The War Begins: 11 - Retaliation
As much as I wish otherwise, ‘tis simply impossible for me to detail all the actions, all the engagements, and all the individual battles that occurred on the first day of the invasion, let alone the entire war.
I can only describe with clarity the ones I myself participated in, and I fear that despite my best efforts it does a grave disservice to all the soldiers who fought and died that day. The desperate first-day defenses of Corps Outposts Alpha, Beta, and Delta, as well as Army bases Red to Blue and the border towns they protected are unsung and unknown; with but one well-known exception, none survived to tell the tale of what happened to them.
Many are the times I wonder even now if we at Outpost Epsilon were better, or just luckier, for regardless of our skill we should still have been among them. The story of how we survived is yet to be told, but perchance there is one part and one individual who should be mentioned now.
Watchtower
Outpost Epsilon
Pony/Gryphon border
September 1st, 1139 AC
1430 hours
The news of Gamma’s counterstrike and that we were now planning one of our own was an instant morale boost to my beleaguered troops.
Flight Sergeant Osprey, Master Sergeant Fell Flight, and First Sergeant Still Way were just starting to hash out the rough outlines of our spoiling attack along with me and Storm Sergeant Blue Bolt, the leader of our lightning teams, when my red command gem buzzed. Judging by the tone, it belonged to my fourth platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Snow Squall, who was currently patrolling the Outpost perimeter at a five-mile radius.
“Firefly here. What is it, sir?” I asked into the ruby crystal, though the ‘sir’ was simply a courtesy to his officer bars. Though he outranked me, and indeed was supposed to replace me, I had not been relieved yet, and by the Corps chain of command, as base commander I held authority over all that were assigned to it regardless of rank.
“Ma’am, methinks you won’t believe this, but… we’ve found another Guardspony.”
I exchanged looks with an equally surprised Still Way. “Please repeat, Lieutenant? Another Guardspony?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s wounded and exhausted, but he slipped in between Talon patrols. I don’t know where he came from because he’s in such shock ‘tis hard to get much out of him. He doesn’t answer questions; he just keeps asking for you personally, ma’am,” he told me, causing me to exchange another glance with Still Way. “I’m dispatching a flight to bring him to the infirmary now. No other activity to report. The gryphons are scouting, but still not pressing.”
I could only hope they stayed that way a bit longer; if they attacked again too soon we would lose all chance to hit them first. “Understood, Lieutenant. Whoever he is, tell him I’ll meet him there. Continue your patrol and recall your flight as soon as possible. I don’t want you out there understrength.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am. Snow Squall out,” he acknowledged whilst I left my staff to work out the details of the strike and flew out from the watchtower to the infirmary, wanting to find out who this mystery Guardspony was who knew me. I arrived there to find Gavian helping treat the injured whilst Swift Strike watched over him even as he interrogated the few live prisoners we’d captured; ones that were too badly wounded to take their own lives.
Methinks our healer team was as efficient as treating as they were at killing (a compliment ‘tis certain they would not be pleased to hear given they were reluctant warriors to begin with!), though they kept their longbows close at hoof whilst they tended their patients, lightweight unicorn blades given to them by Still Way on their belts along with various bandages and other tools of the medical trade. They had already been told to expect a new casualty and were rapidly clearing a space for him; they had just finished when he arrived, leaning heavily on his escorts, trembling and looking on the verge of collapse.
He was a mess, and ‘tis to my great shame to say I didn’t recognize him at first. He was young, looking barely out of basic, yet he already wore the stripes of a Guardspony Sergeant—which, in hindsight, was part of what threw me; he’d advanced in rank since I last saw him. His Corps-issue wingblades were bloodstained, his armor was badly battered and even partially penetrated at multiple points by blades and crossbow bolts. At least two of the latter were still impaled in him; I didn’t even want to think of how much damage he’d taken for as much of his own blood, some fresh and some dried, was covering him.
It only got worse the longer I stared at him. His helmet was partially bashed in on one side and when I looked closely, I realized there was a broken-off end of a third crossbow bolt lodged in his upper foreleg, causing his visibly broken front left leg to hang limply within a crude sling that appeared to be fashioned from the torn-up pieces of a Corps combat uniform. Meanwhile, the side of his face had been slashed by steel claws and his right hind leg was scorched by Magus Knight fire, some of his fur seared completely off to reveal burned and blackened skin beneath. He also appeared to have been knocked into the ground by the canyon river once or twice judging by the caked sand and mud on his left side and belly.
In visible shock, his eyes were glazed and fixed straight ahead. He didn’t speak or seem aware of his surroundings but obeyed instructions; with effort, he made it to the table on three legs and collapsed there as the healers quickly attended him, stripping his armor and treating his myriad injuries as I waited patiently. ‘Twas only when his helmet was removed and I saw his full face that I realized who he was, and my jaw dropped open to see him.
“Sky Sentry?” I gaped at him, recognizing a graduate of the Armored Guardspony class that had followed mine; a promising young pegasus stallion I’d later fought a friendly duel with. “How did you get here?” He’d been assigned to Outpost Delta, I remembered, and that meant he must have flown from there all the way to Epsilon in that state; a distance of one hundred twenty miles!
At the sound of my voice, he turned his head weakly to face me. “S-Sergeant F-Firefly…?” he finally managed in a weak and shaky voice, staring at me in wonder and then reaching his good hoof out for me like he wasn’t sure I was real or if he was still alive. “D-didn’t know if… Epsilon was still st-standing. Th-thought you might all be d-dead…”
“I’m here, Sergeant.” I quickly took his hoof as a healer took advantage of his distraction to reset his arm bone with a sharp but mercifully short crack!, causing him to grit his teeth and hiss hard, then lie back in relief again, looking straight up into the ceiling as healing magic was applied and his many wounds were tended. He’d expressed a certain interest in me before, perhaps the first stallion ever to, and the terms of the duel we’d fought were that I would allow him to indulge that interest if he won and put in for his transfer to Epsilon. I’d won the duel instead, for which he’d bought me and my sister dinner. But I’d taken a instant liking of my own to him in the process, and ‘twould be a lie to say there weren’t times I didn’t at least mildly regret losing. “You’re safe now, and you’re going to be fine. My healers will take good care of you. But why didst you come here?”
“I... I...” He looked like he was fighting his own memories for a moment. “I d-didn’t know where else to g-go after...” His lip was beginning to quiver.
“Sergeant?” I tried again, feeling a deep pit forming in my stomach as I guessed the answer to my next question even before I asked it. “What happened to Outpost Delta?”
He didn’t look at or answer me except for the tears that began streaming down his cheeks.
And so another mighty warrior stands revealed. Let all who read this on both former sides know that Sky Sentry was a magnificent fighter, one of the finest I ever was privileged to meet in mortal combat. He was a stallion who battled with aplomb and abandon no matter what the odds, fighting valiantly for all that he held dear… which I daresay did include you, Captain.
But that story is not mine to know or tell. Though the first’s day’s operations were by then generally going well, especially considering we had been forced to launch it on such short notice, some threats to our advance were still apparent, including a major one mounting right under our collective wings.
—Layan Kaval
Imperial HQ bunker
Raptor Base
Opposite Outpost Gamma
September 1st, 1139 AC
1445 hours
Raptor Base was in an uproar.
Word had reached us of an unexpected strike from the combined Millennium-sized Equestrian Army/Aerial Corps garrison at Gamma, which had surprised one of our staging areas and wrecked it with the loss of nearly an entire Talon cohort, killing its commander and crushing its rank-and-file.
