The Battle of Alkatin Pass

by The 24th Pegasus

Comrades

The Private tried to keep her head high and her shoulders square as her company marched out from camp. Merely a new conscript drafted at the start of the year’s campaigning season, she hardly considered herself a soldier. Most of her company were farmers called up from the heartlands just like her, ponies who had never fought in a war before, where the threat of a changeling infiltration seemed so far away and distant. After all, what reason would a changeling have to infiltrate a small farming community? But Equestria was indifferent to the burdens of her daughters in a war like this, and the Private had been forced to leave her orchard in the care of her little sister and elderly granny. She didn’t know if she’d ever see it again; casualties in Army Group Center had been horrific during the campaign through the Badlands, and she fully expected her name to appear on a list somewhere before it was time to go back home.

The sun beating down on her armor, which barely consisted of more than a steel half helm, a breastplate, and layers of thick fabric padding across her coat, made her feel like she was trapped inside a boiling kettle. Her sweat couldn’t escape to cool her down, and within a few minutes of donning her gear, she felt like she was trapped in a stifling swamp inside her armor. The further south the army went, the hotter it became, and more ponies had become casualties of heat stroke and dehydration, thinning out the regiment even more.

But not her. She was a proud earth pony, and she would shoulder any burden to go home to her family again.

Ahead of her company stood the Twins, the two wooden bridges spanning the gorge that divided the Hives’ heartlands from their feeding grounds. The battle waged there eight days ago had been a brutal bloodbath, but it had been a victory nonetheless. The Private remembered standing in the reserves watching the other companies attempt to force the bridge while the pegasus dragoons and lancers struck down the outnumbered garrison the Hives had left to protect it. Shattered chitinous bodies and blood bags made from writhing ponies had fallen from the sky like strange rain, bathing the dry and dusty ground below. She hadn’t had to fight then, but now it was her turn to hold the ground taken, to make all that death mean something.

Her horseshoes joined the thunder of her company marching across the bridge. The noise surely had to be audible for miles with the canyons as deathly still and quiet as they usually were. She didn’t know if the changelings knew fear or not, but they surely had to respect this kind of might. Then again, the changelings were said to have monsters the sizes of barns…

“Company, halt!”

The soldiers all came to a stop with one final stomp in the dirt and dust. The Private adjusted her halberd and anxiously glanced around. Only about two thousand ponies made up the vanguard of the army’s center, with the rest waiting in reserve across the Twins, positioned on the cliffs behind them, or rising up into the air from the camp. The Private swallowed hard as she realized she was the vanguard for the attack. The changelings always attacked in massive hordes that could easily overwhelm smaller forces. Was she expected to stand up to thousands today?

“Ready arms!”

The Private detached her halberd from her armor and planted the butt into the dirt in front of her, slotting the shaft into a groove running near her right shoulder. Around her, the rest of her company did the same. Two thousand shiny steel points reflected the light of the morning as the company readied themselves to fend off an attack even as the land remained silent around them.

Nopony said a word. Nopony hardly moved. They could have all been statues and the Private wouldn’t have noticed the difference. The only sounds were the guttering breeze and the panting of thousands of hot and tired ponies all around her.

A shiver passed through the company, and the Private’s ears twitched. At first she didn’t know what it was, but then she noticed the conscripts in front of her looking down at the ground. Nostrils flaring, she did the same and flinched back at what she saw.

The pebbles were shaking.

-----

The Magus perched upon a rocky outcrop overlooking the battlefield. Magus Shimmer stood to her left, and between the two of them was weary Princess Celestia. From their vantage, they could observe the entirety of the battlefield below them, and the dazzling silver armor of the infantry arrayed across the Twins glittered in their eyes as the vanguard arrayed themselves into formation.

“This will be it,” Sunset Shimmer said, grinning beneath the runes woven into her hood. “One big fight to decide the outcome of the war. Once we win this, we’ll be all set to go home.”

“It will take much more than that,” Celestia quietly murmured to herself. “This battle will not be the finale of the war, only a staggering climax. So many ponies will die… ponies and changelings.”

The Magus scoffed in disgust. “I can understand grieving for your subjects, Princess, but the changelings? They’re mindless insects. They can’t even feel pain.”

Princess Celestia turned to her, and the Magus was surprised to see pain in her eyes. “My student… All life has value. Even changelings. I hope you understand that.”

The Magus turned her head away and huffed at the Princess’ admonishment. Nothing more was said on the subject, however, and the towering white alicorn once more turned her sad eyes to the dusty ground before them. Nostrils flaring, she closed her eyes and concentrated, ears twitching as she listened. When she opened her eyes again, it was with an almost apparent sigh of defeat. “They’re coming.”

Magus Shimmer grinned and let her horn spark to life. “Great. Guess I better get down there and fry some bugs.” Winking at the Magus, she added, “Try not to die down there. It’d be a real shame to go out on the big battle of the war.”

“I’ll survive,” the Magus said, adjusting her hood with her magic. “See you down there.”

