The barrage had been over for around 20 minutes now, and it seemed that everypony in the army had gathered up in the trench, rifle in hoof. Everypony in Repeaters squad was looking through the makeshift periscopes over the lip of the trench. Streaks of water ran down the mirrors as the rain collected on the periscope, clouding Manifests vision. He lowered it and was about to wipe it off with his hoof, but decided against it after seeing how muddy he was.

“Ah don’t get it, why haven’t they come yet?” Repeater muttered. “Why haven’t we gotten any orders?” he shook his head as he continued looking through the periscope. “Ya talked ta Cold and Joe, right?” Manifest nodded.

“Yeah, they’re alright, a bit wet but alright.”

“COMPANY! ATTENTION!” The ponies immediately turned about and faced rear towards the voice. The Artist stood at the lip of the trench. Along the line Manifest could hear similar commands being issued, but he tuned them out. The Artist looked the ponies over to see that he had their attention.

“The Unicornians are coming; reconnaissance says they’re about a mile away right now. They intend to take the field, but we’re going to stop them. Nopony falls back today!” He turned around and pointed east into the rain . “You can’t see it now, but Canterlot’s back there, and we are what’s between them-” he turned and pointed west “-and them! There’s nowhere left to fall back to. We’re on the line in the sand, and we’re going to hold it! We will make them pay for every step they take towards us and won’t give an inch! Are we clear!?”

Nopony cheered, or even moved very much, but everypony in Repeaters squad nodded grimly. The Artist nodded back.

“COMPANY! ONTO THE TRENCH! LOAD AND READY!” Manifest turned and sprung up onto the edge of the trench, his head and forehooves just clearing the lip. In front of him was the field. Ten yards away was a line of barbed wire. Twenty-five yards out was the ditch. Fifty yards away was another fence. After that the field was barren save for leftover silhouette targets, stretching out until it disappeared into the rain around a quarter mile away.

He grabbed up his Clockwork Canterlot and threw open the bolt. He had loaded it so many times that it had become a subconscious action as he positioned the clip and jammed the rounds in. To his right, he could see Repeater slot in a feed tube on his Marechester, and the ponies beyond him loading as well. Manifest charged another clip as Repeater racked his rifle, then he closed the bolt and flipped his safety switch off, and pointed the rifle off into the rain out west. With several ‘pings’ and metallic rattling everypony else finished up, and all rifles lined up to face the unseen enemy.

Manifest had waited a lot, even today, but in his stomach he could feel that this was the worst. The warm summer rain pattered down upon him and collected on his SMCC, dripping off the end of the barrel, but still he kept the rifle trained westward, not daring to move. ‘In a few minutes, thousands of Unicornians are going to burst out of the rain and we’re going to have to stop them.’ The rain continued to beat down, but apart from that the trench had gone dead quiet.

He adjusted the rifle into his shoulder, thankful for the twin’s invention as the rubber buried itself into his shoulder. He tested the sights briefly. Notch, post, target. He shuddered briefly in the rain. He was going to have to kill again, and soon. Repeater’s rifle snapped up.

“They’re comin’, Ah can feel ‘em.”

Manifest looked out into the rain, but he saw nothing. He couldn’t feel anything either, but Repeater had felt the shaking of the Unicornian artillery, so he knew that Repeater was right. He trained his ears to see if he could hear anything, but aside from the pattering of rain there was nothing.

And then he could feel it. Only just, but he could feel the ground shuddering beneath his hoofs. He had felt it before back in Fillydelphia; whenever a train would roll by his neighborhood he could always feel it before he could hear. It was just like that. First he could feel the ground shuddering, then he could feel the shuddering in his bones. The rain still masked them, but they had to be close. He could swear that the sound had changed too, from the light patter of rain to something deeper.

He thought that he saw something in the rain ahead, and snapped his rifle up. He could see it, 500 yards off and small, but a shadowy silhouette. Around him other rifles snapped up to the ready. In the rain he could now see more. First a few, then several, then dozens, then hundreds. The unicorns emerged from the rain in one large line abreast, packed in tight and marching forward orderly.