We had thought the Gamma garrison was pinned, but it turned out we weren’t the only ones who had tunnels—Captain Sirocco, the accomplished and aggressive commander of the Equestrian Aerial Corps 5th Division, had secretly dug a few of her own over the years for just this occasion and they’d worked with deadly effect—half her forces burst out of the ground right on top of one of our assembly areas, decimating its resting Talons with storm clouds and a rain of unicorn arrows before overrunning the remainder with Earth Pony troops, who destroyed the barely-established base and slaughtered its defenders before quickly withdrawing back into their tunnels before reinforcements could reach them.
It had been a very well-planned and conceived operation, over in less than five minutes, and worse, there were also reports that Gamma pegasi were ambushing our airborne patrols via the same method, bursting out of the ground beneath our low-flying troops to inflict dozens more casualties and forcing the Talons to not patrol in any size formation smaller than a century. Magus Knights had found and caved in the tunnels they used quickly, and the Diamond Dogs had promised they would search for and destroy any others, but the damage was done; we were forced to commit more forces to the siege of Gamma and keep our troops on constant alert were they to try that trick again.
“’Twould appear, my friend, that I did not give Sirocco enough credit…” A glowering Gaius noted to me once he had issued additional orders and we were alone. “I knew she was capable of a counterstrike, but I did not foresee her methods or that she would attack so soon.”
“We had no intelligence that she had tunnels of her own, my lord,” I offered a defense. “‘Twould seem a major oversight on the part of the Owls.”
His eyes narrowed at my words. His opinion of the Office of Owls—and my own—had been markedly lowered of late, as we learned that they had kept secret the theft of our invasion maps right out of the Citadel’s war room in our Imperial capital of Mosclaw for weeks. Worse, they had then covered up their own massive failure of security by attempting to stop the shapeshifting thief behind it with Ravens alone, not informing us of their pursuit until it was too late for us to assist.
The assassins had given chase and by at least one report wounded their quarry, but ultimately failed in their task to stop the Changeling spy before it reached the border. We did not then know the final fate of the creature or its pursuers, but having lost contact with them, we had no choice but to assume (correctly) that our war plans had been delivered to Equestria and, faced with a potentially disastrous loss of surprise, launch the invasion seven weeks early with barely half our intended forces in place.
Still, tempted though he was to blame them, he did not. “Intelligence or no, I fear our blindness to pony military acumen has raised its head again, my friend. We keep thinking that we alone can come up with good tactics or strategies. Once again, the lie of that conceit has been proven,” he growled, his tail twitching as he tapped his talons on the stone table. “And thus, we are now forced to assault Gamma sooner rather than later, lest she tie up too many of our Talons in the siege.”
‘Twas at that moment that Livia Cassius Junius, ever one to tweak her rival, chose to enter. “I have read the reports. Another cohort crushed, I see. So then… still think not striking Gamma at dawn was the proper course of action, Prelate?” the Primarch of Paladins all but sneered. “Perchance we would have suffered high casualties, but they would hardly have had soldiers left to spare for ambushing us later.”
“They could just as easily have used those tunnels to blindside any attacking force, Primarch,” Gaius retorted, though a note of annoyance in his voice told me a nerve had been touched. “Hard as it may be to believe, the ponies do have good soldiers and the mind and will to use them. You may be assured they will fight and find ways to sting us. What will define the success or failure of this campaign is how quickly both sides adapt to the tactics of the other,” he told her. “‘Tis true they destroyed one of ten cohorts belonging to the 30th legion. A notable loss, but not a crippling one. They have exposed their tactic, and now that we are aware of it, it will not work again!” he pledged.
The lie of that statement was given almost instantly when there was the sound of an explosion down the tunnels, shaking the ceiling and causing a small amount of dirt and dust to rain down. Though we knew the Diamond Dog tunnels were sturdy, we couldn’t help but momentarily fear a collapse, but we soon had other things to worry about as intrusion alarms sounded throughout the complex, announcing that impossibly, the Gamma garrison had somehow found our bunker and broken in.
I swiftly drew one of my two swords and took a combat stance, shifting to guard the entrance to the Prelate’s office. Despite the danger, I couldn’t help but smile as my senses instantly flared into fighting readiness. For ‘twas then I knew my fondest and deepest wish was about to be granted:
That I would indeed be seeing combat in the campaign.
And I pity those who were unfortunate enough to face you, Ambassador, and look forward to hearing your account of the action in the next chapter, of which our own reports were but fragmentary.
But before we can return to Raptor and Epsilon, we must finish the fight at Cloudsdale, which by now was just reaching its climactic phase. The Gryphon Wind Knights had been driven off from the militia base, but a second, larger force of Knights and Ravens were still trying to destroy the weather factory.
For all of Thunderbolt’s heroics that day, the most notable of which have yet to be shown, methinks his one critical act was not the heavy losses he inflicted or even the hundreds he initially saved. As will soon become apparent, he cost the gryphons the one thing they had least to spare in this operation…
Time.
—Firefly
Perchance you are correct, Captain, but ‘twas a double-edged sword. For time worked against us as well as we struggled to ready ourselves for another battle, knowing that the militia base was safe but the weather factory was not.
We were exhausted and reeling from our losses after the first fight, but we knew we could not quit now; not so long as the weather factory was still endangered and our friends and families there remained under dire threat.
So once the immediate area was secure, we spared but a few minutes to rest and lick our wounds. Those of us still able and willing to fight hastily reorganized ourselves for additional action, joining forces with the surviving militia before taking flight for the other end of the city.
‘Twould be there that we would enter the fight once more.
—Orchard Oriole
Cloudsdale
Two miles southeast of Weather Factory
September 1st, 1139 AC
1325 hours
We flew along, heading for the fires and sounds of battle in the distance, once more joined along the way by dozens of additional civilians wanting to fight but seeking strength in numbers.
There were well over a thousand of us as we neared the other end of Cloudsdale, a mixed civilian/military force now placed under the command of the senior surviving militia officer. And this time, we had three hundred militia ponies at our core—all that was left of the twelve hundred on-duty soldiers they’d started the morning with after the Knights had gotten through with them.
They could have given up, but they did not—incensed at their losses and the sneak attack they’d suffered, they were determined to fulfill their stated duty to defend Cloudsdale and show the Gryphons that they were not to be taken lightly. And having formed three century-sized phalanxes to fight with that were now properly supported and backed by storm clouds, ‘twas certain they could do some serious damage to the Knight formations despite their archaic tactics.
Especially given those tactics were now enhanced by equipment of yore. Seeing how effective the Royal Legion shields were, the militia forces were now using them at my suggestion. They placed one in the possession of their leader at the apex of their cone-shaped phalanxes, stretching out their formations so that all soldiers in it would remain within its protective shadow, safe from Magus if not from crossbow attack.
This would, in theory, allow them to approach enemy formations with their mass of soldiers intact and grind up any Knight unfortunate enough to be caught within their spear-studded net.
Meanwhile, I was now commanding an entire company, which ‘twas a post to which I’d never ascended in the Corps. My force consisted of mostly civilians led by those retired or off-duty Corps and militia veterans amongst us, commanding squads and platoons and now armed with purloined Knight blades in addition to the ones we’d brought with us.
We’d likewise stripped some of their armor and helmets off bodies that hadn’t fallen through the clouds, sparing the Royal Legion armor for our stallions whilst we added Knight pauldrons and foreleg covers to our own protective ensembles. Unfortunately, their chestplates and other armor were simply too large, heavy, or ill-fitting for most of us to wear.
‘Twas even more remarkable now that I look back on it—that all of us, whether militia or civilian, were still willing to fight despite the extreme losses we suffered. But whether it was due to pegasus warrior heritage or simply the fear of losing our friends and family, our fighting blood was collectively up, and we reacted to the presence of the gryphons invading our ancestral home as a swarm of hornets—or better yet, flash bees—would defending their nests.
Except the electric sting we could generate was far more powerful and lethal. And better yet, as we had the first inklings by then, our storm cloud ‘stingers’ were completely immune to their counterspells.
