Act I: The Town at the Edge of the World
They did get the barrel, in fact. Half the company came with them to retrieve it.
More importantly, they recovered the spider’s body. The major, Quicklime, and the other officers huddled around it while pegasi skirmishers shoved spears and torches beneath the roots along the bank. They found (and killed) a few smaller spiders, no larger than turkeys. Nothing like the one that had jumped Vermilion.
Zephyr was the hero of the hour. Pegasi needed heroes – it was something in their blood. If they didn’t have one, they went out and did stupid things until somepony survived something particularly dangerous and then they all went and got drunk. Having a legitimate hero, somepony who had actually killed a monster, was just about the apotheosis of pegasus-ness. They flocked around her, hooting and hollering, begging her to retell the story while she sat, blushing, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. Cloud Fire had his own little circle of celebration, smaller but still admiring. He hadn’t killed anything, per se, but he’d led the team that scored the first kill of the campaign. That counted for something.
Vermilion stood off to the side. The earth ponies and few unicorns around him were quiet, as they had been when he told them what happened. The company’s medic, a unicorn mare with a shell-pink coat and lilac mane, carefully swabbed the scrapes on his neck and shoulder with an iodine-dipped cotton ball while he spoke. Sergeant Buckeye took notes.
Finally, Buckeye put his papers away. “Anything serious, ma’am?” he asked the mare.
“Just abrasions,” she said. “We’ll keep an eye on him for a few days, in case there’s something venomous in the spider’s shell, but that seems pretty unlikely. He’d be feeling it by now if there were.”
Buckeye peered into Vermilion’s eyes, as if he could see poison that way. “You don’t feel anything like that, private?”
“No sergeant.”
“Good. Now, then.” He held up Vermilion’s ruined scabbard. “What happened with this?”
Vermilion blushed. “Sword got stuck, sergeant.”
“Got stuck?” Buckeye asked. Around them, a few of the older sergeants chucked. “Cherry, you see this little snap here? Part of the piece we commonly call the retaining strap?”
Yeah, they were doing this. And now Buckeye was calling him Cherry. He sighed internally. “Yes, sergeant.”
“You know why it’s called a retaining strap?”
“Because it retains the sword, sir. Keeps it from coming out.”
“And what happens if you try to draw a sword while the retaining strap is still in place?”
“Nothing, sir. You can’t.”
“Correct!” Buckeye turned the torn scabbard, letting the limp straps dangle in the leaves. “Normally, that is. It would seem that if you are sufficiently motivated, you can draw the sword while the retaining strap is still in position. It just destroys the scabbard in the process. Do you know how much a standard-issue saber scabbard costs, Cherry?”
“No, sergeant.”
“Neither do I. But we’ll find out when we get back to Everfree, and it’ll come out of your pay. Now, come on. The major wants to see you and I don’t feel like keeping her waiting any longer. Cloud Fire, Zephyr, git your asses over here!”
The four of them joined the scrum around the slain spider. A black slick extended downstream from the body, staining the water with an oily sheen. A foul, acid scent tickled his nose as they approached.
Quicklime grinned at them and waved as they approached. Her forelegs and chest were smeared black with the spider’s blood – apparently she’d been playing with it or something. A notepad and pencil floated above her head.
“Hey! How do you feel, Cherry? Better?”
He shrugged. “I guess. It never really hurt.”
“He’s being modest,” Cloud Fire said. “You should have heard him scream. Was like a little filly.”
Zephyr nudged him with a wing. “Be nice. So, ma’am, what’s the story with this thing?”
“See for yourself!” She walked back toward the crumpled body and stood beside Major Canopy, who studied it silently. “We’re actually incredibly lucky!”
“Because Cherry survived?” Cloud Fire asked.
Quicklime blinked. “Oh, uh, of course. But also because we’ve never had a chance to really study a kill like this! The last time a fresh sample like this was recovered was over fifty years ago, and there was nopony with a proper scientific background on hand to document it.”
“Well, that is lucky,” Vermilion said.
“I know!” She hopped in place. “Oh, I’m so glad I came with you!”
“We’re glad too, agent,” the major said. “Would you mind briefing us on what you’ve learned so far? Briefly.”
