Chapter 11
Sometimes, I find that the best thing to do in this sort of sticky situation, such as the ones that I find myself landing in with a distressing level of frequency, was to do nothing, and eventually the solution to the problem would present itself when it is ready. I suppose, in hindsight, this merely comes with the territory of being a fantastically wealthy prince of the realm, in that quite often other ponies will simply find ways to fix my problems for me on their own initiative; after all, that is what I pay my staff for, and both Drape Cut and Cannon Fodder were exceptional practitioners of that particular craft in their own unique ways. The alternative explanation, that I am acutely aware of, is that my own inadequacy, lack of competence, and my natural tendency to bumble into these situations in the first place, means that I am almost always much better off simply sitting back and allowing other ponies to do the job, and taking the credit if it all goes well and avoiding blame if it doesn’t. In this particular case, however, it happened when the door to my cell suddenly exploded without warning.
It had been perhaps the next day, or even the day after that as I cannot recall with any degree of accuracy, after I had eavesdropped on Queen Chrysalis’ meeting about her diabolical plan to take over Equestria yet again, that it happened. I remained alone in the filthy cell, though my incarceration was eased somewhat by the myriad presents that the other ponies, still ‘enjoying’ the amenities that Camp Joy had to offer, and fretted anxiously about my next move. Being the only pony who knew about this Operation: Sunburn had placed the significant weight of responsibility upon my shoulders, and unlike the others I could not shrug it off quite so easily, until I passed it on to another pony, that is. The notes that I had taken of the meeting, supplemented later in my cell with some furtive and furious writing of points that I had missed at the time, were folded up neatly in my jacket breast pocket, next to Slab, who was to be the custodian of this valuable intelligence until such time as I could pass this oppressive weight onto a pony who could, perhaps, do something about it.
I had thought about trying to find either Cannon Fodder or Square Basher by use of the tunnels, but I dismissed that on the account that I simply could not afford to be caught with them in my possession; that would surely have encouraged Dorylus to ship me off to the Blackhorns wrapped up in ribbons and a little bow. Hiding it somewhere was an option that I considered, but I would have to find a suitable place that I could easily return to when required to share it with another pony, and so I decided that this was an unnecessary complication. For the time being, it would have to remain with me, and the weight of it seemed somehow heavier than the block of stone that it shared a pocket with, so I used a pencil to tear open a hole the lining of my detestable commisar cap and secreted the notes within. It was risky, but, in the case of everything going truly wrong, I hoped that changeling trophy collectors wouldn’t dare risk damaging the hat any more than years of life on the frontlines already had.
Still, I must surely have been nearing the end of my incarceration, though I’ll never know now thanks to what happened next. To explain, first, my exhaustion must have finally overwhelmed my fear and anxiety at what was to come and I fell asleep, for I dreamt that I was in a seedy bordello in Canterlot, Madame Graefenburg’s to be exact, enjoying the intimate company of a most attractive mare. She was lying on her front on the plush bed and I had mounted her from behind, and for those of you with either a nervous or a prudish disposition I assure you that the detail is vital to understanding what happened next. We were going at it in the usual fashion, until her head rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees to face me directly; her face was Princess Luna’s, smiling idiotically, and she announced excitedly in the Diarch’s voice, “I found you!”
I woke up, screamed, and vomited in the bucket. As nightmares go, that was an especially unpleasant one I can assure you, and would put me off all comforting thoughts of pretty mares for quite a while. At the time, I hadn’t counted on my nocturnal Auntie’s oneironautical escapades; after all, she hadn’t made an appearance in my dreams for quite a while, and I had assumed, knowing very little as I do about the art itself, that she simply had a great many more things on her plate to deal with than tracking down her nephew.
If it was indeed Princess Luna (and given the nature of that dream, I felt much too awkward asking her about it later), she had certainly taken her time in finding me, considering the apparent speed she had done so with the last time I had been captured. Then again, if she had done so with the appropriate level of urgency, then I might not have found out about Operation: Sunburn, and perhaps this war might have taken a rather different turn instead.
[My sister’s dreamwalking is indeed more of an art than a science, for the dream realm is better described as an ocean, and ponies’ dreams are tiny islands in a vast archipelago that she must navigate to. Finding an individual pony’s dream can be difficult depending on the state of the dream realm itself. Princess Luna had attempted to find Prince Blueblood many times after his capture, but the dream realm was particularly tumultuous during Hardscrabble's offensive and finding him proved to be exceptionally difficult. In this case, however, she had formed the dream herself to attract Blueblood, based on an anonymous leak of his whereabouts that has been suspected to have come from Chela.]
It might have remained merely a horrible thing to explain to a therapist years later (and presumably be charged a great deal of bits to be told that I have unnatural desires towards my distant aunt), regardless of whether it was truly Luna or not (and frankly, I took a great deal of comfort in not knowing for certain), were it not for what came next. The effect was not immediate, mind you; some time passed with its usual lack of urgency here, as it always did in this empty cell, before it finally came and once again, just as I had finally gotten used to, if not comfortable with, one state of affairs, something happened to completely upend it.
I remember, I was sitting just under the stairs and against the wall for whatever reason, trying to read a Power Ponies comic by faint candlelight and being thoroughly baffled as to what was happening, who the very colourfully-illustrated characters were, and why anypony would find this sort of thing even remotely entertaining, when the door saved me from continued bafflement and boredom by exploding. The sudden, violent sound of the explosion made me yelp, and I all but jumped out of my own hide. The force of the detonation had wrenched it from its sturdy hinges and hurled it with great force down the stairs, where it broke into two jagged halves and a whole lot of sawdust and splinters. Acrid smoke and dust hung in the air, and I could smell the sharp tang of burnt cordite. It was damned lucky of me to be sitting where I was, for if I’d taken my usual position at the foot of the stairs I’d have probably been struck by the flying door and eviscerated by shards of smoking wood.