As we neared, we found that other improvised civilian forces had already attempted to engage the Knights and break their cordon around the Weather Factory and the Corps base at Fort Tempest. Unfortunately, and as might well have been the case with us at the Militia base were it not for the presence of our Royal Legion shield and storm clouds, they had been enveloped and annihilated, leaving scores dead and hundreds more pegasi outside their perimeter patrols unable to break inside.
The gryphon numbers were greater than those at the militia base, but we were beyond caring, especially as we saw the first evidence of the worker massacres that had occurred inside, seeing destroyed buildings and grey-dyed Ravens flitting here and there to hunt down any hiding survivors.
The Knights reacted with some visible consternation as they saw our large and well-organized formation approach, immediately summoning several additional centuries of their own as reinforcements.
Knowing they were on the way, we didn’t waste time replying to their Magus’ shouted orders to not approach them. Ignoring them, our militia commander immediately directed our twenty storm teams to form a battle line. Several were now crewed by more experienced militia soldiers with better aim, and having already organized them into three batteries, he assigned one to the center and the others to each flank, intending to bracket the growing Knight formation and punch a hole right through the middle of their massed airborne forces.
Their orders given, our storm teams swiftly assembled for action under the protection of militia and Royal Legion shields, an entire militia phalanx and several improvised civilian platoons further guarding each.
Word had apparently not reached the Knights on this side of the city that their anti-cloud spells were ineffective, as they attempted to duplicate their earlier tactics against us. And this time we allowed them to do it, even daring them to as we pushed our formations close to the clouds to more effectively cover them with our shields, meaning that if their spells did work, we’d all be killed at once.
‘Twas a lure, and one methinks was worthy of any predator as they drew closer in anticipation of slaying us with our own storm clouds. With a smug voice informing us that we would die unless we withdrew, their sub-Tribune commander waited but half a minute more before ordering her mages to open up on us. All whilst we simply waited for it, now wearing smug looks of our own, knowing and eagerly anticipating the reversal of fortune we were about to inflict.
And thus, when their magical beams impacted the clouds with nothing more than a weak sizzling sound, our retaliation came instantly in the form of a massed twenty-bolt volley that crashed into their ordered ranks and shattered them, hard on the heels of which came the militia troops under the protective fire of additional volleys that kept the gryphons from massing to meet the attack or otherwise reacting effectively. The looser and more extended militia formations dropped several dozen Knights on their first pass, taking only a few casualties of their own, and none from Magus fire as the Royal Legion shields at their apex proved very effective at deflecting violet-tinged magus lightning and orange gouts of fire.
With the lightning-and-shield protected militia leading the way and showing surprising effectiveness against the elite Gryphon warriors for now having proper equipment and support, we broke through the Knights onto the grounds of the weather factory and immediately fanned out, two centuries of militia troops supported by the bulk of our storm teams heading to the relief of the besieged Corps battalion at Fort Tempest whilst the third century and five storm clouds made for the central grounds, heading towards an area the Ravens and Knights were circling like vultures…
At the center of which was a single pony trapped within three shield spells into which a fourth mage was pouring fire.
Thank you, Orchard Oriole. ‘Twas good to meet you for the first time and be able to swap war stories and other tales with you following the commemoration. ‘Twas even better to finally be able to learn the identity of the one in large measure responsible for our rescue, through your Royal Legion gear and suggested tactics.
I would invite you for a personal tour of the Storm Cloud Factory in return for the one you gave us of the museum, so that you may see the ongoing influence the Royal Legion cloud potion has had on us going forward. I also invite you and your family to have dinner with mine, as repayment for your hospitality and battles past.
Until then, ‘tis time for me to finish my own tale of this battle, painful though ‘tis to remember. But for the sake of history and my sister, and in honor of Thunderbolt and those who fell there, I will continue.
—Morning Glory
Inside the damaged Rainbow Factory, we were unaware of the approach of a potential relief force as we hurriedly continued to barricade every possible entrance we could.
Methinks I had all but given up on life at that point, settling into my role of soldier with surprising ease and no longer noticing or caring about all the dead bodies around me, some of which were my own friends. It scared me how readily I was now ignoring the carnage and how willing I suddenly was to kill, but either due to Thunderbolt’s talk or a desperate desire to live up to the example of my big sister, I brandished a blade and stationed my squad to ambush whoever came through the entrance first as Thunderbolt’s one-winged friend Virga set up a kill zone in the building lobby. ‘Twould do us little good if they simply decided to have their mages rain death on us from above, but in that case, Virga’s orders were to guard a shrinking perimeter whilst others dug their way out through a hole in the floor into the city cloudbase and hid in an improvised bunker beneath the building he had the younger stallions excavating.
‘Twas unlikely we would survive that long if they started burning or blasting us out, but we didn’t question it. Indeed, he didn’t explain, and he didn’t have to; he was doing what any mare would in his place: trying to ensure the youngest males lived, even at the expense of the rest of us.
Virga himself clearly intended to die with us, refusing all pleas to leave, saying he was never going to have foals anyway after all that happened to him; that he would die now as he should have died with Thunderbolt and their promised mares at the Inland Shores settlements. He wielded a Raven sword in his mouth as he stood between two of our remaining three storm clouds positioned to bracket the front entrances, ready to direct what was certain to be our final stand. We assumed Thunderbolt was already dead at that point and we would follow shortly, until we heard a fresh series of crashing booms—volleyed lightning fire!—followed by the sounds of battle getting steadily closer again. We chanced a look out to see…
Well. Methinks mere words cannot do it justice, either the sight, or the emotions it brought. So I will simply say that what we beheld was no more and no less than...
Salvation.
You are very welcome, Morning Glory, and ‘twas good to meet you as well. I believe I will take you up on your offer sooner rather than later, and offer your family dinner in return with my own.
—Orchard Oriole
Whilst assembling our forces outside the base perimeter to breach the Knight formations with lightning, our commander, Synta Spring Wind of the Cloudsdale militia (‘Synta’ being a militia rank roughly equivalent to a Corps Sky Sergeant), elected to divide our forces, something I thought he was foalish to do. Our potency and potential threat to the Gryphon Knights was in our mass, I felt, much as it had been back at the militia base when we overwhelmed them with our improvised artillery, ancient shields and sheer numbers, compensating for their greater skill at battle. We also weren’t facing Ravens then, whose skill at close combat and propensity for surprise strikes was legendary.
Nevertheless, he did so upon seeing the secondary action near the Rainbow Factory, guessing it was a major and ongoing point of pegasus resistance for the gryphons to have committed an entire Knight century and at least four Magi to the effort.
As we neared, we were as surprised as anypony to see they were seemingly focused on but one figure, whose identity became clear as we got closer—the legendary Lieutenant Thunderbolt! The hero of Phoenix Fire (or so we then believed), his skill in battle was said to be amazing, and suddenly it made more sense why the gryphons were focusing so much force and effort on him if he was responsible for all the dead Knight and Raven bodies apparent on roofs and non-cloud surfaces. The Knight century spotted us in some alarm and shifted to fight us as they saw at least three times their number winging in with a fully formed cone-shaped militia phalanx at its core, two of the mages turning their attention on us whilst the other two maintained their efforts against Thunderbolt himself.
With word received that our clouds were immune to Magus spellcasting, the Knights wasted little time in opening up on us with lightning and crossbows firing explosive bolts, trying to disrupt the approaching phalanx. But the militia’s loosened formation and the cover of their Royal Legion shields minimized their casualties, deflecting spellcasting and keeping their greater mass of their century-sized formation intact as they plunged right towards Thunderbolt whilst our storm teams covered them, which were in turn protected by my company of civilians.
