I.
How do you prepare for battle?
There have been many answers to that question through uncountable years and uncountable words. Everything from grooming, polite company, light music… to an orgy of mead and drunkenness sometimes spiced with hallucinogenic. But neither of these are quite the Ranger’s style. He is no aristocrat with disarming smiles, nor is he a barbarian fit to roll under the table nuzzling an empty tankard. He is something in between.
Which is fitting, really, isn’t it? Not a soldier but not a civilian. Neither nightponies or dayponies but both. Rangers are like the twilight, the in-between. They carry few weapons, but train with them all. They aren’t trained to fortify a position, but they know how to create shelter and sometimes it is the same thing.
Perhaps it would be more fair to say it this way: Guards defend, Luna’s Nightshades attack out of the shadows, but Rangers simply do whatever they can when they can.
II.
I followed in a daze, my eyes unfocused and my mind blank as it could be, given the circumstances.
The unicorn we had borrowed hummed as he worked. I felt him removing things from the heavy saddlebags I wore, but I didn’t see what he was doing anymore. I was just a mobile toolbox and lumber source, really. I was alright with this.
When I was younger, I used to really envy unicorns their magic. It seemed so amazing, so fun. It still does, really, but it was nice to be able to fly, and flying took the edge off of that envy. For the first hour, I watched everything the legionary did with a sort of awe. But even miracles grow dull if repeated a thousand times. You can only watch the same pony bang on boards with magic and hammer so many times—and when you’ve seen one beautiful boarded-up window you’ve seen them all, really.
I told Lily what the princess said and she went white as a sheet. I don’t know why… but when I told her my nightmares were still going, she quickly got over it. She started bombarding me with questions. I told her the truth—yeah, I felt like I was gonna hurl because I was nervous, yes my nightmares were getting worse, so on and so forth. She made me something and told me to drink it after lunch. It’s after lunch, but I haven’t had a chance to do much about it because the fortification is the important thing, isn’t it?
An overview, as I blink at nothing in boredom:
The great doors have been bolted shut and then secured with chains brought up from the honestly rather creepy but blessedly small and empty dungeons. A few refugee unicorns helped us fortify the barricade with magic that will keep for another two days, making the chains twice as durable. Then, we shored it up with wood. To either side of the door, we boarded up the windows and left some small spaces to stick guns behind. Swift broke out some of the window panes, which hut our ears and hurt my heart, but it was needful. We have to see to shoot. That’s the first line. Two Rangers and a legionary to reload will be there.
The second line of defense is the great hall. If the changelings can break through the door or windows, which they will eventually, then they’ll find that we’ve brought in tables and turned the grand stairway into a kind of fortress of haphazard, repurposed furniture. Tables and chairs go along the bannisters, providing us some cover while Soft Fang and a legionary ensured that trying to fly into all of that mess is going to be nasty and sharp for the intruder. The rest of us will be here, waiting and shooting any stragglers that squeeze through until the first line can be abandoned.
When that inevitably gets too hot to handle, we move again. This is where things start breaking down. (I was right, by the way, because the Knight-Commander did in fact have a plan!) The lower rooms are wider and more spacious, but they have fewer windows. The upper rooms have tons of windows which have to be boarded up and defended, but tighter space. We’ll be heading upwards, vulnerable to attack from all sides as we flee the great hall barricade until we can get through the last barricade, which is really one of several. If we can lure them into the tight hallways, then we have a chance. They’ll come hurtling through, thinking they’ve beaten us and that we’re on the run, only to crash into each other and be easy targets. Enough confusion and we can inflict massive casualties very quickly from the “sandbags” which are really some of the old sheets and pillows that we filled with random crap and then shored up with the wood we had left.
After that…
Well, nowhere to go that’s planned or built up. Every time we fall back we come dangerously close to losing ponies and we don’t have many to lose.
I’ve been awake since around right before sunrise, talking and building and walking. The refugees are all gone down below now, on their way to the Den under the city and then I suppose… elsewhere. Back out into the snow, heading east for Imperial Center or south towards Equestria. To be honest, I was still getting over my dream at that point.
It’s real. The look on Lily’s face confirms it. But…
But who cares? And why now? I saw Luna. I met her. We talked. But what does that do me here and now? An interview, and audience with Luna herself cannot save me if fangs or hooves do me in. If by some dark miracle they find a Mitou to crash through those doors, no amount of goodwill from on high will whisk me out of the danger.