Winking, Sunset let the red glow on her horn grow until she disappeared with a pop. In the same instant, she reappeared down in front of one of the bridges, startling the soldiers stationed on it. Without a word, she readied herself into her casting stance and faced toward the south, waiting for the changelings to make their approach.

“I should be going too, Princess,” the Magus said, bowing low. But before she could teleport, Celestia stopped her with a hoof on her shoulder. Confused, she angled her head to the side. “Princess?”

“My student…” she said, turning toward the mage. “If I may speak plainly for a moment.”

The Magus blinked, taken aback by her ruler’s request. “Why… why of course, Princess. Why would you need to ask me that?”

Celestia chuckled, though it was empty and sad. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched you grow from a young mare into a unicorn comfortable in her role as a magus commanding the battlefield so quickly that I’m intimidated.” She looked away for a moment, her eyes wandering over the dust beginning to rise from the canyon. “If I could have done anything to stop this war just for your sake, I would have. You deserved better than this.”

“What?” the Magus knitted her eyebrows, trying to study her immortal ruler’s porcelain expression. “What do you mean by that?”

“I had hoped to make you so much more than this,” Celestia ultimately said. “Something greater than a mere Magus wielding the arcane for death and destruction in a mountain of bodies. I wanted to teach you a better magic.” She turned back to her student and looked her over, noting everything from the scars on her coat to the glowing runes in her purple robes. “I had wanted you to be there when my sister came back. I had wanted you to solve Nightmare Moon’s return. But the war made that impossible.”

The Magus’s eyes wandered to the sky, where hidden somewhere under the light of day, the Mare in the Moon had been returned to her imprisonment during a brief struggle with her sister that had nearly destroyed the Equestrian war effort from within. “What kind of power could I have learned then that I don’t have now? If I were to fight Nightmare Moon today, I would be much more capable of defending myself than I was four years ago.”

The look on Celestia’s face told her that she had missed the point, that there had been plans and machinations for her torn asunder by the outbreak of the war, hopes and schemes that meant nothing now. Celestia herself could only look away and stride closer to the edge of the cliff. “There’s no time to discuss it now, unfortunately,” she said. “Maybe when this is all over we can think about it some more. But for now…”

A weak but genuine and hopeful smile changed Celestia’s expression entirely. When she looked into the Magus’ eyes, the unicorn suddenly felt like there was a deeper meaning to her words. “Don’t merely use your magic to kill, Twilight. Use it to save a life. Use it to protect your fellow ponies. They may not be as strong as you, but they are all your equals. Even the Major.”

The mention of the Major set an unpleasant taste in the Magus’ mouth, but she nevertheless nodded, not one to refuse the advice given to her by Equestria’s living goddess, cryptic as it may have been. “I will try my best, Princess,” she said, bowing low. But as the ground began to shake and vibrate beneath them, she quickly summoned a glow of energy to her horn. “For now, though, I have to fight. You are strong enough to maintain the ward, right?”

Celestia nodded, and the pale wash of magic on her horn glowed brighter. “I have not failed my little ponies yet,” she said, “and I will not fail them today.”

“Good. See you when this is all over.” Then, spinning about, the Magus spotted an open space on the bridge and let the magic flow from her horn, slicing across the fabric of reality to join the army in preparation of the storm coming their way.

-----

The Major hovered in place above the army as her dragoons fell into formation behind her. She could see the ponies arranged on both sides of the Twins, with the earth pony vanguard forming a stout obstacle between the Hives and the army’s camp. She did not envy those poor souls down there ordered to hold the line by themselves. The vanguard would likely be slaughtered to the last, but if they held the changelings back from crossing the bridges long enough for her dragoons and the unicorns to make mincemeat out of them, then they would have done their jobs in service to the principality.

A sacrifice to be honored, for sure.

She quickly spun in place to inspect her troops as they arranged themselves in neat, orderly arrowheads. Most were already picking up a sheen of sweat on their coats, and even though their armor was light, the heat and the dry air sapped their strength and didn’t leave them any clouds to stand and rest on. All the clouds the army had brought with them were being used to support the troops with rainwater; they were too valuable to bring anywhere near the field of battle. So, with no other options, the pegasi had to beat their wings and hover under the weight of their armor and lances until the order to charge was given.

Her pickets began to return to the army, carrying with them news of any changeling movements within fifteen miles of the front. So far, everything seemed to be quiet along the flanks of the army, and her scouts confirmed what she had suspected: the changelings were rallying everything they had to counterattack the Equestrian position at the Twins, including numerous goliath beasts. If she could win the fight today, she could win the war for Equestria.

Green wings heralded the arrival of her trusted sergeant. “Major,” Lightning Dust began, throwing a quick salute into her approach. “The company is formed and ready to move.”

The Major nodded, though she didn’t take her eyes off the opposite side of the ravine. “Good. Then all we have to do is wait.”

“Hammer and anvil?” Lightning asked. “Or tip of the spear?”