‘Twas then a series of crossbow bolts impacted our formation from below, causing several of our number to fall from the sky with a series of pained cries. I looked down to see… three teams of Ravens rising to meet us, seeing easy targets of untrained civilians wielding improvised weapons. The ‘gunner’ of a cloud we were guarding was hit, so I had Blue Jay take over, as she, like me, had served time on a storm team whilst in the Corps. We knew weather combat well, so I immediately ordered all those who knew how to alter their clouds to fire a ‘scattershot’ bolt, which means a bolt that quickly splits and splits again many times into multiple forks, branching out into a broad cone.
‘Twas an excellent close combat weapon and a means for storm teams to fend off swarming attacks from enemy infantry, but ‘twas also only good at short range as the spreading sparks attenuated at any real distance. I waited until they were within twenty yards despite the pleas of my company to fire, and only gave the order to strike when most of the Ravens could be caught in the net.
Lacking the armor of the Knights, they were all caught by the net of forked bolts, and whilst not all of the strikes were lethal hits, the electric shock stunned many of them long enough to fall to the cloudbase below. One unlucky Raven was struck at the base of the left wing, the appendage nearly shorn off; she screeched in dismay as she fell, likely to her demise. Having no protection against such an attack, the remaining Ravens tried to swoop around us to take us from the rear only to find that we didn’t have to turn the clouds around to fire them in a different direction; we just had to dart behind them again. After suffering another decade or more of casualties due to lack of armor or countermeasures, their remaining numbers retreated to sniping with crossbow bolts, unable to approach.
‘Twas just as well, as we were down to our final bolts, and I didn’t have time to add more lightning potion to them.
In the meantime, though down a third of their force due to accurate Knight crossbow fire and slashing sword attacks from their squad-sized decade units—to their credit, the militia troops were well-trained in their tactics and simply closed up their forces around their losses, rearward troops moving up to fill the gaps—the phalanx reached the first mage and his dozen protectors trying to keep a choking Thunderbolt caged, forcing him to abandon his effort and see to his own safety, casting a shield spell around himself as the militia crashed in, chewing up the Knights within their ranks though they took an equal number of casualties to do it. They succeeded in bringing down the first mage with the Royal Legion shield, which the Gryphons learned then could not only deflect but also disrupt magical auras, collapsing his shield on contact and rendering him vulnerable to spears and wingblades.
It should be noted that here at the start of the war, the non-Magus Knights were excellent fighters in possession of superb weapons and armor, but the Magus themselves, once you got past their magical tricks, were not, armed with only a short sword and a cloak meant to deflect unicorn curses, not blades. ‘Twas a weakness of theirs that ‘twould not be addressed quickly, and we took full advantage; with only a few bolts left I spent them all on the second magus, forcing her to pull back and release a badly weakened Thunderbolt, who fell half-dead to the cloudbase below, gasping for air.
We had freed him and crippled another Knight century as well as taking out another score of Ravens, but to what end? Our clouds were spent, and as still more troops gathered against us as the gryphons either finished off the Fort and its Corps defenders or simply abandoned their siege of it, shifting their forces to counter the two-pronged attack they were then facing, I wasn’t sure I had enough time to reload our clouds. I could only hope they didn’t realize that as I pulled out the two lightning potion vials in my possession and passed one to Blue Jay, hoping for just another minute. But as the Knights gained the upper hand on the militia troops who freed Thunderbolt, who was still too weak to fight, it dawned on them that our fire had stopped. ‘Twas then they realized we were defenseless and began to streak in to crush us…
But they never made it to us, oblivious to the threat closing on them from directly overhead until it was too late.
Indeed, old friend, and we in the Rainbow Factory were all but delirious with joy to see it.
This is Virga Veil, and before I describe the events to follow, Methinks there is something worth mentioning. For those who are unaware of the connection, Thunderbolt knew Windshear, as they served together at Outpost Beta before the IS-2 incident, and they did remain friends afterwards. As I also served there, I knew him as well, and though he was certainly a magnificent soldier in his own right, ‘tis certain that not even he could have fought as brilliantly or as savagely as Thunderbolt did this day.
By an odd quirk of fate, Windshear did not participate in the Phoenix Fire operation, as he was ordered to stay behind and assume command of Beta whilst the operation was ongoing, guarding the border against potential gryphon retaliation. ‘Twas supposed to be but a temporary post, but one he stayed in for a year afterwards before moving on to train Corps recruits at Fort Stratus.
My memory remains poor of most things prior to IS-2, but one thing I do recall clearly was that Windshear oft said that tricks of battlefield fate like that one decided who would win or lose, live or die. Such it was for both us and the gryphons that day, as it took a confluence of fortuitous events and timing for us to live and the Gryphon raid to be driven off.
Case in point, I couldn’t believe our luck as not one, but two relief forces reached us within minutes of each other, trapping the gryphons between the proverbial gale and a hailstorm, forcing them to face two equal threats at once and into a fight that in the end, they could not possibly win.
—Virga Veil
As Morning Glory has stated, I was ready to die, and was indeed awaiting it, certain that despite all we had already accomplished and as many minor battles as we had already won, we simply could not survive much longer. Thunderbolt was gone, ‘twas certain in my mind, and I would now follow him, deciding I could rest in peace knowing we had done our duty to Equestria.
‘Twas an oddly serene feeling, I found. After having wondered for so long why I had survived that terrible day, on this day, I finally found an answer, and for it, I was ready to die if it meant saving at least some of our stallions and other workers; inflicting as many losses on our hated foe as I could.
‘Twas an acceptance I had only then arrived that as our last thin threads of hope were cut. Those hopes had risen with the coming of the militia-led relief force, spiking hard as they inflicted significant losses and even saved Thunderbolt, but fell again quickly afterwards. Thunderbolt was now in no shape to fight, Knight numbers were simply too great and the militia clouds, whatever their nature (methinks I had no idea what sorcery had been used that they were firing gold-colored bolts!), simply couldn’t sustain their fire forever. In the Corps, each storm team would have a ‘runner’ that would retrieve fresh clouds from supply as one was being used up, but here, that wasn’t an option.
I was actively considering dashing out to pull Thunderbolt back inside, Ravens be damned, hoping our meager medical supplies might revive him. But I quickly realized that would be suicidal as the Knights regained the upper hoof and began to grind down the invading force. They were suddenly swarming all over the weather factory where before it had just been a few plus the Ravens; they’d clearly been released from the siege of Fort Tempest to fight. And fight they did, moving to envelop the invading civilian and militia formations with their superior weapons and soldiers, determined to finish the job in spite of their losses. They were well-trained warriors, and our fate once again seemed sealed…
Until many hundreds of blue-uniformed figures with gleaming blades dove right out of the midday sun on them, blindsiding them in a classic Corps tactic, dropping nearly two centuries of elite Gryphon soldiers in mere seconds! We did not know it then, but ‘twas a reinforcing brigade from the Aerial Corps 1st Division, six hundred soldiers dispatched to Cloudsdale from Outposts Mu and Nu with all deliberate speed by Princess Celestia herself. To them—and to her—we owe our lives as they took the Knights completely by surprise and threw them into disorder, their slashing wingblades and hit-and-run, 4-on-1 tactics as per standard Corps combat doctrine decimating their centuries in a matter of moments.
A ragged cheer went up from my defending forces as for the first time, we thought we might yet live, and this time, I did dispatch several volunteers to dash out and bring Thunderbolt back. But ‘twasn’t necessary as the Corps commander recognized our still-standing building as an improvised command center and flew down to present himself, entering and asking who was in charge, removing his helmet to reveal…
“Rolling Thunder!” I exclaimed, reflexively saluting my former drill sergeant during basic training at Fort Stratus so many years earlier as he dispatched a hundred soldiers to secure the grounds, and a squad brought Thunderbolt and several other wounded back with them, swiftly and efficiently establishing a perimeter under his direction. A thirty-year Corps veteran, back then, he’d been but an SFC, but now wore the stripes of a Sergeant Major; last I’d heard he was the ranking trainer at Fort Stratus, having turned down an appointment to the Equestrian Officer Academy on several occasions to remain at the Fort doing what he loved.
