Calamity (Part I)
Iron Rain woke that morning with an uncomfortable feeling in her gut. The dark grays of the coming dawn were just beginning to replace the midnight blues of the night before, lighting up silvery undersides of clouds scattered across the eastern skies. Slowly, with an almost practiced melancholy, the Nimban mare lifted her armor from the stand in her room and draped it across her back, taking a few seconds to let her wings comfortably slide through the holes in the back. Her hooves pulled tight on the wrinkled and sun bleached leather straps, tightening them together with the polished buckles.
Her wingblades went on easily, and she relaxed as the familiar weights settled onto the crests of her wings. She buckled these too with swift precision, and flexing her wings a few times, was pleased to not feel any resistance or grinding between the scales. With luck, it’d be another few days before they’d need to be oiled again.
Extending a wing, she hooked her galea under the brim and flipped it onto her head, using a hoof to tease back the short strands of her mane and settle them under the helmet. She picked up a brush from a nearby polishing table and ran it through the plume on her helmet, making sure the dyed red crest was neat and orderly. Rain hated polishing her armor or keeping herself looking neat—she’d much rather be spending her time fighting than preening—but being a legate in the Legion, she was expected to look the part.
Giving herself one last once-over in the mirror, Rain moved to the other end of her room, towards the massive sword rack on the wall. She stopped a few paces away, looking at the length of iron caringly hung on the rack. It was a massive sword, a foot longer than she was, with a blade as thick as her foreleg and a counterweight as heavy as her head. The weapon was definitely not hoof-forged; no, this iron had been worked by the talons of griffons. It was a griffon zweihander, which simply meant ‘two-handed sword’, but Rain enjoyed telling subordinates who didn’t understand a lick of Gryphonic that it meant anything from ‘The Dragon’s Tooth’ to ‘The Flesh Cleaver’. To Rain, it was simply called ‘her sword’, or if she was feeling dramatic, ‘her big fucking sword’.
She kept the weapon clean and oiled, polishing the iron day in and day out, always making sure there wasn’t a mote of dust on it; yet she felt a pang in her heart as she looked at the sword’s cleanliness. She simply wasn’t doing the blade justice by keeping it here in this city. Gold Moon’s words came back to her, and even though she would be the first to call herself a proud mare, they still left her wounded and frustrated. Scowling, she took the blade from its weapon rack and slid it into a groove in her armor so that it ran crosswise across her back, right between her wings. Then, quickly grabbing her small bucknife, Mary, she fixed the weapon to her cuirass and stepped outside.
It was a short walk from her room to the balcony of the basilica; it was, after all, built into the top corner of the building. Rain rolled her eyes for the millionth time at the reasoning behind it. Her father was Lord Winter Rain, ruler over the city and a Nimban king in everything but his loyalties to the emperor. Despite being arguably the very definition of a fearless Nimban, he was anything but with regards to his daughter. Even though he had raised his daughter to shun fear and glorify death in battle, he was still hesitant to let her stray too far from the city, especially now that war with the griffons had been officially declared and the fighting was escalating. Iron Rain knew that he was trying to keep her out of harm’s way, and when she quite angrily confronted him about it, he had told her that the city needed her in case there was trouble from griffon agents.
Horse. Shit.
Even still, there was nothing she could do to change her assignments. Like it or not, she was a Nimban pony, and Nimban ponies respected authority and discipline no matter what. Instead of leading her ‘rainstorm,’ her closest and most-elite soldiers into the field of battle, they were all stuck with her patrolling the capital of Nimbus, day in and day out while the war and the glory to be had was being won elsewhere.
Her hooves took her to the first leg of her morning patrol: the basilica exterior. Turning left off of a long and quiet hall, the mare nudged open a heavy iron door and found herself at the end of a long cloudstone balcony that wound its way around the roof of the palace. The winds of the dwindling summer tugged at her feathers, and sighing to herself, she set her hooves in a line and began to walk along the balcony.
It wasn’t long before another pony approaching from the opposite direction caught her attention.
“Legate Rain!” a white-on-gray stallion called out. Making a quick salute with his wing, he closed the remaining distance to the legate before she could finish a salute of her own. “Changing of the guard, eh?” Rain nodded. The other pony raised an eyebrow and took a step back, coyly staring at Rain. “You’re two minutes off your mark.”
Rain clobbered him with the feathery end of her bladed wing, earning a sneeze from the stallion. “Yeah, yeah, cut it, Haze.”
Haze smiled and walked to the edge of the balcony, Rain meeting him there. “What? Wanted to catch a little extra sleep? I can’t blame you, at least no after Gold Moon ate you alive when you tried to chew him out.” When Rain didn’t respond, Haze nudged her with an elbow. “Or is it something else? You got a stallion you’re not telling me about?”
“For Ofnir’s sake, Haze, somepony needs to nail your tail down and smash a beehive over your head.” Despite the threat, Rain’s tone was friendly, if not irritated.
The threat did little to deter Haze. “I know all about tails and the nailing of them, and believe me, I’ve only ever seen one pony who needs it more than you right now.”
Rain could smell a trap, but she bit anyway. “Really now? Who might that be? Yourself?”
Haze looked offended. “Me? Nah, I’m on my way to get some tail right now. Thorn should be waiting for me. Mare always liked her longspears...”
“Is this your first time with her?” Rain asked, smiling. “I’d imagine so. I don’t think she’d be interested in you and your little twig if it wasn’t. I should go warn her so she doesn’t die of laughter when she sees it.”
“Oh, you always were the funny one,” Haze retorted, trying to hide the fluster showing through his white coat. “Even when we were little, you were a fun one. Albeit slightly insane with a terrifying fascination with killing her toys, but a fun filly nonetheless.”
Rain attempted not to smile too much. “In fairness, the doll had it coming.”
Haze laughed at the suggestion. “For what? Did it insult your sense of masculinity?”
“Maybe?” Rain thought it over for a moment.
“You do know that you’re a mare, right?” Haze asked, a knowing smile on his lips.
“I’ve seen yours,” Rain shrugged with her wings, the metal scales scraping together from the simple motion. “Mine’s bigger.”
Haze felt his cheeks flush and he stomped a hoof on the floor. “That time doesn’t count!” His ears folded back and he averted his gaze from Rain’s. “It was really cold out…”
“Minor details,” Rain said with a soft chuckle, then, resting her forelegs on the balcony railing, she turned a more serious expression to her foalhood friend. “But seriously, how long have you and Thorn been ‘a thing’?”
Haze shrugged. “A thing? It has to be some sort of ceremony now?” He smirked. “Probably started a week ago.”
The larger mare struggled to stifle a laugh. “You mean that time we tried to see if it was actually possible to get Red to calm down by drinking him under the table?”
Haze looked away quickly. “Maybe it happened then,” he muttered all too fast.
But Rain wasn’t about to let up. “You and Thorn and Stonewall were all piss-drunk and Red thought it’d be funny to start an impromptu bar fight. Just threw a wild hook and clocked Stonewall in the jaw.” Rain was laughing heartily now, and she tried to hold back tears. “Poor Stonewall was so confused, the only thing he could think of doing was chucking the nearest thing back at Red, which just so happened to be—”
“Me,” Haze finished for her, none too happily. “Don’t worry, I remember. I was there.”
The legate snickered. “Tell me, when Red leaned out of the way and your face slammed into Thorn’s, was that you guys’ first kiss?”