“Sure.” Quicklime stepped right up to the spider and pried its curled legs apart with her bare hooves. Several ponies gasped, Vermilion’s heart jumped into his throat, and even the major’s wings jerked out in surprise. “So, you can see here—”
“Is that safe, ma’am?” Buckeye asked. He’d taken a step back with the rest of them.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’s dead.” She knocked on its carapace with a hoof. “Dead dead. Totally dead.”
“Please continue, then,” the major said. Her voice was calm, but her feathers were still a bit ruffled.
“Okay, so, regular spiders come in two flavors, right? I don’t mean that literally, I don’t know what spiders taste like. Bad, I assume. But there are two general types of spiders, those that spin webs and those that ambush their victims. Based on Private Vermilion’s experience, this seems to be the second type. You can see it has powerful legs and large eyes, which help it find and subdue prey.” As she spoke, the floating notepad followed her gaze, sketching out the spider’s various parts. As each drawing finished, the page tore free and floated by itself in a growing cloud above them.
“Avoiding the web-using spiders should be pretty simple,” she continued. “Just, you know, avoid the webs. This type, however, hides and attacks when you aren’t expecting it. That would, I assess, make them the more dangerous type. We should make sure ponies know where they may be hiding, and keep an eye on their buddies.”
The major nodded. “And how do we kill them?”
“Um.” Quicklime looked down at the body. “Well, this worked. Any significant trauma like Vermilion inflicted should do the job.”
Vermilion gestured at Zephyr, who ducked. “Actually, she killed it.”
“Not really.” Quicklime bent the creature’s legs away from its body, stepping on them with her hind legs to keep them down. “When you knocked it off your back, you severed a fang, two legs, and badly fractured the shell around its thorax. It would have died within a few minutes, even if Zephyr hadn’t stabbed it. Sorry, Zephyr.”
“Eh.” She waved a hoof. “It’s fine. Good practice.”
“Anyway, that brings me to my favorite part. This!” With a magical flourish, she produced Vermilion’s punctured rations tin from her bags. The spider’s severed fang still stuck from it. “Isn’t this neat? It went through the steel like paper!”
Vermilion closed his eyes. Those fangs had been just inches from his spine. “It’s very neat, ma’am.”
The glow around the tin and fang brightened, and Quicklime bit her lip in concentration. They began to vibrate in her magical grip, and just when Vermilion was sure they were going to explode, they popped apart in a shower of golden sparks. “Whew! That was really in there. Here you go.” She passed the punctured tin back to Vermilion.
“Um, thank you.” He took it and held it lamely. The biscuits inside, visible through the hole left by the fang, had turned black.
Buckeye took it from his unresisting hooves. “We’ll just get you a new one of these, private. No charge.”
Quicklime spun the fang in the air. The actual bitey part was about as long as his hoof, shiny and black. It drew down to a point so fine it seemed to vanish. The other end was a muscular, deflated-looking stalk that ended in a clean cut after just a few inches. A crust of dried blood limed that end.
“Is that thing safe?” the major asked.
“As safe as any sharp object.” Quicklime passed it to the major, who accepted it gingerly. “The venom seems to have mostly drained out, but I’d still be careful with it. It’s apparently hard enough to puncture just about anything.”
“Sound advice.” She inspected the fang closely, as if it might be hiding some greater truth within its hollow core, then shook her head and held it out to Vermilion. “Here, private. A souvenir. Will look good above your fireplace someday.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He took it with his hooves, rather than his mouth. It smelled foul enough even without being right up against his muzzle. “Zephyr, do you—”
“It’s all yours, Cherry.”
That little exchange seemed to be all they wanted him for. The major gave them a curt nod and turned back to Quicklime, who was pulling the spider apart while providing commentary on her discoveries and taking magical notes all the while. Recognizing a silent dismissal, he stepped back, then followed Buckeye back toward the main encampment. Zephyr and Cloud Fire flew ahead, trailed by a small flock of adoring pegasi.
Buckeye waited until they had some space before speaking. “So, private, how do you feel?”
“Now?” He let out a breath, proud of the fact that his chest barely shook. “Scared. I had no idea it was there until it jumped me, and it was only dumb luck that it bit my gear instead of my neck. I almost died.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t. Better to be lucky than good, they say. And now, thanks to you fillies, we know what to look out for. So next time we won’t have to be lucky.”
“We just have to be good?”
