Fifteen ponies are dead. Two of the bodies are irretrievable, and have had memorials engraved for them and placed within Songring's tomb. The third is currently lying in an open casket for her wake. The rest are face down in the Charmedsmile to await being consumed by the tigerfish or to drift downstream.

She has once again disobeyed my orders. She has neglected to inform me of valid concerns of the settlers. She has shown an inability to make rational decisions in the face of adversity. She has failed to act with decisiveness or conviction during a crisis.

Dawnstar has gotten three ponies of Songring killed.

Let me simply stack this on top of the outrage of her writing in my journal without my permission, and in doing so compromising my recordings, as well as making statements within that I would have much rather withheld due to the tender and personal nature of them.

My journal is a recording of my mistakes, now is it? A recording of my decisions to better learn from them in the future? How about since she was bold enough to write in here, we review a few of her decisions then? Her decision to refuse to come to me when ponies first expressed concerns about the strange individuals on the banks of the Charmedsmile is the first on the list. This decision, made between 9:30 am and 11:30 am, is one that achieved nothing more than giving me two more hours to sit in the furnace room, completely unaware of the approaching visitors and watching the three smelters cast ingots out of the galena ore. The cost of that choice was that Big Lilly took a stand where Dawnstar and others would not, and was subsequently murdered for it. She stood in a place that should have been mine, without any preparation or backup due to this decision, and it cost us her life. That same decision also led to only one of Songring's defenders (Daggersides) actually entering the conflict equipped with a weapon: The rest were standing against armed opponents with only their hooves to protect them, and now because of that nasty little side effect, one of Songring's defenders is dead from being garroted while she was trying to save another unfortunate victim, and two others are wounded and in the infirmary without proper medical staff here to assist them. This decision, in conjunction with Dawnstar's inability to act during times of duress, also lead to the untimely demise of Glacier Cut, as an untrained miner pony attempted to do whatever she could to see her fellow settlers safe and stepped into the line of fire with nothing but her pick axe.

If Dawnstar had simply come to me at the time she first started receiving reports (like I have informed her once before in a less disastrous situation that she must start doing), none of this would have happened! I would have seen their approach and requested Daggersides to arm the militia and accompany me to meet them somewhere other than on Songring's front damn doorstep! At that time, if they had attacked, Songring's fully armed militia would have had much less trouble dispatching of the group, as I can give a testimony from personal experience that they were sloppy and untrained, merely savages looking to pick a fight. Sir Bullion would not have lost two of his guardsponies during the attack since they would not have been ambushed while on the move. In fact, he would have never been confronted at all by the group of ambushers.

Does that happen to be the kind of "Review" you meant, Dawnstar?

Now I must also come back and explain myself for personal information she has written about me in my journal that does not belong here. As much as I wish to call it libel, it is indeed truth, albeit an inconvenient one for me. I was indeed with Maple that night in my office, but I must immediately remove all suspicion from the reader's thoughts that anything physical manifested. It was nothing more than falling asleep in my chair.

It started when Maple took me to my office after the encounter, setting me at my desk as I held my head in my hands and tried to block out the images of blood pouring on the ground from the invaders that we were forced to eliminate, and the gruesome memory of the sight of Glacier Cut and Lilly being mutilated in the river by the local fauna. To forget hearing Glacier Cut's screams as she was pulled under with Shadowstep still holding her hooves and doing her best to pull the anguished pony onto the bank with no success. I just wished to forget right then. I wanted to wake up and the nightmare to be over. The terror of those lingering thoughts was only worsened by the realization of what the encounter might mean for our future.

Songring has been found out.

Twelve is a frighteningly large number in the broader scope of things. Just one piper, who infiltrated our settlement last summer, was enough to warrant worry that we might be closer to Equestria's borders than would be comfortable, but this advance on Songring has proven the existence of a grouping of Deicidian ponies. I have no concept of how large it may be, but they are organized enough to have found alliances in one another. The knowledge that there is a civilization of them living nearby, along with the discovery of two new breeds of Deicidian ponies, has left me anxious. Worse yet, they know where to find us. My only hope is that perhaps the group had been trailing Bullion's caravan for a while and were simply hoping to rendezvous with him to take his possessions as their own, or that the group is nothing more than an isolated band of bandits and thugs.

If they truly were out here to attack Songring, I am not sure what we will do.

These thoughts had left my mind in a jumbled mess of horror, sorrow, and anxiety while sitting alone in my office waiting for Maple to get us both something to drink: Coffee from the dining hall, brewed from some of Bullion's wares, which he was happy to gift to us as a simple thanks for assisting him with the encounter to the south. I could smell that hers reeked of rum when she returned with two mugs, resting one in front of me and telling me to pick myself up and try some with her. She quietly drank her coffee across from me as I sat at my desk and refused to partake, still gripping my hair in my hands and staring down at the smooth top of the wooden desk that my elbows propped me up against.

It seemed like a couple of hours passed as she sat there silently, merely watching me and waiting for me to take a drink from the mug. When the coffee had lost all heat and became nothing more than murky brown water, she pulled it away from me and let it rest on the edge of the desk. "Ben, talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about. I just need to be alone to think," I informed her quickly, gritting my teeth. I just wanted some time to try to sort through my thoughts and come up with a reasonable answer to give to the settlers. What would I say to them? What would they need to hear right now? I could not just tell them that Songring may be in danger of being besieged by these monsters, could I? There was no way I could think of to relay this news to the settlers and not leave them upset and scared.

I felt my chest pushed back after that, as Maple had come around my desk and placed a hoof underneath my hunched form. She pushed up on my chest to ease me back into a seated position, and turning my chair to face her, gave me a hard look in the eyes, her jade orbs gleaming with what I could discern to be worry. "That's a lie, Ben. Talk to me. You're not in a good place right now."