“It was certainly something,” Haze remarked, rubbing some phantom bruise on his nose. Then he smiled. “At least we were both so drunk that getting untangled when we were both on the floor was something fairly... intimate.”
“And while you two were discovering that one plus one equals fun, Red started scaring the new recruits from Updraft shitless while trying to start some fights.” Rain shook her head. “Lesson learned: never let Red get drunk again. It only makes him worse.”
“You don’t say?” Haze asked with all the sarcasm he could muster. “Insanity and Red are a match made in the Great Skies.”
Rain laughed. “At least he’s good at turning that insanity towards the griffons. The stallion’s a one-pony cohort. I don’t know what we’d do without him.” Waving a wing into the empty air, she shook her head and stepped back, ready to continue her patrol. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t burn down the city one of these days.”
Haze tilted his head from side to side as if thinking on the merits of such an action. “Hopefully.” Sighing, he too leaned back from the railing and opened a wing. “Permission to hug, ma’am?”
Rain looked him over before ultimately shaking her head. “You’ve got another mare for that, and I’d hate to come between you two.”
“Awww, but Rain, you’re so soft,” Haze whispered as he wrapped his forelegs around Rain’s shoulders and rested his head against her neck. Rain stiffened at the contact, and it drew a slight chuckle from Haze, who gently patted her back. “There there, missy, we’ll find somepony who loves you one day.”
Rain shook him off, though she couldn’t hide the one upturned corner of her mouth. “When I said I didn’t want to come between you two, it was so that I wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with this.”
Haze’s lower lip protruded and his ears flattened against his head. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It is,” Rain teased, flicking him on the nose with her primaries. “But Thorn’s a big girl; I’m sure she’ll have you whipped in a few days.”
Haze leaned back onto his right rear hoof and brought a forehoof to his chin. After tapping it there a few times, he suddenly gasped and stood up straight, the words ‘divine inspiration’ stamped onto his forehead.
“That’s what you need!” He clopped his hooves together with pride. “I shoulda figured all along! It makes sense!”
“What?” Rain drawled, confused.
Reaching forward with a hoof, Haze patted Rain’s shoulder. “It’s obvious just looking at you; you’re a mare’s mare!” His beaming face was almost blinding to the legate.
Unfortunately for Haze, it didn’t stop the tall mare from hooking her forelimbs under his own and hurling him off of the balcony. The squeak he made at suddenly being weightless was anything but impressive.
Haze fluttered up a few moments later in time to see Rain storming angrily down the balcony. “Hey, wait up! It was just a joke!” He hesitated a few moments while the flustered mare rounded the corner of the balcony to get to the next leg of her patrol. “Or maybe not! I don’t really know! You ain’t leaving a lot of clues around for the guys... or girls...” Shaking his head, he glided towards where Rain had disappeared, trying to make sure his friend was okay. “Come on, now you’re a big g—”
His voice was cut off as he nearly collided with Rain’s tail. The legate was standing just around the edge of the corner, her eyes transfixed on the glowing orange lights at the eastern limits of the city. Raising an eyebrow, Haze leaned closer to the mare. “What is it, Rain? Don’t tell me you were right about Red burning down the town.”
“No, you idiot,” Rain hissed, urgency creeping into her voice. Reaching over her shoulder, she unlatched the hilt of her sword with a hoof and loosened it so she could slide it out with her teeth at a moment’s notice. By now, the fires were multiplying, and she could see dark figures flying to the walls from both within and without. Scowling, she spread her wings and was airborne in two flaps.
Haze watched her for a confused moment, then his eyes widened as alarm bells began ringing. He didn’t need Rain to tell him what she saw, because just like every Nimban, he knew what those bells meant.
“Go and grab Thorn!” Rain called from where she hovered in the air. “I’ll pick up Stonewall and Red!” Without even checking to see if Haze heard her order, the mare dove away into the darkness of the night, leaving Haze behind. As she flew towards the Nimban barracks, only one word came to mind, the word she both despised and adored.
Griffons.
Finder was having the dream again.
It started like all the other times. Dark figures moving through the shadows. Cold, lethal eyes watching him as he scrambled over fallen trees and around rotting trunks, ducking underneath ghostly hands of dead pines that clawed at his wings. They chased him, and the harder he ran, the closer they seemed to get. When he finally burst out of the forest and onto the stone bridge, he afforded himself time to pant before moving onwards.
But now the bridge was different. The rows of dead bodies wrapped in white linens, family members wailing over them, were gone. Instead, there were just four corpses in a neat line, their pure white death wrappings somehow unstained from the growing pool of blood underneath.
It was infinitely more painful than seeing his mother wailing over Longbow’s body, because Finder recognized each pony’s face… each and every one.
Longbow. Carver. Summer. Dawn. All dead.
“No!” Finder screamed, running up to his brother’s corpse. His trembling hooves reached out for the body but stopped short, unwilling to feel the cold truth. Tears leaked from his eyes as he gave a desperate shake of his head. “No, no, no no…”
His brother, what was left of him, was desiccated and frail, little more than rotten skin holding his bones together. One of his hooves brushed the corpse, and it suddenly jumped. Finder fell onto his back, speechless and terrified, as the cold flesh of their corpses twitched and undulated like marionettes on their strings. Brittle bones snapped, cold flesh tore, and and voiceless screams scratched free of their throats.
Longbow opened his eyes to reveal nothing but blood and bone and rot.
“Dead,” the corpse whispered, finally standing on four legs of bone and rotting tissue. “Dead! Dead because of you!”
Finder began sliding backwards, his wings opened in terror. “No! Longbow, I—Please! I’m sorry!”
“Sorry?” Longbow spat, taking a step forward to match Finder’s retreat. “You being sorry is supposed to fix this?” Longbow’s lips—or what was left of them—pulled back in a snarl, revealing the remains of a set of broken yellow teeth. “You killed me. You killed them!” Longbow shook his head, his disgust apparent in his scowl. “You’re no brother of mine.”
Hot tears trickled free of the colt’s eyes, burning salty lines down Finder’s cheeks. “Longbow... please...”
The corpse of Carver stepped forward, leaning over Finder’s trembling form. “I stuck my neck out for you so you could join the Legion, colt. And what did you do to show your thanks? You cut my eye out and then left me to die when the griffons came.” The one glowing, red eye in Carver’s face narrowed. “I thought we were friends.”
“And we thought you were our friends, too,” the voice of Summer hissed as she approached Finder with the mutilated corpse of Dawn at her side. “But first chance you got, you ran. You’re a coward, Finder. You don’t face fear; you run from it.” At her side, the corpse of Dawn growled disapprovingly through the hole gouged into her neck.
Longbow stepped forward to Finder again, placing a cold and rotting hoof straight on the colt’s chest. “You killed us, Finder. You should have stayed in Altus. None of us would have died if we weren’t so worried about saving you, only for you to leave us when it mattered most.” Longbow pulled his hoof away, and the corpses turned in unison and walked towards the broken edges of the bridge.
“Longbow!” Finder wailed, standing up after them. “Carver! Dawn! Come back!”
But they didn’t come back. One by one, they stepped over the edge of the bridge, rotten wings not even trying to hold themselves aloft. Finder was almost certain he could hear the sickening crunches of their broken bodies in the ravine below. When only Longbow was left, he paused at the edge of the bridge and stared Finder down.
“Go home, Pathfinder,” the corpse spat. “Go home before you can do more harm than you’ve already done.”