A slightly portly but still-potent dark grey pegasus stallion with a graying mane of close-cropped pale blue hair—woe to the many raw recruits who tried to challenge him over the years for being slightly overweight only to find out quickly how well he could actually fight!—he turned to me and returned the salute with the same smirk he often wore whilst berating Corps recruits during basic. “Trainee Virga,” he instantly recognized me, as he had an uncanny ability to recall every pony he’d ever taught in a quarter-century at Fort Stratus, as well as all their shortcomings. “I’d ask how in Celestia’s name you could possibly be working at the weather factory given how poor you were at weather work back in basic, but methinks such questions can wait. We have a battle to fight here,” he told me as Thunderbolt was carried in by a full flight of Corps mares and lowered gently to the floor. He threw off the helping hooves and struggled to his own, saw Rolling Thunder, and then saluted in genuine surprise and respect.
“Sir!” he offered through a coughing fit, his bloodlust momentarily forgotten to my great relief. “Methinks I never thought I would be so glad to see you, sir!”
“And methinks you bore the officer rank, not me, Trainee!” he said like he was back in basic correcting a recruit, but still returned the gesture. “I would have hoped you got better at proper address of superiors than you were then!”
For one of the few times I’d known him, Thunderbolt looked chagrined. “My apologies, Sergeant Major,” he said, finally allowing Corps medics to attend him, fresh air and healing balms quickly reviving him. “But… why are you here and not at Fort Stratus, sir?” Like me, he simply couldn’t get out of the habit of calling our old Drill Sergeant by the officer honorific.
This time, Rolling Thunder let it go. “I was giving a training seminar at Outpost Mu when news of the invasion came followed by orders from Canterlot to rush reinforcements to Cloudsdale. The base commander was absent, so as ranking pony, I led the force. ‘Twould seem we arrived in the nick of time,” he commented, turning toward the shattered windows to observe the continuing action; his soldiers making the most of their temporary advantage to even up the numbers of the two sides before the gryphons could reform their ranks. “So what’s our situation?”
We told him shortly as several militia officers and two civilian mares wearing old-style Royal Legion helmets along with Gryphon Knight pauldrons and foreleg vambraces were brought in, both of whom started upon seeing Thunderbolt and myself.
I knew I’d seen them before but couldn’t remember their names, even cued by their colors. Thunderbolt, however, did. “Orchard! BJ!” he recognized the herd mares of our old comrade Windshear, who’d introduced them to us at the Summer Sun Celebration military ball mere months before the IS-2 incident.
To little surprise, Rolling Thunder instantly recognized them as well. “Trainees Oriole and Blue Jay,” he acknowledged them to their surprise, causing the orange and blue mares to instantly stand at rigid attention and salute even though they were over two decades removed from their Corps service. “Why am I not surprised you’re in the middle of this? Methinks the only thing you two excelled at was troublemaking. Still think sneaking in to my office and putting ink on my spyglass back in basic was a good idea?” He all but growled as he gave them a mock glower, causing the pair to reflexively cringe… and me as well, scarcely able to imagine what punishment he’d given them and their now-dead sister Cardinal after.
Blue Jay spoke for both of them. “We will perform as many wing-ups and wind sprints as you wish, sir… after we’ve won this battle!” The pair went on to explain how they’d come to be there and how they’d beaten the Knights at the militia base, and then used the same tactics to bloody the gryphons badly here at the weather factory.
“The Royal Legion…” Rolling Thunder shook his head and chuckled, and I couldn’t help but do the same, amazed that their ancient weapons and tactics could be useful once again. “We couldn’t bring any clouds of our own with us over that distance, and methinks from what you say they’re more dangerous to us than the gryphons anyway. Do you have any more of that potion?” he asked, to which they produced but two small half-full vials, the remaining liquid of which they said held only around twenty bolts each.
Rolling Thunder grimaced, and so did I. “Methinks that’s not enough to defeat their remaining mages or dent their numbers significantly,” he told us as a messenger appeared to inform us that the gryphons were now regrouping around the remains of the storm cloud factory, badly weakened but still possessing sufficient numbers to beat us back. “So be it. ‘Twould seem we’ll have to do this the hard way…” he buckled his helmet back on and deployed his wingblades. “Stay here, trainees! You’ve done plenty and fought well. The Corps will finish this.”
“The hay I will, sir!” Thunderbolt flared his wings in anger and brought his hoof down hard; the dangerous gleam returning to his eyes. “I’m not stopping as long as there’s more gryphons to slay!” he exclaimed as some wounded Corps soldiers were brought in.
Rolling Thunder stared at him for a moment, than nodded, perchance deciding he’d have more to worry about if he denied Thunderbolt’s desire to fight than if he acceded. “As you wish. Welcome back to active duty, Lieutenant.” He instructed one of the wounded soldiers to remove their wingblades and offered them to Thunderbolt instead. “I do request, however, that you not pull rank on me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Thunderbolt answered as he pulled on the wingblade harness and a wounded soldier’s helmet, shrugging his shoulders to deploy the former. He took a few experimental swipes to test the fit, nodded in satisfaction and spread his wings to take flight, only to stop short, turning to face the two mares, and odd and dangerous smile breaking his burned and bloodied face.
“So tell me, Orchard… these Royal Legion lightning potions of yours. Is there any way to use them other than adding them drop by drop to clouds...?”
There was indeed, though methinks Thunderbolt’s presence made their use in such a manner immeasurably more dangerous… to both sides. We knew Thunderbolt had a lightning affinity from what Windshear had said, but had no idea how potent or deadly it truly was.
—Orchard Oriole
We emerged within five minutes to find the battle had stabilized into a standoff with both sides possessing equal numbers of Knights and Corps Soldiers, but even with their sharply reduced ranks, the gryphons still held the Storm Cloud factory, having finally and rather brutally crushed the militia-led assault directed there. ‘Twas clear by then they had given up on reducing the entire facility, but were attempting to complete the destruction of their most vital target before departing.
We would not let them escape, not if the fresh strategy we came up with had any success. With two reinforced battalions at his command supported by several hundred civilians and scattered militia troops, Rolling Thunder directed us to push them back towards the storm cloud factory, which we already considered lost. ‘Twas key, however, to making sure the price the Knights and Ravens paid for the bloody raid was total. The Knights sparred with the Corps soldiers with some success until Thunderbolt returned to the fight, and I was awestruck to see him in action; an unstoppable killing machine that dropped two dozen elite soldiers in the space of a minute. His presence forced the gryphons to fall back on their interior lines and keep under the protection of their mages…
Exactly as we wished them to. With their remaining six hundred or so soldiers gathered tight around the storm cloud factory whilst the Ravens set charges to bring the fortified facility down completely, we passed the cloud vials to Thunderbolt. I honestly didn’t know if what he was planning would work, but ‘twas certain he was also the only one who could survive it if it did.
After Rolling Thunder feinted an attack from the north to pull some of the gryphon forces away, Thunderbolt shot towards the storm cloud factory from the southwest, and for once he didn’t stop to slay any gryphons… perchance because he knew full well that if he succeeded, he would slay them all.
Dodging bolts and magus fire from the gryphon troops, he flew at his considerable top speed right for the ground in front of the damaged facility, landed in the middle of a group of surprised Knights and Ravens, including what appeared to be a Knight commander. He spoke to them in Aeric, perchance informing them they were all about to die, raised a vial of lightning potion as if in toast to them, and then...