“AIM!” The Artist yelled out. Everypony had already been doing that, but now Manifest concentrated, he lined up a spot on the imposing line and steadied himself. As he focused he noticed things that he hadn’t before. The extra weight in the rifle from the water, how the mud deformed slightly when he put his hooves weight on it. How the water droplets would pool and run down his forehooves to the ground. How his ears twitched as he tried to hear everything over the pattering of the rain. How his stomach felt like it had been knotted up 4 different ways and every hair in his body was on end. He could clearly make out the unicorn that he was aiming at now, about 400 yards away. He was a little shorter than the others, and armed with a large lance like all his comrades. All of them were a light grey, wearing a darker grey uniform of some sort. They had to be at least ten deep, but Manifest didn’t take notice.

‘Come on, turn around and just leave,’ a part of him silently pleaded. His ears twitched, and he could hear a voice out west, a clean, forceful voice.

The Unicornians began to sprint forward, a second later the massed yell of thousands of ponies reaching Manifests ears. He breathed in, and felt his hoof tense on the trigger. A drop of water fell off the barrel of his gun onto the ground. He kept his sights on the unicorn he picked out, now getting closer. The unicorn was yelling, head down and horn forward with his lance, the ground shaking with the thundering of thousands of hooves. 350 yards, 340, 330, 320, 310.

“FIRE!”

Every gun in the Equestrian lines fired simultaneously with a roar that downed out any noise the Unicornians hoped to make. As Manifests SMCC fired with a flash and a “BOMF” all the water that had accumulated on it was shaken off. As soon as he pulled the trigger he was operating the bolt, only faintly aware of the scores that had fallen with the first round. Off to the left and the right he could hear the rattling of machine guns as he aimed again. The Unicornians were closer and still charging, their numbers seemingly hardly affected. Manifest fired again. And again. And again. He could see them being cut down with every second that passed, but they were closing the gap.

‘Celestia, it’s not enough,’ some part of him thought in panic. ‘we’re going to be overrun.’ He fired again. And again. They were a hundred yards away, fewer than before, but still scores of them. He fired again. He was running low on rounds and they were charging closer. He fired again. 80 yards. Again. 60 yards. Still hundreds.

‘I’m going to die.’ He thought as he aimed his last round. The unicorn his sights settled on kept charging forward, mouth open as he yelled.

Before Manifest could pull the trigger the unicorn stopped, but not on his own.

The unicorn was yanked to a halt by the barbed wire fence; he quickly tried to backpedal to escape. Manifest pulled the trigger, and the unicorn slumped over, held up by the wires he was entrapped in. Manifest quickly threw the bolt open and jammed his rounds in as fast as he could manage. He snapped his rifle back up.

His unicorn wasn’t the only one that the fence had stopped. The Unicornians now bunched up along the fence. He took aim at one that was trapped in it. “BOMF!” Another one was trying to yank the post out of the ground magically, Manifest aimed and fired, and the Unicornian fell over with a burst of red. He took aim at a group that was trying to lift a section of the fence up. Before he could fire they started to fall, the last few turning to flee before the bullets tore into them.

Bodies were now piling up along the edge of the barbed wire, but the Unicornians were still coming in hordes. Manifest now took to shooting anypony who tried to destroy the fence. If the fence went then there was little left between them and hoof to hoof combat. Another unicorn was trying to pull up a post; Manifest caught him in the neck. Manifest fired again.

He definitely wasn’t starved for targets; just about every foot of fence had a Unicornian trying to get through. To his right, Repeater was hardly aiming anymore. He had taken to blasting off his rounds as fast as possible into the masses before reloading as fast as possible. The roaring of gunfire was hurting Manifests ears, and every time he pulled the trigger he could feel it in his shoulder. He fired again. And again.

At this point, the Unicornians had to clamber over their dead countryponies to get to the fence, but they were also getting smarter. One flashed out of existence, popping up on the other side. As soon as he materialized Manifest swung his rifle over to him. The unicorn barely moved forward before he was cut down, at least 4 ponies shot him simultaneously, gore erupting from his body as he slumped over.

Manifest swung back to the fence as he rechambered and shot another one. He worked the bolt again. A pony had his horn on the wire, melting it with a heat spell. Manifest shot him through the neck and into his body. The unicorn had done his job though, the ones behind him lifted on the wire and it separated from the rest of the fence, leaving a clear opening at least five feet wide. Manifest shot the one closest to him, the round ripping through him and catching the pony behind him as well.