With one fluid motion, Longbow’s corpse stepped over the edge of the bridge. As the cracking of his body echoed off the walls of the ravine, the bridge exploded into fragments of stone and mortar. The entire thing lurched, flinging Finder off of its surface and down into the ravine after his friends.
The oppressing darkness exploded in light.
“Up, up! You lazy sacks of shit, get up! This is it! The moment you’ve all been waiting for!”
Finder jolted awake, hyperventilating, his brow covered in sweat. All around him, the reserve soldiers of the Cirran 8th Legion’s Second Platoon scrambled out of their bedrolls. The noise, coupled with Finder’s lingering shock from his nightmare, had him awake in an instant.
On his right, Carver was still trying to shake off sleep and crawl out of bed. Scowling, Centurion Skyhammer, who had been standing at the door to the tent, stormed over and kicked the older stallion in the ribs. “You think the griffons are going to wait till you’ve had your tea? Get your ass up, you worthless pile of skin and feathers, and armor!” Turning to face the rest of the platoon, Skyhammer stomped his hoof angrily. “All of you, armor, weapons, and papers! This isn’t a game anymore, kiddies, this is for real!!”
Finder’s already racing heart pounded even harder. He immediately hopped to his hooves and tore open his canvas supply bag with shaking hooves. His hooves wrapped around his light armor and helmet, but as he pulled them out of the bag he dropped the galea, which rolled across the cloud until it bumped into Windshear’s hoof.
The light blue stallion was already halfway dressed in his armor, and he took the time out from buckling a strap to kick the helmet back towards Finder. “This is it, huh? You ready?”
Finder caught the helmet and gulped, hesitantly sliding it onto his head. He knew what ‘it’ was; the clamoring of the alarm bells and the shouts of organizing legionaries outside told him as much, but some foalish part of him still clung onto the hope that it was all just a drill.
“Burn my tail,” Carver cursed as he finally got up and began to clumsily strap on his armor. “What the hell are griffons doing at Nimbus? The rest of the Eighth’s miles from here! There shouldn’t be a griffon left from Stratopolis to Hengstead!”
Finder draped his lorica squamata over his back and slid his wings through the mail. The armor’s once-foreign weight was comfortable and comforting now. He shuddered at the thought that it might have to save his life today.
Summer and Dawn galloped over from the mare’s end of the tent, both with hidden excitement in their faces. “Come on, boys,” Summer called, picking up Carver’s sword and dropping it roughly into his forelegs. “The griffons are here, and it’s about time we give them a proper Nimban welcoming!”
“But we’re not Nimban!” Finder squeaked. He fumbled with the loops on his sword’s scabbard before finally managing to get it securely hooked into his armor. “The rest of us are from Cirra!”
“Then pretend you’re Nimban!” Dawn shouted. “Life’s more fun that way anyways!”
Summer shook her head as Carver struggled to get one strap of his armor secure. “You fat oaf, turn around!” Before Carver could even respond, Summer had forcibly spun him around and yanked the strap a few belt holes too tight. Carver coughed and immediately reached down to loosen it, managing to resecure the strap before Summer could squawk at him again.
“We all ready?” Dawn asked, flexing her wings so that the sharpened scales of her wingblades glinted in the dim candlelight. Finder finished attaching his in time to nod and scramble forward along with the rest of the replacements from Second Platoon.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Carver muttered. Making sure the last of his supplies were in order, he too moved forward and left the tent, with Summer, Dawn, and Windshear bringing up the rear.
The five ponies took their places at the rear of Second Platoon’s century. Finder’s eyes widened at the hellish sight. The eastern gate was on fire, and the ponies on the walls were fighting desperately against large, shadowy figures. Still more pegasi fought in the air above and below the walls, their tandem teams squaring off against griffon tandems in deadly aerial dances. Finder watched as one of the larger figures dived onto a smaller pegasus. It hit him in mid-air, and a second later the pegasus spiraled away in two different halves, the winged half falling a little slower than the other.
A cohort of legionaries flew low overhead, their coiled hooves little more than five feet above Finder’s head. Several of the green ponies in Skyhammer’s century flinched as the cohort flew over them with a guttural roar, making a beeline straight for the walls. Already the roar of fighting was beginning to drown out the world, and the fires burning along the walls casted terrifying shadows across the cloud.
“Legionaries!” Skyhammer shouted, pacing back and forth in front of his century. “It looks like your brothers in the field missed one of the chicken king’s hordes, and it’s up to us to hold this city until they realize their fuck-up and come flying back to cut ‘em apart!” A roar of crackling fire filled the air, and Finder looked up to see a dozen blazing comets arced out of the center of Nimbus and into the middle of the combat zone. The firepots detonated with a bang just past the walls, sending liquid fire shooting throughout the atmosphere and into the feathers of the unsuspecting griffons caught in the zone. Griffons scattered amongst the rain of artillery, a good number screaming and thrashing as they fell towards the ground, feathers and hide alight with Nimban flame. The effect was short, however. Moments later, their lines reformed, the deadly artillery proving as little more than a nuisance.
Skyhammer looked each of his soldiers in the face, one after another, and his brow lowered in determination. “This is not the situation I would have liked our first fight to be in. We’re likely outnumbered, but with the gods’ will, and by the strength of our fellow pegasi, we will prevail tonight. Aquilifer, raise the standard!”
At Skyhammer’s command, the pony in the front of the century holding one of the Eighth Legion’s Eagles hefted the proud standard higher. Flaring his wings with a metallic scrape, Skyhammer hovered up beside it. “This is what you are fighting for! This is our Aquila! Our Eagle! We will not let it fall to the griffons’ talons until every last one of us is dead! In the coming fight, look to our Eagle, look to your brothers and sisters, protect the ponies by your sides. They will need you much more than you will need them!” Turning around, Skyhammer drew his sword and thrust it towards the eastern wall. “Now, soldiers! After me! Ante Legionem nihil erat!”
“Et nihil erit Legionem!” Finder found himself screaming in unison with his friends and the other ponies of the centuria. As one, the sixty-four pegasi all spread their wings and took to the skies, following Skyhammer’s advance on the eastern walls. Behind them, five more centuries slid together, forming one large cohort of nearly four hundred legionaries. Finder and the other ponies of Second Platoon knew that Skyhammer was pilus prior, the most senior centurion of the six centuries, and as such the entire cohort was his to command. That also meant that his century was the cohort’s first lines, and they’d take the brunt of the fighting.
“Remember,” Summer called to Finder, Carver, and Windshear from the gap between the first and second centuries, “keep your head down, stick together, and don’t be stupid! You’re fighting for five minutes, then you get to go to back for twenty-five! Make sure you make it!”
Finder nodded, pumping his wings a little harder to keep close to Carver on his right and Windshear on his left. The flapping of four hundred wings in tight formation tore the air to shreds behind Skyhammer’s cohort. Finder was simply glad that he wasn’t at the rear, where the turbulence would put extra strain on his smaller wings. Although, being one of the first sixty-four in combat wasn’t much of a tradeoff at all.
His body shivered with nervous anticipation. He immediately began to second guess his preparation. Was his gladius securely latched into its scabbard? Should he pop the latch so he could immediately draw it when landing? But what if he got caught in an aerial battle? If he unlatched it now, it might come loose in the air. Were his wingblades properly oiled and sharpened?
Finder looked to his right. Carver’s attention seemed to focus dead ahead as the cohort closed in on the wall. His wings pumped in a steady rhythm, and Finder could tell the larger stallion was distracting himself from the task at hand by concentrating on flying. Still, the nervous shivers along his back and in his legs were hard to conceal even with the motion of flying.
