Chapter 1E3 - The Act of Moving
Officer's Report
May 16, 1535 ECY
I swear to whatever forces are out there, my job is never so easy to give me a break. Some cloaked pony broke into HQ today, avoiding capture for five minutes (seriously, I ought to look into how that was possible in the first place) or so before I put a stop to them through the good old tackle technique. I think they cast a spell on me, if the sudden light from his horn is anything to judge by, and then teleported away, somehow getting around our disruptors. Either the maintenance crews chose the worst time available to bring down the disruptors, or the intruder somehow found a way around them. The spell they cast on me wasn't any type of offensive spell, becuase I wasn't injured or even affected by it. Other than being temporarily blinded, anyway. I can't help but to wonder if anything will come out of this. Maybe the Captain will come investigate the matter for once? To be fair though, I think he'll just send some ponies from the Ministry again.
Didn't think that little chase would tire me out so much, becuase I feel like I'm about to faint. Like I can just drop dead out of nowhere. Wouldn't that be an interesting thing to read about in the reports? "Lance drops dead in bedroom at the middle of the night from exhaustion".
Maybe I'm losing energy as I'm getting old? I should look into asking for a veteran bonus when I've rested this off. Maybe I can even retire with a smile on my face even though my only source of income will be gone?
On another note, the rookies are coming along nicely. Hammer treats them the same way he treated me when I first joined the GEA, and I expect nothing less. That stubborn old stallion just refuses to die, even though he should have retired decades ago.
~ Lieutenant Magic Lance, Grand Equestrian Army Officer
After finishing the report (which was more a diary entry than a official report) Lance let the pen drop onto the tilted wooden table with a barelly audible thud, which then rolled off the table and onto the hard, ice-cold stone floor where it broke into two pieces for the 8 millionth time (probably) and spilled ink onto the ground as well as the wooden chair Lance sat on. Normally, this was the part where he'd be grumpy about it and then clean it up, but this night was diffrent. With a heavy sigh, he looked out the open window and was treated to the same sight that he'd seen for the last seven years since he'd been assigned this room after his graduation from officer training.
The stars over Station Everfree were in the same place as always, not that he expected them to have moved. That would have been odd, as nopony had bothered with the stars for a really long time. They seemed to be a relieving sight for all the soldiers out on campaigns against the griffons or minotaurs, with some ponies decribing this as "A familiar sight amongst a sea of unfamiliarity".
The light from the magic candle next to Lance didn't seem to change alot either. It was always on night and day, and never seemed to burn out or get extinguished. Which was good, becuase that thing had cost quite the bit of bits. In fact, it had cost five month's of pay, but it was definatly worth it on times like these when the moon decided that it didn't want to be seen, and got a blanket of clouds to cover it. To be fair, Lance wanted nothing more then to do the same, so he rose from the chair...
...And stepped in the ink still spilled on the floor, staining the bottom of his otherwise grey coated hooves with the ink black colour.
"Are you bucking kidding me..." he mumbled into the dark room, barely lit up by the magic candle. After stepping away from the ink puddle, Lance started looking around the room for a towel to use wiping his hooves off. Eventually, he laid eyes on a towel that laid by his bed, which was already soaked with sweat from the chase earlier today. Not that it stopped him from trotting over there, leaving a trail of ink on the otherwise gray floor.
"There we go," he said he took hold of the blue and red striped towel he had used ever since his foalhood. Some ponies said that he should have thrown it away years ago, but the same ponies had also told him that he wasn't fit for the Royal Army. Yet here he was, 23 years later with 10 years of service under his belt. Under my armor might be a more fitting saying in the matter, but whatever, he thought.
After wiping his hooves clean of the ink and effectivly coating parts of it ink black, he threw the towel on the floor next to the wooden door leading into his room, and made a mental note to pick it up tomorrow. As he was about to go to bed, he heard the sound of something breaking where he had been a few seconds before. Turning around, the first thing he saw was that the window as a whole, including the window frame, had been smashed into many, many pieces and had spread over quite the area, not all too different from how it'd look if an explosion had occured. That'll take a while to clean up, he thought to himself with a frown.