“A little bit of both,” the Major said, a small smile forming on her face. “I got creative. You’ll see.”

Lightning chuckled. “You always did like to be flashy.”

“If you’re not flashy, nobody will see you when you claim all the glory.”

The Major narrowed her eyes at movement on the far side of the ravine. Lightning saw the change in her expression, so she likewise shifted her attention in that direction. Her brow lowered and her lips parted to reveal bared teeth. “There they are. About time they showed their shiny black faces.”

Emerging out of a bend in the canyon was the changeling army. The sight of the bugs always sickened the Major. They marched in rough company formation in a crude mockery of the pristine Equestrian battle lines, with very little coherence to their troop regiments other than blocks of drones. They carried flags and standards of black and blue, each depicting the crowns of their respective queens. Their weapons were forged from black iron, a crude but terrifyingly effective substance found in the badlands. Pound for pound, the common Equestrian soldier was worth two or three poorly equipped and expendable drones. Unfortunately, the Hives had a lot of weight on their side… and not just through their drones, which outnumbered Army Group Center by nearly three to one.

Mountains moved around the army—only they weren’t mountains. Monstrous arthropods taller than houses clambered over rocks and scuttled by the sides of the army. They were the real danger of the Hives, the wrecking ball that could slaughter hundreds in minutes if left unchecked. Nopony knew where exactly the changelings found them, or if they were just drones twisted into monsters by the queens of the Hives, but the Magi tended to call them goliaths. Most ponies, on the other hoof, simply called them ‘beasts’ or incoherent screaming and crying.

The Major counted the Hives’ army as it began to descend on the Twins. The drones she had little concern for, but the goliaths could rout the army with ease. When she finally counted all five of them, she swallowed hard and felt a cold sweat break out under her armor. If the Hives were fielding five goliaths now, how many more did they have in reserve?

If they weren’t careful, they could lose the entire army in one charge.

A palpable tingle of magic filled the air, and the Major looked down to the bluffs beneath them. There, Princess Celestia stood in her gold and silver plate mail, magical energy building on her horn. The Major tensed herself before the Princess released the spell, and when she did, a golden wave of light burst forth and enveloped the battlefield. She quickly turned around to inspect her own troops in case the purging spell had revealed any embedded infiltrators in her ranks, but there wasn’t a black shell to be seen. Thanks to the Princess’ magic, the Hives had largely given up on infiltrating her army, but that didn’t mean they could assume they never would try it again.

“And now it starts,” Lightning Dust said. She turned to the Major and cocked an eyebrow. “Orders, ma’am?”

“Take four regiments with you and climb as high as you can,” the Major said in reply. “When you see my signal, drop them on the fliers and crush them from above.”

“The usual signal?”

The Major smirked back at her. “You know the one. Now go,” she said, already spotting several hundred changelings rising into the air to fight for dominance of the sky. “I’ve got a charge to lead.”

Lightning Dust did as she was told, departing with a salute and quickly pulling a few hundred ponies to follow her to higher altitude. As she did so, the Major turned and faced her dragoons, her trusted elite, their mettle tempered in dozens of battles. “We take the fight to the bugs!” she shouted, loud enough so all could hear her voice. “We can’t let them get above the vanguard or we lose the battle. Understood?!”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am!”

“Good!” Turning back toward the changelings, the Major pulled loose a pin on her armor and swiveled her lance from back to front, so the steel weapon stuck a good two and a half tail lengths out from her shoulder. Locking it into place, she gave the order for her soldiers to do the same. “Fix weapons!”

The air momentarily glittered with hundreds of swinging lances, and she gave her troops ten seconds to get them fixed before she began to fly forward, her speed increasing as her company built up momentum. “Everypony, on me! We take the charge right to the Hives! We’ll break through and burn their nests down, and the war will be over!

“For honor! For glory! For the Princess! For Equestria!

“Charge!”

-----

Horns blared.

Officers shouted.

Hooves shook the earth.

The Private felt her throat seize up as the hordes of changelings began to gallop down the hill towards her company. Though they had showed up in formations and ranks to match the Equestrians, those began to rapidly disintegrate as the drones lost cohesion and simply threw their weight into the charge. Alabaster wings buzzed and filled the air with a horrible vibration, and her green eyes pitched upwards at the drones beginning to dive towards her position.

Nervous chatter rose up from the green soldiers of the vanguard as the ferocity of the incoming charge began to bear down on them. The Private wanted to run—every one of her instincts screamed at her to do so. But she was dead center in the formation, and there was nowhere to go. She could only stand her ground until the army broke ranks around her.

“Hold!” her officer shouted, and what limited drilling she’d had before being sent off to the front kicked in. Suddenly finding her foundation, the Private readied her halberd, feeling the weight of the weapon in her grasp. She was an Equestrian, was she not? She had the weight of her family at her back. She would be the rock that would break the charge.