Then Finder looked left. Windshear was a different pony altogether. His flight was smooth and calm, his spear balanced in the fetlocks of his forehooves as he flew. Nearby, several other spearponies did the same, but Windshear’s poise was something else. The way he held it, the way he carried himself... Finder could tell there was a repressed instinct that was simply waiting for a griffon to get too close before being released.
He remembered how Windshear had fought in the tournament. He knew what that instinct could do.
They were little more than thirty seconds out from the walls now. Somewhere up ahead, a whistle blew, and Skyhammer climbed twenty feet to make his voice heard across the cohort. “Medics, break off!” he shouted, waving with a hoof towards the rear of the cohort.
Summer tapped Carver on the shoulder. “Go get ‘em, sexy.”
It was enough to break Carver of his concentration, causing him to stagger in flight. “Uh... thanks?”
Dawn flew up close to Finder, and before the colt could realize what was happening, she pressed her lips to his burning cheek. “Stay safe, lil’ guy! I’ll be waiting to fix up your booboos when your five minutes are over. Do real good and I might even give you something real special.”
Finder blushed and separated awkwardly. “I won’t—I mean, I will—I-I mean...”
Dawn smiled. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.” Then, with a twist of her wings, she and Summer broke off from the cohort and descended to the cloud, where they and the rest of the cohort’s medics began to set up an immediate treatment center.
“Buck me, that mare...” Carver muttered, shaking his head. “She killed my focus.”
“Dawn?” Finder asked, confused. “Or Summer?”
“The stallion in the mare’s body,” Carver said. When Finder still looked confused, he rolled his eyes. “Summer, Finder. Who else?”
Finder opened his mouth to respond, but Skyhammer’s next command cut him off. “Spears, archers, break off! Archers up top, hastae, you’re the backstop! There will be no ad triarios redisse today!”
Windshear raised his eyebrows as the specialists separated out of the cohort. “So... that’s awkward. I’ll see you guys later... hopefully under good circumstances.” With a twist of his wings, he dove down out of the formation, grouping with a century of spearponies that then rose behind the ranks of the cohort and trailed at a comfortable distance.
Something in his voice set a pit in Finder’s stomach and a chill down his spine. He turned to Carver as the ranks adjusted to fill in for the sudden gap. “What did he mean?”
Carver grunted. “Skyhammer said no ad triarios redisse—no falling back on the triarii.” He looked over his shoulder to where the spearponies were spreading out, creating a curtain of pointy sticks. “We’re not allowed to retreat, or they’ll kill us.”
A pit opened in Finder’s stomach. Skyhammer would have him killed if he tried to run? He suddenly felt a lot more worried about the coming fight.
‘Five minutes,’ he told himself. ‘Five minutes and then I can go to the back.’
Skyhammer’s voice once more rang out over the chaos of the battle. “Brothers, this is it! Are you ready for a taste of griffon blood?! Because now you’re about to have it!!” Lowering his altitude, Skyhammer resumed his position at the front of the cohort as the other centurions relayed his orders back through the ranks. Up above, Finder could see the archers take up positions on a cloud and collectively draw their bows. Iron-tipped arrowheads glinted in the moonlight and the fires of the burning Nimban outskirts below, and the metal ‘fingers’ that the archers wore around their fetlocks and used to draw their bows glistened in the hellish light.
Finder’s heart was pounding. He could clearly see the fighting on the walls and all throughout the air in front of him. Large feline shapes with the heads and talons of eagles ripped through the air or fought embattled legionaries on the walls. To Finder, they looked like beasts, demons, and they fought with an animalistic cruelty and ferocity that left scattered legionaries fighting losing battles for their lives. As the cohort got closer, Finder had the misfortune of seeing one hybrid grab a stallion by the face and rip his throat out before flinging the body off of the wall and turning toward its next target.
“Legionaries, wingblades leading, and ready your swords! Step formation, leading low, trailing high! Hit the bastards with everything you’ve got!”
Hard discipline drilled into Finder’s head from one too many training sessions guided his hoof to the latch on his sword without him even realizing it. With a sharp click, the latch fell away, and his hoof nudged the sword an inch out of the hilt, ready to come free with a yank from his teeth as soon as he hit the wall. Then, the cohort separated into its six centuries, with trailing century flying high and each century stepping down in altitude until Finder and the leading century were almost at eye level with the wall.
A great whooshing sound made its way to Finder’s ears, and seconds before the cohort had reached the wall, dozens of arrows rained in from the archers on the cloud behind. They scattered across the wall and battered the griffons assaulting it. Many of the feathered shafts skittered across the cloudstone or deflected off of griffons’ armor, but several found their mark. Several of the hybrids went down with cries of rage or pain, clutching at their necks or their chests where an arrow or two had punched clean through the armor. The legionaries on the wall rushed forward and drove their swords into the necks of the griffons that had only been wounded, ending their lives in a river of dark liquid that stained their feathers and soaked the white cloudstone.
“Ready?!” Carver shouted over the noise. He flapped his bladed wings a few more times, building speed and momentum as the cohort entered the final stretch to Nimbus’ walls. Finder couldn’t find the breath to respond. All he could do was watch as the pegasi in front of him shouted a ferocious battle cry and hurled their bladed wings and armored bodies at the griffons along the walls.
Finder’s hooves touched down on the cloudstone wall as the first century slammed into the griffons that still remained on the wall. The piercing ring of iron and steel and the cries of dying soldiers filled the air. Reaching to the side, Finder grabbed his sword and drew it, squaring himself up behind the soldier in front of him. At his right, Carver widened his stance, readying for combat as the first lines of the cohort pushed against the sieging griffons clinging to the wall.
A warm, sticky rain drizzled across Finder’s face and wings, turning his attention skyward. Up above, the stepladder formation of the cohort spread out, creating an angled wall that slammed into the lines of airborne griffons, driving them back and up and asserting an aerial presence over the sieged part of the wall. From there, the airborne legionaries split off into pairs and began chasing down pairs of griffons within their assigned defense zones, turning the sky into a messy dance of death.
Skyhammer’s century began to widen along the front of the wall, driving the griffons back and buying the weary survivors who had originally been defending the walls time to fall back and regroup. In a matter of seconds, the century had completely driven the griffon presence from their wall, slaying those that fought and forcing the rest to flee. Finder quickly located Carver and flew to his blindside, taking comfort in the larger pony’s presence. His sword quivered in his mouth, and part of him wanted to curl up into a little ball and pretend he wasn’t in mortal peril.
“Brace yourselves and get ready for the next wave!” Skyhammer’s voice rang through the air causing Finder to turn his head.
Looking around, he swiftly found the centurion walking in the rear ranks of his century, ushering his soldiers to man the walls two ranks deep. From above, two of the five centuries providing top cover descended, taking up positions on the walls to the left and right of Skyhammer’s legionaries. As the pegasi settled into position, Skyhammer stepped back and widened his stance. “We hold this position! Centurion Solar Flare and the Ninth Cohort will relieve us when they arrive! Until then, you do not leave this wall until I give the order!”
Finder’s heart was racing. He looked past the shoulder of the pony in front of him, trying to see into the dark grayness of the early morning. Hundreds of tiny fires dotting the countryside below, casting eerie orange light into the sky. That light reflected off of the armored stomachs of hundreds... thousands of airborne griffons. And they were making a charge straight for Nimbus’ walls.