He drank it!
At first, nothing happened as the gryphons hastily drew their weapons, but then his eyes and very cutie mark glowed gold and we could all feel a static charge building in the air. The potion charged him as he’d never been before, and suddenly, he was a living lightning battalion as bolts erupted from him in every direction, each uncannily aimed at the nearby gryphons, who he slaughtered in seconds, forcing the remainder to flee. Their leadership destroyed, he then carried out the second part of the plan as the first vial was spent, using his final bolts to blast open a wall to a storm cloud storage vault other workers present knew the location of. He disappeared inside, the gryphons afraid to follow him, and barely a minute later…
The clouds beneath our hooves rippled and there was a growing rumble as if an airborne earthquake was occurring. The second way the Royal Legion could use their lightning potion was as a massive bomb—if you could toss a vial of the potion into a large cloud, it would erupt with not just the potion’s lightning, but release all the natural bolts it had already stored as well and at once, much as the magus spell caused the militia clouds to do. But those were just single clouds. For when tossed into the storm cloud vaults of the weather factory…
The building all but exploded in lightning, shattering it from the inside. Massive numbers of jagged sparks reached hundreds of meters into the air and all around, like giant scattershot bolts that caught almost all the gryphons in their lethal net. We pulled back as the remaining Knights and Ravens were all but annihilated by the massive explosion of electricity, a mixture of gold Royal Legion and the more typical blue-tinged Corps bolts that erupted out of the ruptured storage vaults with devastating effect, destroying the building and everything within three hundred yards.
‘Twas a spectacular and deadly display, and once it was done, the dazed remainder of the leaderless gryphons were easy prey for Rolling Thunder’s full-strength brigade, which attacked and drove off what little was left of their once-overwhelming force with the loss of nearly ninety percent of their original numbers.
And all thanks to one pony, who inflicted such grievous losses in an act of incredible sacrifice, one he was not likely to survive. To this day, I wonder if Thunderbolt actually had a death wish—’twould be a lie to say that I did not at times, like here—but methinks the answer was truly no. And why?
Because as he told me once, he wished for redemption and atonement above all, to break the hold his killing demons had over him. If he died there, he would have neither even if the Gryphons were slain. But by living, he could not only serve Equestria once more, but himself as well.
—Virga Veil
Instructor
Weather Factory Training Center
Cloudsdale
It was done.
When we entered the ruins later, we found Thunderbolt seared and his fur still smoking under a pile of rubble… but also very much alive. To little surprise, the first thing he asked when he was pulled free was, were all the gryphons dead? The answer was yes, and with that, his bloodlust left him and he emerged with some help to the cheers of civilians and Corps soldiers alike. ‘Twas only then that he allowed himself to accept their acclaim—something he never did after Phoenix Fire for the atrocities he committed—and this time, he would accept decoration for his actions…
Once he made it out of the hospital, that was, where he would spent the next several days with severe burns and internal injuries in addition to his myriad blade and bolt wounds. But the battle could not have been won without him, nor could hundreds of weather factory workers have been saved and later able to rebuild.
The gryphons may consider him a villain, but to me and many others, he is the greatest of heroes, a pony who wielded a terrible gift ultimately in service to others and saved countless lives with it. He was my friend and my comrade, and perchance I choose now to live simply to keep his memory—that of my oldest and dearest friend—alive.
We all believe the same, my new friend. He will never be anything less than a hero in my own eyes as well. He saved us all, and somehow even turned me, the most unwarlike pony in existence, into a soldier in the process. I respect him as I do few others… save perchance you, Fell Flight.
—Sky Sergeant Morning Glory
Head of Storm Cloud Production
Cloudsdale Weather Factory
Cloudsdale
I was alive.
I was alive, and I didn’t know how.
If ‘twas a great victory, it did not feel like it as we picked through the remains of the weather factory cafeteria, looking for those we knew even as we prayed we wouldn’t. The wail of children finding their brutally slain parents and vice-versa is a sound nopony should ever have to make or hear, but one that was heard all too often that day. No pony should ever go looking for their family among the dead, and in the end…
You will forgive me captain, that even thirty years later, ‘tis still very painful for me to recall that search, and what it resulted in. And you will forgive me as well, if from this point forward I decline to detail my wartime experiences further as I find them anything but cathartic to relive. You were born to fight, my sister, but I was forced to, and though I find irony in the fact that I remain a soldier even though you no longer are, ‘tis no lie to say that I never wished it and part of me died that day along with far too many of our family.
As for why I remain in the Corps, ‘tis simply to do what I can to ensure such scenes never recur. I oversee Corps storm cloud production to ensure that Equestria is ready should the storm of war ever break over our lands again…
So that we may never have to hear the cries of grieving ponies once more.
I know, dear Glory. The burden of the warrior was supposed to be mine alone, but war does not respect such wishes. I never wished it for any of you, and I cannot help but regret again not being there that day. Perchance I would have died, but perchance I could have saved more of our herd.
Mayhap ‘tis but a form of survivor’s guilt, but I nonetheless bear it. And since my sister will not say what she found, I will: every other adult member of our herd save Morning Glory herself died at the weather factory in that attack, slain by the Ravens, who I cannot forgive to this day. Indeed, I bore them special hatred afterwards as my mother, her herdmates, two siblings and my sire all fell, and worse, the fear, pain and pure terror of their last moments can never be known.
You may find this attack justified in purely military terms, My Captain, and I certainly understand your rationale for it. But I cannot agree with it. To me, the attack on Cloudsdale ‘twas a savage assault on peaceful ponies who had nothing to do with war, and it will never be justified in my eyes.
—Fell Flight
I understand how you feel only too well, noble warrior and emissary, and I decline to offer my own opinions on the matter except to say that I would not have wished to be the one who planned that operation and ultimately had to make the horrific calculation of what would win the war more quickly.
‘Tis worth noting I have known many Gryphons since the war, befriending several, and I ended up drinking in a pub with a former Knight the day of Thunderbolt’s monument commemoration. They, too, lost far too many that day and we ended up crying together for our lost friends and comrades, blaming not each other but a war that was as inevitable as it was senseless.
—Orchard Oriole
Curator
Royal Legion Museum
Cloudsdale
‘Twas a rare family of Cloudsdale indeed who did not have friends or family who belonged to the militia or worked at the weather factory.
Almost all of us lost friends and loved ones in that attack, and we of Windshear’s herd were no different. ‘Twas only the next day, as we had just learned of Windshear’s death whilst we were picking through the rubble and bodies that we found Red Tail had died at her post guarding the entrance to the storm cloud factory, fighting the Ravens alongside Corps soldiers and trying to prevent their entry. She trained to fight them in the PSD and oft wondered how her knife-fighting skills would match up with them. In the end she took two with her, succumbing only to repeated hits of crossbow bolts and scimitar blades.
Gust Front fought as well, donning her Corps uniform and personal wingblades to lead her own improvised force into action against the Knights over Fort Tempest; we knew not her fate until well after the battle, finding her hospitalized with a broken wing and shattered rib cage, having been bested by a Knight commander. A veteran NCO who’d seen plenty of action at Outpost Omega, she would leave the reserves to rejoin the Corps on active duty after she healed, but to our great sorrow, lasted not a month before she fell in battle, and more death notices would soon follow for our beloved foals. ‘Twas far too much grief for any one family to bear and yet, we were lucky for simply knowing their fate. For far too many other herds and families, they would never know what happened as the bodies of their slain loved ones fell through the cloudbase to the ground far below and were never found.
Despite our losses and being middle-aged, Blue Jay and I wanted to fight in the war as well, but with half our herd gone and three underage foals still to take care of, we both could not. At least one of us needed to stay out of the war in order to raise our remaining offspring, so ‘twas decided after some discussion that Blue Jay would fight and I would stay behind, becoming herd matriarch, carrying on the Windshear line if the worst should happen and all should perish. All did not, but of our five foals who were or eventually enlisted, three would fall, leaving but two alive...
