Just a day in Equestria

by dave89898989

48 - Equestria's rout

An aching sensation in my heart and my head woke me up rudely all of a sudden. This pain I had never felt before stayed with me for the rest of the morning. I rode the train to Canterlot to start the next day of my job that I hadn’t been very active in yet, and that needed to change.

I dressed myself in the platinum armour that shined as much as the polish could make it, after my rigorous applying of the solution. The day set itself out as it normally would; patrolling and checking the grounds, fixing any problems in the castle, serving the Princesses with whatever they needed, et cetera. Not as exciting as being a royal guard would mean to outsider ponies who don’t know what an average day actually consists of. The only thing to look forward to would be the free coffee and donuts at the end of my shift. At least this employment put food on the table, so to speak.

I spent some time looking in the armoury, still contemplating on the primitive weapons compared to the ones I’ve held in the past. Of course, advanced technology isn’t so much needed in a relatively crime-free place like this. Either that or the scientist-ponies just haven’t gotten around to researching that sort of subject in this world. The single cannon in the corner gave me chills, however.

“Hey Blue! How’s it going?” called the other guard ponies as they passed me in the halls. My reputation had certainly grown between the others. As a General it had to be automatic, even if I’ve never experienced a battle while in possession of this rank. When it would come to it though, will I have what it takes to lead an army into battle and command them accordingly? I know that I’ve done it before, but could I do it right this time?

“Good Morning, dear General Blue. How is the day going for you so far?” asked a sudden voice of Celestia from behind me.

“Uh, pretty well I suppose,” I replied courteously, but changed my tone after. “Well, that’s not true. I know I haven’t been here long, but…it’s just boring going around the same castle again and again, you know?”

The alicorn looked at me in subtle shock. “Now you know this is a responsibility every guard has to undertake. I can understand how you feel, but it is very important that you do your duty.”

I huffed and nodded coolly. “Can’t I at least go out for a little while?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Oh, alright then, but don’t tell anypony I let you off.”

We laughed as I thanked her and left the building for some more open patrolling.

The upper-class ponies stared at me as I trotted along, not expecting a royal guard to be casually outside of the castle. I repeated the phrase, “don’t mind me, I’m just passing through,” in my head when I traded glances with the others. Everypony seemed to have a sort of incriminating fear against the guards. It could only be expected as we are authority after all, it’s an intimidating factor in some cases. Being a newbie though, I didn’t understand that quite as well.

Approaching a tea room, I entered the establishment and immediately ordered a hot chocolate. When I walked up to the counter however, the ponies surrounding the area moved away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked aloud. “Does my presence scare you?” I received no answer.

“Don’t worry, I’m on a break. And besides, I’m just as equal as you are, I’m not issuing arrests or anything.”

A general sigh of relief erupted at that moment. I took my paid for drink and sat at a table near the entrance’s adjacent window, took my helmet off and rested it on the surface, facing away from me. I didn’t get the situation. Did these folk have trouble with the guards before? Is everypony involved in the criminal underworld in one way or another. I shook my head and took a sip, reeling from the scalding heat of the chocolate.

“Hey, you mind if I sit here? Electric Blue, right?” I heard as the scrape of a chair rang around my ears. I slowly looked up from my beverage, and there two ponies sat in front of me. I became so shocked I almost fell out of my own chair. The couple smiled back at me simultaneously.

“You...you’re…” I couldn’t get my words out.

“Yes, it’s me. My, you’ve grown Blue, last time I saw you you looked much less formal,” he chuckled.

“Spark…” I whispered, sudden tears trickling down my cheeks. “But how?”

“How what?” he replied with his own question, looking quizzically at me.

“How did you...survive?” I couldn’t contain myself. Just seeing him there, in the flesh, brought me instantly to crying, quivering lips and all.

“What do you mean? I’ve been alive ever since. Anyway, it’s nice to see you,” he said as he kept smiling, contrasting my emotional control.

“And please do stop sobbing, it’s making a scene,” Twisha jokingly added.

“It’s...nice to see you both...too…” I struggled to reply.

“You’ve finally got a job, hey? As a royal guard too. That’s very impressive. I became a science lecturer at the Trottingham academy, surprisingly. And Twisha is still studying as hard as ever as an art student,” Azure Spark contemplated.

“Things have been looking up for us all, as of late,” I related, finally giving off my own grin of satisfaction through the blubbing like a foal who had somehow failed at the game of peekaboo.

Literally nothing could get better than this now. I have a source of income, I’m giving to the community, I have a purpose, my foster parents are back with me, I made up with my best friend, I have a successful relationship at last, and my brother is still alive in this world. A hedonistic sense of worth and will washed over my mind in accordance. Life for me had finally reached a point where I felt good about living it. And maybe it could get even better.

“So what brings you to Canterlot?” I broke the short silence.