“Brace!” came the next command, and the vanguard shakily lowered their halberds, planting the butts into the ground and bracing the hafts against their bodies. At a command, the mass of ponies became a solid wall of pikes and points, unassailable from any angle from the front. The Private could only imagine the carnage that would come next, but the changeling drones, too simple to think outside the command of their queens, did not change their course.

Flashes of light nearly broke the Private’s concentration. Somewhere behind them, regiments of unicorns let fly with all sorts of projectiles, both magical and mundane. Arrows fanned into the charge, thinning out the numbers, while heavy javelins ripped through the reinforced chitin of the stronger changeling soldiers. Magical bolts and blasts of arcane tore huge and ragged holes in the charging army, splattering gore and pieces of chitin across the dusty badlands. But it didn’t stop the charge.

The Private felt it firsthoof when a black body tried to squeeze through the rows of pikes. Growling, she thrust back with a yell, and her eyes widened in surprise when the point of her halberd pierced the changeling’s armor near its neck. It shrieked and thrashed in pain, but while her halberd held it pinned in place, another jabbed from over her shoulder and ripped its abdomen open. Entrails and green blood bathed the soldier in front of her, who squawked in alarm and dropped his weapon as he vomited onto the earth.

But the Private had no time to reflect on the life she helped take. More changelings filled in the gap before she could free her weapon, and fangs and holey hooves tried to knife their way into the formation. To the right, a soldier fell as a drone pounced on him, fangs soaked red; on her left, a mare screamed as a changeling grabbed her mane and dragged her out of formation, where more drones promptly ripped her into wailing, bloody pieces. The brutal onslaught of the charge began to bite into the vanguard, but the valiant Equestrians fought back, forcing the Hives to pay for their meager advances in blood.

A shadow fell on the vanguard as the airborne changelings began to descend in an attempt to outflank and destroy the forward Equestrian unit. Suddenly attacked from the rear, the unit began to break cohesion and formation, and the Private looked over her shoulder to see some of her fellow green recruits struggling to fight off changelings in close quarters. She turned to help, but her cumbersome halberd became entangled with the weapons of the ponies around her, and when she tried to dislodge it, a heavy weight fell on her back with a fearsome hiss.

The Private slammed her muzzle into the ground as she fell, dirt and dust sticking to the sweat slickening her face and neck, tiny shards of stone shattered millions of years ago digging into her nose. She could feel the changeling weighing down on her, smell its vile odor, and as the adrenaline surged through her veins, she thrashed and fought back. Bucking, kicking, and writhing, the Private managed to shake her assailant loose before its teeth could find a soft spot in her armor, and she rolled onto her back to force the drone away with her hooves.

The drone pressed back against her, hissing and spitting in her face. The Private screamed back in return, half in anger, half in terror. She had never been this close to a changeling before, and suddenly it was looking like she’d never get the opportunity again. The changeling stomped hard on her now unprotected belly, and the mare coughed as pain distracted her from the struggle for her life. When the changeling tried to lunge at her throat, she threw her head forward in desperation, her half helm splitting the bug’s snout with a crack and forcing it away in agony.

Before it could lunge at her again, the ground began to dazzle with sunlight reflected off of silver armor. The drone paused, an in a split second, a tidal wave of colorful feathers swept over the vanguard and washed away the changeling assaulting it. The drone hissed at the onslaught of pegasi, only for a lance to impale it through the neck and tear its head off its body, leaving its spurting corpse to soak through the Private’s armor. And just as quickly as it began, it ended, and the now-tested soldiers of the vanguard rose back to their hooves and picked up their weapons.

“Company, form!” an officer shouted, and the survivors of the vanguard threw themselves back into a shoddy formation as the dragoons routed the first changeling charge. The Private grabbed a halberd from the ground—she had no idea if it was hers or not—and instinctively braced it against the ground in case another charge threatened her position. But instead of changelings flying towards her, she only saw armored pegasi flying away from her, their mounted lances stained green and carrying bits of chitin on their points as they swept back the remains of the wave. Soon, they were climbing higher into the sky, led by a colorful mare whose tail reminded the Private of a rainbow.

The vanguard had stood its first test, and it left the Private feeling more confident. They could do this. They could win the war. All she had to do was stand firm and refuse to yield and it would all be over. For the first time, the adrenaline of the fight put a half-smile on her face as dread turned into cautious excitement.

A ferocious roar and the thunderous shaking of the earth put an end to such notions. With the drone charge routed, the beasts in the back fiercely shrieked and began to lumber toward the vanguard, driven onwards at the behest of the soldiers mounted upon their backs. Horrible jaws filled with thousands of teeth stretched open into cavernous depths, and the very rock of the badlands split asunder as they began to charge down upon the helpless vanguard in front of them.

There wasn’t a command in the entire army that could keep the panicked soldiers in place. In the face of such terrible might, the vanguard broke ranks and ran—the Private among them.

-----

The Magus growled in frustration as the witless idiots of the vanguard broke ranks in front of her and scattered in all directions. She knew that putting the green infantry in the front would only backfire in the end. What did it matter if they kept their veterans fresh and held in reserve across the Twins if the vanguard didn’t even slow the charge of the goliaths?