Buckeye grinned. “Now you’re getting it. By the way, nice job back there. Most earth ponies in the company never see any action, and you’re already slaying monsters as a private. Hell, most of the pegasi never do what you did.”
Vermilion felt his face flush. Praise from Buckeye was the rarest of events. “It was all by accident, sergeant.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell them that.” He gestured with his muzzle at the ponies in the camp ahead. “If you can’t make up a good story, then just be quiet. Let them make up stories for you.”
He pondered that for a moment. “Hey, sergeant? Is that why the major never brags?”
Buckeye snickered. “Nah. She don’t brag because she don’t need to. You want a long life, Cherry? Don’t try to be like the major. That’s dangerous.”
Dangerous wasn’t something Vermilion wanted any more of. With any luck, he figured, this would be the high point of the mission, the only bit of adventure he would ever need. Let the other seventy-nine ponies in the company have their turn.
They camped in the woods for the last time, that night. Hollow Shades was not far away.
* * *
Vermilion took one look at Hollow Shades and decided he wanted to leave.
The town sat in a wide valley between two long, forested ridges that rose nearly to the base of the low clouds looming overhead, producing the overall effect of a land disconnected from the rest of the world. The trees were more pines than anything else, now; a few hardy aspens covered the south-facing slopes, but their leaves were all yellow and ready to drop in the next big storm.
The valley hiding Hollow Shades was higher up in the mountains than Vermilion expected. They spent much of the morning trudging up a gentle incline, one he barely would have noticed if not for the extra weight of his pack. The pegasi noticed it too, and spent the whole march sniffing at the sky and ruffling their feathers to get a feel for the wind. More than once he saw one jump into the air, hover in place, then land again with a shake of their wings. In all his months on marches and boring, eventless patrols with the company, he’d never seen a group so anxious.
A wet chill seized the air as they climbed higher into the valley. Their breath fogged around them, and steam rose from the lather in their coats. The forest’s carpet of fallen leaves slowly gave way to brown, brittle pine needles. An icy crust grew on the edges of puddles in the road.
And, of course, there were the webs.
They were easier to see in the cold, barren forest. Without the constant mists to hide the distance and cloak the trees, they could see the webs extending far beyond their sight. They were thicker now, far more than the intermittent silking back west. It must have taken an army of spiders to weave so much as this.
And yet, the webs were all empty. Even the few web-encased trees they had searched, prodding with spears and spells and fire, revealed nothing. It was like whatever legion of spiders had entombed the forest were satisfied with their handiwork, and moved on.
The town appeared abruptly. One moment they were trudging along the path, the mud sucking at their hooves and splattering on their bellies, and the next moment the forest seemed to open like a door to a hidden room, and there it was. Dozens of houses stood in orderly rows, two or three stories tall with sharply-sloped roofs to toss off the snow. Visible just beyond them was a high steeple with a belfry and wrought iron wind vane hammered into the shape of a pegasus, seemingly impaled on the pole that supported it. A clutter of low barns and sheds and silos huddled around the edge of the village, and little footpaths extended into the woods on all sides.
Vermilion’s squad was at the front of the march, again. Buckeye pulled up short and shouted back at the rest of the column to halt. The major and her deputy, a unicorn captain named Electrum, trotted forward and stopped just in front of their squad. Up ahead, they saw a few shaggy earth ponies in the streets. They moved furtively, and vanished into the houses or raced away toward the large building in the near the town’s heart.
“Friendly bunch,” Cloud Fire mumbled. He stared at the wind vane as if not quite sure what to make of it.
“They probably don’t get many visitors,” Vermilion said. “Sometimes earth ponies can be a little, uh, insular.”
“How so? The ones in Everfree aren’t like that. They all seem super friendly,” Quicklime said.
Vermilion frowned. “The earth ponies in Everfree left places like this. Not places this far away, granted, but there are a thousand little towns like this all over the kingdom. And they’re all… Look, sometimes ponies just want to get away.”
“So… are they gonna come out and talk to us?” Zephyr asked. The major and captain were still waiting at the front of the column. Behind them, ponies had started dropping their gear and melting out of formation into organic groups of friends and acquaintances.