Light poured in through the now unobstructed doorway, and after all this time trapped in the darkness it was almost blinding. I picked myself up off the floor, ears ringing from the explosion and eyes blinking in the glare, and I glimpsed a tall, dark figure silhouetted against the bright daylight.
“You were only supposed to blow the hinges off!” the figure yelled to somepony unseen. She was a mare, that much I could tell.
“I did!” a shrill, enraged voice screamed back. “Don’t tell me how to do my job!”
“You nearly killed Celestia’s nephew, you idiot.” The figure began to trot down the steps, and out of the bright light I could make her out better; she was a tall pegasus, slim but well-built and without an ounce of unnecessary fat on her, and her athletic figure was accentuated by a skin-tight flightsuit that hugged every line and sinew of her lithe body. “Prince Blueblood, are you still alive?”
“I’m perfectly alright,” I said, trying to recover as much of my dignity as I could muster by standing. “Thank you for asking.”
The pegasus mare stopped about halfway down the stairs and peered at me, standing alone in the darkness. I could see now that her flightsuit was a glossy black with a shock of acid green on the front, and her coat, where it was only visible from the neck up, was a pale turquoise. Her mane was bright orange and swept back, though seemingly out of flying at high speeds than any intended style. She made a cocky grin that put me instantly in mind of another certain pegasus I’ve had the great misfortune to have met, and I briefly wondered if that sort of insipid smile was just ingrained into every single member of that pony tribe.
“Well, today is your lucky day, because I’m busting you out of here!”
I looked her up and down, trying to find some sort of military insignia and found none. Far be it from me to reject the prospect of rescue, especially with the notes of the fateful meeting weighing heavily on my mind and in my uniform’s pocket, but some voice inside me told me not to trust strange mares with a penchant for blowing up doors. “And you are?”
“Lightning Dust!” She jumped the last few steps, wings flared, and landed just in front of me with a flourish of splayed feathers. “And we’re the Washouts; ex-Wonderbolts deemed too dangerous, reckless, and badass for stunt flying. We’ve been behind enemy lines for months now, killing Changelings, rescuing prisoners, and blowing things up! Now it’s your turn!”
“So,” I said slowly, “I am to be rescued by failed Wonderbolts?”
She pulled a face, shoved it quite close to mine, and I made a mental note not to insult my rescuers in future, should I find myself in this situation once again. “Princess Luna selected us Washouts personally, because we’re independent and can work deep in enemy territory without all of those stupid rules getting in our way.”
That still seemed a tad irresponsible of my dear Aunt, thought I, but I could see the reasoning behind it. I looked at the still-smouldering remains of the broken door, and from the gaping portal it once filled I could hear the sounds of violence and carnage beyond; muskets cracked, steel clashed with steel, and pony and Changeling voices alike roared and cried with pain. Another explosion, somewhere in the distance but still close enough to be felt as a tremor through my hooves, briefly drowned those noises out, and the unseen pony who had blown up the door laughed maniacally. Perhaps, I considered, as what was actually happening began to fully dawn on me, I might have been better off staying down here.
“Hey, Lightning Dust!” yelled the very angry pony at the door. A short, squat pegasus with dwarfism peeked his head through the scorched open doorway. He too wore a skin-tight flightsuit with the exact same colours as his presumed superior officer, and, in contrast to hers, his made his chubby body resemble a sack of potatoes. His uniform was supplemented with a great deal of pouches bulging with sticks of dynamite. “You might want to hurry your stupid introduction up! The bugs are starting to put up a fight!”
“Yeah, yeah, quit your complaining Short Fuse,” said Lightning Dust with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “It’s nothing you guys can’t handle.”
“I dunno, LD.” The midget pegasus looked behind him and winced; there was a crackle of disciplined musket fire, followed by that of a sharp discharge of magic. “The Blackhorns are here. Looks like that Purestrain’s finally woke up too, and he looks pissed.”
Lightning Dust ignored her underling, who disappeared back behind the sturdy wall, and carried on with her little speech. “Princess Luna’s personally ordered us to get you out of here, and I’m not about to let a Princess down, so let’s get moving and you’ll be back in Canterlot having tea parties with all your rich buddies in no time!” She wrapped her foreleg around mine, her grip strong despite her slight build, and pulled. “Now move!”
I didn’t need to be told twice, but apparently I was still too slow for this crazy pegasus, for I was all but dragged, struggling to keep my hooves moving at quite the right speed, up those steps, over which I tripped a few times and was hoisted back up and into the bright light of day for the first time in what felt like an eternity. What I saw, however, made me want to go straight back in my cell and lock the door, after reassembling it myself.
Whatever one might say about Camp Joy, its purpose, and the strange and twisted ideology of its commandant, it was at least a rather pretty place that the Changelings had put quite a lot of effort into designing, building, and maintaining; I had even thought of taking ownership of this place once the war was finally over and using it as a holiday home. Now, however, I saw that such ambitions were dashed, and I would have to rebuild it, perhaps as more of a chalet than a country manor. A fire had broken out, and black, choking smoke rose from one of the wings of the manor house itself; tongues of yellow flame licked up at the skies over the roof, with the faint crackle of burning timber.