And I can’t even enjoy it, really. When I woke this morning, my head was spinning. I had talked to Luna! I had shared her dream! But hours and hours of sunlight slipping away in the business of preparing for death dampens any joy. The truth is, the sad truth, is that you can’t be excited forever, not even over dying. Eventually, it rubs away and you’re left with what’s left… and sometimes what’s left is nothing. If you’re lucky, you have the thing itself, the core of your excitement. If you aren’t? If you aren’t you end up staring ahead while a unicorn finishes putting boards up on another window on the second story, wondering how long it will be until this is finished with.
I hear somepony coming and turn my head to see… Ruby. I smile at her automatically, and she smiles at me.
“Hey,” I greet her warmly, and it isn’t hard and it isn’t a pretense because despite my general… whatever this is, seeing her does make me feel better.
“Why, hello there, Ranger,” she says and then salutes. I chuckle, and then she joins me.
“Doesn’t feel real,” I say. “Not really.”
She nods. “I understand… It’s rather strange for me, as well. Do you not feel that you’ve earned it? We’ve seen more warfare in a few weeks than some see in years.”
I press my tongue against the inside of my cheeks, and then: “Yeah, I guess. You’re right, Ruby, but… I mean, there’s more to Ranger-ing then just war. Hell, I think it’s the smallest part of it.”
She sits and then leans against the wall. She hums softly, and then speaks again. “That’s true. You’re a smart pony, Midnight. And I guess that… I don’t know. I feel like what we’ve done should count. And there are parts of being a Ranger that we’ve grown in because of all this that aren’t just fighting.”
“Like what?” I ask, but my voice is soft. I’m interested, but not really… feeling up to conversation. On the other hoof, this is Ruby, and I’m sort of always up to talk to Ruby. Especially with… well. With how things are.
“Well, survival,” she said, and then chuckled. I chuckle, and I’m surprised to hear the slightest laughter from the unicorn digging more nails out of my bags. “We’ve learned how to do a lot of work with light rations without falling out of the sky. We’ve covered a lot of ground. Saving ponies and saving refugees is kind of the same. And! And we’ve learned how to work together as a wing—“
“You kinda do that one in school,” I grumble.
She sticks her tongue out at me and its so ludicrous to see her do it over the Lunar emblem pinned to her duster that I laugh.
“Yeah, yeah. But you see what I mean, right?”
“I do.” I smile at her. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, Ruby. Thanks.”
“No problem, Midnight.” She sighs. “They’re figuring out who goes where downstairs.”
“Any good news?” I ask. I don’t like it when she isn’t smiling. I wonder, idly, if that’s selfish of me. Maybe her smiles are her own and her frowns are her own, and I can enjoy them but I shouldn’t push them into being. “I hope I’m not on the front door.”
“I think you might be,” she says. “Sorry. You have good eyes and you’re fast, so Star Brand says you have a better chance of doing good there than anypony else. Except maybe Swift.”
I cringe. “Yeah.”
I mean, I understand. He’s probably right. But…
I feel like its being signed up to die first.
III.
The day wanes. The Knight-Commander sends out Swift to fly over the compound twice before sunset, and he sends Soft once after it. Nothing stirs in the unreal city, Amethyst that was, a lost husk on a lost frontier.
The defenders of the compound are meager and haggard. There is no military polish in them, and that is just as well. Seven rangers, none of them initiates. Nine legionaries, hungry and cold. Two refugee unicorns with nowhere to go. One Pathfinder unlooked for—Last Call, ready to throw his weight, refusing to leave and sending Gale on ahead over his many protests. Nineteen. Midnight didn’t notice until the afternoon and she and Ruby laughed themselves hoarse over it. Oh, irony. How fitting. How awful.
The windows were boarded, the doors reinforced, the old city watch’s primitive shootsticks supplemented by slightly more slender Legion muskets. Hoofblades from the Governor-Generals’ private armory had been passed out. Barding small enough for Ruby and large enough for Last Call. Torches all along the streets. The walls treated by unicorn magic to make them resistant to flame both natural and magical. Dusters enchanted to resist puncture.
Star Brand and Swift huddled over cards, leaning against the door. Soft Fang talking slowly with the two refugee spellcasters, speaking comfortingly, speaking of them in glowing terms. Midnight and Ruby sharing a blanket and talking to legionaries. Legionaries and Last Call putting torches outside, wondering how useful they will actually be when night comes. Yuletide upstairs next to the scrying globe he can barely operate, weeping softly beneath it, his head in his hooves. Lily huddled in a corner, staring at receding with her skin in rebellion.