And no matter how many times we got word the worst had happened, the agony never got easier to bear.
I am an old pony now; the last surviving member of Windshear’s original herd, approaching seventy years of age. But for all the loss I suffered, neither my house nor my heart are empty. The herd of my youngest surviving foal, Swift Sparrow, still lives with me in our original home, and I have a museum to curate with many tales to tell others within it. I have lived a full life, and have no regrets for any of it… save that I could not fight again at Windshear’s or my sister’s side. I do not leave Cloudsdale much any longer, but I will to see the graduation of my beloved Windshear’s grandfoal, Stalwart Stand, and visit Windshear’s memorial together with him then.
And I will be honored to give you an escort, dear friend and honored mare of my mentor. You have known more loss than anypony should ever expect or experience over your long life, but I for one am very glad you were willing to share your story. Thank you for being Windshear’s wife, thank you for all the hospitality you showed us, and thank for simply being the honorable mare you are. You are living history and a link to the past now, and you will always have a friend in me.
With this, the Battle of Cloudsdale draws to a close, and the focus of the story shifts back to the frontier and our attempts to not only survive the Imperial onslaught, but somehow slow it down. ‘Tis debatable how much we accomplished when all was said and done, but at the time, simply living to tell the tale was enough.
—Firefly
People tell me I saved hundreds and hundreds of people. But I have to tell you: It’s not the people you saved that you remember. It’s the ones you couldn’t save.
—Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, American Sniper
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Gods damn...
👏
Amazing as always
!
That was absolutely epic. Loved the graphics too; they gave a really great sense of the battle progression.
Excellent
And so this chapter finishes... Phew, I might want to complain but I can't imagine actually writing chapters like this.
As always the wait was worth it. Good job!
Please remind me, who was her again?
Fix bayonets, Kriegsmen! We have some trench clearing to do!
Big damn heroes. They always come in the nick of it.
Maybe he simply asked them politely to leave. Or that he was about to paint half of Cloudsdale crimson with their eviscerated guts.
Somepony will have to clean that mess.
Very well done, and holy throne was this a nail-biter of a chapter!
I'm just going to hand this one over to Linky and Twinkleshine. Lots of shop talk opportunities here...
Can an attack really go bad in the fridge?
Neigh, but it can go really bad out on the field! A spoiling attack is a limited objective offensive intended t' buy a weaker force time t' prepare defense further back in the line or muster reserve forces. A vulnerability is spotted in the enemy line, such as a seam between two army groups or unit formations and a group is sent in to disrupt them. It works best in broken terrain where yeh can buy more time, but when yeh're desperate you'll attack over whatever ground yeh have.
That can't be good on the attackers! How do they know they won't all be killed and ultimately end up dying in vain?
Pegasi have a much easier time of it, being able t' fly and all. They kin always bugger off if the enemy masses on their flanks and threatens envelopment. One major advantage the spoiler has is the larger force has a huge number of targets in mind whereas the brave, plucky spoilers have one objective in mind: simply stalling for time. Once the larger force is committed to action, it's very hard to change midstream. Hundreds can upend the timetables of tens of thousands — not to mention being remembered for all time in the annuls of history as heroes of their country.
Something, something, this is Sparta?
I kin yeh got the idea well enough.
Ahh, so they realized they messed up and are taking stock of things before committing to another attack. Maybe they should just stay there and not bother spoiling? Use the defenses they have to their fullest instead of exposing themselves to an arrowy, spiky death? What say you to that, Linky?
Bah! That's just playing into the enemies' hooves! The longer yeh stay put, the better prepared the enemy will be next time and the longer yeh wait to act the worse yehr odds become at escape. The gryphons don't care about the ground the ponies are standing on for any other reason than it impedes their progress further into Equestria. It's not a dragon hoard yeh can just sit on forever! Any defensive position is only good for so long and only serves the role of buying time for a defender. It's not like Canterlot Castle was built one day and all need for standing armies was lost! War is about movement and castles can't move. That's where the spoiling attack comes in, striking an unsteady foe before she can calmly arrange a proper siege and seal you inside yehr coffin, however well-defended and cozy yehr coffin may be!
You make war sound so difficult and scary! Can't I just hide behind stuff?
Neigh! Yeh shall never find honor inside a hole in the ground.
If that's honor, I'll take the hole in the ground! How is he still alive!?
“Sergeant?” I tried again, feeling a deep pit forming in my stomach as I guessed the answer to my next question even before I asked it. “What happened to Outpost Delta?”
He didn’t look at or answer me except for the tears that began streaming down his cheeks.
He flew all that way nearly dead in the off-chance he'd find Firefly where he arrived. Oh, to find a stallion like that of me own!
What was that about not relying on holes in the ground? *wink*
Attack holes should never be compared to wimpy defensive holes! That sister knows what she's doin'!
Attack hole makes it sound like a very aggressive mare pursuing sex. Did Roseluck develop the Attack Hole Strategy?
Not that kindae story and yeh know it!
They almost should have seen that coming given the ponies' willingness to attack at all after such losses. It's like I said earlier, it's hard to change course once yeh're committed to action.
Better to be doing something and staying focused and productive instead of doing nothing and panicking, I suppose.
Aye. It's good fer yehr psychology no matter the context.
On its face, aye. Mass is considered an integral part of warfare and especially so with an inexperienced force unable to translate complex tactics.
So if you win, the cavalry saves you and if you lose, it is a glorious defeat. I think I see what you mean about defense now; it should only hold out as long as it takes to get the cavalry there to save you.
And hopefully not a second too late. Aye! Either way one puts their lives in the hooves of fate as to their individual survival and is why the elevation of said individual for the sake of survival is folly. Well unless that individual is Thunderbolt who kin fight as an army by himself.
In retrospect, not the best building to defend!
Our hero hasn't lost his sense of purpose after turning himself into a kamikaze.
Still early in the war. He has so many enemies to kill yet! Glad to see him live.
I hate to interrupt L and T but it has to mentioned that war is so often carried out deliberately against civilian populations since WW2 such sentiments hold little meaning in reality. German capitulation in WW2 saw the wiping out of not only German but French cities under the flimsy justification of denying resources to the enemy. In many cases it's not even considered important for history to record the use of starvation in modern times to force capitulation such as the Sunni Saudi Arabia's genocidal campaign against Shi'ite Yemen. While I agree with Fell Flight's sentiments, I have to wonder if she'd conjure up some neoconservative platitudes about the will of freedom over the hand of the tyrant or the fate of democracy if it wasn't her family's carcasses being fed upon by vultures.
How many people even realize the British blockade on Germany didn't even end until well after WW1 ended (or that the same monster, Winston Churchill was responsible for so many pointless deaths in both world wars)? History has traditionally been and will always be determined by the victors and no one else. History will not judge Western Civilization kindly for our many crimes.
Good guy. A lot of liberal types hate him for being a coward, as if they somehow cared about the tactics he used being honorable and weren't trying to score political points against a Republican president they hoped to impeach. As if they had a shred of principle to stand on. Chris is of course right. I just hope the ponies who ultimately survived this terrible war had as many children as they possibly could. That is ultimately what matters most when you're playing the long-game.
Sorry for the delay, folks. Here's me finally catching up on comments to the latest chapter.
8894312
Where is your God NOW???
Well, actually, here, it's probably Thunderbolt...
8894361
Thank you! *takes a bow*
8894651
Indeed they do, but only if the fields those seeds are sown in are tended carefully and patiently afterwards. It's not instant and is something that can usually only happen over the generations, as the pain fades and the respect two sides gained for each other in the conflict takes hold amongst their respective cultures.