Ahead of us, part of the wooden fence that surrounded the grounds had been rather violently smashed in, and the crater that bisected it, as though the earth itself had been scooped out by a gigantic shovel, certainly demonstrated that a great deal of explosives had been used. There were bodies scattered across the grounds, most of whom were Changelings, and judging by the way they had fallen and the lack of weapons with them, most hadn’t put up much of a fight and had been stabbed with spears where they stood. Their green ichor stained the painted dirt. Elsewhere, I heard the continued cacophony of the fight carrying on around the grounds. Some of the drones had surrendered, and had been rounded up and sat forlornly near their old barracks building under the watch of a few native ponies clad in rough cloth robes and wielding spears and the odd musket. I was a little surprised to see them, and wondered just how the Equestrians leading this operation had convinced them to join them in rescuing me of all ponies; the promise of killing their hated oppressors must have been motivation enough. They each bore some form of tribal marking, rather like Buffalo war paint, daubed roughly on their faces with earthy pigments, in a variety of elaborate designs that I did not recognise, which all implied to me that a variety of warriors from different tribes had joined up with these Washouts. A few of my fellow prisoners had enthusiastically joined in, and I saw Switchblade wave at me with the utmost enthusiasm as he trotted out of the Changelings’ barracks with a large bag of muskets, cartridges, and bayonets carried by his teeth.
[Changeling control in the occupied Badlands was strongest around the hive cities and weakest in the countryside, where the remnants of native pony tribes banded together and continued to resist and escape occupation. The Washouts and other Equestrian groups inserted behind enemy lines allied themselves with these tribes and together conducted an increasingly effective guerilla campaign of sabotage, which drained Changeling ponypower away from the frontlines. It is likely the group Blueblood describes here was made up of members of the Jerboa, Kultarr, and Parodia tribes, among others.]
“Is that him?” another pegasus shouted from above, her voice a particularly strong Horsetralian accent that bordered on unintelligible. She hovered in mid-air at about a dozen feet up, alternating between gawking at me and keeping an eye out for those Blackhorns that Short Fuse had mentioned. “I expected somepony taller, and not so chubby.”
I was much too overwhelmed by what was going to respond to the insult, so I let it slide for now. Besides, I thought, if this was a rescue, it would not do to start criticising their decorum and manners until after I was safely back in Equestria and enjoying a well-earned convalescence. Another crackle of disciplined musket fire, this time much closer than before, caused me to flinch.
“Yeah, that’s him,” said Lightning Dust, finally letting go of my foreleg. I almost fell over trying to stand up straight again.
The Horsetralian nodded her head and touched a hoof to her forehead, as if tipping an invisible cap. “G’day, your maj’,” she said. “Afraid we don’t have a royal chariot waiting to take you back to your palace, mate, so you’ll have to hoof it. Short Fuse here wouldn’t reach yoke anyhow.”
The short chap became enraged in the manner only put-upon short stallions can, which was funny enough to encourage bullies such as Yours Truly to carry on antagonising the vertically-challenged. He dashed through the air, almost collided with the other tall, gangly mare, shook his hoof petulantly and roared in her face, “Why don’t you come down here and I’ll show you how far I can reach when I ram my hoof right down your c-”
“Alright, save the banter for when you’re not getting shot at!” shouted Lightning Dust, before adding under her breath a barely-heard comment about how stupid they all were. I had to agree with her; while the amount of times I’ve been rescued from captivity have been relatively low, namely that time I was Earthshaker’s guest and a particularly daring escape from a rural police cell after a colt’s night out ended with the theft of several policeponies’ helmets, this particular prison break seemed terribly disorganised to my bewildered eyes. Then again, these were ponies not good enough for the Wonderbolts working with a band of native resistance fighters armed with pointy sticks, so I should have been impressed that they could muster enough ponies here and point them in the right direction in the first place.
“No worries!” chirped Rolling Thunder, darting expertly out of the way of the angered little pony with a Neighpoleon complex, with the sort of practised alacrity that only a trained stunt flyer could possibly muster. She looked out at something over in the middle distance, which I, stuck on the ground, simply couldn’t make out for the burning manor house in the way, and waved merrily at whatever it was.
Her hoof reached out, circled in the air, and around it a small, dark cloud condensed, growing to about the size of a buckball. It crackled with golden sparks of lightning. Rolling Thunder, still hovering in place, pulled her electrified hoof back, with her other stretched out before her, and then hurled her cloud in an arc over the roof of the manor. A moment after it disappeared behind the building, there was a brief flash of light accompanied by a sharp crack of lightning, which was immediately followed by a shrill yelp of pain.
“Look at ‘em!” shouted Rolling Thunder, almost cackling with glee. “The bugs couldn’t hit an airship at this distance!”
Muskets cracked in response -- a sharp fusillade, much too close for comfort this time. Rolling Thunder hissed loudly in pain, as one wing was struck by musket balls and the other flapped frantically to keep her airborne. The other pegasus, Short Fuse, shouted a string of incoherent obscenities at the Changelings in the distance, apparently daring them to fire again. Another round was fired, presumably by the second rank, and it was only by luck that they missed the small, angry target.
“You useless invertebrates! You think you’re so smart with your shape-changing and your muskets! Why don’t you come up here and I’ll show you who the ‘superior species’ is? You don’t even have spines, you- you spineless cowards!”
[Changelings are indeed invertebrates, lacking a spinal column.]
This was definitely the worst prison break I’ve ever experienced, I concluded, as Rolling Thunder’s one remaining working wing gave out and she dropped like a stone to the ground. She fell with a thud, and I heard something, presumably a wing bone or two, snap horribly. I looked at Lightning Dust, who stood there dumbly, turning slightly pale at the sight of her comrade bleeding with broken wings.
Meanwhile, Short Fuse continued to taunt the Changelings from above, and as he did so, I saw him take from the bandolier around his waist a stick of dynamite, light it with a cigar lighter, and toss it somewhere into the distance. He did this, I should point out, without pausing in his angry tirade at all. Seconds later, an explosion rocked the manor, blasting brick, mortar, splintered wooden beams, and lumps of what I took to be assorted Changeling body parts high into the air to rain down on the roofs and the grounds.
“That’s what you get!” screamed Short Fuse.
Lightning Dust stood there uselessly, her insane bravado having instantly evaporated now that everything had gone so horribly wrong so very quickly; so, as per usual when things started to go belly-up, it was up to me to do something about it. I jabbed her in the shoulder to knock her out of her funk, and shouted, “Move!” at her.
