Chapter 5:

"Time Passes..."

My time in the guard was well spent, if I do say so myself. Due to my inability to sleep, the night shifts ended up becoming something I looked forward to, simply because I managed to be useful. It let the other guards rest, earning me just a little more respect from them. You’d be surprised how much a good night’s sleep can do for someone who doesn’t trust you.

The Shadow-Stalkers only attacked five more times over the seven months that followed. As good as that may sound, my heart was telling me that there was something amiss. From my experience with Torrentican, whenever there was a lull in activity like that, it meant he was preparing. For what, I did not know…and it had me worried.

There were still other threats though. Occasionally, a diamond dog or passing bandit would sneak his way into Pine Falls and kidnap a pony to work in their mines. Thankfully, the guard was on high alert, always ready to thwart them. Of the twenty-seven times it happened, I managed to catch them in the act seven times.

Whirl Wing had caught them seventeen times. Needless to say, he was probably the best guard we had. Even with my skills improving, it wasn’t unusual for him to beat me in our usual sparring matches. Between our fights, guard duty, and time spent together, we had ended up becoming close friends. Hell, even during the Stalker fights, or the times we spent tracking down bandits and criminals, we ended up being one hell of a team.

Things really had changed around town. Hell, I had even taken up a few new hobbies. You’d be surprised by how much free time you get when you don’t have to sleep.

For once, things were looking up. There wasn’t another town I had to go to, whatever war it was that Gaia told me about wasn’t supposed to happen for years to come…for once, I didn’t have to stress out over everything.

You know what this is referred to as?

The calm before the storm.

XHXHXHXHXHXHX

“Hey, Battleclaw!”

I turned to see Crimson Forge, the town’s new resident blacksmith, waving at me from his shop.

“Forge,” I greeted him, walking into the small store. Inside, all of his shelves were covered in various pieces of finely crafted metal sculptures. The earth pony really had a talent for delicately carving the metal traded with the nearby friendly diamond dog groups.

Yeah, asides from the bandits, Pine Falls is on good terms with the diamond dogs. Apparently, the mayor and Sky had both dealt with them repeatedly in the past, meaning that they could at least tolerate them. And if anypony in town had problems, they’d have to take it up with Sky…and no one really wants to get on his bad side.

Myself included.

“Say, you still in the market for a weapon, or some armor?” Forge asked me, making his way to a large iron chest he kept stashed behind the counter.

“I’ve told you, there isn’t any armor that will work with my arms,” I firmly stated. “Unless you have some sort of vest in there that will fit me, I’m pretty sure tha-”

I stopped talking as soon as he had pulled out a thin blanket of chainmail out of the chest. He ran a hoof lovingly over it, and said, “I’ve been experimenting with new techniques in the forge; one of the attempts at making a necklace got me thinking about how you can’t wear the plate armor that normal ponies wear.”

The best way to describe it was that it was basically just a literal vest. See, the former problem with armor was finding a way to fit it over my head and adjusting it for my arms. We couldn’t cut my hair (mostly because of how stubborn I am), and most plate armor that we strapped onto me wouldn’t let my arms move around enough for me to fight properly.

With this, however, it would work by letting me slip my arms into it, while thicker chains would hold the front together. It wasn’t perfect, but it would definitely stop almost anything from carving out my heart.

“Thank you Forge,” I said sincerely. “You have no idea how useful this is.”

“Ah, don’t mention it. I made armor for everypony else. It just took me a little longer to get to working out something for you,” he laughed, pushing his soot-stained mane out of his eyes. “And then there’s the matter of your weapon!”

“I don’t use weapons though,” I pointed out. “It’s mostly just hand-to-hand stuff.”

“That’s why you’re gonna love me for these,” he grinned wickedly. He dug around his chest again, only this time he emerged with a pair of large metal loops with curved grooves on the inside part of half of it.

“What are those?” I asked, confusion evident in my voice.

“These are my pride and joy…I call ‘em ‘Knuckle Dusters’,” Forge said, his chest puffing out in pride. “I got a unicorn to enchant it with a one-size fits all spell while it was melting in the fires. See where I’m going with this?”

“You mean these will fit over even my freakishly huge hands?” I joked evenly.

In answer, he shoved one of them onto my hand. It was a little loose at first…until it pulled a Terminator, and flowed like quicksilver around my palms. In an instant, they had fitted themselves over my knuckles, forming a pair of gleaming, silver knuckles.

Brass knuckles can suck it.

“These are pretty cool,” I admitted, taking a couple experimental swings with them. The extra weight wasn’t really noticeable at first, meaning I wouldn’t have to make any huge adjustments to my style. Let’s hear it for magic, people!

Thanking him once again, I set out from the metal shop to Whirl’s house.

I was proud of how much he had added onto his home. Now it had two more rooms added onto it: a guest room which I was currently occupying, and a room for the baby that was due any day now.

Stepping through the door, I spotted Whirl Wing reclining on the couch, a thoughtful expression on his face. I sat down across from him, and pulled a chunk of firewood onto my lap from the pile next to the fireplace.

Absently, I started running a claw through the wood, carving away the bark. “You got anything you wanna talk about?” I asked after a few minutes of silence.

Wing hesitated for an instant. With a heavy sigh, he asked me, “Do you think that the town’s well protected?”

Where did this come from?

“Yeah, I’d say it is,” I replied after some thought. “Mayor’s finally commissioned the carpenters to get finished on the watch towers, we haven’t had an attack in a long time, more guards are joining everyday…not to mention the woods are starting to thin out.”

