Some soldiers don't want to be soldiers. Some soldiers would rather be painters, or take over the family business, or go to culinary school.

Some soldiers would love to see that happen.

Written for the September Writing Contest of the World-Building-Alliance. Prompt: "Brotherhood"

In the courts of Equestria, it is tradition for the pasts and presents of the aristocracy to be recorded with painstaking detail and accuracy. But when a certain mostly-reformed draconequus joins the ranks of the Canterlot elite, detail and accuracy are some of the farthest things from his mind.

After Discord gives the Royal Archivists more than their fair share of trouble with the writing of his biography, newly-crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of his past.

She may have bitten off more than even she can chew.

After the failed invasion of Spurta, and the subsequent retaliation by the minotaur armies, Ozylandura was left as a prince without a kingdom. When he found ancient writings about a place deep within the desert - a place which the Old Gods had built centuries ago - he knew that it was where he could find the power to take back what was rightfully his.

After thirty long years, his search is about to come to an end.

A companion story to The Life of Fear.

Joint 1st-place winner of the March Writing Contest of the World-Building Alliance. Prompt: "Death".

See the other first-place winner here: Burraku_Pansa's Plainswalker.

The stories of a place lost to time: those who found it, that which was held within, and those who came too late.

(A companion story to The Life of Fear)

Thieves: Shift Key and Gaston have never been the luckiest of "treasure hunters". Every job they try to pull seems to end in disaster, and they're barely making ends meet. But now, deep in the mountains, they've found something - a large, faceless, heavily-protected stone door - and what they find inside will change their lives, and Equestria, forever.

Preliminary Report: No matter how small or large the discovery, somepony always has to fill out the paperwork.

V-27: A Rowanwood Hourglass: Just the thing for those little moments that slip between your fingers.

V-58: A Heart of Stone: "Once more, I open the door: and my heart will go on and on."

V-66: A Silver and Ruby Amulet: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Borrowed power must eventually be given back.

V-83: Quicksilver Horseshoes: "I'm walking on sunshine, and don't it feel good?"

V-90: A Small Metal Key: A solution in search of a problem.

V-165: A Silver-Rimmed Lens: Some things aren't meant to be seen.

V-209: A [REDACTED]: [REDACTED]

V-244: A Rosewood Wand: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

V-372: A Standing Mirror: You can see yourself, but you might not look the same.

Surf-on-the-Shore-Brings-Sand-to-the-Depths is a sea-pony. This, in itself, would not be strange, if any other sea-ponies had been seen in Equestria for the past 500 years.

Why, then, has he washed ashore now, covered in what look like hundreds of shark bites?

Written for the February Writing Contest of the World-Building Alliance - although, frankly, I'm not sure I've done enough world-building to even qualify. It started out as a more comedic endeavor, referencing the Gen. 1 song "Call Upon the Seaponies" from "Rescue at Midnight Castle" at every available opportunity, but it evolved into a romance after I listened to this song about ten-dozen times.

It is what it is. Inspiration struck, and I hammered it out. C'est la vie.

A scribe recounts (a small part of) the tale of the founder of his tribe, and how that founder gained the artifact that defines them to this day.

2nd-place winner of the January Writing Contest of the World-Building Alliance. Prompt: "Pick a race (other than ponies) and write an origin story for that race." Originally, I was going to do dragons, but then this idea sort of... happened.

Today, there are only four alicorns - but it was not always so. The alicorns once covered the world, protecting the light, and battling the dark. Their city, Olympus, was a shining bastion of all things good and just.

This is not a story of then. Those times are long gone.

This is the story of Phobos, the third son of Bellic the Black, the fourth son of Serena the White, and the 12th seer of the alicorns - a stallion without the serenity to accept the things he could not change, the courage to change the things he could, or the wisdom to know the difference - born just a few short decades before the rise of Discord, the fall of Luna, the disappearance of the Imperium Vitreus, and the destruction of all his kind - and it is a story he wrote himself.

He was never much good with titles.