The second thing he noticed was that there was a dark figure standing where the window had once been, looming over the room like a bird waiting for the right moment to strike.
Lance immediatly picked up his chest armour and spear with his magic, like he had been trained to do during the many hours of training he had gone through. Putting it on hastily, he never took his eyes off the figure in the windowframe, in case they decided to do something drastic like assault him.
The dark figure seemed to remain completely still for a while, before opening one of their eyes, which immediatly struck Lance as similar to those of the nocturnal ponies he had met during the Battle of Fogbound Lake. The eye seemed to scan him, and he could swear he felt the figure judge him. While the figure was scanning him, Lance took the oppurtunity to look closer. The figure looked like a pony, judging by the four legs and horn sticking out through the, which seemed to match that of himself. It also seemed to wear a cloak, which was very similar to the one used by the pony that ran about in HQ earlier. They were probably part of some secret organization aimed at bringing down the Royal Army or something. There had been plenty of those.
"...Yes, this shall do," the figure said, but the voice was odd in that it seemed to be both female and male at the same time, which was the first warning light in his mind that he might be a bit in over his horn.
"Citizen, on behalf of the Grand Kingdom of Equestria, I order you to surrender and allow me to detain you on the basis of breaking into government property and disturbing the peace," Lance mumbled just loud enough for the other pony to hear. It never went that smoothly, he knew from experience. All arrests usualy ended with a chase similar to the one at HQ not too long ago. Ponies simply never went "oh, ok" and let themselves be restrained. Not as far as he was aware, anyway.
The two ponies stared at eachother for a while, one ready to strike at a moments notice while the other simply stood as still as a statue. Evetually it crossed Lance's mind that no hoofsteps could be heard outside the door, about to bust it open. I thought others would've heard that from kilometers away. It wasn't very silent, he thought.
As if the pony in the window had read his thoughts, it said "Don't count on rienforcements. I made sure that the two of us will be left... Alone."
It was only really then that Lance noticed the black colored magic bubble surrounding the outside of the window (or what was left of it), and the bubble surrounding the door. A lack of any sounds like late night birds and guards patrolling the hall solidified his theory. Sound isolating spell, he deduced.
"What do you want, intruder?" he asked cautionatly. Probably nothing good, if they had made the precautions to be left alone during the conversation, if you could call it that. It was more or less a confrontation, and Lance was on the wrong side of said confrontation.
The pony leaned in closer to Lance's face until their noses nearly bumped together. The first thing that struck him as the figure did this was the smell of perfume, though which smell it was exacly was beyond him. Smells like a mare, if I may have to say so myself, he thought, thinking back to one of his recruits that had been assigned to him. She always wore parfume, even during the battles, which struck Lance as both odd, and at the same time quite cute. Shame she died so early on. What was her name now again... Oh, right, Rose Smell. That was an odd name for a soldier, he thought to himself.
He was pulled out of his throughts when he realized the figure had been talking to him, and he hadn't heard a word of it. Normally, that was enough for disciplinary action, but he'd managed to avoid it somehow. Mostly, anyway. "...To start over in a new land and... Has thou even been listening to a word We- I mean I have said?" They asked with a hint of annoyance.
Normally, this was the part where Lance would simply state an excuse and pretend to know what the hay the pony was talking about. But this time, he simply didn't feel like it, and simply shook his head lightly, never taking his eyes off the pony.
The window pony just retracted her head with a sigh, and turned their head to the side. "We- I mean I should have known it wouldn't go that smooth. ...Oh well, 'tis not Our fault for being thick headed."
Lance was about to argue that he wasn't thick headed, just easily distracted by his own thoughts, when the biggest headache he'd ever experienced set in. Despite the headache, he managed to hold onto his spear for a few seconds before he collapsed and started blackening out.
The last thing he'd hear before fainting was the sound of something hitting the floor behind him, and the familiar tune of a horn lit up with magic.
Darkness.
Neverending darkness.
Well, no not really, but it was quite dark nontheless.
It seemed to drag on for a very long time (probably whole seconds, which was way too long in the the old soldier's mind), but eventually it seemed to release it's grip on Lance.