"That's just it. I don't think any of us are." With that, the side of Maple's hoof rested on my lips to quiet me and she shook her head.

"I don't mean like that. You're not in a good place. I can tell you're really worked up, and you need to take a minute to let it go. Talk to me, Ben, and tell me what’s wrong."

"It's my concern," I told her, pushing her hoof away from my face and growing irritable as she continued to insist I sit in the chair by pinning me upright beneath her other leg. "Don't worry about it. I can handle this. I just need some time to think. I can't do that with you here, Maple, so if you really want to help, you need to go."

Maple refused, shaking her head so that her yellow and green ponytail gently swayed behind her. "One way or another, I'm going to worry about you. I know what you need, and it isn't to be alone right now. You're upset, and I just want to help. Don't push me away because you're just trying to play like some kind of big-shot figurehead."

"I just want to do my job, and that includes easing the minds of the settlers. I can't very well do that by spilling my guts here and telling you of all the things bothering me now."

Maple grew stern as she pressed forward, standing on her hind legs to drape herself over my lap and press her chest to mine. She looked me in the eyes closely. "You see me as some part of a group of nothing but one of your little-ponies? Screw you, Ben, I'm a big girl and I can handle myself like one. Even if you see me as nothing more than some helpless little villager playing adventurer out here, I at least happen to see you as I should. I see you as..." At that, her phrase paused, her frustration melting as she bit her lip and looked down from my eyes at that moment to consider her words. "As a friend."

There must have been something she omitted for me there.

"Instead of treating me like I'm some filly that needs you to coddle me and tell me everything is going to be alright, lay it on me like the mare I am. Tell me what you're thinking and what's got you worried. You don't need to be alone right now, because I get a feeling you're just going to beat yourself up for what happened."

"I'm also not some little boy who needs someone to tell him what he does and does not need. I will not beat myself up."

"Tick Tock wasn't your fault either, and look what being alone did to you then." We both fell silent, our heated gazes on one another adamantly. She felt confident in her point, and I was unable to conjure up a rebuttal for it. She had bested me with that logic. "You think I'm just going to walk away and watch it happen again? You're wrong. I'm not going to watch you tear yourself up over something that you could not control.”

"This all could have been avoided," I told her as I felt my resolve slip, and my guard began to drop with a feeble sigh. That is when I felt her hooves hook behind me and encircle my chest to pull herself a bit closer. She closed her eyes to brush her face against mine. "If I had known, then nobody would have had to die. I could have saved them, Maple. I could have saved them..."

"You couldn't, Ben,” she told me, continuing to nuzzle me affectionately and turn her body so that she was resting on her side in my lap while she embraced me. "If you did not know, you simply did not know. There is no way you could have prepared for something like this. Nopony could have."

I broke down then and joined in her embrace, feeling the same warmth at that moment that I did when I was sitting on the floor in Fluttershy's cottage amongst the wreckage made by my own fury. That same comfort of having the charming yellow pegasus cradle my head and whisper to me that I was not a bad person, and that everything would be okay. "I'm just scared, Maple. I'm scared that this might mean more of them will come, and I don't know how to ensure that everyone will be alright if they do."

"I'm scared too, Ben," she informed me quietly, taking a deep breath and gulping back after admitting the tough truth of it to me. "I'm scared that you might get hurt. You keep trying to play like some badass hero each time things get heated, and I'm scared that you're not going to be okay one of these times that you run into the line of fire like that." Brushing her wet tongue over my cheek once and pressing her lips to it afterwards, she opened her eyes to tell me, "We're both scared, but I promise that I'll be there to fight off those boogeyponies anytime they show up, Ben. I promise that I won't let them hurt you, and that I will do everything I can to make sure everypony stays safe."

Curling my fingers into her mane and burying my face in her neck, I told her the same. "I promise that I'll do what I can to keep us all safe. I don't know how, but I'll do all I can."

"That's the most we can do."

That is how Maple and I ended up in each others' embrace as we slept. Time simply continued to pass after that, and when I realized that she had slipped off into slumber against me, it did not seem worth it to move her. I... enjoyed it: The warmth of another body, and the safety I felt from having someone close. It might be the only reason I slept at all, for I know that I was expecting to be haunted by fears and worries throughout the night.

Believe me when I state that nothing happened that night between us. It was merely an exchange of comfort and a necessity for us both so that we could get the rest we needed to endure another day. I would have rather never been required to explain it, as I still feel that it might lead to one assuming that this means things that simply are not true. It is the first time something like this has happened, and for the sake of avoiding complications, I hope it remains the only time.

She was right that I did not need to be alone that night, however.

I find now that my anger has melted away when forced to relive the memory of that night, and I looked back through Dawnstar's writings with a bit more sympathy. I now have new questions for myself that I must take into account after reviewing the final few paragraphs of her report.

Am I truly not teaching her anything? All I can see is that she seems to be learning what she is not, instead of learning what she is supposed to become. Is she truly not of the belief that she can do what I do? That she is not capable of becoming a leader? Is it because my example is too poorly explained? I wish I could give her more insight... I wish I had more of a story to tell her about how I became the kind of leader that she looks up to... but the complete truth is that I have no story. I simply am doing what I feel fate has pressed me to do. I am doing all that I can do. Somehow it just seems to work, even if there are blunders from time to time because of my inexperience.

I also question her final words. She wants to be where Maple was? She wants to be the one draped over me as we both sleep in an office chair? My biggest concern is whether or not to even address this. If I say nothing, it may develop into something that I do not believe I would be comfortable with. If I were to say something... what would I say?

I have a lot of cleaning up to do now.