She snapped out of whatever fugue she had come under, and darted over to where Rolling Thunder lay on the ground, her scarlet blood soaking into the parched, cracked earth. The injured pegasus struggled to get to her hooves, but I saw that her wings were bleeding profusely and, while I’m certainly no expert on these things, probably should not be bending at quite so acute angles.
“It’s only a flesh wound,” hissed Rolling Thunder through set teeth. Her face was screwed up in agony, and her breathing was sharp, rapid, and shallow. “I’ll be flying in no time, right?”
“You’re not flying anywhere right now,” snapped Lightning Dust. She shot me a sharp look, with eyes narrowed, as though somehow I was to blame for all of this. “We got what we came for, now let’s go!”
Lightning Dust turned to move, but I stopped her with my hoof and said, “What about the other prisoners?” If we were fleeing to the hills to hide and escape to Equestria, then I wanted as many bodies with me as possible.
“What about them?” Lightning Dust sneered at me. I was rather stunned by her cold response, and I must have betrayed that feeling with my facial expression, as she continued. “They’re Night Guards. They’ll handle themselves. It’s you we’re ordered to rescue. Now go!”
Well, I was certainly not about to argue with that, so I followed her as she took to the air and flew towards the gaping hole in the wall, without waiting for anypony else, I might add. Rolling Thunder hobbled along on her own behind, so, pretending to be the gentlecolt that I’m supposed to be, I let her place her foreleg over my shoulders for support; pegasi tend to be quite light, as a general rule, so I wasn’t much slowed.
Lightning Dust raced over the field littered with corpses, with Rolling Thunder and me lagging behind. From above, Short Fuse still yelled volleys of invectives at the Changelings moving up to our rear, though I dared not to even glance over my shoulder. From our right, a formation, or a mob, rather, of those native heathens in rags and brandishing spears galloped up, and I spotted one or two of my fellow prisoners in between them, trying to cajole them into something resembling a coherent military formation. The gap in the outer walls was straight ahead of us, tantalisingly close, but as we neared, the crater filled with Changelings swarming up from the slope outside, and each was clad in a grey tunic and forage cap the same shade as Ommatidium’s uniform, complete with the insignia of the Blackhorns sewn on their chests.
The drones levelled their muskets at us, ready to fire. I preemptively hurled myself to the ground, taking the injured Rolling Thunder with me.
“You can’t!” she shrieked at me, hissing in pain from her damaged wings. I ignored the strange comment, and held both her and my head down from the volley to come.
There was a loud crash, not of the expected musket fire and the whizz of lead over our heads, but of thunder. I dared to raise my head from the dirt to see Lightning Dust flying in a tight circle just over our heads and at a vomit-inducing speed, forming a churning vortex of dark grey clouds and white-yellow sparks at the centre of her circuit. She lashed a foreleg out at this concentrated maelstrom she had summoned, and those sparks danced vividly across her latex-clad hoof. With a swift, downward stroke, she hurled a lightning bolt down upon the Changelings like a heathen pegasus goddess of old. The bolt struck the ground close to the enemy formation; not terribly accurate, I thought, but it was enough to spook the drones and send them scurrying back into the cover offered by the crater.
“All yours, colts!” yelled Lightning Dust above the din. The mob of natives and their Equestrian hangers-on hurled themselves into the Changelings, driving their spears into toughened chitin with horrid sprays of green ichor. The gap in the wall was filled with this swirling, chaotic melee, as, unlike the scrum of battles, this rapidly devolved into a brutal bar brawl of a fight. There was no battle line that I could see, no pony or drone watching out for his fellow, but merely individual struggles for survival. I could scarcely keep track, but my eyes caught crystal-clear glimpses of the carnage within - splintered spears still used to gruesome effect; bayonets tearing into pony flesh and Changeling chitin alike; and in places the combatants had to resort to their own hooves to pound one another into bruised, broken, twisted, lifeless lumps.
There were more of the drones than the ponies, but they gave a poor showing of themselves. The small band of natives and their brand new Equestrian friends were outnumbered more than three to one, and had fought the Blackhorns into a brutal stalemate. I saw Switchblade atop a drone, plunging a bayonet repeatedly into the creature’s eye socket until his death spasms ceased; Square Basher herself, who swung her dinner plate-sized hooves to beat another until his chitin split and the soft tissue was pummelled into gorey paste. A drone leapt onto her side with the apparent aim to bring her down, but she simply fell on top of him, pinned him beneath her bulk, until Ploughshare finished him off with a bayonet to the throat. Though I had no time to ponder it, Lightning Dust provided a succinct answer to my question on why this band of Changelings seemed to be especially poor fighters.
“That’s right, you cowards!” she roared at them, having ceased her circling. The angry cloud she had summoned swiftly and harmlessly disappeared into vapour with a crackle of sparks. “Not so tough when you’re up against ponies who can fight back, are you?!”
[The Blackhorns’ modus operandi relied on brutal reprisals on native ponies for resisting Changeling rule, as well as pogroms against other species deemed to be not useful to Chrysalis’ regime and dissident drones. As Lightning Dust had demonstrated here, they were not combat troops and thus struggled against an increasingly organised resistance movement trained by Equestrian agents. Later, as the war situation continued to deteriorate further for the Changelings, Ommatidium requested Chrysalis that he be allowed to lead the Blackhorns in frontline combat against the advancing Equestrian forces, despite his lack of military experience. Ideological fervour did not translate into victory on the battlefield.]