At the very least, maybe their panicked fleeing would distract the monsters long enough for her and Sunset to send them reeling.

The soldiers behind her tensed, and the Magus pulled her hood down and stepped forward off the bridge. Fifty feet away, Sunset Shimmer did the same, and the two exchanged looks. They’d each killed a dozen goliaths throughout the war; what were another few? Nothing but huge targets to work their magic on, that was what.

Sunset’s horn roared to life, and flames crackled across the dusty badlands. The Magus watched them burn, watched as the tongues of fire momentarily faltered the charge of the beasts. They were immune to all but the most concentrated of magic, so Sunset’s spell wouldn’t inflict any damage. But she had always been the faster caster, and her fire slowed the beasts down just long enough for the Magus to let fly with her own powerful punch of mana.

The ground shook and the bridge creaked as the Magus fired the first powerful blast of mana from her horn. With the goliaths slowed by the fire, it was hardly a difficult shot to punch right through the cranial armor of the goliath and boil its insides. It shrieked and howled as its limbs flailed in their death throes, and the colossal arthropod fell to the ground with a booming thud, squashing numerous unlucky drones as it fell.

But the Magus did not have any time to appreciate her kill. As she tried to draw mana back into her horn as fast as she could, the rest of the goliaths fell upon the scattered remains of the vanguard. Ponies were reduced to colorful smears on the rocks, and the goliaths’ jaws carved stones out of the ground as they swallowed soldiers whole. Some tried to fight back in vain, but their weapons could not pierce the goliaths’ shells, and those that lingered too long either fell flat beneath their monstrous feet or found themselves swarmed and slaughtered by the changelings following the charge of their wrecking balls.

Sunset began to weave more fire to force the changelings back, and the Magus fired another bolt of magic at a goliath. Like the first, it fell in one shot, its body adding another unnatural mountain to the craggy rocks of the badlands. Only three goliaths remained, but now, the Magus found herself the center of unwanted attention.

Drones began to rush her side of the Twins, and the Magus had to switch her focus from taking down the goliaths to warding off the changelings closing in around her. A shield repelled the first few, and the walls turned into lethal spikes that impaled them and flung them away. A step to the left, and she shifted her casting stance to slice another four in half with a toss of her horn. Wings buzzed behind her and fangs lunged at her robes, but a flash and a shriek of pain ended the changeling’s life as one of her magical wards detonated.

Gritting her teeth, the Magus whirled around and glared at the company of infantry standing fifteen feet behind her. “Well?!” she shouted, snarling at them. “You have pikes! Keep them off of me so I can cast!”

The fire in her voice rallied the nervous soldiers, and they pushed forward again to keep the changelings away from the Magus. She turned around and prepared to cast once more, only to immediately smack skulls with another pony. The goliaths had successfully driven the Equestrian vanguard from the field, and now the Twins were overflowing with soldiers trying to force their way back to the safety of the reserves. A crush formed across both bridges, and the two magi, the only thing keeping the goliaths in check, found themselves caught right in the middle of it.

“Get off of me!” the Magus shouted, trying to push back. The bridge shook and creaked as more and more weight piled onto it, and ponies began to scream as some fell off the sides. The Magus tried to push her allies back, but the helmet she’d taken to her skull left her magic sputtering. Was this going to be how Equestria lost the war? With its own army crushing itself on a bridge over a ravine?!

Changelings began to assault the formation from above, and the halberds had become too entangled with each other to effectively ward them off. The archers and artillery on the ridge behind tried to clear out the onslaught, but to little effect for fear of hitting their own forces. And somewhere behind it all, the Magus could still see the goliaths moving. One was busy chasing the fleeing ponies about the stone and dust on the other side of the Twins, one seemed to be held in reserve, and the other…

The Magus looked to her left. With a furious roar, the goliath lunged at the mass of ponies stretched across the bridge. Her eyes widened as desperate flames shot up from somewhere in the middle of the crush, but they weren’t enough to hold back several tons of pure monster. The frenzied beast fell on the bridge and all the ponies trapped on it, and the wood connecting one side of the gorge to the other exploded into splinters, sending hundreds of ponies to their deaths. Numerous bodies flailed as they fell, the weight of their armor dragging them to terrible deaths far, far below.

The Magus’ breath hitched in her throat when she didn’t see a flash of teleportation among the falling bodies.

Swallowing hard, a grim reality set in for her. She was the last standing magus of Army Group Center, and there were still two goliaths to kill. If she didn’t destroy those goliaths soon, the rest of the army would follow. But she couldn’t do it from here.

She slapped her hooves on the cheeks of the nearest soldier and dragged the orange mare’s face close to her. “Do you want to die today, private?” she screamed into her face.

“N-No!” the Private stuttered back. “But that monster—!”