“Get ready!” Carver shouted to Pathfinder, bracing himself for the impact. Finder gulped and widened his stance as Skyhammer had taught him so long ago, his sword ready and his wingblades opened and out to the sides.
The seemingly endless horde charged the walls like flies descending on discarded meat. With his sharp eyes, Finder could see the steel armor they wore and the terrifying longswords they kept clutched in their talons. Their armor was covered in spikes and ridges, and their talons were sharpened to lethal points. From their cruelly hooked beaks rang thousands upon thousands of piercing screeches, and beyond the sharp beak Finder could see rows of equally sharp teeth. It looked like something out of a nightmare.
Then they hit.
Blood, limbs, iron, steel, and screams of agony and death filled the air. The pegasus in front of Finder grunted as a griffon slashed its claws out at him, scoring a glancing blow across the legionary’s face. Growling, the pegasus retaliated, striking out with a wing to destabilize his opponent before swinging his gladius upwards, trying to catch the griffon under the chin. The griffon pulled back and lunged forward with a clawed hand, trying to grab the Cirran’s neck, but the pegasus was too fast. Ducking low, the legionary avoided the attack and slashed out with his sword. The heavy steel blade connected with the soft flesh of the hybrid’s elbow and rend the limb in two. The griffon screamed in agony, and the legionary twisted around to drive his sword straight through the hybrid’s neck. Blood sprayed from the wound, painting the young legionary’s armor red. With a final shrug, the Cirran knocked the dying griffon from his sword and sent it tumbling over the walls.
The victory didn’t last long. With a terrifying screech, another dropped from the sky like a like a hawk and tackled the pegasus in front of Pathfinder. They struggled for several seconds before the griffon’s talons grabbed hold of the legionnaire’s mane and pulled his head back to expose the pegasus’ unguarded neck. With a sickening tear, it plunged it’s beak into the soft flesh causing blood to sputter from the pony’s lips. Finder flinched at the gruesome scene, taking a terrified step back. When the griffon pulled its beak free of the felled legionary’s neck, it was stained bright red. Thin strips of meat—pony meat—hung from its beak. With a fearsome glare, the griffon swallowed them whole and began advancing on Pathfinder with a horrifying smile.
“No!”
Before Pathfinder could respond, Carver charged over from the side and jabbed at the griffon’s shoulder with his sword. The griffon turned its attention from Pathfinder to block Carver with its longsword, the blades meeting with a hard clang and a shower of sparks. Pulling back from the strike, Carver jabbed once with each wing, hoping to get around the griffon’s defenses, but it retaliated with the blades on its own wings, jabbing the rusted iron blades at Carver’s neck. Hopping into the air, Carver gained a few feet of altitude then dive-bombed the griffon, using his momentum to break the griffon’s defenses. The beast blocked the attack but stumbled from the blow, giving Carver an opening to press the assault with his wingblades.
Grunting with each hit, Carver swapped between his wingblades and his sword, driving the griffon back with every blow. All the while, he kept his head angled to the right with his sword sticking out to the left and below his remaining eye, making sure the griffon couldn’t get around to his blindside. Striking out again, Carver managed to hook his sword under the griffon’s and pulled, yanking the hybrid’s weapon loose.
The griffon faltered, but only for a second. Lunging forward, it slashed with its talons at Carver’s face. The stallion barely pulled back in time, but the tips of the griffon’s claws raked across his face, drawing a series of red lines across his forehead. Snarling, Carver lowered his shoulder and rammed into the griffon’s chest, making the beast stumble back. Before it could get out of range, however, Carver spun on his hind legs and delivered a whirlwind slash to its chest.
Sparks flew from where the sword snapped the griffon’s blade in two. The spray of orange sparks quickly turned into a spray of crimson blood, splattering across Carver’s face and armor, and showering Pathfinder’s nose. With a sickening gurgle, the griffon collapsed, its blood mixing with the blood of other fallen Cirrans and griffons along the wall.
Carver remained frozen in place, his eyes locked on the fallen foe in front of him. He was hyperventilating, and he seemed unable to blink. His sword, bloodied and dripping red, quivered in his grasp.
“I... I’m...”
Finder could only reach a hesitant hoof out towards his friend. Carver, the pony who just the other day had been dreaming of peace with the griffons, had just killed his first.
A body slamming against the wall and rolling off nearby shook Carver from his stupor. Looking upwards, he and Finder watched helplessly as a resurgent wave of griffons slam into the three centuries trying to hold the airspace above the walls. With howling battle cries and screams of death, the griffon surge steadily pushed through the centuries above. Several of the less experienced legionaries panicked and broke off from the engagement, flying directly towards the wall of spears Skyhammer had ordered set up behind the walls.
As one, the screen of spearponies diverged to intercept the fleeing legionaries, waving their spears to try and get them to turn back to the fight. Several of the breaking pegasi quickly grabbed hold of their wits and nervously charged back into the fray, but many continued onwards. As soon as they came within ten feet of the spearponies, the pegasi forming the backstop thrusted out with their hastae. Half a dozen Cirran legionaries were slain by the spearponies until the rest of the runners turned back to return to the fight, too afraid to retreat further. Finder tasted bile on the back of his tongue as he watched the spearponies shake the bodies of their comrades off of their weapons. Everywhere he looked, he imagined Windshear knocking a body off of his bloodied spear before returning to formation.
Finder was already panicking as the lines shifted around him, griffons diving madly into the line of pegasi, trying to gain some sort of headway against the staunch Cirran defense which barely clung to its fortifications. Bodies, whole and piecemeal, fell from the sky like stones, slamming into the cloudstone walls or sliding down their buttresses, tumbling to the ground thousands of feet below. As Carver reeled himself back in, Finder gasped as a headless pony slammed against the wall, it’s body lingering for half a second on dead hooves before it slid down and out of sight, leaving nothing but a trail of blood in its wake.
Carver spotted Finder standing back, his wings open in shock, and quickly stormed up to him. “Finder!” he yelled grabbing the colt by the breastplate and pulling him off his hooves. “What are you doing?! You’re going to get yourself killed just standing back here!”
Finder squeaked, pushing lightly against Carver’s chest. “Let me go! I’m sorry!”
“Sorry isn’t it going to cut it when you’re dead!” Carver shouted, dropping Finder onto the ground. “Get your act together, kid! I don’t want to lose you!”
Finder nodded, bending over and clutching his sword from where he’d dropped it. Carver jabbed a hoof into his chest. “Get on the wall and watch my blind side! I don’t want to die without seeing the bastard that killed me; that’d just be insulting!”
The older pony turned back to the wall, and the meaning beneath the stallion’s words left Finder reeling. Carver had just killed his first griffon less than a minute ago, and already the hardened edge of the Legion was creeping into his mind. It was like he was witnessing his friend changing before his very eyes, transforming into something... awful. Something not-Carver.
The griffons level with the wall were pulling back and sweeping upwards, disappearing into the shadows beyond the lights of Nimbus’ walls. The action reminded Finder of watching the waves back in Altus, seeing the water pulling back into a rolling wave as it built up, right before the crash...
Gulping, Finder looked up, craning his neck to get a clear view of the sky.
The three battered centuries providing air superiority were beating the griffons away from the walls, struggling to keep the skies clear. On some unspoken command, however, the griffon fliers engaged with the Cirran pegasi pulled back in a general retreat. One of the centurions above barked an order, and his century slid out of position to chase down the fleeing griffons. The excitement pulled half of the neighboring century along with it.
Neither century spotted the tidal wave of griffons crashing down from above.
