For the first time in many months, I felt bored. Being part of the Royal Guard ensured you spent no moment unoccupied, but right now I couldn’t do anything that I normally would do in my spare time.

I sighed, tapping my right hindleg on the cold, sterile floor. What were my squad mates up to? Was there just another replacement for me, one who they would get used to?

Will my name no longer be recognized?

My thoughts were going in that direction because during training, and just in general, you were constantly reminded there were a dozen other stallions who would eagerly take your place. As my thoughts drifted back to training, I gave a small smile as I remembered the site we were trained.

The place had no name, as it technically didn’t exist. Officially, Royal Guards were trained on the Canterlot Palace’s grounds, but as soon as you were considered, and you agreed to join, it quickly became obvious that was a half-truth.

Your first day was basically spent signing paperwork that stated you agreed that you would not disclose any information not approved by the Captain of the Royal Guard. After that, you were “released” to go home for the day, only to be ambushed by actual Royal Guards. Interestingly enough, the ones who would ambush me were Legion, Sparrow, and Claymore.

When you regained consciousness, you were outside a facility in the middle of the forest, with Canterlot almost directly above.

“They abandoned you there,” A voice whispered in my ear, and I jerked up, looking for who had just said that. There was nothing different in the room, but I knew for a fact I heard a voice.

Measuring my steps carefully, I walked towards a wall, and looked for whatever said that. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary awaited me.

“You can’t find me. You know that, right?”

I snapped my eyes around the room, looking for whatever the hell said that.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, and then the voice laughed. I noticed it sounded as if multiple ponies were speaking the same thing at once.

“My, my, Phalanx. Have you forgotten me so easily?” the sly voice said with a predominantly mare’s voice.

“Who. The. Hell. ARE YOU?”

“I am what you are.”

Such a specific answer, I thought sarcastically.

“I am speaking the truth, Phalanx,” the voice stated, as if it could hear my thoughts.

“How can you hear what I’m thinking?” I inquired, my curiosity outweighing my defensiveness.

“Because I am what you are.”

With that, the surroundings changed to a vastly different room. Instead of the cold, ceramic, hospital floor, there were wooden floorboards that were dark gray. The ceiling, instead of being flat, was obviously a roof, and there was a regular, non-grated, window.

The room itself, however, seemed very organized. There was a bed that seemed as if it had been taken directly from a display, the sheets perfectly flat. The bookcase in the room was filled to the brim with volumes of knowledge, but they were all sorted alphabetically. There was a desk that was tidy, there was an ink and quill to the side and a perfect stack of paper.

I knew what this room was; it was my own bedroom in my parent’s house.

“How?” I asked fearfully.

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Phalanx,” The voice huffed. “It isn’t your room; it’s your memories!” The voice said the last part a bit too eagerly.

A door swung open, and who else would walk in but a younger version of myself. I realized when this had occurred: it had been the spring of my freshcolt year at high school.

What’s the purpose of this? I asked in my thoughts, unsure if it would be a wise idea to vocalize.

“You can speak, you know,” The voice commented drolly. “My purpose is to show you what you once were.”

The younger me let out a sigh, took a book from a shelf, and set it on the desk. On the cover it read simply: “Equestrian Military History.”

I heard hoofsteps that shouldn’t have been there, because I remember nopony interrupted me. “Until next time, Phalanx.”

My surroundings jerked back to the hospital room, and I was lying on the floor. Harthan was standing not two hoofsteps away, concern creasing every part of his face. Behind him was a rather smug-looking doctor along with two of the orderly-guards.

“Phalanx, are you alright?” Harthan asked hurriedly. I just nodded, noticing the two nurses in the doorway and Harthan glanced over and shook his head, making them leave.

“Well, Doctor, I believe your life story worked wonders,” The other doctor commented venomously.

I instantly decided I disliked the doctor, basing my judgement on those nine words.

“Yeah it did,” I agreed, proceeding to roll myself back up to my legs. “It actually made me somewhat appreciate Doctor Harthan.”

The unnamed doctor looked at me with disdain, but I ignored it.

Harthan, on the other hoof, seemed to wince slightly at my response. I realized he wasn’t going to defend himself against this doctor, for whatever reason; so, I decided to do it for him.

“Any other assessments?” I asked the doctor.

The doctor looked at me with more fury than I had ever seen a pony have, but he finally sighed. “Come on, Roller, let’s leave the Doctor to his patient.”

The two walked out, and I looked back at Harthan who seemed to be in a state of shock, one eye half open.

“So, if I may ask, who was that?”

Harthan realized I was still there, and he looked at me. “That’s another story for another time. I think right now I have tried my luck as it is.”

My mind seemed to start paying attention to the rest of my body again, and the scent of food hung in the air.

“So... Are we going to just stand here or are we going to eat?” I asked, sharing the eagerness he had to get off the topic.