“I can kill it!” the Magus shoved the orange private back, and with the smarting in her horn finally gone, she could use her magic again. Telekinesis lifted all the soldiers around her into the air, and she galloped off the bridge with them in tow. She set them down on the other side in a rough formation and charged to the front of it, her momentum bringing the soldiers behind her off the bridge as well. The field had momentarily cleared due to the lumbering and distracted charge of the goliath, and the Magus used the separation to her advantage. Her horn split the air like a thunderbolt, and the fourth goliath fell, leaving only one standing. The crack was like a drumbeat, and it instilled a fresh tempo in the army.

The Magus spared a moment to turn around and look the soldiers in their eyes. She was the last standing magus in the army, and it was up to her to lead this fight back from the brink of death. “We are Equestrians!” she shouted to them. “We do not yield! We will take this fight and we will win!”

With the chaos of the first goliath charge gone, both sides seemed to reset. The last goliath growled and clawed at the ground, and numerous drones formed up in front of it, ready to protect it from the Magus’ next attack. Both sides stared each other down, while high above, the pegasi and airborne drones fought a whirling and chaotic dance of death. Blood, sweat, and dirt covered the coats of the proud defenders of Equestria, giving them a ghastly look, as if they already had a hoof in the grave… and their fury was that of the damned come back for vengeance.

The Magus yelled, and Equestria yelled with her.

-----

The Major watched the carnage below her as a goliath fell through one of the Twins, sending scores of ponies to their deaths along with it. Instinct wanted to send her flying down to grab just one before they vanished into the black abyss beneath them, but duty stayed her wings. Her dragoons were in the thick of it now, and they needed her leadership or they too would die like the soldiers below.

Dust and blood clawed at her eyes as she powered through the maelstrom around her. Green guts streaked her lance and coated the right side of her armor, all that remained of a drone smeared along her body. Her pegasi followed her in close formation, never stopping or wavering, only seeking to push through the body of drones and emerge on the other side as fast as possible. Their lances shattered chitinous bodies and sent innumerous drones falling to the dirt below, and the impressive charge of her dragoons pierced the shapeless cloud in two. They emerged on the other side no more than thirty seconds later, and the Major flapped her wings and began to lead her formation upwards.

A quick glance over her shoulder left a proud smirk on her face. The second wave of dragoons nailed the reeling changeling formation as the first exited it, further splitting the formation apart. Thirty seconds behind them, the third formation began its descent, ready to chop the drones apart again. And high above them all, Lightning Dust’s formation of lancers circled against the sky, forgotten about by the singular focus of the changeling hive minds in resisting the dragoon charge. All they needed was the signal, and the Major knew her capable second would secure them aerial supremacy for the rest of the fight.

She spared a look at the company commander to pass off control of the formation, and then began to accelerate, splitting off from the formation. As the second formation tore through the scattered changelings, the Major began to arc above the mass of changelings, stalling out just at its height. She lingered for a second for her dragoons to clear and, undetected, began to speed back down to the dirt of the badlands below her, her rainbow trail practically impossible to miss against the brown of the ground and the blue of the sky.

Her timing was perfect, and the ranks of the second formation cleared beneath her just before she crossed their airspace. The third formation began to cut through the changelings off to her side, but she was already well beneath them before they even began to get close. But her attention wasn’t on her troops anymore. It was only on her signal, on flying fast enough to shake the battlefield. It was something she’d done before, but there was always the risk that a changeling would get a lucky shot on her as she passed.

But there was no lucky shot. Those who realized what she was doing were far too slow to react and stop her. She could feel the air stiffening, the drag pushing back against her limbs like a spring compressed almost to its breaking point. It wanted to expand, wanted to fling her back to where she came from, but she didn’t let it. It screamed and cried as the wind whistled through her ears, but she paid it no mind. And then…

And then…

A flash of color and a boom of thunder bloomed over the battlefield. The Major abruptly changed her course before she hit the ground and chased the ring of light expanding out above her. Even in her armor, even when laden down with the tools of war, she was faster than any natural barrier. The sky could not contain her, and it would not entertain her enemies for long.

The shockwave of the colorful explosion separated the airborne drones from those on the ground, the boom preventing any more from taking off and joining their brethren in the skies. The third formation pressed the top of the changelings down into the ones rising away from her explosion of light and noise, and the changelings found themselves crushed in the air with little room to move—right as Lightning Dust fell upon them.

The carnage was nothing short of Tartaran. Chitin, guts, and filmy wings rained from the sky as Lightning Dust’s company of dragoons turned the changelings into pulp. In one fell stroke, the hammer crashed down upon the anvil, and the gooey remains of the drones caught in between spewed out like the sparks of a struck length of iron. Those that survived the charge scattered in all directions as the pegasi spread out at the bottom of their dive. Those that didn’t fell to the earth in messy piles. The Major was pleased to see more of the latter than the former.