“Look out!” Finder screamed, but knowing all too well that his small voice was only lost in the chaos of the battle around him. Grabbing onto Carver’s shoulder, he pointed upwards. The larger pony jumped at the contact, calming as he realized it was only Finder. He twisted to look upwards as the first griffon slammed down onto the back of an unsuspecting pegasus.
The century that had remained took the brunt of the hit. Two dozen pegasi dropped from the air in short order; the rest of the century panicked and scattered as close to three hundred griffons quickly punched through their ranks, slaughtering confused and fleeing Cirrans as they plummeted. The centuries that had been drawn forward by the griffons’ retreat suddenly found themselves cut off and surrounded. Turning as one, the survivors of the two centuries bolted for the walls, trying to cut through the crashing wave of griffons and regroup with the rest of Skyhammer’s cohort. Almost immediately, another surge of griffons surged up from below, tearing the centuries to shreds as several more squads of griffons split off from all around to dive into the fray.
“BACK!” Finder could hear Skyhammer scream. The centurion took wing, hovering just above the walls as the panicking reserves under his command flew back into the city. “Back and regroup at the forum!” Looking skyward, Skyhammer screamed at the archers. “Covering fire!! Give them everything you’ve got, shield our withdrawal!” As the archers nocked new arrows into their bows, part of Finder’s mind noted how Skyhammer never used the word ‘retreat’.
“Come on, Finder, let’s move!” Carver shouted, slapping Pathfinder across the back as he took wing. Finder immediately spread his wings and took flight, aligning himself with Carver’s right flank as his wingpony and his right eye. Half of Skyhammer’s cohort was broken and routing, and the retreat of the remaining two hundred wasn’t in much better shape. Up above, Finder saw the archers on the cloud platform loose their arrows in a flurry of pointy death directly into the faces of the griffons charging them. It wasn’t enough to scatter the charge, but a dozen griffons fell from the sky, buying most of the archers enough time to scatter and fall back. Several were too slow and fell prey to sharpened claws and brutal evisceration.
The cloud rained blood.
Ahead of him, Finder could see the spearpony backstop tense at the oncoming cohort, quickly trying to decide to force them back or let them pass. Ahead of him and Carver, Finder spotted the figure of Windshear, bracing his spear against his flank. Finder’s heart stopped as he realized he and Carver were flying right towards their friend.
“Hastae! Screen the griffons while the rest of the cohort withdraws!” Skyhammer ordered, his voice already taking on a raspy edge. Immediately, the spearponies lowered their weapons and spread out to let the fleeing legionaries pass. As Carver and Finder stormed past Windshear, Finder couldn’t help but make eye contact with Windshear. He saw anxiety and fear in his friend’s eyes, but there was something else. Almost like... guilt?
Windshear’s spear was stained red.
Then he was gone, and Finder, Carver, and the survivors of the cohort were on the other side of an agonizingly thin screen of hastae. That didn’t stop Skyhammer from leading the cohort deeper into the city, and a look over Finder’s shoulder explained why. The griffons had taken the walls and were about to tear through the spearponies providing the cohort cover. Finder’s gut twisted as he realized nopony in that formation would survive. Not even Windshear.
Just then, there was a ferocious war cry from above. Finder flinched and dropped a few feet, expecting griffons, but the rush of oncoming air was from the center of the city. Just a few feet above him, another cohort of Cirrans had rallied and was rushing out towards the walls to try and contain the gap. It was Centurion Solar Flare and the Ninth Cohort, arrived but a minute too late to stop the griffons from breaking through.
The Ninth Cohort and the griffons met in a brutal clash, with the Second Cohort’s spearponies trapped right in the middle.
“Windshear!” Finder screamed, turning in place to try and find his friend in the brutal melee. The griffons and pegasi slamming into each other had turned the sky into a swirling vortex of death and screams. Legionaries flew this way and that in pairs and quartets, with griffons hounding them the whole way. A hundred games of cat and mouse were being played in the small arena, each game ending in lethal results. Finder thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar light blue coat, but it simply blended back into the mass of armored and bloodied bodies.
“Medics, organize and evac!” Skyhammer barked to the medical station down below, the edge of peril had dropped from his voice now that he had another cohort to cover him. “Take the wounded back to the forum, we’ll provide cover!” Turning to his wavering cohort, Skyhammer hovered above the medical camp. “My century will help the medics get their sorry asses out of here. The rest of you, get to the forum and organize a defense as best you can. Centurion Aurum is in charge until I return!”
The pegasi saluted and began to split off. Skyhammer dove down towards the barracks, and a mare with a shiny golden coat took his place—Centurion Aurum, Finder presumed. The mare barked out orders with a frightening intensity at least equal to Skyhammer’s booming voice, and the survivors of the cohort took wing deeper into the city. Pathfinder, however, didn’t hear her words; he was already diving town towards the medical camp, along with the forty-seven other survivors from the walls.
The count horrified Finder. They had been fighting on the walls for little more than five minutes before Skyhammer ordered the withdrawal, and they had already lost a quarter of their strength. Still, Finder had the uneasy suspicion that his century was one of the least molested of the six in the cohort.
Skyhammer flared his wings as he approached the clouds, and behind him, the rest of his century fanned out. All around, Finder could see medics frantically tending to the wounded, dressing wounds and wrapping bandages around those who could be saved. He immediately began searching for Summer and Dawn, Carver at his side, as Skyhammer stormed to the center of the field hospital.
“C’mon, pack it up, bring it in, and take flight!” Skyhammer shouted, spinning in place to make sure he had everypony’s attention. “We’ve got fewer than ten before the griffons come ripping this place to shreds! Stretcher bearers, get the wounded who can make the move out of here, and medics, deal with those who can’t!” Turning around, he faced his century of soldiers and raised a hoof towards some crates. “Gather medical supplies and anything else you can get out of here! I want this place stripped bare! Anything you can’t move, burn. Don’t let the bastards scavenge anything for their own wounded!”
The ponies in the camp immediately responded to Skyhammer’s orders, a harsh month’s worth of discipline forcing them on without question. Still, Finder hesitated even as Carver started to load bandages and vinegar into a crate for transportation, looking for his friends. Wandering around a tent, the colt nearly plowed directly into Dawn’s flank.
“Hold him down!” Dawn shouted to the medics on either side of a thrashing stallion. With abject horror, Finder noticed that the stallion’s wing, or the remains of it at the least, was snapped, twisted, and hanging in bloody tatters against his side. Responding with a quick “ma’am”, the two medics both moved to the stallion’s sides and pressed down, restraining his movement.
Finder stepped back, terror in his face. “Dawn, w-what are you—!”
His words were stolen as he watched Dawn reach for a bonesaw and grasp the bloody handle between her teeth. “Shish ‘ill only hursh for uh shecond,” she reassured the stallion, her words garbled by the instrument in her mouth. The stallion only thrashed harder, nearly shaking the smaller medic of of him, before Dawn wrapped the tatters of his wing in a hoof and held it out. Grimacing, she lowered the bonesaw against the base of the wing and drew her head back.
The screaming was horrific, and Finder flattened his ears against his skull to try and block it out. Blood spurted from the fresh cut, painting Dawn’s face with thick red streaks. She squinted and blinked to keep the viscous fluid out of her eyes as she started to saw. In a few short seconds, the remains of the wing separated from the stallion’s body, and one of the medics immediately moved to an open fire, grabbing a hot piece of flat metal shaped like a half circle and pressing it onto the wound to cauterize the bleeding with a terrible searing hiss.