The fight at the breach looked as though it was not going to end any time soon and there was certainly no way that I was going to dive in myself, especially with a dead weight holding me back, so if I wanted to get out of this miserable place as quickly as possible I would have to find an alternative route. From what I could tell - call it intuition, a paranoid guess, or an old soldier’s instinct - the main gate itself, from which we had entered Camp Joy in the first place those weeks ago, looked unguarded, and that the main effort, both from the natives and the prisoners trying to escape and from the Blackhorns trying to contain them, appeared to be focused mostly on this breach. There were other fights taking place across the grounds, but these were small, isolated groups of ponies and drones struggling to survive this horrid mess.
“This way!” I shouted above the din, and pulled Rolling Thunder with me in the direction of the gate. She hissed in pain; though her legs were fine, whatever damage the musket balls and the bad landing had done to her wings made every movement agony for her. Lightning Dust gave me a confused look, so I had to elaborate: “The gates!”
“They’re barred!” Lightning Dust shouted back. She was indeed correct; across the gates was a large and heavy iron bar that looked as though the two spindly Washouts and the third short one would struggle to lift together.
“Then blow them up!” I had to wonder if the heathen natives, who, I might add, had been resisting Changeling rule for years prior to Equestrian charging in, had done most of the actual work in the sabotage and the slaughter of guerilla warfare, and these Washouts had only swooped in now and taken all of the credit, if I had to explain the blindingly obvious to them. The most generous explanation, I thought, was that Lightning Dust here wasn’t used to things not going to plan, or for the enemy to fight back once the element of surprise, so vital to all partisan operations, had been spent.
I saw that Short Fuse was still hovering above us, apparently relishing the opportunity to look down on somepony taller. “You there!” I called out to him. “The gates! Destroy them, damn you!”
“I’m doing it! Get off my back!” he shouted at me, as he grabbed another stick of dynamite from his pouch. To be fair, he was doing it. He lit the fuse with the same sort of practised ease as I would a fine cigar, and he hurled it, trailing a thin line of white smoke as it described an elegant arc through the air, where it landed with startling accuracy at the base of those gates. It detonated a second later with a suitably loud, sharp crack, blasting the wooden gates into so many jagged shards of wood into the open road beyond. As the smoke and dust cleared on the hot, languid breeze, I saw through it the path leading down the side of the hill into a deep valley between mountains.
I wasted no time in dragging Rolling Thunder to the ruined gates, and despite being slightly weighed down by the injured pegasus I thought I made rather good time. The smell of burning wood stung my nostrils and made my eyes water, and the two of us broke out into hacking fits of coughing as we passed the burning manor. We were damned close, and though I must have known better, it certainly felt as though as long as I could get through the gaping hole where a sturdy wooden gate used to be, then I would shortly be home with my pack of notes to a well-deserved hero’s welcome. However, as we limped along together, I got a peculiar sense of deja vu, and realised that I had been in a similarly sticky situation before, only with another pony helping me carry the wounded pony.
“Where’s Cannon Fodder?” I asked, stopping dead in my tracks. The thought of him had taken me suddenly, and I felt damned foolish and terribly embarrassed for having waited this long to ask about him.
“What?” shouted Lightning Dust, hovering just above me with a look of profound irritation.
“My aide,” I explained. “He’s a unicorn who looks like he hasn’t bathed in years and smells like it, too. You can’t miss him.”
“Ugh.” Lighting Dust rolled her eyes so hard that she probably gave herself a good view of her own frontal lobe in the process. “Our orders are to get you out of here, so move it!”
“But-”
“Princess’s orders! Look, if he’s smart he’ll fall in with the natives like the rest of your captured buddies, but right now my job is getting you out of here and back to Equestria. Most ponies would be grateful for this kind of rescue!”
I was not in the mood for arguing with her, and I suppose she was right in a way - Cannon Fodder was a damned resourceful chap, and not least in scrounging little bits and pieces for me that I dare not ask their origin, so he’d probably turn up safe and sound in the fullness. Still, that didn’t sit right with me at all, and I felt strangely vulnerable without him and his reassuring odour by my side.
There was little else for it, so I carried on, almost dragging Rolling Thunder with me as I was so damned eager to get out of this infernal place, though she grumbled and swore as she stumbled a few times. Her thin, lithe body was pressed to mine, and she was clearly shivering from fright and pain in spite of the brave face she had put on; I could only imagine that it would be as much a shock to a pegasus to lose her wings as it would be for me to lose my horn. I was astonished that our escape was still clear of Changelings, though when I dared to snatch a glance over my shoulder, I saw that the brawl at the breach had occupied almost the full attention of the enemy, such that they seemingly failed to notice their most valued prisoner trotting merrily out of the main gate. Seemingly every drone in the camp willing and able to fight and whatever reinforcements from the Blackhorns they could muster had hurled themselves to plug the breach, but both the natives and the prisoners fought with a savagery and skill that overcame the more numerous amateurs. I feared for a moment that the ponies would be utterly swamped, but Square Basher led the charge and with sheer brute force tore a bloody gap in the Blackhorns’ lines that allowed her comrades, both new and old, to stream through into the wilderness beyond.
The escapees’ success, unfortunately, would bring the enemy’s attention down upon me. While most of the drones had pursued the fleeing mob, who I imagine would disperse into the hills to regroup later as partisans ought to if they were sensible, a few others held back, apparently to guard the burning manor, and almost immediately caught sight of us. One, hovering in mid-air over the grounds, called out wordlessly and jabbed a hoof in our direction, and he was soon joined by five others brandishing muskets.
I broke into a trot, and Rolling Thunder immediately shouted in pain as I had apparently jostled some shard of jagged bone trapped in her ruined wings. She fell, almost pulling me down with her. The drones were behind us still, and I saw them begin the arduous process of reloading their muskets, their hooves turned to claws to better manipulate the various bits and pieces to do so.
“I’ll carry you!” I shouted. My magic still wasn’t working thanks to the damned ring on my horn, so I had to almost crawl between her long, spindly legs and under her until her barrel rested on my back, and hoist her up.