Ugh... That was horrible, hope I'll never have to go through that type of headache again. It was almost as bad as that one time I swam in a bathtub of cider and drank it all. Most of it, anyway. That hangover felt like it was killing me, I swear, he thought as the memories of the headache returned, before attempting to open his eyes, only for the darkness to remain. He waited three seconds before realizing that his eyes had refused to open despite his attempt.
Perfect, now my own eyes are refusing to cooperate with me. Wonder how long it'll take before my heart stops working.
He tried opening his eyes again, and this time he found that he had alot more luck with opening them, only to wish he didn't open them. He could immediatly tell he wasn't in his room anymore, but somewhere else entirely. Looking around, he realized that he didn't recognize his surroundings one bit, other then the fact that it was still night (if the lack of light was something to go on), and immediatly shot up, quickly scanning where he would have been abducted to.
Or atleast he would have, if the armor he had hastily put on him didn't throw him off balance and make him faceplant the stone floor with a weak clang. Gathering his bearings, he rose up again, and found joy in that the rest of his armor and spear had come along with him. After putting on the armour and picking up the spear, he looked around to try to figure out where he had ended up.
The first thing he saw as he looked around were the partially broken stone walls that clearly had suffered quite the bit of decay, like they had been there for a millennia. Which struck Lance as odd, as his HQ never had anything more then five years old in it. It was part of some old policy to switch our every object more than a year old for reasons beyond him.
The second thing to strike him as odd was that all the windows were broken. Unless he would've been knocked out for a few hours, there was no way all the windows would be broken. Had he been abducted to some long forgotten warehouse? No, the torn red carpet on the ground and the lack of shelves seemed to indicate he was in some sort of government building. But what type of government building would be this torn down? You'd think that it'd be looked after better then this, he thought to himself.
He was snapped out of his thoughts by shouts coming from nearby, and the sound of something being smashed. Normally, he'd already be rushing to the source of the sound, but something stopped him. Namely, the forest visible outside the broken windows. He stopped to stare at them for a few minutes, trying to figure out where the hay he had ended up.
Eventually, he concluded that he would come to no reasonable conclusion just from looking at the endless wave of trees, and trotted back to the door the scream had originated from, opening it carefully to avoid startling anypony on the other side. Most ponies didn't take the arrival of an Army officer dressed in combat armor very well. It had been that way ever since Fogbound Lake, with good reason.
The scene that greeted him as he poked his head out was that there was a small gathering of ponies in what appeared to be a very old throne room with more broken windows. From this, he guessed the building he was in wasn't actually a government building, but rather an old castle, likely abandoned a very long time ago for some reason. Probably becuase of the forest. Next, he turned his attention to the six ponies gathered near the thrones. Two were unicorns, two were pegasi, and the last two were earth ponies. Wonder what the fuss was all about, he thought to himself, before noticing two more ponies, both of which had horns and wings. Wait, both horns and wings? So they're- But that's impossible! They should have disappeared 900 years ago!
He didn't pick up exactly what was said due to his internal panicing, but eventually, the ponies started walking off, leaving Lance alone in the castle to ponder over what to do.
"Wait, where is this place even located? Equestria? Probably, there are ponies here, which look perfectly normal. But... I don't remember hearing anything about a castle located in a forest, and we have, as far as I know, checked out every forest there is. Except Fogbound, for good reasons, and the Everfree... Then again, the Everfree was deemed sealed off to all guards. Probably becuase the forest was too wild. Maybe that's where I am? If that's the case, then I am quite far away from any settlement," Lance said to himself. He knew wandering off in a random direction inside a forest was a bad idea, but what else was he supposed to do? There wasn't anypony to follow- Oh wait, there was.
Maybe I can follow the group back? They seemed to know where they were going, he thought. Making up his mind, he got up from his sitting position, and started walking in the direction the group had taken off in, eventually reaching the exit of the castle, only to realize that they were nowhere in sight, long having disappeared past the treeline. Note to self: Keep an eye on new ponies before you have an internal monologue.
"Well... Buck."
Out of options, he decided to simply leg it in some random direction like he planned, soon dissapearing past the treeline, not noticing the black shadow which came into existance where he'd woken up and headed after him.