Spark cleared his throat. “Oh, we needed to pick up some materials, and this city is one of the closest places to get them. It’s for Twisha’s latest art project, which is the is huge experimental canvas painting.”

The maroon coated mare continued after her companion, “It’s like a landscape picture of Marelin in Germaneigh which we travelled to recently, but some parts stick out more than the rest in a three dimensional way. When it’s finished, I’ll put it in the Trottingham art gallery and ponies will be able to walk around and interact with it in certain ways.”

“That sounds very interesting. I’d be happy to come and see it when it’s done,” I acknowledged appreciatively. Being able to walk around an art piece instead of just look at it is one of those brilliant advancements in artistry.

“Anyway, we must be heading off now…” the stallion abruptly announced, getting up from the table.

“What?! Already? But we just met after being apart for such a long time!” I blurted out.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have a lot of time to stick around, unfortunately. Maybe next time though, we’ll do a formal meeting. Alright?” his calm and reassuring tone persuaded me.

“Alright, Spark.” I quelled my grudges against time and gave my brother a tight, almost unending hug before he left with Twisha. And just like that I returned to being alone again. At least I had the hot chocolate to finish.

As I returned to the castle in order to carry on my duties, I thought about how Spark could still be living in this world. Maybe somehow, he figured out how to make the separate connections like Rose and Destiny did. Just how did he manage to convince her to give up her secrets…

*Janus’ POV*

“Right, is everyone ready?” Zeus bellowed as he stood up from his throne.

“This is going to be very easy for us,” Athena announced. “Anne has what we want, the few items that are stopping us from gaining more power. When the time is right, we enter her little world, take what is rightfully ours, and dispose of her.”

“Correct,” Zeus intervened. “The sacred orbs...the ones she’s stored for this long, and they’ve been growing in power ever since we gave her that second chance at life. And what a horribly, deviously sweet deal that was. And it was all thanks to the sacrifices of those two other mortal members of ours, now long gone. But with the orbs soon to be in our possession, they will be able to regain new life.”

After the small speech the readying Gods waited for the time to come. And we would strike not just on Anne’s world, but every other world in our control. Every ‘volunteer’ of the second chance plan we devised all those years ago, will be reaped for the well deserved rewards that we all desire. We crush their worlds, destroy their lives and take their power for ourselves, propelling us into a higher plane of existence; not that we aren’t already high enough. I laughed dryly outside of my head. The moment we had all been waiting for. We gave the little people who ‘signed up’ everything they could want in their personal bubble, until it would be popped suddenly by us, in a maelstrom of hellfire and doom. The excitement got to me, and I grinned maniacally for a moment.

All we had to do now would be to sit and wait. Everything had to be perfect. The Gods did have a reputation to uphold, after all…

*Blue’s POV*

I continuously swept the dust-free halls with my broom as I walked slowly down each one. Cleaning happened so regularly that the evidence of dirt lay out of the question of sanitation. Canterlot Castle had to be spic and span at all times, so it stayed as a presentable standard to the higher-ups of Equestria, who rarely visited anyway. Every visible object in the vicinity had to shine permanently too. Only the best for the rest, I suppose.

As I leaned on a pillar to take a short rest, a massively oversized cannonball blazed through the castle walls, leaving a gaping hole and debris scattered everywhere. So much for my hard work…

I looked through the hole and noticed the large army of the Gods floating in the air from far away, with this ancient-armour clad, bulky God leading the charge. This situation didn’t look good. “Guards, everypony, quickly, evacuate! Follow me!” I commanded as we ran out of the now ruined building.

“What is going on here?!” Shouted Princess Celestia.

“Opare was going to warn us about this; she ran out of time before she could. The Gods from my world, Earth, have come to destroy us all. We must rally all of our armies as quickly as possible,” I requested, causing Celestia to fire up her magic to deliver the message.

One of the guards had cleverly snuck out of the castle with most of the armoury’s contents, now dropped onto the floor for everypony to pick a spear up. Our equipment met little match to the opposing army’s guns.

Janus had appeared from a portal in the sky. He approached me cautiously. “Blue, please give us what we require. We want those orbs that are in your possession.”

“Orbs?”

“The various coloured spheres that you acknowledged one or two times.”

“Oh...those things? What are they for?”

“Never you mind. We wish to take them as they are rightfully ours now.”

I gave it some thought. If refusal showed itself as an option to me, I would be sacrificing everypony’s lives. They served no purpose to me in the first place, so I might as well give them up. “Okay, I’ll present them to you when I can go and get them. In my absence, you will stay there and not harm anypony. Do I make myself clear, Sean?”

“You have a deal,” he said with a smirk. “Just hurry it up now.”

I rushed back to my house, panicking my parents as I began aggressively rifling through various cupboards and containers until I found the ‘sacred’ orbs. They all glowed with a dull, saddening light at me. I stuffed them all in a saddlebag and raced back to the Gods, ignoring the concerned questions coming from my mother.