How do you prepare for death and what is it? Do those questions haunt you? Should they? That is the line of thought in every head that snakes around and around. And like a snake it bites anything that stays still long enough, or it chokes it if it struggles, every other thought or feeling.
If death is a door it is wide open.
IV.
Lily shook all over.
Today was the day she was going to die. Or, well, tonight was the night she was going to die. It didn’t really matter. She knew this not because the changelings would swarm down on them tonight, but because she had run out of supplies.
Supplies. She wanted to spit in fury. She loathed herself. Supplies. Call them what they are.
Ratios. Supplies fulfilled ratios, ratios fulfilled “needs” needs fulfilled days days fulfilled the term of her service her service fulfilled life her life fulfilled—
One part Lunar Amaranth—Selena Anthos—there are four dozen uses for it, it was the basis of all batpony medicine. They’d brought it over the sea. One part piper methysticum. This was a tropical plant, and she’d spent a lot of bits keeping in good supply. Together they made Lily.
But as soon as she’d seen Midnight, Lily had known this would be her last night on earth as herself. Or, really, her last morning, for she was slipping. Midnight had looked exhausted. Bags under her eyes, drooping ears, dull coat, everywhere signs of exhaustion and malady. She was young but that didn’t mean she was invincible. She needed the Anthos more than Lily did. She was so young and she wasn’t strung along. She could survive. The flower could be mixed with other things, and then… but as soon as she’d gone to work she had started shaking because she knew she only had enough left for one more dose for her and it was all gone now and she was sweating like she was in heat.
One part… one part amaranth from across the sea… one part…
She tasted her own bile in her throat. Another wave of shakes. She had to ride it out. She had to endure. Just a little longer. She couldn’t let them see her like this. They knew Lily, but they did not the one underneath and she would die as the right Lily if she could.
V.
Swift paced. The night was coming with a vengeance and the changelings had not swooped down to tear and devour and he was very, very ready for that to change. Not because he wanted to die, because honestly he didn’t think much about death. He was just ready for anything that wasn’t waiting. Waiting is the worst thing. Waiting is boredom that continues. To not be useful, to not be in movement was not just sinful—it was boring, and ponies often underestimate the power of mere boredom to wear away at a perfectly good soul.
Soft Fang and Star Brand were on watch. He hadn’t seen Lily or the new Rangers in awhile. No, he took that back. He’d seen Ruby eating with some of the legionary fusiliers, chatting. She was really a charming young mare, and he wished fervently for a world where she could have space to learn to put steel in her spine without haste squeezing that gentle spirit into nothingness. A Ranger who could talk down a pony and comfort one in need of rescue was almost as important as one who could fly a crippled one to safety or take down a timberwolf with a well placed kick. Ponies like Ruby really could keep a whole station working and living and going strong.
Midnight. He liked her. She was a good kid—and he caught himself ruefully. Neither of them were foals, and he couldn’t think of them as being initiates anymore. They wore the emblem same as he did. Midnight in that weird hat she’d picked up Luna knew where and Ruby around a chain on her neck (or had she pinned it? He forgot now). They’d been admitted by unanimous vote. Midnight was born to stalk a mark, trail them with sharp eyes and sharper ears. She was a shadow in the darkness. He appreciated a pony who could do her work without being seen or heard.
Star Brand would be watching out some window, even if he wasn’t technically on watch. They understood each other—Brand wanted to be doing something, same as him.
He tried to hum as he walked the great hall, but it came out tuneless and a little soulless, so he stopped.
On a whim, he turned and walked away from the great hall, towards the armory. He was happy with the hoofblades that he had found, but he could always look for another set…
So it was that he came across Midnight slumped against a wall. He opened his mouth, about to greet her with a joke, but then stopped. Her body sagged, like she was asleep… or hurt. He was about to spring to her aid, but yet again he stopped. Swift’s eyes swept over her quickly and he recognized what he saw.
Staring into her eyes, her wide, dilated eyes, he knew. And he shook the startled Midnight. Before she could complain, Swift drug her into a side room and pushed her in as he slammed the door closed.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? How did you get into her stuff?”
Midnight stared at him. He truly saw her now. Not just the symptoms but the mare herself—confused, unknowing. “I don’t understand, she—“
“Lily needs this. Did you even know?” He was furious but more than that he was terrified. He always knew.