8894694
Appreciated!
8895158
Thanks. They were a lot of work, but were worth it in my opinion. I'll need to go back and add them to the previous chapters as well.
8895240
Thank you!
8895426
Neither could I, when all was said and done. This was awful lot of work but worth it in the end.
8897010
Thanks!
The amount of work I put into the graphics turned out to be worth it, too. Now I just have to go back to previous chapters to put them in there as well... 
Primarch Livia, commander of the Paladins (the Empire's equivalent of the Royal Guard, tasked with defending the Royal Family and seat of Imperial power in Mosclaw), and a longtime rival to Gaius, now assigned by the Empress to be his watchdog after his first war plan was blown up spectacularly by Celestia. You first met her in Part 14 of the original Rise of Firefly and then again in Part 2 of this story. Gaius considers her a mediocre warrior and leader at best and doesn't appreciate her efforts to turn the Empress against him, while she thinks he's too enamored of misdirection and maneuver at the expense of raw strength and doesn't deserve the Empress' favor.
Indeed! And if you were waiting to see Layan Kaval in action, your wait is nearly over...
Well, nobody'd remember him if he showed up before or after the fight! The hero should always have a sense of timing, after all...
What did he say? I'll spoiler the answer, since I plan to reveal it later: He said "You who are about to die... I salute you!" in Aeric, in a slightly skewed version of what gladiators used to say before mortal combat in ancient Rome/Roam.
Yes and no. Most of their bodies fell right through the cloud surface. Does save on cleanup costs, but that building is s still going to have to be cleared of rubble. Or maybe they could just dispel the modified cloudwalking magic spell they use for construction material and let it fall through as well. Look out below!
8897010
As it was meant to be!
Appreciate the compliments, and thanks as always for commenting!
8897989
I rather hoped we might hear from them!
Welcome, girls, and hope you enjoyed the graphics as well as the written descriptions.
No, but my milk can... and did just recently.
Thank you for a very succinct explanation, Linky.
Bingo.
If this is Sparta, where's the pit of death to kick people in? It should be used for far more things than Persian diplomats, you know...
Exactly. Any static defense can be overcome with enough time and preparation. If they just sit back and do nothing, the gryphons can plan their attack properly and they'll suffer the same fate as the other outposts. ditto for Gamma on a much larger scale; if they just sit back and wait the gryphons can take their sweet time, commit fewer forces to the siege and just wait for their siege engines to come up to beat them, pound the base to rubble and then easily overrun the remainder.
And if that doesn't convince you, you won't ultimately find your best chance for survival in that hole either. Not in these circumstances; not when they damn well know where you are.
At this point, he's asking himself the same question, but the answer is... he had something to live for. Not just Firefly, but he has a son he wanted to live to see again and if he died out there, his colt would never know what happened to him.
He's a keeper, no question. There is, however, a question of whether he can psychologically recover from what happened at Delta... you'll learn more later.
Just don't call them assault holes. Then people will try to ban them!
I've got plenty of other stories along those lines if that's what you want, ladies! Roseluck and Lily comment there.
To borrow and slightly modify a phrase: Their overconfidence was their weakness. The ponies' faith in their friends was their strength.
Seriously, they thought they'd won at that point once they had Thunderbolt dead to rights and didn't take the approaching force as seriously as they should have, overlooking the storm cloud threat because they thought their counter was perfect. Maybe they should have considered what it meant that militia forces were there--that a) they'd driven off the attack on their base, and b) how they'd done it even with their anti-storm cloud spell. Of course, their rules of engagement worked against them as well since they weren't allowed to attack outside of the weather factory unless the ponies attacked first.
True. There's no worse thing for morale then being able to do nothing. He at least gave them a purpose and a possibility of survival, even if it was a slim one. Sometimes, that's all a commander needs to do.
On the other hoof, if they'd all headed for the storm cloud factory they'd've lost Thunderbolt and possibly the defenders at the Rainbow factory even if they still ended up victorious, with grave repercussions down the line. The problem was, the Corps battalion at Fort Tempest was finally wiped out just as they came knocking, so there was nothing left to save and the gryphons could release their entire besieging force for the fight.
Or at least until Gandalf reappears at sunrise with the Rohirrim.
Not quite. Under perfect circumstances he could fight a century by himself, but even his odds go down sharply aside from that, particularly where multiple mages are involved.
Timing was perfect all around here, as the arrival of the first relief force saved Thunderbolt and held the gryphon attention while the second and more dangerous force hit them out of the sun, where they weren't looking. Seriously, this timing was about as good as the Battle of Midway.
Ironically, they were planning to do to the building exactly what Thunderbolt did, just after they were clear. But Thunderbolt preempted them and caught them all in its kill zone. For the record, less than 200 Ravens and Knights escaped the weather factory from a force that originally numbered nearly eight times that. It was a hell of a beating they took, but they did succeed in most of their objectives--most of the weather factory is in ruins and out of the fight, but the fact that Thunderbolt ultimately saved a significant portion of the workers meant that they could rebuild afterwards and start producing storm clouds again within months.
Not to worry; he's got plenty of battles left to go, fillies!
indeed he is. And unfortunately, what large tracts of Western Europe seem to have completely forgotten.
I had suspected that Thunderbolt would drink the potion and I think that this wasn't the last time he did. It is also clear that Sky Sentry has gone through tartarus and is lucky to be alive for now. It's also unsurprising that Fell Flight and Morning Glory do not forgive the attack on Cloudsdale.
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As Firefly says, few Cloudsdale residents can, and yet she sides with the Imperials as to the necessity of the attack. Fell Flight and Morning Glory lost all their other adult herd members there, parent and sibling, so no, they’ll never forgive it. Fell Flight says at much in the next chapter.
Sky Sentry’s story remains unclear for now, even for me, but suffice it to say, he only left when there was nothing to save and nothing else he could do. We’ll try to explore that a bit more later.
The Summerlands are too full of fallen angels, I think. Too soon ripped from this world by the talons of a foe they had never imagined would visit them at home.
But, what an amazing chapter, for all it's glory and heartbreak, I cannot help but bow before this story's amazing ability to both showcase the heroics of the ponies you write about, as well as the soul-shattering heartbreak of it's aftermath.
If I had the ability, I'd fly my Wonderbolts' flag at half staff come September 1st, but I think I'll settle with having it on my wall.
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So yes, I think you should totally do it. the fact that this is a fictional story be damned, Firesight does such a wonderful job of balancing the heroism and the heartbreak, I don't know about everyone, but I certainly felt my eyes water when reading this and similar chapters earlier in this story and its prequel.
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Sad but true. Consider that my inspiration for this campaign is the German invasion of the Soviet Union in WW2, which was inarguably the biggest and most brutal land war in history.
Thank you! I’m going for balance with these stories between victory and defeat, good times and bad, tragedy and triumph. I don’t want it to be wall-to-wall horror à la Fallout Equestria, but some of the chapters will end up close to it at times.
As would I...
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I consider that very high compliment as I’m definitely going for feels here, both good and bad. Don’t worry, you’ll get some good ones before too long as well...
F-YEAH! I was waiting the whole time for Thunderbolt to drink the potion!
I wonder if Firefly gets some too later on.
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You got your wish!
Maybe, but it wouldn’t do her much good right now because her own lightning affinity is not well-developed. If she did it at her current beginner level of ability, it might kill both her and everypony around her.
To think this was but the start. If the corrupt Griffon Empire had successfully pulled the war, all would be over...
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The world would definitely look a lot different. It’s possible they might well have eventually overrun the entire world, but also equally possible they would have overextended themselves and eventually crumbled quickly. They might have then shared the same fate as every other rapidly expanding historical empire, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon to Genghis Khan to Hitler.