Her momentum carried her up into the sky where her formations began to rally to her. A little bit at a time, the panting pegasi returned to their fearless leader as the aerial wing of their enemy lay crippled and shattered before them. But even though she’d struck a decisive blow against the changelings, the battle was hardly over yet. A goliath still raged below them, protected by changeling shield bearers and lesser queens, and it wouldn’t be long before more drones were directed into the skies. Now that they had aerial superiority, they had to hold it and smash the changelings into the dirt like crushing a bug on the pavement. The dragoons of Army Group Center would win the battle and win the war—and the Major wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Keep flying!” she shouted to her companies. “Keep fighting! Don’t stop until they’re fleeing the field—and then cut them down some more!” Grinning, she double-checked the lock on her lance and once more dived down into the fray. “Long live Equestria! Glory to the dragoons!”

-----

There were no more battle lines on the ground anymore. The Private didn’t know what unit she was galloping with or who was in command. After the Magus had broken the crush on the sole surviving Twin and rallied the troops around her on the other side, the orderly formations and military discipline of Equestria’s armed forces had devolved into a ferocious charge. Ponies streamed across the bridge from the reserves, pikes and halberds lowered into makeshift lances as they sprinted through the rain of changeling gore from the skies toward the changelings massed at the far end of the pass.

Somewhere above the roar of the army, the Private heard the flash and boom of magical artillery from behind, and a rainbow of mana bolts lanced through the air and into the formation of drones ahead of her. The powerful magic severed limbs or boiled the bugs inside of their shells, momentarily scattering their formations as basic survival instincts fought with the hive mind commands of their queens. Scattered and confused, the drone caricatures of proper armies were easy prey for the horde of Equestrians surging across the dust and dirt—but the drones were never the problem.

Behind the drones, the last changeling beast loomed tall, protected by an array of lesser queens weaving a powerful magical shield in front of it. The Private wondered for a split second why they held it in reserve instead of letting it shatter the Equestrian charge, but her thoughts immediately went back to the battle at hoof as she had to skirt around the fallen bodies of drones and ponies alike. A thunderous boom shook the skies above, and when she turned her eyes heavenward, a brilliant ring of color burst over the battlefield, pummeling the changelings in the skies and leaving them helpless against the diving pegasi above them.

This battle was far from over yet.

Equestrian steel crashed against changeling black iron as the Private finally crossed the field and immediately thrusted her weapon at the changeling across from her. Her halberd was longer than the drone’s due to her earth pony strength allowing her to wield a heavier weapon, but the black iron the changelings used was far deadlier. The momentum of her charge carried her lance through the changeling’s chitinous armor and into the enemy ranks as she pushed her screaming opponent back, and she tried to disengage and pull back before any black iron pikes could pierce her armor clean through. But like on the bridge, the ponies behind her continued to push, only driving her deeper into the melee as Equestrians and changelings mingled and mashed together.

The Private almost choked on her own panting breath. Ponies of flesh and drones of chitin fought and raged all around her as both sides tried desperately to gain the upper hoof. In the close quarters brawl, the Private immediately found that her halberd was all but useless. The brace on her armor was poorly designed to allow her to fight with it at half length, and she didn’t have the room to try and pin it under her foreleg and fight that way. Drones hissed all around her, and one clawed at the armor on her shoulders, knocking her forward. She tumbled to the ground and her halberd disappeared somewhere into the melee. Bodies fell and blood clumped the dust and dirt, and it wasn’t long before a drone noticed her writhing on the ground.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye, saw the light glimmer off its filmy wings. Before it could pounce, however, she spun around on the ground and oriented her tail toward it. When it lunged, she closed her eyes and let years of running the orchard come back to her, muscle memories and instincts from a simpler time before the draft took her from her home. After all, if she could buck a tree, she could surely buck a weak changeling.

Her hooves connected with something solid… and then kept going. The force of her buck kicked her back off the ground, putting her body weight on her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see her hooves going through the drone’s face. Whatever scream or hiss of pain it may have tried to squeeze out ended up mangled and garbled through her hooves. Augmented with steel horseshoes, there was no chance in Tartarus that the changeling could have held any hope of surviving the powerful apple buck delivered to its face.

The Private quickly rolled back to her hooves, her pike already a long lost cause. Instead, she simply began bucking and kicking at the changelings around her. Even still, she quickly realized she was the peak of the company’s penetration into the changeling lines. The sheer weight of drones began to throw the Equestrians back, even as more soldiers reinforced the line on each side. “Fight!” she screamed, her voice splitting ragged over the roar of war. “Drive the varmints back! For our home!”

Drone after drone fell to her powerful hind legs, but it wasn’t easy. Crushing the drones with her hooves meant safely navigating her lightly armored rear end within the reach of their weapons. She didn’t know how long she’d be able to keep it up; working through an orchard was one thing, but fighting for her life while weighed down in heavy armor was another. Sooner or later, she’d run out of luck.

