Chapter 1
“What’s taking so long?” Stormcrest demands, twisting her head back towards Bladeburn, her changeling ally.
“You got really big wings Gayle, it’s hard to bandage them quickly,” he snorts.
He brings the white bandage around the back of her wing, pulling it close against her snow white feathers, well, they used to be snow white. A bit of blood seeps through and stains the bandage. He sighs and wraps another layer around her wounded wing. The itchy cloth rubs up on her feathers in a horribly uncomfortable way. A shock runs up her spine as he pulls it tighter. “You’re wrapping a bandage, not tying a tourniquet,” she complains.
“Oh stop whining,” he states, “I’m just making sure this stays on, you don’t want this falling off and then you get infected with black wing disease, do you?”
She raises her arm into the air to argue but then promptly sets her arm back down with a defeated sigh. He chuckles a bit and shakes his head. He looks over at the small dish of bloodied bullets pulled straight from her wings. “How many?” She requests.
“7 from the right wing, 4 from the left,” he answers, “you won’t be flying for a solid month at the very least.”
“You sure? My wings are my livelihood, without them, I don’t know what I’ll do! You have to be joking!” Stormcrest pleads.
He rests a hoof on her shoulder, gazing deeply into her eyes, “despite being a changeling, I’m not going to scare you with lies— or jokes for that matter.”
She wraps her arms around his neck, nuzzling into the underside of his head. He wraps a hoof around her back and pats her a few times, “it’ll be alright,” he pushes her away slightly, “now let’s finish bandaging your wings.”
She sits up as he brings another roll of bandages around her back and chest, wrapping them repeatedly. He pulls them tight, folding the wings against her back before finally tying them.
He takes a deep breath, his exhale freezes in front of him because of the cold air. It was early winter and the snow had just began to settle in. Stormcrest liked the cold weather, she said it helped her focus; Mandible couldn’t agree less, he hated winter, how it froze you to the core and numbed your senses, how snow and ice managed to get into everything.
“What are you going to do once this is over?” Stormcrest asks, throwing her vest back on.
“Well I don’t know,” Mandible returns, “I’d probably find some nice Mare or Griff and settle down, not sure about anything else though.”
“I would most likely just live out the rest of my days, ruminating on everything I’ve done,” Stormcrest says.
A pegasus walks in to the tent, he hesitates however when he sights the two, “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all, Jade,” Mandible replies, “I was just bandaging up her wings, they’ll be out of commission for a while.”
Jade sets his gun down and trots up to the two, “how many bullets?”
“11,” Stormcrest replies, “and it hurts like hell.”
“That’s to be expected after your wings are riddled with machine gun fire,” Mandible comments resulting in him being smacked atop the head by Stormcrest.
“I wouldn’t have had to use them if you kept shooting!” She retorts.
“My gun jammed!” Mandible responds, “and I dragged you out of there on my own after you got shot.”
The two clash together, bringing their foreheads close to touching before breaking out into a small fit of laughter. Jade eyes the two strangely before shaking his head, “out of everything I’ve ever seen, you two together are the strangest.”
“Thanks, the less predictable the better,” Mandible replies.
“And why is that?” Jade counters.
“If the enemies can’t predict what we’re doing they can’t plan for what we actually do,” Stormcrest retorts.
“Seems reasonable enough,” Jade defeatedly states.
“Mandible,” Stormcrest starts, “I don’t think I ever asked you where you got that scar, the one on your neck.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Jade adds, “c’mon now, spill it.”
“It was a hot summer in the year of 997, really, really hot. I was 11, I’m the same age as Stormcrest actually, and my sister had dropped her toy in Ravenstone Lake. Me, being the nice big brother I was, jumped in to get it. I got the toy out of the water and to my sister who was at the end of the dock, but when I go to step out a Biteacuda comes leaping out of the water and onto my hind leg. It drags me under where I bash my head against the big rock under the dock, knocking it loose, along with giving me a headache for the next two days. It all becomes a blur after that but I remember dragging the damned thing out of the water and bashing it’s head in with the rock. I got it’s blood and my blood all over me; the horrified face of my mother when I passed out after entering the cabin covered in blood will be a sight I won’t ever forget.”
“Well it seems your childhood wasn’t any more traumatic then mine then,” Stormcrest sarcastically answers before entering her own monologue, “the year is 994 and I had just turned 8. I was so happy to be a year older, like any young kid. My parents let me go off on an adventure with my friends out into the woods. We explored and played all day but when it was nighttime I came home to find my home abandoned, everything that belonged to my parents, gone. And living in Ravenstone Heights isn’t easy either, I was barely scraping by during my childhood before I found this guy,” she punches Mandible’s shoulder.
“You guys have got some really messed up backstories, I just lived a normal life as a little colt in Ponyville,” Jade responds with a horrified inflection to his voice.
“With exception of the scar story my life was decently easy,” Mandible states, “that was until she showed up. Some random gryphon just rolls up on your doorstep one day and asks if they can stay with you. We took her in immediately, I think it was around 1004 or something—“
A loud explosion rocks the base, sending troops into a panic and shaking the earth beneath them. A hippogriff pulls open the entryway, “come on Timberwolves, we got a job to do!”