“What are you talking about?” she shook her head. “What did she give me? I feel all… all weird. I feel great but also kind of dizzy…”
“She… shit.” He sat and rubbed his temples. “Shit. Dammit, Lily. Luna… dammit.”
“What did I do?” Midnight is close now, trying to get him to look up. “What did I do? What did she give me? I’m sorry!”
“Lily’s been drugging herself since Canterlot,” he said dully. “She told me she was running low. Have you seen her?”
“N-no…”
“Probably because she’s out, now. You… there’s no way you could know. This is fucked. Just… what did it taste like? Did she say what she gave you?”
“It was… blue?”
“Eh. Probably… yeah. Just… Just walk it off. You’ll feel great, but it’s not what she gives herself. Gods, I’m glad she didn’t do that. I’m going to find her. Don’t tell anypony she gave you anything. Try to act normal… and for Luna’s sake, Midnight, don’t look anypony in the eye for a few hours.”
And he left her there, confused.
VI.
Night has fallen. Swift sits with Lily as the shaking stops. Yuletide with dry eyes turns one of the legionary muskets over and over. The others eat or wait.
The changelings have not come. Will they? In each heart burrows the tiny light of hope: “Maybe they won’t come at all!” But then that hope dies hard when the alternative is pondered. Where else would they go? Probably after the refugees they have chased for so long.
The Rangers are beginning to get worried that they have left the refugees to die and inadvertently saved themselves. There is no relief in that potential salvation.
Why do you choose to stay behind in the first place, after all? What is the motivation for sacrifice and self-immolation? Who chooses to die swarmed by changelings? They all ask themselves this.
Legionaries do what they must, what they promised, and besides—where would they go? Last Call’s reasons are his own. The refugees saw their families die before their eyes, victim’s to the excess of the conqueror’s joy. Yuletide and Star Brand live duty. Lily and Swift do not wish to be alone. Soft Fang believes in doing the job in front of him.
And the youngest?
A confused and worried Midnight waiting with a quiet Ruby, both thinking of what they almost hope is coming. And they are at peace with it, as much as they can be, because…
Midnight doesn’t know. She feels like there is a big reason, and it is convincing, but she doesn’t have the vocabulary for it. She doesn’t know how to put it in words. Maybe it’s just loving your neighbor as yourself. Maybe it’s just that Ruby is here.
Maybe it is because she’s always known that every single pony has a hill to die on and this one is hers forever.
VII.
Twilight understood and did not understand. She knew the panic of tardiness, of being too late, but when Twilight had been late in life, it meant a docked grade or a friend she could apologize to. Her brushes with death and ruin had always been in a group, and she had never truly lost. She couldn’t afford to. Celestia couldn’t afford to.
Apparently, it was all Luna could afford. She had flown all night without stopping—she had flown from practically the moment she had woken up, only pausing long enough for a startled Celestia to be told in monosyllabic exhalations that there was another duty she must attend to. The only things that followed her besides a wing of Nightshades was Celestia’s calls and a confused Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight struggled to keep up. Already, she had been helped along by Nightshades and eventually somewhat gruffly bullied into resting on Luna’s back. She lay there now.
She had pieced together only some of the story: the lost station she had heard about in passing (it had been a sad fate) was not lost at all. The situation was dire, and while they lured the enemy in with the promise of an easy victory, innocents fled towards safety. But she was confused why Luna was soaring through the air at a speed she had once thought impossible for anypony who was not Rainbow.
“Princess, I don’t understand. Why are we going? Couldn’t you send your nightshades?”
Luna grunted. “Because they are mine!” she shouted over the howling winds.
“So are the guards! I know you care for them, but why are you going? There’s an army to lead!”
And she got no answer.
Luna sped northwards towards an unreal city as the dawn begins slowly to shine.
VIII.
I sit by the windows, looking at the darkness outside. The stars shine overhead—the cloud cover has broken—and everything seems intense and beautiful. Everything. I feel like I’ve guzzled a gallon of coffee, except that only communicates a fraction of what I feel. Colors are on fire. My body is electric. I feel my heart so loudly in the quiet. The cold steel of the musket barrel makes me shiver and I love it. I feel like the quickest thing in a slow world. I am the quickest thing in a slow world and that is right there are only the quick and the dead.
Ruby is in the barricade by the stairs. Swift is with me and so is the legionary unicorn with his grim face set just so. Swift lights the last cigarette he bartered off of the legionaries and takes a drag. I flinch at the sound of his match against hard hoof and the tiny scream of his fire and the whisper of his breath over his teeth grating and sliding through his coat over his lips.