Harthan gestured to a tray on my desk, and I went over and sat down. The “food” didn’t look exactly pretty, it seemed like a mush of a dozen different things. I didn’t mind, though, I had far worse before, the “Ration Bar” coming to mind.

“Phalanx, could you describe to me what was occurring while you were on the ground?” Harthan asked and I turned to look at him.

“I’m not quite sure really, first I was-”

Harthan cut me off, “I think I know what triggered it, Phalanx, and I don’t want to trigger it again. Can you just describe to me what started happening when you noticed things were amiss?”

“There was this voice, or better stated, a bunch of voices. But nopony was in here, and when I came to the wall, I was in my bedroom. I was standing there, and I realized it was a memory of an afternoon a few years back. Then, I heard hoofsteps that shouldn’t have been there, and next thing you know I am on the ground.”

He nodded, and glanced at the food. “I hope it’s not too bad, they are very picky about what they let patients eat.”

“It’s fine,” I replied. “Granted, I would like an MRE a little more, but I am okay with it.” I took the opportunity to eat some of the mush, which seemed to taste like artificial cheese. A minute later, I had swallowed the last of it, and when I turned back again, Harthan was still there.

His head was inclined towards the floor, his eyes staring at a tile in deep thought. His eyes snapped towards me, and he raised his head. “Can I have a story for a story?”

“Of course.”

“What made you interested in the Royal Guard?”

I sighed, I had been asked this twice before. Once by my high school counselor, and then another time by the recruiting officer. Both times they seemed pleasantly surprised by my response, because it actually wasn’t the result of some colthood fantasy.

“In one word: Stalliongrad.”

“What about it?”

“Well to start off, I grew up in Prancesylvania, my parents were both, and still are, the proud owners of a 93-acre oat farm. I had no military history in my family whatsoever, mind you, my family had settled there two hundred years before. For the first few years of my life, I helped on the farm, and was generally bored.

“One day, when I was four in the middle of summer, my father got an invitation to an agricultural convention in Stalliongrad. My parents were ecstatic at the invitation, however I had a foalhood tantrum. As much as I found the farm boring, I had never gone anywhere else more than fifteen miles away, and I didn’t want to go.

“We went anyways, obviously, and when we got there, it seemed exactly how I pictured it,” I recalled. “There were boring gray buildings, it was cold, and there were more ponies than I had ever seen. My mother decided to see if we could find a tour of the city, so as to possibly grasp my interest.

“It was boring, for the most part. There was a spiel about how Stalliongrad was one of the largest cities, and how it was the northernmost city in Equestria. They went on about agriculture and all this other stuff, and the tour ended. On our way back to where we were staying, we passed a statue.”

“The Mareayev Monument, I presume?” Harthan asked, and I nodded.

“I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I stopped and stared at it. In the middle of this boring city, was a statue that seemed to not fit in. What really got me though, was the stallion in armor. Everypony else, and even him, seemed to be exhausted and disheartened, but the armored one seemed to have resolve.

“I asked my mother what the statue was, and she replied with ‘You wouldn’t understand’. But I wanted to know what it was, and I asked again. She bit her lip, and then told me ‘Here, I’ll see if they have something on it in the library’.

“We actually went to the library, and she kept her promise. She came back with a book: The Battle of Stalliongrad. She warned me that I probably shouldn’t be reading it, and that I wouldn’t understand a lot of the words. I disagreed though, and when we returned to the hotel where we were staying I opened the book up and started looking through it.

“A lot of the wording went over my head, but I understood what happened at a basic level. That there had been a terrible conflict, and that the city of Stalliongrad had been left alone to survive. It amazed me how the ones who were in there kept steadfast and didn’t surrender, how they resisted and refused to back down.

“From that day forward, my interest grew in the battle until I learned a few months later, after asking my parents countless questions about what certain words meant, of the Royal Guard. That they had been the ones to gather everypony together, and they had organized a way to make the Griffins leave.

“I wanted to know how they could do that, how they could not give up. So, for the next fourteen years, I poured everything I had into becoming a Royal Guard,” I finished, relieved to have to not go on and on any more.

“It was curiosity that drove you, not envy or desire.” Harthan commented.

“Pretty much, though later on when I discovered my talent I also wanted to join them to be able to give my own abilities for use.”

“Curiosity, not envy.” Harthan breathed, and he had the slightest frown.

“Something you want to tell me?”

“Not yet, I want to have more confidence on it.”

“On what?”

Harthan looked up to the ceiling, and started to formulate a response when the door swinging open interrupted him. “Lights out in five minutes.” An orderly informed me, and Harthan looked relieved for some reason.

“I will see you tomorrow, Phalanx,” Harthan said, and hurried out.

I was frustrated, because there was something he knew but wouldn’t tell me. What was it?

Sighing, I decided to lay down and try to get some sleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.