Dawn stepped back, dropping the bloody bonesaw in a bucket of water and pushing it towards the fire. “Red Fern, give him some henbane, now.” Then, turning around, she finally noticed the colt standing behind her. “Finder? What are you doing here? You’re not hurt, are you?!”
Finder rushed up to the mare and placed his hooves on her shoulders. “We have to go; we lost the walls, and Skyhammer’s withdrawing to the forum.”
“Lost the walls!?” Dawn shouted, stepping back in shock. Craning her neck, she looked skyward for perhaps the first time since the start of the fight, and her eyes widened as she noticed the stream of griffons slowly but surely forcing the Ninth Cohort back towards the city. “Gods! We—Finder!” She turned back to the colt and gripped his armored shoulder with a hoof. “Summer’s two tents over, taking care of the more critical cases. If she hasn’t heard Skyhammer’s order... tell her what needs to be done.”
Finder nodded, but lingered a moment longer. “Dawn, I—”
“Go, Finder!” the medic shouted, pushing him away with a hoof. She immediately turned to her assistants and pointed towards a bloodstained stretcher in the corner of the tent. Looking over her shoulder and seeing that Finder was still standing there, the Nimban growled fiercely. “Go now!!”
The colt squeaked and dashed off, leaving Dawn behind.
Finder flicked his ears as he ran. The sound of the nearby battle was growing. Looking up, he watched an additional cohort slam into the griffon right flank, driving them back but forcing them closer to the medical camp. Several dozen griffons split off and withdrew before angling to their right, spinning around to try and counter the new cohort’s attack and stabilize their advance. Even higher up, dark shadows flitted through the smoke and clouds, moving deeper towards the city.
“Summer!” Finder shouted, spotting a large tent which he assumed was his destination. “Summer! We gotta move! The griffons’ll be here any minute now!” Sliding to a stop at the tent flap, Finder pushed it open with a foreleg and stepped inside. “Summer?!”
Finder spotted Summer standing in the back of the tent, her hooves resting on a bloodied mess of a mare’s side. The mare’s armor had been peeled off and was resting beside her cot, more crimson than gray in color. Summer’s back was towards Finder, though he could see the way she ran a hoof through the wounded mare’s mane, cooing softly to her.
“Shh... it’s okay,” Summer whispered. “You served the Empire well. The gods will welcome you with open arms. You’ll live in the glory of the Eternal Empire in the Great Skies, unbreaking, unwavering, undying.”
The mare coughed. “...I’m... I’m going to die... aren’t I?”
Summer was silent. Finder could only imagine that she was pursing her lips, searching for the right words. “Yes,” she said. The honesty in her voice made Finder’s heart sink, and he leaned backwards, lifting a forehoof off the ground. “But it will be quick and painless. The griffons won’t touch you. I swear.”
The wounded soldier was quiet for several seconds. “If you see Cloudburst... tell him I’m sorry... and that I love him.”
Summer nodded, and Finder saw her bend over to kiss the mare’s forehead. “On my honor as a Nimban, I will.” Then, her hoof touched the breastplate on her armor, and she withdrew a short, curved spike. With a soft grunt, she rolled the mare onto her back, eliciting a strained whimper from the wounded soldier.
“Garuda, guide your child’s soul to the afterlife. Give her the reward she deserves for fighting for Cirra’s honor; give her a piece of your Great Skies,” Summer prayed. Grasping the spike between her teeth, she hesitated for only a second before she drove it into the base of the mare’s skull. There wasn’t even a gasp from the wounded legionary. Her body simply twitched once, then fell slack.
Summer’s shoulders heaved for several seconds, then she pulled the spike free of the mare’s skull and let it drop to the floor. Her wings fell to her sides, and she bent her head down, pressing a hoof to her face.
Finder took a step forward. “Summer?” he whispered. The mare’s head immediately darted up, and when she looked over her shoulder, Finder could see the tears staining her face, her eyes already red and puffy. Finder’s wings twitched in shock, and he took another step closer. “Summer? Are you alright?”
“Finder...” Summer wheezed, her voice nearly choking on a sob. “What are you doing here...”
Without even thinking, Finder fluttered across the room and stood on his hind legs to give the taller mare a hug. “It’s okay, Summer. It’s okay.”
Summer stiffened at the contact, but then her hooves slowly found their way to Finder’s shoulders. “F-Finder, I... thank...”
She wasn’t able to finish her words. Instead, she broke apart against Finder’s shoulders, her body heaving with each sob. Warm tears stained his neck, but Finder only hugged the mare closer. Part of him marveled that he even had the strength to calm Summer. Suddenly he realized that he simply knew Summer needed him more than he needed her.
“I couldn’t s-save them,” Summer whimpered as she managed to regain some semblance of control over her emotions. “They were too wounded to move, and I couldn’t just leave them for the griffons. Who knows what the... the bastards would have done to them.” Finder opened his eyes and looked around the room, noticing for the first time that the cots he thought were empty simply had woolen sheets dragged over the bodies inside. He counted seven bodies total... and Summer had been the only one in the tent when Finder arrived.
“You spared them,” Finder whispered, his voice cracking as he did. “It was a mercy.”
Summer separated from the hug and looked forlornly at the exposed body of the mare she had just killed next to her. “She was so sweet... she must have barely been eighteen, but...” her voice stuck, and she looked at Finder with red eyes. “I think she was underage. J-Just like you...”
The implications drilled through Finder’s armor, piercing his heart and ripping it to ribbons. Summer had just had to kill a filly. Even if it was to spare her from suffering, it had to be weighing heavily on his friend’s mind. She had joined the medical corps to save pegasi, not end their lives. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through inside.
Finder nuzzled Summer, then stepped back. “We have to get going. Skyhammer’s regrouping at the forum. The griffons will be here any minute.”
Summer’s eyes suddenly caught a glint of hatred, pure malice focused down to a murderous point. “Let them come,” she snarled. Spinning around, she grabbed her sword from an operating table and hooked into into her armor. “Let them come and see what I had to do! I’ll rip them all to pieces! I’ll stain this cloud red with their blood!!” Stomping forward, her face contorted with so much rage that Finder scrambled backwards. “I shouldn’t have to murder a little filly!”
“Summer!” Finder squawked, his voice wavering. It was enough to break the trance over the mare, and she glanced back towards the colt, breathing heavily. “You have to fall back with us! Dawn and Carver and I are waiting for you! We can get through this together!” Part of Finder’s mind realized that he left Windshear’s name off his list of friends. It was as if his subconscious had already accepted that the stallion was dead.
Summer stared at Finder for a moment longer, the anger and rage bleeding out of her eyes. Eventually, she growled and stepped back. “Alright. But the next griffon that gets within reach of me, I’m splitting from neck to tail!” Turning around, the mare stormed out of the tent. Finder hesitated for a second, then galloped after her, following her tail as it disappeared around the corner of the tent.
Back in the center of the medical camp, the legionaries had thrown together a large pile of medical equipment and supplies, everything too large to carry and too valuable to let fall into griffon claws. Grabbing a lantern from a nearby tent, Skyhammer swung it over his head and shattered it on the pile, letting the flames take to the supplies. Medicine that could have been used to treat wounds and save lives instead turned into acrid black smoke, mingling with the smoke rising from the outskirts of Nimbus from the griffon advance.
