowly, almost nerve racking so. About halfway across his hoof landed on some loose material and slipped off, causing some debris to fall away onto the ground below where a large pile of gravel existed. He regained his balance and slammed himself back against the wall, while his chest heaved and he panted with the adrenaline running through his veins. Flood quickly brought himself back together and started shimmying to the other side again. He arrived with no further incident and found sufficient space to let himself fall back to the natural all fours as he rested the hinds from carrying his entire weight. After shaking out his legs he walked over to the next half destroyed doorway. A small jump existed from his floor to its unstable opposite, and as he was thinking about it, another rattle of shots rung out, closer this time. He turned his head and scoured the area behind him for any points of exposure to some human who may have been watching. Now that he thought about it, all this time he had been skulking around like he was in a “Daring Doo” novel and had yet to be spotted. Either he was very lucky or something out there was very patient. This brought him back to think about the silent hunters that were somewhere in the ruins of Ponyville, watching, waiting, hunting him and his comrades. He had seen them shoot pegasi and thestrals from the sky like a griffon would on a skeet shooting day. Of course he had never seen them in actual form, only their scarily accurate shots and the large holes left in the unfortunate victims. "Sometimes I wonder..." He said in-between breaths. "... Why haven't we got weapons like these yet?" He shifted his shoulder to move the rifle resting against it and he gave it a quick glance. It looked strangely beautiful as well as terrifying with it's black coating and reflective materials. This only served to remind him that he was in a war-zone, and he should be more careful. And he mentally kicked himself for not thinking about it earlier. All this time somehuman could have been watching him, and he would have had no clue… He peered around the open doorway once more, this time with decreased pace and increased care. The gap in-between the side of his current house and the open wall to the next was doable and in no way posed a threat to him. It was the floor on the other side that worried him; It was cracked and several places and barely had any support as the bottom floor looked to have been largely blown out and burnt He decided to go for it, and as he stepped back, he took a deep breath. He then let it out again before sprinting forward through the open hole in the wall and jumped to the other building. As he was gliding through the air, a loud 'BANG' rang out and a high pitch pressure induced noise smashed his ears and he lost his sense of balance mid air. He hit the edge of the floor and it crumbled away underneath him. Confused and slightly disoriented, he scrambled for grip and kicked at the ground wildly, spurred to action by the vertigo and the licking heat of the floating embers below. Finally, his back hoof caught on the lower window and he managed to save himself from falling to the ground below and breaking something, He pushed away from the the exposed gap and tried to steady his off-beat breathing as he found a safe spot to chill for a second. He saw something on the wall near to where he had jumped, a black impact hole in the wall and a rather large one at that. Inside was a smoking object that had just hit the wall projected at high velocity. It took a while for it to hit him, but when it did he felt like his chances of escape were reduced from minute to molecular as he began to tremble. The shot that had hit the wall and narrowly missed his head was fired by one of the silent hunters. Judging by the hoof sized hole in the brick he guessed it would have surely obliterated his head if it had hit. He came to the realisation that he was being watched, hunted down by the invisible foe that stalked the senses of every surviving guard in the town. He didn't think it possible before, but now he knew. It was strange what such realizations did to a pony, rather than increase his anxiety, the situation seemed to have a calming effect, as if the certainty of the source of death had given him something to focus on, the fact that something was focusing on him. Perhaps this war would leave him sooner than he thought.