[It would appear that the Washouts had neglected to bring a small file or a knife to remove the nullifier ring, or had planned on doing that when they reached safety.]
“No worries!” she replied with mock-cheerfulness.
At least Rolling Thunder was light, so I galloped to the ruined gates. She clung on tight to me, wrapping one foreleg around my neck and almost strangling me in the process. As for the other two, Lightning Dust and Short Fuse were already ahead of me, hovering by the gates and waiting with some impatience. They could have done a damned sight more to help, I remember thinking, and it was a pretty poor showing if the rescuee was forced to carry one of the rescuers. Still, it would make for a heroic story when I got back to Canterlot.
“Finally!” exclaimed Lightning Dust. “This way! We can lose them in the hills!”
She waved her hoof in the direction of the aforementioned craggy hills that surrounded the camp, and then darted off to the right of the gates with Short Fuse on her tail. I stumbled as I descended into the smoking crater where the gates used to be, just as Changeling muskets crackled behind me. Something whizzed past my ear, sounding like I had been overtaken by a supersonic bee, and I felt the air stir the hairs on my mane. Small puffs of dust erupted sporadically mere feet before my hooves as I scrambled down the shallow slope littered with shards of broken wooden beams. My heart hammered in my chest and I felt my blood run ice cold; being shot at was never something that I could get used to, and fear gripped me that I would once again feel the hot sting of a musket ball in the flank.
“Bastard!” cried Rolling Thunder.
“Did they hit you?” I asked, as I immediately scrambled up the other side of the crater. It would take the enemy time to reload or to close the distance, but that at least guaranteed me a few seconds of survival.
“No, my wing hit something.”
“Jolly good.” Well, that was something at least. The thought had certainly occurred to me that, if nothing else, she served as a decent equine shield for at least a third of my body.
I hauled myself and Rolling Thunder up and over the other side of the debris-strewed crater to be met with the spectacularly rugged view of the desolate hills that I had only glimpsed from my bedroom; great, rocky hills undulated in ripples stretching right to the horizon, like a tumultuous sea suddenly frozen in an instant, with sharp peaks and ridges and plunging canyons between them shrouded in darkness. All of that open space and sky felt quite daunting after that time in the basement, like I might fall straight into the vast expanse of landscape and get lost in it; indeed, that was the entire point of this venture. Straight ahead, however, the clear blue sky was marred by a number of small dots, clustered together and flitting this way and that, which could only have been another formation of drones ready to pounce on any escapee charging down the path.
Following Lightning Dust, I turned right, off the path leading into the valley that would likely be crawling with Blackhorn patrols by now, and down the slope which plunged sharply into an even deeper cleft between two angular hills. I was as good as free, I thought; once again plucked out of a sticky situation by these enterprising individuals and I barely had to lift a hoof, save to carry their wounded comrade. Though fear still held its icy grip over my racing heart and my limbs still burned with the sort of exertion they hadn’t been put through for a few too many weeks, once I’d crossed the ruined gate and crawled out of the crater I felt the sort of elation I had not felt since perhaps the time I pushed Shining Armour into a pond full of highly territorial swans. I was free, and though the enemy hounded us like griffons on a rabbit, our expert guerilla fighters, whose tribes had lived in these hostile lands for a thousand years, and these resourceful, Equestrian-trained partisans, would surely see me off to the safety of home.
That feeling lasted as long as it took for me to step on a caltrop.
I should have watched where I was going, but my attention was fixed on the open blue skies, the majesty of the landscape around me, and the group of Changelings on my tail aiming their muskets at my flanks. At first I thought I’d simply tripped over a rock or a stick, as something had caught my left forehoof just as I’d placed it down, and I fell on my face, bruising my snout on the hard ground. Rolling Thunder swore loudly and profusely as she held onto my neck and back for dear life, and somehow, in spite of her injuries, managed to avoid tumbling straight over my head.
The expected volley of musket fire to finish me off did not come, which was odd considering that I remained a big, fat, stationary target. I could feel something stuck in the frog of my hoof, a pebble or something, and it was damned irritating, so before I tried to pick myself up off the ground to flee before the enemy’s sudden feeling of fair play evaporated, I pulled my hoof out from under me where I had landed on it, feeling this thing seem to move inside my hoof. When I saw the four-pronged lump of jagged metal stuck rather deep in my hoof’s frog, the mystery of why the enemy held their fire was conclusively resolved -- I had been rendered thoroughly helpless by this cowardly weapon. Then the agony began.
“You alright, Blueblood?” asked Lightning Dust with more annoyance than concern.
“No I’m not bloody ‘alright’!” I roared back. The sloping field ahead was full of those horrid caltrops, and alongside the pain I felt damned foolish for not having seen them, or considered that the enemy would be so under-hoofed as to blanket the ground beyond the camp with so many. I could only hope that the other escapees were a damned sight more attentive than I. “I’ve stepped on a caltrop!”
The pain was sharp and white hot. Blood seeped around the wound, plugged by the metal. There was nothing for it; I couldn’t walk with this blasted thing in my hoof and I couldn’t very well limp along on three legs with the drones chasing me, so I would have to get it out somehow. I clamped my teeth around one of the prongs, wishing that I at least had a gallon of brandy to dull the pain, and then pulled.
“Bad idea! Really bad idea, mate!” shouted Rolling Thunder in my ear, but it was too late, I had already committed.
Few things I had experienced so far could compare to the incredible pain of pulling out a caltrop; it was rivalled only by that of being flogged, and even then I couldn’t possibly pick between the two. Tears stung my eyes and I clenched my teeth down on the caltrop. I could feel the barb severing flesh, ripping sinew, tearing through tendons, and only then did I realise just what a damned idiot I’d been. It burst free and I spat the hateful little thing out. I lay there on my front, panting for air as though I’d run a marathon. The pain did not ebb one iota for having removed its source. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking the dry ground, and I let loose a torrent of most un-princely language that made even the Horsetralian blush.
