The life and times of an Earth Pony.

by TheRealShadowFoot

Part 4: The Calm after The Storm

The first hour soon melded into more hours, then eventually into a full day of fighting. Both sides suffered heavy casualties as the day progressed. Shadow and his team had barely emerged victorious that evening. The Griffins were tougher than they’d imagined, and went hoof to claw with Shadow and his team for hours. Only after Shadow had caught the commander of the squad in the chest with a superheated ball of magic, did they retreat. The unlucky Griffin now sported a scorch mark where feathers used to be. It looked like somebody had shattered a piece of glass on the commander’s chest. Shadow wasn’t entirely unscathed either, emerging from the fight with bite and claw marks all along his sides and even missing the lower 6 inches of tail hair. He still had the entire length of his tail. But not sported a ridiculous bald patch at the base which he laughed about later. It grew back after months, though. From using so much magic and energy, Shadow was wiped out and had to sleep, so he and his battle-scarred team had headed back to the barracks to catch who knows how much sleep before they were roused for patrol or battle.

North’s fight had similar results. As a familiar voice bellowed his name from a distance, North looked back and realized he was being pursued by Speed Razor, which never was a good thing. Even at full flight speed, North could not outrun Speed Razor’s expertly trained wings. Speed Razor put just enough space between himself and North to do a 180 turn and land a pair of hooves right below North’s right wing joint. It was just enough force to bruise the muscles. North's wings immediately seized up. That was not a good thing. North began a spiral towards the ground, his vision alternating between blue sky and green and brown turf. Moments before he hit the ground full force, one of North’s squad members caught him and eased his momentum just enough to send him into a sort of flip-roll, careening through the underbrush at nearly 30 miles per hour. Suffering bruised ribs and muscles, and his right wing broken, North was grounded for two months at minimum. He’d be orchestrating the ground forces for the next two months, if the war lasted that much longer.

It had been roughly 10 years since North and Shadow set out from home, and almost two years since this silly idealistic war started. They were both nearly 30 years old now, and stronger and wiser than they could ever be had they stayed home. It was high time for a visit to the homeland, so after leaving intel and strategies with their commanding officers, The two friends were given a month’s leave to recover and recuperate after such fierce fighting. They had really beaten back the Old Equestrians this time, when the Zebra clans had arrived two days after the fighting had started. The new arrivals, with their lifestyle of combat and magic, were instrumental in the resulting victory. For now, the Zebras and the local military could hold the line until the Pegasus and Unicorns arrived, and then they would make a full march to the Old Equestrians’ capital, squashing anything in their paths. This war had to be ended now, before countless hundreds more died. There had already been nearly 2000 casualties on both sides in the two years, and everyone was feeling the strain on resources.

As North and Shadow guided their weary bodies home, they passed the time by recounting stories of all they had seen and done and learned, or sang songs taught to them by various friendly tribes. They passed the nights by firelight and food, Silver Platter joining them after a couple days. Silver had lost an ear and almost lost an eye in the fighting, and was deemed next to useless for scouting missions, as he could only hear halfway. It took the trio nearly a week to get home, and when they did they found quite a surprise. Non-Combatant refugees had started moving into their hometown and the surrounding area, swelling the population and economy by nearly double. Along with the influx of trade goods and textiles, many young mares had also chosen to settle down here.

They shied away from the horrors of battle and conflict, preferring to live out their days relatively peacefully, away from the front lines. The new young beauties had become quite captivated by the three returning war heroes. Three in particular had captivated our heroes as well. They were but young mares who had just received their Spirit Marks when they had left their homelands to live here, and had even met these three at one point before. Though time was not so friendly to our young gents, it was quite the opposite for the three beautiful mares. Dusk Glitter was a beautiful black-coated mare with a shocking red mane. Her sister, Dawn Glitter, was a lavender colored mare with a golden mane. And some say the most beautiful of the three was the one who caught Shadow’s attention.