The locals didn’t keep them waiting for long. A crowd of them, all earth ponies, all shaggy and rough, bedecked in undyed wool cloaks, gathered in the road where the first buildings began. Foals raced around their feet, pointing at the invaders with muddy hooves and whispering up at the adults, who watched the company with a stoicism that bordered on indifference. The brightest, liveliest coat color Vermilion saw among them was a subdued tan – the rest were grays or browns or umbers. The crowd grew, until it must’ve included half the ponies of Hollow Shades.
Finally, when Vermilion was certain they were only minutes away from pairing off for a staring contest, the crowd parted, and from the mass emerged the oldest pony Vermilion had ever seen. His silver coat hung in curls from a gaunt frame, thin and tall, supported upon stilt-like legs knobbled with arthritis. His eyes were half-cloaked beneath the wispy veil of a mane long since bleached of any color but gray. A thick tartan blanket was draped over his barrel, and he leaned against a young mare’s shoulder for support. Together they walked slowly through the gap in the crowd, stopping a few feet away from the major.
The old stallion’s eyes were cloudy, Vermilion saw. But his movements were still sharp, and he held his chin up, as though it were the one part of his body that could resist the cruel touch of gravity. He sniffed at the air, snorted, then whispered something in the ear of the mare supporting him. She nodded and lifted her head to speak.
“Elder Pembrook welcomes the ponies of Equestria to Hollow Shades,” the mare said. Her voice was pitched to carry, and she spoke in clear Equestrian, but with an odd cadence to her speech, with the stress on all the wrong syllables. She was nearly as tall as the stallion and built in the traditional earth pony style – a dull, muddy coat laid over slabs of muscle and bone. Only the faintest trace of refined cheeks and chin, and the relative slenderness of her ankles, suggested that she was female at all.
“I am Pyrite,” she continued in her odd sing-song. “And I have traveled to Everfree. I know your customs and language better than most in our village, and I am happy to put myself in your service during this difficult time.” She finished with a short curtsy, barely more than a nod of her head and cursory lifting of a hoof.
The major returned the nod. “Thank you, Elder Pembrook and Pyrite, for your welcome. I am Major Canopy, and I am here on behalf of their majesties Celestia and Luna to provide whatever aid I can to your town. We do this freely, as an act of goodwill and service, without any desire for compensation. Though your town is outside our borders, we come as friends.”
The ancient stallion offered them a smile, a ghastly thing full of missing teeth and black gums, and whispered in Pyrite’s ear again.
“Elder Pembrook thanks you on behalf of our town,” Pyrite said. The word town stretched out in her mouth, emerging as taw-un. “We did not expect so many ponies to answer our call, but we shall do our best to quarter you in our homes. Winter will be here soon, and we cannot let lords and ladies sleep in tents. The cold will be fatal.”
“Lords and ladies?” Quicklime whispered. “What’s she mean?”
“It’s an old earth pony term for unicorns,” Vermilion whispered back. “Respectful.”
Cloud Fire stuck his head in. “What’s the old earth pony term for pegasi?”
“Just pegasi.”
“Oh.” Cloud Fire’s ears drooped at that. He opened his mouth as if to say more, found nothing to add, and closed it again. They turned their attention back to the front of the column, where the elder was whispering again to Pyrite.
“If you will give us time, we will see to quartering your soldiers,” Pyrite said when he finished. “Until then, Elder Pembrook would be most honored if you would join him in the moot hall so that we may explain our difficulties to you.”
“Of course. If you will give me a moment to see to my troops.” The major sketched a short bow to the elder, then turned back to the column. She spoke quietly with Captain Electrum and started point out various ponies, wagons and positions while he took notes. She ended by pointing at Quicklime, and then, after a moment, at Vermilion as well.
“Looks like she wants you,” Zephyr said.
“Oh!” Quicklime gave a little bounce. “I bet she wants to talk about the spiders. I should get my notes!”
“Yeah, you two have fun with that.” Cloud Fire shrugged off his pack and stretched, his joints popping as his wings extended like fans. “Try and find out when we can go home, while you’re at it.”
* * *
The inside of the moot hall reminded Vermilion of home.
Not because of the hall’s lofty architecture – his parents farmhouse was squat, cramped and drafty with a floor composed of warped wood planks, transformed over the years by dozens of tiny hooves tracking acres of mud in from the fields, until it was something neither wood nor mud but rather a permanently cold, wet surface, grimy and gritty at the same time. All his memories as a foal included that floor, its clammy feel, its scent of loam, and even its bitter taste.