I shiver. He eyes me, but doesn’t seem angry anymore. He sighs. “Don’t think too hard,” he whispers for me to hear and for our reloader not to hear.
I don’t know what she gave me but I know this: I am not afraid anymore. For just right now I am not afraid. I am nervous but in a fighting way I want to do things. Restless. Restless, that’s the word.
I wish Ruby was here. I look back and see her staring at me. Lily is talking to her. She puts a calm, unshaking hoof on Ruby’s shoulder and smiles and Ruby laughs. I wish I was there making Ruby laugh but I am here. Lily looks up at me and salutes and I salute back. It is weird moving my hooves across my eyes.
More and more I wonder if maybe we’ve been passed over. What if they went home? What if the invasion is over and all of the Mitou are under the snow and Shining Armor has swept them away like a reaping blade for a full harvest? I saw him once during basic training and I know he could, his magic fierce his eyes full of steel his grin fearless and his body keen.
I shake my head. I feel the cold worse now but don’t want a blanket. My duster is enough. Ruby made me wear barding underneath and some leg-guards but they are stupid. But she seemed happier when I agreed and I wanted her to feel better so I did it.
Luna. Luna Luna Luna where are you? I wish I could sleep so I could talk to you. I wish that you would come flying down to save us. If they come can anything happen but death? Them and us, fire and then a lingering silence?
Luna, why do we say these things about you? Who are you? Who are we, who talk about you and trudge in snow for you and die for you? Or are we? Maybe Rangers aren’t dying for Luna at all. Maybe there is something else worth dying for and maybe there is nothing worth dying for and it is all stupid in the end. But when I think about that I see Ruby smiling at a foal while I can’t think of anything but myself and I know that to watch that be ripped out of the universe by anything is wrong. It’s wrong. Lily singing in the snowy woods or dancing. Yuletide gruff but proud. My changeling friend who worried about me and did not know my name.
I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of not being. I am not afraid of pain, only of silence. I am afraid of the silence of others. What if all the sound was blotted out? What if just some of it was? What if the sound of Ruby humming as she cooked was silenced?
I shiver again. The wind picks up outside. The torches flicker. The stars twinkle and we all pretend to be brave.
I think that we aren’t running away because there’s a reason not to. The reason isn’t Yuletide—he gave an order but only one we would have given for him. No one complained. Rangers don’t have the same attitude about the chain of command.
It isn’t glory because Rangers are all about staying alive and maybe glory later. You do your job and the real glory is that nopony can do what you do. Anypony can die.
It isn’t because we hate the changelings because I think I wish they would just go home. I don’t hate them. I can’t because it hurts to. I just want to be in a world where they didn’t do bad things and they weren’t all messed up and mutated and there weren’t any Mitou and hating them makes this world the only one because hating something is investing yourself into it.
It isn’t to be heroic because nopony will see us and they may never know. They will not stop looking at batponies with a little fear in the back of their minds. It isn’t about me and it isn’t about Ruby.
I just want to love my neighbor. I grip a musket built a thousand years ago in a foreign empire and I wish I could just love my neighbor. I wish we could all live on a single street that goes on forever, that we could share the same cave neighborhood, that we could let out children play in the common cavern and walk under the apple trees and the silver “daylight”. I wish I could show the dayponies how beautiful a deep dark pool can be, or how the blues and silvers of our lighting casts everything in dreamy shades. I wish I could know ten million names and ten million faces and love them all and I know I could. I know we could but it won’t happen and it can’t happen because it’s all gone wrong now. Everything is wrong and I never wanted to be here.
And I want to be angry about that. I want to be furious but I can’t be because of the fucking drink Lily made me all in my blood and brains and everything, making me feel warm and cool and like I’ve never felt anything but on the top of the world forever.
I want to go home. I want to learn how to make dreams do things with Luna. I want to kiss Ruby and look at her crimson eyes forever. I want to hear Lily sing and I want to show mom my hat and sleep in my cot at the station and be in Hollow Shades to see Luna’s arrival for Nightmare Night and… and…
I want to go home.
IX.
There’s something apocalyptic about the night. Not this night in particular but night as a whole, all of it, the universal night. The small things we call “night” are but pieces of it and they are all pointed towards the end of the world. Silence. Silence is the thing.
Silence… and then movement.
The changeling wings cover the rooftops like flies on rotted meat. They are waiting… waiting…
Until their mother, far away, tells them that now is the time.