Princess Celestia

It’s frequently said that warning sides were ignored. That the Crown failed to properly respond to the invasion, even months into the war. There were reports that intelligence was being completely ignored, and Canterlot had no idea what it was doing. How do you respond.

It was war. It was a pre-emptive attack. Of course we’re going to take damage. Of course the intelligence will be faulty. We were getting contradictory reports all up and down the line. Some said we were retreating, others said we had success. Are communication lines were destroyed. The dragons ran an effective counterintelligence campaign. We simply acted on the best information we had at the time. There is only so much that politicians can do.

Field Marshall Stormy Winds

The highest ranking officer in Equestria by the end of the war, Field Marshall Winds is still the most recognized face of the war. I meet him and his wife for a long lunch at their home in Canterlot. He’s quite old, but still has a photographic memory. He insists that it was his attention to details that made him a capable officer, rather than cunning or courage. “Capable” is an example of his modesty. Most historians credit Winds as being the stallion who won the war.

You were a colonel when the war started?

That’s correct. Brigadier General after four months of fighting. Field Marshall after two and a half years. That would have been unheard of during peace time. But I’ve heard of greater movement in a shorter amount of time during war. There was an officer in my general staff... Flash. Second Lieutenant out of the academy when war broke out, and he was a Major General under my command by the Battle of Stalliongrad. Good stallion.

Those must have been horrible years, in the early part of the war.

Every year is horrible in war, son. But yes, you’re speaking of the losses. Every day was another loss. Every month was another hundred miles of territory on the northern front. Morale was very low. Those were the darkest times, everyone agrees.

No offense intended, but the records show you as being selected Commander of the Northern Front by being merely the next officer in line, after a string of failures.

None taken. I’ve always been an unremarkable officer, in my own opinion. My predecessors were removed from their command, and I was promoted to fill their position. That’s how the Army works, for better or worse.

Could you explain why your predecessors were removed.

No, I cannot state that for the record.

I’m sorry, Marshall. I was under the impression that you had been cleared to speak candidly. All of the old records have been unsealed and...

No, no, no, son... you misunderstand me. There is no issue of state secrecy. I simply cannot explain the reason for their failures, as I was not there. It would be presumptive of me, and probably wrong. I wouldn’t want to sully their character, or write a history that I do not know.

Surely you know what became of them.

Yes, of course I do. Do you want me to play this game? Do you want me to say it? They were summarily gored for cowardice. They retreated instead of counterattacking. They evacuated rather than securing their ground. They didn’t order their stallions into certain death, and for that they had to die. At least that’s what the politicians said, damn them. Again, I wasn’t there. I’ll speak no more of my predecessors.

It must have been a terrible weight on your shoulders, knowing what would have happened if you were removed from command.

Yes, well. I tried to think about killing dragons instead.

Thunder Charge

Can you tell me more about the training?

Sure, Doc. The first few weeks were total physical conditioning. It was tough, but we had all been on work crews in the prison, so we were tough already. Only one that really struggled was this lardass named Tails (laughs). He was as strong as an ox though. Once the physical training was over, he was the most fit of the bunch. Just a big slab of muscle. He could have taken on a snake all by himself.

So then after that was over, we moved on to teleporting. Let me tell you, Doc, you never forget your first teleport. I didn’t even make it ten yards, and I ended up puking my guts out for the rest of the day. Head hurt like a bitch too. It was more or less the same for all of us. One short hop, then we get to spend the night in the infirmary, feeling like shit.

Then we still got up at reveille, and had to do it all over again. Only this time we did it twice. And further. Felt worse the second day than it did the first. But they told us it would get better, and we did it. More the next day, more the next, and so on. A month into it we could port a couple dozen times a day, a hundred yards or more each. By then I figure we were the best teleporters in Equestria. So we moved onto the platform.

Platform?

Sure, just a raised wooden platform, maybe a couple hundred feet in the air. You’d take the stairs to the top, then they’d tell you to teleport down. It’s not really that different, magically, adding that third dimension. But the psychological impact is intense. It’s like jumping off a cliff and being told to trust you’ll have a safe landing. Anyway, we all made it. And soon we were all porting back up. And then just up into open air and back down again in a flash. We started getting pretty cocky then, I’d say. Next big psychological hurdle was the wall. We had to teleport from one side of a brick wall to the other. Distance didn’t count. But teleporting where can’t see? That was scary as shit for a greenback, and we were all greenbacks. We did it though. And in another year it was the staff’s turn to get scared.

I don’t understand.

We got so good, that’s it. Take you- you’re at the bar. You want to take a piss, you get up, walk to the john, take a piss, walk back. We got so damn good we did everything by teleportation. Teleport to the crapper, crap, teleport back. Teleport to the bar, grab a drink, teleport outside, teleport back in for your smokes because you forgot ‘em. You realize how much a pony will get up and move around all day without even thinking about it? Well, we did all that by teleporting. Apparently it really freaked out a lot of the normal staff. A lot of them were allowed to transfer out. We were mostly taking care of ourselves the second year. Doing the cooking, cleaning, maintenance, laundry, that sort of stuff. We were a pretty good team by then.

Ehh... sometimes at night, I get these real intense dreams. Sometimes about the war, sometimes random shit. And I’ll start teleporting around the house, you know? Instead of sleep-walking? Scares my wife half to death.

Were there accidents?

Yeah, one bad one on the back up team. A couple of mares teleported into each other.

That sounds horrible.

Yeah, I didn’t see it, thank god. But my buddy, Tails, the lardass, remember? He saw it. It was in the mess hall when it happened. He was there eating a big pot of beans. Some of the back up team were screwing around, playing catch. Then these two mares just happen to teleport into the same spot at the same time. There are a number of magical safeguards that prevent that sort of thing, but they all just happened to fail at the wrong time. Shear bad luck. One in a million shot.