There were few memories of that farmhouse he cared to recall.
The moot hall’s floors were warm, sanded oak, dry and clean. The ceiling rose high above their heads, high enough for a pegasus to feel at home. A massive stone fireplace set into the far wall was loaded with an entire tree worth of firewood and blazed, filling the room with more warmth than Vermilion had felt in nearly a week. The welcoming scent of charred pine overwhelmed him.
No, what reminded Vermilion of home was the ponies – earth ponies, dozens of them, crowding around the fire and the entrances and giving the major a wide berth. Every pony in the room was an earth pony except for their party, and Vermilion realized with a jolt that he was the only earth pony member of the company among them.
The villagers had certainly noticed this – they all watched Canopy, Electrum and Quicklime with wary eyes, but they stared at him with a mixture of suspicion, hostility and awe, as though amazed that one of their tribe could belong to such an organization and mingle as an equal with lords and ladies.
Not that he was equal, of course. The townsponies might not be able to see the invisible barriers of rank, but of their little group he was the least. He wished that Buckeye would join them, so that the village could see one of their own as a leader and not a follower.
The center of the hall was dominated by a wide, circular table. Scuffs on the floor around it suggested the presence of chairs, though they had all apparently been packed up and stored to make room for the crowd of ponies jostling for space. On the table was what looked like a white sheet, stolen from somepony’s bed, covered in ink and paint and weighted down by cobblestones on the corners.
Vermilion stared at it, trying to puzzle out its meaning, until the clues fell into place. It was a map.
A very bad map. The kind of map a foal might create, with mountains drawn as spikes, the forests drawn with actual trees, and squares with pointy hats apparently representing the town’s houses.
The major and the unicorns stared at it, their eyes flickering back and forth across the map’s crude features. For a moment, a hot rush of shame filled him, burning his face. This map was an embarrassment, a pathetic thing compared with the company’s maps; it was the kind of thing an earth pony who had never read a book or touched a quill might make, which was exactly what it—
The crowd shifted and grew suddenly quiet, interrupting Vermilion’s self-castigation. A hole opened at the table beside them, and Elder Pembrook stepped in, still leaning on Pyrite. A brown stallion with a heater shield cutie mark stood on his other side. Something about the set of his eyes and the shape of his jaw suggested a relation to Pyrite, though whether brother or father Vermilion couldn’t say.
The elder whispered something to Pyrite. From this close, Vermilion could hear the watery rattle in his lungs with each breath. He didn’t like the elder’s chances of surviving the coming winter.
“The forest has always been a place of danger,” Pyrite spoke for him. “But for generations it was also the source of our prosperity. We gather what we need from it, and grow the rest. But this past spring that began to change.”
Elder Pembrook waved a hoof over the crudely drawn forest and mumbled something. For a moment, his cloudy eyes seemed to sharpen.
“We didn’t notice it at first, not until months had passed,” Pyrite continued. “The birds failed to return from the south, and those that wintered here in dens began to vanish. If we had realized this sooner, it might have made a difference.” She frowned, the first true expression of emotion Vermilion had seen from any of the adults in Hollow Shades.
“Nopony can fault you for that,” the major said. “Such a small sign would be easy to overlook, even for a pegasus. Please, go on.”
The elder snorted at that, and whispered in Pyrite’s ear. Apparently he was able to understand their Equestrian without any difficulty.
“Elder Pembrook thanks you for your kind words,” Pyrite said. “It was not until the summer that we knew for certain that something was amiss with the forest. Other animals – boars, deer, even the rodents – began to vanish. And we found the webs.”
“Can you describe those? The webs,” Quicklime said. She had her floating pad out ready to take notes. The villagers stared at it.
“They were…” Pyrite frowned. “Webs, like an attercop weaves, but larger than you can imagine. They covered entire trees, my lady. If you saw them, you would understand our fear.”
Vermilion opened his mouth to correct her, but a sharp glance from Electrum stalled him mid-breath. He covered it with a quiet cough.
“What next?” Canopy asked.
At her words, the elder seemed to slump. The stallion beside him grimaced and looked away. Pyrite’s perpetual frown deepened.