But she wasn’t the only tip of the spear chewing through the melee. Not too far away, separated by only a few drones, the Magus weaved her spells into a maelstrom of death. Fire and ice, lightning and thunder, magic of all kinds ripped drones to shreds. Her robe fluttered with her movements, the runes glowing as they projected wards and barriers to fend off spears and fangs. Nothing could get close to her, nothing could touch her, and in the space she cleared, the Equestrians followed and supported.

The Private growled and began to fight her way over to the Magus. Her legs ached, but she continued to kick and wrestle with the drones around her. Bit by bit, she got closer to the Magus who had rallied her, and soon she was standing by her side, her hooves splitting apart the skull of a drone lunging for a gap in the Magus’ armor.

The unicorn only spared the drone a glance and the Private a nod of appreciation before she focused her efforts back on the changelings around her. Now comfortably at the Magus’ side, the Private quickly snatched a new halberd off the ground and began to fend off the drones from a distance, giving her legs a chance to rest. The two worked in tandem, driving the wedge deeper into the changeling lines. Those lines bent, then they splintered, then they cracked, and suddenly they were through.

Before them stood the towering body of the last monstrous behemoth. It watched them with a malignant intent, acid dripping from its mandibles, razor-sharp chitinous teeth ready to crush them to shreds. And around it, an assortment of lesser queens stood ready to protect it from the Magus’ magic. The behemoth’s clawed legs dug into the ground, and the Private knew if it charged, it would shatter their advance.

“Ya got a plan for that?” she asked the Magus as the two looked up at it. A barrage of magical artillery struck at the behemoth, but the queens cast a web of green spells together and fizzled it out of existence. Magic was the only thing that could bring these monsters down, and the Private didn’t see any way past the defenses the queens had erected around their trump card. So long as one behemoth stood on the field, the day was not won.

And then its legs tore through the earth is its colossal weight lunged forward… and it began to charge.

The Private cried out, but the Magus put her foreleg around her and held on tight. There was a flash of light, a flutter of vertigo, and then the Private found herself standing off to the side of the monster’s charge. “I… what…” she stuttered, but the Magus had already shifted her attention back to the monster. Her horn flared to life, and a cascading barrage of spells and elements all flew at the behemoth, her spells probing the queens’ defenses. Though most were harmlessly absorbed before they could strike the monster’s chitin, some managed to slip through, drawing the behemoth’s ire and attention before it could plow over the mass of Equestrian soldiers driving the changeling army from the field.

“Well, you got the darn thing’s attention,” the Private said, readying her halberd for all the good it would do against a behemoth charge. “Got any other brilliant plans?”

“Just one,” the Magus said, and instead of loosing another spell, she tilted her horn straight up and fired a series of flares into the air. The Private watched them twist and sizzle, but they did little to stop the behemoth beginning to bear down on them, the ground shaking and thundering as it picked up speed.

And then, shadows. For a moment, the Private wondered if a cloud had drifted across the sun, but clouds were rare in the dry air of the badlands. Only when she heard the beating of wings and the war cry ringing out over the land did she realize what it was. She tilted her head back as a column of pegasus dragoons descended from overhead, their lances extended as they dived right into the fray. The queens shifted their focus from the Magus to the pegasus charge, lancing out green magic into the air to try and shatter it before the wave crashed down on them.

“Keep them off of me!” the Magus shouted as mana began to build on her horn. Sweat dripped down her cheeks, the glistening droplets reflecting the buzzing wings of a pack of charging changelings. The Private swallowed hard and readied her halberd, knowing full well that this would likely be their best shot at ending the battle in one more decisive blow. If the behemoth fell, the changelings would be routed, and there would be nothing between the army and the Hives.

She tightened her grip on her weapon and roared right into the face of the first assailant as it lunged for the Magus in a desperate bid to snuff out the spell that would win the war.

Equestria would prevail.

Comments

[Eroraf86]

“Well, you got the darn thing’s attention,” the Private said, readying her halberd for all the good it would do against a behemoth charge. “Got any other brilliant plans?”

Well, we got its attention. What the hell was step two?

[BradyBunch]

Freaking awesome. You are an inspiration.

[Bookeater_otaku]

You draw a clear picture of battle and the multiple points of view are a nice touch. Lots of carnage.

The only pony missing from the story is Pikie thought.

And it's about that point that I expect Chrysalis to unleash something on her ennemy to change the course of the battle. Like a spell, something that block all magic like her throne in the show or even a new type of bug that she kept in reserve near the hives of that she just finished developing. Like giant spiders or scorpions that could climb the wall of the canyon or enormous worm that could emerge from the ground in the middle of the army.

It would be Chrysalis style to keep something nasty in reserve like that or that it was all part of her plan to draw the Equestrian army to the Twins and have some kind of trap ready.

Surprised that since there are no Griffons in the army we don't see any Diamond Dogs or Young Dragons mercenaries trying to make a fortune.

[djthomp]

Little surprised to see Sunset die in such a pointless way, but I suppose that's war and messy battles for you. It would have been easy to avoid that situation, but as they say hindsight is 20/20.

[Csquared08]

Man, what a battle.