As Summer and Finder cantered back to the center of the medical camp, several wings of medics flew towards the center of the city, carrying the wounded they could save on stretchers between them. On the clouds, Finder noticed Dawn and Carver standing side by side, both equally covered in blood. Dawn wore the blood of her comrades, Carver, the blood of their enemies. Finder and Summer slid over next to Dawn and Carver while Skyhammer turned to address his century.
“I’ll be honest with you, legionaries, the situation isn’t good,” Skyhammer growled. “There’s a whole damn army out there, larger than anything we’ve got in or near the city for a hundred miles! I don’t know how the hell they got past the Eighth, or what’s happened to the Eighth, but it’s up to us to hold the line until reinforcements come.” Opening a wing, he pointed to the center of town. “The Nimban forum will give us plenty of cover and well-fortified positions to hold off the griffons until we get some sort of relief! We’ll fly there and hold, no matter what!”
Then, taking wing, Skyhammer flew towards the center of the town. His century mobilized after him, forming several wedges of four pegasi each as they took to the skies. Finder, Carver, Summer, and Dawn all aligned in flight, with Carver taking point, Pathfinder on his right, and the two mares trailing at his left.
“What the hell’s going on out here?!” Summer gawked as she watched the crumbling defenses of the Eighth’s reserves trying to stem the griffon push. “How the hell did they get inside the walls?! Where the hell is the militia?!”
“Where’s Windshear?” Dawn asked, quietly.
Finder felt a stone drop into his gut. “Windshear’s... still out there,” he murmured.
Summer momentarily faltered, forgetting to flap her wings for half a second. “Windshear’s still out there?! What the hell were you guys thinking, just abandoning him?!”
This time Finder faltered, wanting nothing more than to just curl up and crawl back into some hole, away from everything. Luckily, Carver answered for him. “There was nothing we could do, Summer,” he said, his voice despondent and layered with frustration. “Skyhammer sacrificed the spears to get the cohort off of the walls and away from the griffon counterattack. The ninth cohort hit the griffons at the same time that they hit the spears, but I don’t know if there’s anything left now.”
The white mare ground her teeth together and clutched her head with her forehooves, letting out a feral scream. “GRRRAAAAUGHH!! This shouldn’t be happening!! This can’t be happening!!” Tears broke free from her lashes, falling to the clouds below.
Ahead of them, Skyhammer tucked his wings and descended into the forum, taking his century with him. Several tall buildings of white cloudstone surrounded an open court of polished cloud, and Finder could see pegasi filing inside at the orders of the centurions. The gold coated mare from earlier, Centurion Aurum, was standing in the open, organizing the defense of the forum. Skyhammer landed next to her, and the two exchanged salutes as the stallion took command back.
“Century! We’re holding the central building! Spread out and cover all the windows and doors! Hold it with your lives!!” he shouted. Waving his wings, he led his troops into the building ahead of him. Finder and his friends landed at the entrance to the building and quickly moved inside, taking up position in a large room. Judging by the scrolls and desk covered in innumerous quills, it was some praetor’s study. Walking over to a large window looking out over the south side of the city, Finder and Carver took positions on either side, while Dawn and Summer stayed in the center of the room.
“This is all going so wrong,” Summer moaned, her wings drooping by her sides. “Where the hell is the militia?”
Dawn bit her lip. “The militia on duty would have been on the walls when the griffons hit. And those walls aren’t ours anymore.”
“So much for the glorious Nimban militia,” Carver hissed, eyeing the skies outside the window carefully.
Cold fury danced in Summer’s eyes from the off-hoof comment. Stalking towards Carver’s blind side, she jumped up and shoved him against the wall. “What did you just say?!” she spat, throttling him.
Finder’s wings flared out reflexively as he backed away. Carver merely shoved Summer off with a warning growl. “I said that this Nimban militia you’ve been propping up for so long was swept aside like nothing!” He stepped forward, jabbing a hoof into Summer’s breast. “Now the whole damn thing’s falling apart, and we’re trying to fight for our lives against an army that outnumbers and outclasses us! And your militia has already proven it can’t stop the griffons...”
Summer’s wings were open in rage, and Finder noticed her move a hoof to the latch on her sword. “We’re trying our damn best!! We can’t help it that all you Cirran ponies are soft!! No matter how good we are, we can’t do your damn work for you, you cowards!”
“I’ve killed a griffon!” Carver shouted. “I watched the life drain from his eyes! I tasted his blood! That griffon might have had a family, but I couldn’t care! There wasn’t room for that! He was going to kill Finder if I didn’t do something!!”
“I killed seven ponies!” Summer roared, forcing Carver to flinch. The tears were streaming down the hurt mare’s face once again, and other legionaries in the building had started to eye her warily. “Seven lives! Seven lives I was supposed to protect, supposed to save! Well, I didn’t save them!! I executed them one by one, and the others knew what was happening after the first one!” She fell to her haunches, letting her tears drip onto the cloudstone floor. “I killed a little filly,” Summer whispered, her tone low and dangerous. “A little filly, barely fifteen. I tried to scoop her intestines back into her gut with my bare hooves as her blood spilled across the floor. She watched me do it, too, but she didn’t say a word the entire time. She knew, Carver, she knew that she was going to die, but she let me help her anyway.” Standing up, she narrowed her eyes against the stallion, who swallowed hard. “She was the bravest pony I’ve ever met. She was braver than me. And she sure as hell was braver than you.” Backing up, she shook her head at the stallion, then looked away, disgusted. “I promised her I’d tell some pony named Cloudburst that she loved him. I don’t plan on dying until I do.”
Her eyes slid to each of her friends. “If you have something you want to tell somepony else, do it now. Because if you go down, I can’t promise you that you’ll live. Please, don’t make me have to kill you too.”
She turned around and walked away from her friends, her posture sagged as she tried to resume her duties. The remaining three ponies looked at each other awkwardly, speechless.
Carver bit his lip and went back to looking out the window. Finder and Dawn made brief eye contact. There was so much Finder wanted to tell her... but now wasn’t the time. He blinked and looked away, watching the skies with Carver.
He was almost certain he heard a disappointed sigh from the mare as she turned and trotted away.
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Poor Finder...
Waking from a nightmare into a nightmare.
~Skeeter The Lurker
This was amazinglywell done, the mix of roman strategy crossed with ponies. Perfect.
Something tells me that Iron Rain is going to die a horrible death... and you're going to make us feel for it, you glorious bastard. It never ceases to amaze me how much you manage to pull me into your stories. The scene in the medic tent with Summer... you managed to bring tears to my eyes in such few, eloquent words. This chapter was well worth the wait. The copious amounts of action and brutal carnage was wonderful. The argument at the end was beautiful as well. I can't wait for the next chapter, because this story remains high on my list of stories to keep up with. Actually, it's the only one I'm reading that is still in the process of being written.
~SolidFire
Well... That's got to be a top 5 for best written battle scenes I've read here if not #1 then #2. Probably also top 10 for best I've ever read
Oh dear, this is like Ice and Fire all over again... All the time I have the feeling someone is going to die, but I just don't know who.
I love Rain.
Oh, and that's who her father was? That's quite the ancestry.
And then we find out that the fall of Nimbus was actually caused by some of the irregulars getting a bit too drunk.
Daaaaaaaaaamn, that was brutal. A very well written battle, but brutal as hell.
Damn...just..damn...
4246644
Please do not tell my that you just use the word 'copious' and 'action' in the same sentence.
4281720
Yes, yes I did.
~SolidFire
4408570
Why thank you! You picked a good day to get into Wind and Stone, the next chapter is in editing and should be out in the next day or two