Standing as tall as him, but graceful and sleek, was Lunar Destiny, a white mare with a deep blue mane, the very color of the sky itself. Her Spirit Mark was a sun and moon as one. Her coat seemed to be flecked with silver, but Shadow was uncertain of this. At any rate, Shadow was immediately stricken by her beauty, which in all his days of wandering and fighting, had never happened. Sure, he’d had his share of young flesh, but Destiny’s attitude was not that of a common Unicorn mare. She always carried herself proud and tall, and spoke with a voice and gentle as a summer breeze. Some say that she had traces of royalty in her. But this mattered not to our hero, Shadow. He loved this mare because of what she had done for her home. She led her entire village here, after Shadow had described his homeland to her as he was passing through her village. Some of the first conflicts of the war had started only miles from her home, and she could not bear to see anyone hurt. So with much urging and pleading, all her fellow ponies from her homeland began the month long trek here. Destiny was in her own right, a war hero. The month’s leave flew by all too quickly for our heroes, but there was one last push for total victory and Shadow and North had no choice but to return to the front lines, only a day’s travel away from the O.E. Capital.

Comments

[Stalin the Stallion]

i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Ok, hi everypony, Stalin here, bringing another installation of Stalinview!

i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Today we are going to look at alternate universe/crossover story "Shadow Foot's Great Exploration "!

--------------------

i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png Heh, i already see the main problem with this story. It's nothing more than MASSIVE BLOCK OF TEXT. A piece of advise, autor, dont do these. These shall avert the reader from your story, cuz blocks of text are just too hard to read.

"As a Unicorn born and raised by Earth Pony parents who owned an apple farm and a library"
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Apple farm AND a library?
i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png It's like owning yacht AND migraine at the same time!
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png The thing Misha want to say that these things are not fitting together.

"with his magical powers, which felt that they leaned more toward protecting and helping others over such things as combat, or beauty, or other types of magic"
i42.tinypic.com/1r4u8n.png Don't quite get what you wanted to tell here...

“True North”
i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png LOL! Is Falce North his brother?

"from the time before time."
i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png ....What..? Time before times? Like Land before time with dinosaurs?

"They were incredible warriors, living by a strict code of honor and pride in one’s king"
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Samurais had no "king". If you insist on not using word "Shogun", use "Lord" instead

"“Daisho”, which consisted of one short blade, called a Wakizashi, and a longer blade, named a Katana"
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png HOW THE HECK PONY CAN USE DUAL WEAPONS? One blade is understandable, cuz they can hold it with mouth. But DUAL?!

"so he found these weapons extremely difficult to wield as two"
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png It's not "difficult". It's IMPOSSIBLE

"He also practiced wielding by both mouth and magic, which served to strengthen his neck and his magic powers."
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png Neck muscles? Do you really need these?

"and began training with the force"
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png - Luke, i am your father
i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png - NIEEEEEEEET!

"By this time, several years had passed, and he and shadow had their “Spirit Marks”"
i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png Ok, that makes sense.

"establishing routes that would develop into modern trade and postal routes"
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png Word overuse. Route used twice in sentence, which is not good

i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Have to disagree with all "tribes" stuff. Heath warming eve hinted that Equestria was unhabited before three tribe leaders came there.
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png Boss, it's tagged as "Alternate Universe"
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Oh, right. Ok then

i39.tinypic.com/35bxab6.png Hmmm. There is nothing much to talk about here, except of what we shall tell in overview.
i40.tinypic.com/2wptjee.png Let's fast-forward then

OVERVIEW:
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Again, forst thing to mention is that your story consists of a HUGE block of text. It is EXTREMELY hard to read, and man ponies who shall open this story and see it, shall refuse to read. You need to look at other stories and learn how to properly use paragraph.

i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Okay, now the plot.
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Your writing style is strange one. It feels not as a story, but as a recap. like some third person telling us the events of past.
There are almost no real-time moments, but reader can get used to it and like it. But lets say that this style of story telling is not for all.
Your characters are interesting enough, althou some of them have no personalities. Your time and history parallels are understandable, war planning is well done... Althou a little clished.
i40.tinypic.com/bjbmvs.png Stalin recommend you to look at other's stories at Fimfiction more and learn some stuff about pacing and paragraphing

VERDIKT: Not a bad story, but it have a long way to improve

[TheRealShadowFoot]

424988
Greatly appreciate the input, fearless leader. Had to get it from somewhere since nobody commented except you. This was kind of rushed over 2-3 nights, and I really have no defense for how bad it is, heheh. But live and learn, right? I'm sure if i actually take my time with my fics they'll come out much better. I really do appreciate the time you took out for this. I had already favorited one of your fics prior to this review, so i'll be eagerly awaiting more chapters from you. This was a bad copy paste from microsoft word. I'll have to go back through and edit it quite a bit. Thank you again.