I tried to stand, but the moment I placed the injured hoof on the ground and applied any sort of pressure to it, the pain increased ten-fold and I fell on my front, crying out in agony. The only thing left to do was to crawl, or…
“Carry me!” I shouted out to Lightning Dust.
She looked at Short Fuse, then at the small swarm closing in behind us at an insultingly leisurely pace, and finally back at me. “What about Rolling Thunder?” she asked.
“Both of us, then! Between the two of you I’m sure you can do it. Rainbow Dash carried two ponies all on her own!”
“She isn’t here,” sneered Lightning Dust. More’s the pity; of all the headstrong and suicidally brave pegasi out there to mount this daring rescue, Rainbow Dash would certainly have been my top choice, but alas I was stuck with this idiot. “You look heavy. I can’t carry both of you, and Short Fuse can’t carry much, either.”
The mare still clung to my back tightly, and, well, I’m not exactly proud of what I said next, but given my circumstances I think I can be excused. “Then leave her! You’re here to rescue me!”
“Yeah, no.” Lightning Dust glared at me with an expression of utter disgust, and I suppose I might have deserved it. Her wings flared and she descended gracefully from above, and her hooves expertly avoided stepping on the caltrops that still surrounded us as she landed. “Sorry, Prince, but the Washouts won’t leave one of our own behind. Come on, Rolling Thunder, this mission is a total failure.”
Rolling Thunder released her grip on me and stood, hissing with pain as she did so. “He’s right, LD,” she said, with no particular enthusiasm. “The mission-”
“I don’t care about the mission!” snapped Lightning Dust, her face dark as a thundercloud. She seized her wounded comrade, while I weakly reached out with my hooves, and with a series of powerful beats of her wings lifted the both of them off the ground. “I’m not leaving one of my own for the Blackhorns just to save Prince Blueblood of all ponies.”
“And he’s fat, too,” said Short Fuse, and I wished I had my magic so I could hurl these caltrops up at him. “He’ll only slow us down. LD, the bugs are on their way; we need to leave now!”
“Damn you!” I cried out. “You can’t just leave me here! Look, I have to get back! I know something that might cost us this war! I have to tell them!”
Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder had at least the manners to shoot me apologetic looks as they flew away, with Short Fuse just behind them. The latter quietly threw something underhoof towards me, which I recognized in a split second of instinctive terror ingrained by the chaos of Virion Hive to be a grenade. My entire noble life, lived through so many ignobly spent years, seemed reflected in its cold black shell—until I realised the fuse was unlit.
My mind reeled at the implications; Short Fuse had forgotten a match, perhaps assuming I could light it myself—and I could, with my cigar lighter still intact. One last hurrah, one flick of the switch and I'd be gone, denying the enemy their prize, and hopefully taking a few of them with me. It was just the sort of end every place from public houses to smoke-filled boarding rooms would be alive with discussion thereof, mingled with songs of their heroic Prince, lost in a blaze of glory. It was terrible, pragmatic logic, and, I reasoned, these ponies' best idea of showing regret by letting me die with dignity. Still, I held it with my hooves, and thought about how oblivion was merely a spark away.
Apparently, they could just leave me here, for that is exactly what they did; the Washouts raced down the slope, faster and faster, rapidly diminished into specks, and were then subsumed by the darkness of the valley below. All the while, I could only seethe with anger at this betrayal, at having my chance at freedom robbed from me when I was so damned close to grasping it. As I watched them and my future fade away into the blackness, and as the Blackhorns surrounded me, hovering above the caltrop-strewed slope with their bayonet-tipped muskets aimed squarely at me, I could only rant and shout at just how bloody unfair all of this was.
“Lightning Dust, you callous bitch, get back here! When my aunts find out what you’ve done, you’ll have wished the Changelings caught you! Please! Help me!”
Even back then, I knew that, at least from her own perspective, Lightning Dust had made the right choice; aside from being thoroughly undeserving as I am, she and her gang were partisans who lived and fought deep within enemy territory without supplies and support from Equestria. In the grim calculation of war, an experienced fighter like Rolling Thunder was worth more to her and her group than Yours Truly being safe and sound. That didn’t make this hurt any less, however.
The drones became tired of my useless shouting, and one of them slammed the butt of his musket against the side of my head. Pain exploded in my temple, momentarily muting that from my mutilated hoof, and I was knocked to the side and whimpered pathetically.
“Dorylus wants him alive,” admonished one of the drones, with the exact same tone of voice as if his comrade had dropped litter.
“Alive doesn’t mean undamaged,” said another, and he kicked me in the belly for good measure. “Wait, what’s that he’s got there?”
“Shit!”
I heard a frantic scurrying of hooves and buzzing of wings, which all kicked dirt and dust in my face, as a few of them tried to scramble away. Another laughed, apparently an NCO or an equivalent thereof, and the grenade was wrenched from my hooves. “It’s unlit, you stupid maggots,” he cackled. “The little princeling didn’t have the guts!”
The drones laughed, and it was the grim, hideous sort that can only be mustered by the sort of creatures whose senses of humour are derived entirely from the suffering of others. From where I lay on the ground, I could see them passing the unlit grenade as though it was some sort of trophy ripped from a conquered foe, which, I suppose, it really was. However, the noise of the crowd ceased suddenly, as though the needle of a gramophone had been wrenched from the spinning record, and I heard Dorylus’ voice, clipped, refined, but strained: “Do try to keep him in one piece; we don’t want to spoil the Queen’s present, do we?”