“Ah, so do you have them?” Sean asked me, nonchalantly.

“Yes, I do. Name your price,” I said, cottoning on to the shady antics the Gods would try to pull.

“No price...we just want the orbs. For free! You can trust us,” he said with a salesman’s grin.

“Sure, I can trust you,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?” Sean responded.

“Oh, I was going to say, are you leaving now? If so, nice meeting you, bye-bye,” I tried to shoo these divine beings away quickly, after uncarefully throwing the saddlebag of the magic spheres at Sean’s feet.

“Dear Blue, you cannot just make us go without giving us a warm goodbye. And while the final hours of your life come to a close, you’ll probably want to start reciting your speeches.” Sean cruelly revealed his true nature to me. “Your body has a time limit until it ceases to exist. We felt generous and gave you three days to live. You have one remaining. We have no use for you now, because your soul has grown and come so far. The orbs we now have stored your soul’s essence over the time you have stayed here. And just like that, you released your soul from your possession to us. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”

I felt utterly helpless, speechless. Celestia as she heard this, became enraged and started to charge up her powerfully volatile magic.

“Ares!” Sean called out, and the army leader rapidly pulled out his own gun and fired directly at the stone floor under her, leaving a bullet to ricochet wildly off the pillars and fly off. She stopped her magic and stepped down, shaken from the muzzle flash and the projectile which headed towards her.

Like a natural instinct, the braver royal guards dashed to the Princess’ side to protect her.

I had been caught in a stalemate of sorts. I didn’t want the situation to arise to a conflict, because I knew the power that this army of the Gods held. But I didn’t want my soul just to be taken away like that, and my life to end in a single day. I didn’t want to go yet. It felt as though they planned this from the beginning, by building my life into something I could be happy with, then tearing it straight down again.

“That’s it! This is what you’ve been using me for. Your own sick amusement! You slowly gave me a life that I could live in utter joy, but when you felt it was right, you wanted to bring it crashing down before my very eyes,” I surmised out loud.

“Exactly right, young one. And at that, we might as well get started on making your world crumble before you. No mercy.” Sean assumed the position of a commanding officer. “Ares, begin the assault!”

Ares turned to face the vast amount of minions behind him and barked various orders. As quick as a flash, guns blazed everywhere, managing to take down most of the guards in the surrounding area before they could do anything. The rest charged in, throwing their spears and impaling a few of the opposition in a blind attempt at retaliation. I had no weapon equipped, so I made a break for it to Celestia, and escorted her away from the scuffle as fast as I could.

“Princess, are you alright?” I softly spoke as we now hid behind cover of another part of the castle.

“The...the guards…” she mumbled, still reeling from the shock.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have done anything sooner.” I felt failed as a protector, but nopony could have seen that coming.

We looked at the slaughtering of the scattered guards. “Bows and arrows against the lightning…” the white alicorn sadly remarked.

As the massive army advanced, I noticed some guns strewn across the floor, lying next to some of the downed infantry. “Celestia, I know you feel weakened right now, but I need you to retrieve one of those guns for me.”

She noticed the hunk of metal on the ground as well. With her yellow magic, she slowly picked up the gun and levitated it to me. I took hold of the pistol with one hoof, struggling to form a grip until I could hold it properly.

“Canterlot and Ponyville must be evacuated. Be strong, Celestia. You’ve been through a thousand years or more and still you’ve stood high, so please go quickly. I’ll distract them from getting close to the town,” I delicately commanded. She came out from behind the remnants of the mighty castle, and approached the town covertly.

I fired off a warning shot to draw the army’s attention to me, luckily managing to get one of the minions in the head. I would not be going down without a fight. as they edged closer to me through the grassy field, I fired the pistol faster and took as many headshots as I could as the entire battalion edged closer to me. With a click, the gun ran out of bullets; automatically making me eject the magazine and holstering the pistol. The countless swarms of the enemy started to run as soon as I did, striding over the plains and plunging into the waterfall on the edge of the precarious cliff. I dived into the lake below me, bullets following as I went.

Clinging to the riverbank, I watched as Canterlot’s residents shuffled out of their living place in a terrified manner. Looking into the distance, Ponyville had a queue of the village’s inhabitants scurrying out and over the hills. Nopony had been left to fight as they realised the gravity of the situation by witnessing a few ponies being shot to death. This horrified me to the core. Almost all of us stood defenseless against the overcoming army. I swam farther down the water’s current, hoping that there would be something waiting at the end of where I willed myself to go. Some last line of resistance.

Comments

[Pinkamina vs Butchershy]

WTF I cant believe no one comments on how good this story is I mean really awesome work dave keep at it ps. when does it end because I hope its not to soon

[dave89898989]

3385053 Very soon, unfortunately. It's definitely been a long road to get this far though.