“We were fools,” she said. Her accent was thicker, transforming the words into a liquid sing-song that took Vermilion a moment to mentally decipher. “You must understand, there are caterpillars that can wrap trees in silk, and some years they infest so much of the forest that it seems like winter, they are all crowned in white. We pretended it was just those little pests, and ignored the other signs. Even when traders failed to appear on their monthly schedules, we thought they must merely be delayed. So we did nothing.”
“These traders, they travel along the same route we took?” Canopy leaned over the table to peer at the black line winding its way west toward Equestria. “To Gloom’s Edge?”
“Aye, there are four or five who make the trip every month, depending on the season. Fewer in the winter, of course,” Pyrite said. “We ken them all by sight. Their families have been working the roads for generations.”
“And when was the last time one visited?”
Pyrite swallowed, and she didn’t answer until Pembrook gave her a tiny nod. “Not since before the solstice. Almost three months.”
Canopy’s frown took on a dark aspect. “It sounds like you have known about these troubles for some time. I wish you had sent your letter sooner, elder.”
“I thank you for your generous hindsight,” Pyrite said. Her stony demeanor was back, and she stepped between the major and the elder. “We also wish we had written earlier. Please be assured we have agonized over that failure enough.”
Vermilion half expected the major to snap back, but instead she absorbed the sudden burst of anger as though it were nothing more than a comment on the weather. “Of course. My apologies, Pyrite, I did not mean to pry at old wounds.”
“How did you even send the letter requesting our help?” Quicklime asked. “You said there’d been no traders for months.”
Pyrite gave the major a final glower before shifting her attention to Quicklime. “Messenger pigeons. We have a pony who breeds them. After the first snowfall, we… we knew it was time to ask for help.”
“Why after the snowfall? What difference did that make?”
Pyrite’s head shifted a few degrees, and she glanced back at the stallion standing beside the elder. Her mouth stretched out in a grimace.
Vermilion already knew the next part. It was so typical, so predictable. Like earth ponies the world over, the ponies of Hollow Shades were masters of ignoring any problem outside the borders of their little town. And when the forest’s problems began to intrude on their timeless, fossilized lives, they pretended nothing was amiss, because to act would mean acknowledging that their world had changed. And change was something towns like this could not abide.
He couldn’t help himself. “Who died?” he asked.
The townsponies looked at him in surprise, as if not realizing he could talk. The officers, even Quicklime, seemed no less surprised, and Electrum glowered at him.
“Private—” he started.
The earth pony stallion beside Pembrook interrupted the reprimand. His face twisted, and he clenched his eyes shut.
“My daughter,” he said. Even through the thick accent, the words were unmistakable. “It was my Lily.”
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This explains so much about Rainbow Dash.
Canopy may be a badass, but she's no diplomat. Still, at least the troops are getting some helpful context.
Meanwhile, fate seems to have taken a great interest in Vermillion. This is by no means a good thing, but it may mean that the worst-case scenario won't come to pass
Oh, man, that description of a farm-house floor... envy's a sin, but a hard one to resist. I wish I'd written that.
Another military story!
I have fond memories of being deployed with a small team in Baghdad. I mean, we were just fixing the network, no combat, but still. This story is already capturing the same feeling of camaraderie. I'm hyped!
First chernglerngs and now giant spiders... Equestria is really making my case for inventing RAID!!
I could make a killing selling pesticides to the locals...
I give a 50/50 chance of Vermilion and Quicklime ending up becoming an item, or literally all of Vermilion's friends dying before act 2.
man. the best part so far has been the interactions between the tribes. theres just somethings that are so ingrained into the society, and to have it salt and peppered through the story is fantastic. I wonder, is quicklime how you got around having a unicorn in their squad?
So great.
Honestly, Cherry's knowledge of earth ponies might be as useful as Quicklime's of monsters. And easier to come by too if anyone is paying attention, given that they didn't even need to find a pointy-headed non-guard expert for it.
The idea of a retaining strap on a scabbard really bugged me for a moment till I remembered the characters are ponies not humans. It would make sense for a pony as they are probably carrying all their swords horizontally on their body, not vertically like a person normally would.
8705793
Shouldn't swords have a "stopper" anyway? Like safeties on a gun to prevent undesired use? I always imagined that they had that and merely trained the soilders to release them on instinct and/or prior to battle.
More evidence for my theory that one of the themes here will be "don't overlook the Earth Ponies".
xD nice