I tried to lift my head, fighting the waves of dizziness and nausea to see this ring of Changelings around me part, and the tall, blurry figure of Dorylus approached and slowly came into sharp focus. Short Fuse was right, he did look ‘pissed’, as he had put it; I’d seen him annoyed and frustrated at my refusal to go along with his mad experiment, but as it was now burning behind him, the dark smoke still visible rising over his shoulder and the crackle of the fire just audible over the noise of a myriad different conversations around us, I could see the tension in his jaw and the fire in his narrowed eyes as he seemed to struggle to keep his rage under control.
Dorylus peered down at me, curled up in pain on the ground and shivering from terror, and my rather pathetic display appeared to cheer him up a little. At any moment I expected to feel the agony of a bayonet thrust in my neck or heavy hooves pounded on my head, but instead he merely stood there, considering me carefully for a while as a cat would with a fatally-wounded mouse, and then sat down on his haunches next to me. I had to tilt my head back at a painful angle to look him in the eyes, which was a difficult enough prospect given his tall stature.
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” began Dorylus, his voice curiously measured and calm despite his hostile sneer. “I hate ponies.” His thin, lipless mouth curled into a sardonic smile, as he pulled at the ludicrous cravat around his neck until it came free and he threw it on the ground. “I really mean it; not in the same way that you might claim to ‘hate’ a weak martini, oh no, I mean that I utterly despise your kind to the core. I hate how dependent we Changelings are on such a frivolous, useless, decadent species just to survive, and how you selfishly hoard what we need to live for yourselves.”
“It didn’t have to be this way,” I gasped out between ragged, pained breaths. “If the Hives had merely asked-”
“Shut up!” he snapped. The masque of refinement and culture had been torn free and was shattered on the ground, and the monster beneath it was unveiled in all its ugliness to breathe its rank breath in my face. “Hives, you were the worst. Every single day I had to put up with your inane, drunken, perverted behaviour, your pointless, vapid stories about how many intoxicating drinks you had and how many mares you slept with, and every day I had to resist the urge to murder you. And for what?”
Dorylus breathed a deep, defeated sigh, and ran his hoof over his scalp as though he had a mane. His sick, sarcastic smile grew wider, and he let out a pained chuckle and shook his head. “I tried,” he continued. “I really tried, here, to find a solution that would benefit both of our races, to find a path to a lasting peace.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The others were right, of course; it was doomed to fail because you ponies cannot let go of the foalish delusion of your own superiority.”
Speaking hurt, as did everything else, but somehow I felt the need, in what could be my last moments on Faust’s green Equus, for one final show of defiance. “I told you so,” I said. “Nopony will want to give up their liberty for some light pampering.”
“There it is again,” said Dorylus. “That damned arrogance. The carrot has proven useless, so now the Hives must return to the ways of the whip and the bayonet to keep livestock in line.” He reached out with his hoof and placed it on my shoulder, where it felt cold and clammy. “I promise you, Prince Blueblood, you will not die today or even tomorrow. You will live to see Equestria burn.”
With that chilling threat, Dorylus rose to his hooves and turned to the nearest Blackhorn soldier. “Cocoon him.”
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While we know the Washouts turn up alright, I'd say their military careers are probably over and Luna will make sure Lightning Dust won't be sleeping well for the foreseeable future.
Nice turn of events. Good chapter keep it up.
I wish the updates would be more than just once a month
An update! Just when I needed a break after a few failed runs in Darktide! Thank you for your work
Historically, words to this effect were the supposed last words of several officers
From epic escape to getting shipped to the worse location Blue could have gotten sent. I think he needs his Changeling sympathizers to help him now.
Oof I'm not sure what else could have gone wrong short of Blueblood actually dying.
Then again from the sounds of it being cocooned doesn't seem much better
The single worst mistake of this Changeling's life.
11461115
I believe one stood up from the trench and said "They could not hit the broadside of an elephant!" right before being shot in the head.
11461074
Yuuup. I wonder if Luna can manifest in a cocooned pony's dreams, now that she knows where he is?
11461074
If the events are accurately retold by the survivors, then probably. I believe Blueblood is correct and the natives have been doing most of the guerrilla work with the Washouts just acting as glory hounds, which is pretty much in character with Lighting Dust.
Oof. So close, yet so far. Great chapter! Hope you had a happy holidays!
11461093
Honestly, same.
After reading the chapter:
Gosh darn it, Lightning Dust! You can’t even save someone properly! I hope you and your team face a tribunal or the equivalent for your incompetence, be summarily kicked out of the military, barred from ever entering any branch of it in the future, and forever be remembered as the ones who left Commissar Blueblood to be recaptured by the enemy to save their own hide in the history books. I also hope that your teammates wing turns gangrene and looses it.
Dorylus show his true nature and prove that Blueblood did manage to evade all of his questioning or trying to make him slip-up.
The Washout really botched that operation. I wonder how many prisoners dyed in that fight.
Coocooning... I wonder if that even work on Cannon Fodder with his anti-magic effect around him. I mean, the cocoons are kind of part of Changeling magic in a sense. As for Blueblood, they need to threat his wound before putting him in there to prevent infection.
Well, dang.
I wonder if Cannon Fodder is going to finish the breakout the Washouts botched...
11461115
Most notable was this example from the little known space campaign of the changeling war.
For some reason, I didn't get a notification this updated. Terrible luck for the prince; he probably could have made it out if he'd stuck with the other prisoners fighting at the wall. What a mess of a rescue.
You do not call in the Washouts for precision, or discretion, or discipline, or...
Frankly, the only reason to call in the Washouts because they're the closest available ponies who even resemble a military asset. And now they're going to get reamed from stem to stern.
Meanwhile, Dorylus remains so close, yet so far. The ponies aren't the only ones who can't let go of that damned superiority. The next few days won't be remotely enjoyable for Blueblood. We'll see just how bad they get.
Luna doesn't need a therapist, she needs an exorcist.
He may have misunderstood her Horsetralian.