Anyway, Tails said they was stuck together for a couple of seconds, one big sort of monster type thing. He had details, but I don’t want to get into them. They sort of screamed in an unnatural way for a couple of seconds because they both realized what had happened. Then they both tried to teleport away, which was what really killed them. Not that I can blame them. It was a pretty big mess. None of us could clean it up even though we were all hardened bastards. Had to bus in some work crews to take care of it.

Both teams were shaken up real bad after that. Some of us couldn’t teleport for a week. We got over it. But we were more careful after that. (laughs)

Looking back now at the dozen of us, hard to consider anything that we ever did as careful.

There must have been other kinds of training.

Sure. Combat telekinesis, pyrokinesis. Just like the unicorn regulars, only more intense. And we each had a specialty that we would study extensively. There wasn’t a single field of magic that at least one pony on the team wasn’t a master in.

What was your specialty?

I&I. Invisibility and illusions.

Angel “Devil” Breeze

The ace pegasus meets me at a restaurant in the groundside district of Cloudsdale. He takes a coach service. He only has one wing. He wasn’t injured in the war, but lost it to cancer five years ago. He blames the Agent Joak used against the dragons and he was involved in the class-action suit against the crown several years ago.

I wanted to be a stunt-flier before the war. I was the best around. The fastest, the most nimble, you should have seen me. See, the thing about proper stunt flying is that it’s all about control. There’s precision involved. You have to keep a cool head. You have to keep an eye on what your other five wingmates are doing. It’s about cooperation. If you’re not exacting, you can’t do it.

Combat flying? That’s completely different. It’s reckless, it’s hotheaded Completely improvisational. It’s all so random. You have to fly fast, you have to be nimble. But it’s a matter of luck if you’re the one that flies straight into a claw.

That’s no way to fly.

Sweet Leaves

Two weeks of training, and then they shipped us off to the line. My neck still hurt from all the trench horn training. We were still using the Mark I’s. You know, the ones with triangular blades that were supposed to cause wounds that wouldn’t heal properly? Wear one of those 16 hours a day and you’ll never forget it.

So they ship us out, but they didn’t even have enough weapons to go around. They had to split them up, almost evenly. I got two pairs of combat shoes. My buddy from training, Cobbler Smith, he gets the trench horn. I envied him at the time, but if it had been the other way he would be talking to you now and I’d have been killed.

So we wind up a hundred miles or so north of Seadle. It’s near the coast, just open pasture and mudflats. They grow bulbs there now, for export. Tulips and whatnot. For about two weeks in spring it’s the prettiest place on earth. Every other time its dismal.

We see the dragon coming on the horizon...

This was the first? The one that made you and the others famous?

That’s the one. Big green bastard. He looked big on the horizon, and just kept getting bigger and bigger. We had a full company, just like in the training manuals. Thirty pegasus ponies, sixty earth ponies, ten unicorns. The pegasus ponies took off when he was still five miles out. He looked a lot closer than that, he was so big.

They must have had nerves of steel. They start swarming him, almost straight above us. There’s combat footage that you can watch, but it’s no replacement for actually seeing it. It looks just like starlings swarming a raptor. You can’t even follow it with the eye.

He started picking off the pegasus ponies one by one. Nothing we could do but keep our ranks and watch. They all fell. Some clearly dead, others were wounded. That was the worst, watching the ones who fell wounded. The medics would rush out to them, but of course they had all died on impact. We watch eleven pegasus ponies fall that day. The whole aerial fight lasted maybe five minutes, but if felt like days. They eventually forced that dragon to land, maybe two hundred yards in front of us.

That was when we charged. The unicorns hit it from a distance with stones, clumps of mud, whatever they could lift. They took out his wings, just like they were supposed to. It couldn’t escape. Their pyrokinesis also kept a lot of us from burning in the fire. The rest of us earth ponies went in for the kill.

Like I said, I was only wearing combat shoes, so I couldn’t do a lot. Kicked him right above the ankle with both hindlegs. Obviously not a killing blow, but I drew a lot of blood. Made him flinch too. I saw it in his eyes, we looked each other right in the eyes for a split second. I don’t have any fond memories of combat, except for that one. I knew I hurt him.

And of course all the earth ponies who were wearing horns went under for the belly kill. That was when... (he takes a very long pause to collect himself). That was when he started slamming. That’s a natural instinct, they didn’t need training for that. They feel an animal moving underneath them, and they just drop. All of their weight. When they get back up... you see what it did to the ponies who had been underneath trying to gore them. It’s... Their necks break, right? Usually they were looking up anyway. Necks not just broke a little bit, but their heads were bent completely back over their spine. It looks like a bent pipe cleaner. And their bodies were flattened. The thing is, all those guts have to go someplace, right? And they pretty much just come shooting out their back ends. Whole thing kind of looks like an awful tube of toothpaste more than anything else. I had nightmares after that. I still get them. The only thing I ever feared after that day was being under a snaked when it slammed.

It slammed a few more times. Killed more ponies. But the damage was done. It fell dead pretty fast after that. And then we were done. Three O'clock in the afternoon. Battle of Bulb Fields. Fifty ponies dead. An even fifty percent casualty rate. Everything went by the book that day. Everything.

What happened after that?

They shipped us back to Canterlot. Gave us a parade. Stuck medals on us. The first company to slay a dragon in direct combat. We were in the papers and the magazines. They gave us a week’s R&R but all we wanted to do was get back to the front. I had no idea at the time that I’d be the only pony in that company to survive the war.

There were a lot of fresh faces in the company then. But I never made buddies with any of them after that.

Next Chapter: Part 3 Estimated time remaining: 30 Minutes