“That’s true…” he quietly said in response. I hadn’t ever heard him ask things like that before. Normally, he’s the kind of pony to just go with things.

“Whirl, just tell me what’s wrong,” I said in a concerned voice. The wood I was carving had been stripped of all bark by now, and was starting to vaguely resemble a sword. I had no idea what I was trying to carve…I just start scratching at it while trying to free whatever shape was inside.

“It’s kind of hard for me to say,” he muttered.

Another scratch.

“When you’re up to it, let me know,” I sighed. No use in pushing him.  

XHXHXHXHXHXHX

A few nights later, and I was once again sitting next to the fireplace, scratching away at the same piece of wood from before. The sword was coming along nicely. I had carved out the basic hilt, with some delicate swirls etched into the sides of it.

Gentle Heart trotted into the room then, her belly even more swollen than the day I had met her. She collapsed onto the couch with an exhausted yawn, distracting me from my work.

“Evenin’,” I greeted her. She nodded tiredly at me, barely stirring from the couch. “Rough day at the medicinal place then?”

She groaned in response.

“Take it the baby’s kicking again,” I stated evenly.

Another groan of confirmation.

“Know if it’s gonna be a Pegasus or a Unicorn? Two groans for Pegasus, one for Unicorn.”

She groaned once, and actually added, “She keeps jabbing my stomach with her horn.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“No, no,” she protested. “It’s a good thing. She’s alive and kicking.”

She winced again.

“And stabbing,” I deadpanned as I continued to carve.

We exchanged small talk for a little while. She had managed to get more time off from her job in anticipation of the foal that was on the way. That always seemed to be the main subject of every conversation I had with Whirl or Heart nowadays. Understandable, given that they were two of the kindest ponies here.

Finally, I worked up the courage to ask her, in my famous blunt fashion, “Do you know if anything is wrong with Whirl Wing? He’s been acting different.”

Subtlety, thy name is Omnius.

Heart’s face fell, as she asked me, “You mean he hasn’t told you yet?” I shook my head. “Oh…well, Wing and I have been talking…and we’ve decided that it’s best if he retires from the guard.”

She braced herself suddenly, as if she expected me to yell at her or something.

Instead of that, I nodded politely, and said, “Okay. Is that all?”

“You’re…not…?” she trailed off.

“Surprised? No, not really. You know what he talked about the majority of the time when we were on patrol?” I asked her. Not bothering with the wait for a reply, I continued. “Three things: You, the kid, and Pine Falls. It’s only logical that he’d do that.”

She let out a relieved sigh. “Thank Celestia. Wing was worried you wouldn’t take the news too well.”

“Nah. I get it. He has a family, needs to focus on you guys. So tonight’s his last round then?”

“Yeah…”

We lapsed into silence once more.

XHXHXHXHXHXHX

Later that night, it was mine and Whirl’s turn to go on patrol. As we walked around the gate’s construction site, we talked about how he was planning on retiring from the guard.

“So what do you plan to do from here?” I asked him, tightening the straps on my vest.

He shrugged noncommittally, trying to mask his worry. “I’ve been thinking about becoming a teacher. I mean, I taught you how to read Equestrian, didn’t?”

Had to give him props on that one. Turns out, this Equestria’s written language was far different from most of the languages I knew. So when I brought up that I couldn’t read, he leaped at the chance to try out his teaching skills. A couple of months later and I had at least gotten the basics of it down. Still had trouble, but I managed to write somewhat legibly. I have to say, it explained his cutie-mark (a quill and knife in an ‘X’ shape) a bit more than it had before.

“You’d make a good teacher,” I admitted with a smile. “Guess I’ll have to move out too, right?”

He slapped me on the back of my head. “No you won’t, you big fuzzy idiot! You’re pretty much part of the family now,” he said, shaking his head at my apparent stupidity. He then smirked a bit, and added, “Besides. You don’t expect me to raise that kid all by myself, do you?”

Well. I don’t know whether that’s touching, or slightly degrading. Does that make me the new family pet?

“Hey, Battleclaw, you think you co-“

Suddenly, the alarms started to ring violently. Wing and I instantly tensed and got our weapons ready. From what I could tell, the alarm had been activated at the front of the town, towards the west. Wing took to the skies and flew ahead, leaving me to follow along. Racing through the towns, my nose picked up a bitter, acrid smell.

“Whirl! Do you see any smoke?” I shouted at him.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look too bad. My main concern is how it started!” he shouted back, never once slowing down.

“Alright, go and get some backup then!”

He nodded at me and flew off to alert the other guards that were on duty. While he did that, I started running on all fours, picking up more and more speed.

XHXHXHXHXHX

When I reached the source of the fire, I expected a couple of bandits, or maybe some vandals. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some of the dumber teenage ponies dancing around a trash blaze.

So I was considerably surprised to see a small group of teenage DRAGONS (three of them to be exact) dancing around a burning tree. Out of the corner of my eye, I could also see Twitch sprawled out on the ground. His armor was scorched in different places, along with some of his skin as well…

“HEY!” I roared as loud as I could, getting the dragons’ attention. All of them stopped where they were to stare at me in a combination of amusement and surprise.

“What in Tartarus are you?” one of them, a bulky crocodile like green one asked in a bewildered tone.

In answer, I clanged my knuckle dusters together, sending a flurry of sparks into the air. The light from the sparks cast my bared fangs into demonic shadows, my straw hat only adding to the intimidation factor.

The three of them tensed visibly, preparing themselves for a fight.

I gave another low growl that lingered for a moment afterwards.

“I’m just one angry sunuvabitch.”

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