He rechambered as they began to pour through the gap and pulled the trigger but the rifle remained still in his hooves. ‘Oh Celestia, I’m out,’ he thought in fear. The unicorns running through the gap had only gotten a few steps before a machine gun swung over to them and opened up, reducing twenty ponies to none in the time it took Manifest to reload.

As Manifest snapped the rifle back up he could tell two things clearly. First was that the Unicornians were paying through the nose for every step that they took. The fence had bodies piled up behind it in scores, and anywhere that the Unicornians were able to break through it was also strewn with carcasses as Equestrian brass plugged up the holes. There were fewer Unicornians in the field as well, they no longer choked the fence, or blotted out the horizon as they had done moments before.

The other thing that he could tell was that the fence was failing. More and more sections were being melted away, or ripped up by the combined strength of ten unicorns. Manifest aimed his rifle at a hole in the wire that a unicorn started running through and fired, his round going low and blasting two of the ponies legs from under him. More started coming through the hole and Manifest kept firing. He shot the first one, then the second, then the third. With each one that he felled, they got a little farther. In his periphery he could tell that this was happening across the trenches. The Unicornians were breaking through.

He aimed at the fourth one that was running, but before he could fire the unicorn leapt down and out of his sights. ‘The ditch,’ he remembered. He didn’t have time to think though, and snapped his rifle back up in time to catch the fifth pony before he could leap into safety.

More and more were getting past everypony now and into the relative safety of the ditch to regroup and get out of the hail of brass the Equestrians were laying into them. Roughly for every one Manifest was able to shoot, one made it to the ditch. The field was now thinning out significantly, the remaining Unicornians charging through breaks in the wire to get into the ditch. The amount of gunfire hadn’t decreased at all though, the remaining Unicornians out on the field now being target to hundreds of rifles at once.

Manifest took aim at a group of ponies running forward. He fired, and their lead dropped. As he moved to rechamber it, rifle fire tore into the remains of the group. He pushed the bolt closed and aimed again. In his sights a unicorn skidded to a stop in the mud as his comrades fell around him. ‘Don’t choose to be someone that you’ll regret being,’ he remembered suddenly. He aimed his rifle away from the scared pony. It didn’t matter; the unicorn had hardly retreated two feet before he was cut down. He quickly took aim at another and fired.

Despite the carnage that the Equestrians had wrought fresh Unicornians were still crossing the field. ‘There’s too many of them,’ he thought as he fired again, bringing down another. ‘Where’s the artillery?!’ artillery or not though; all that mattered was moving the bolt and pulling the trigger so that the hordes could be reduced by one. Unless something happened though, he knew that they would charge out of the ditch in mass and into the trench, and then it would be over.

Then something happened.

Cold Blooded sat in near total darkness and three inches of cold standing water, the only light being the reflected light from outside coming in through the periscope he looked through. He only had vision running along the length of the ditch, which was endlessly frustrating. He wanted to know what was happening up there. Were the Unicornians being beaten back, had half of our side run? All that he could tell for certain was that no Unicornians had gotten to the ditch yet, and that the Equestrians were putting out a ton of fire. He could hear it through the tunnel, and even through the earth, a steady continuous roar of rifles and chattering machine guns.

‘We may kill them all before they even get here,’ he thought. A frown appeared on his face as he thought about it. He wasn’t going to tell everypony ‘I didn’t fire a shot’ at the battle of Canterlot. No sir, he was going to walk away from this with his head held high knowing that he had done his part.

His thoughts were interrupted by a unicorn leaping into the ditch before him. For a second Cold tensed up. Through the periscope he could see the unicorn look to the left and right hurriedly, panic on his face. He looked right at the tarp that hid Cold’s machine gun. If he saw it for what it was then Cold would have to start shooting now, and now was too soon. The unicorn looked away, up to the top of the ditch as it waited, and Cold breathed a sigh of relief.

“What is it?” Joe whispered.

“A unicorn got to the ditch; the tarp worked.” He took a good look at the unicorn. Light grey, wearing a dark grey uniform. On his saddle, he carried a lance about ten feet long which stuck up over the end of the ditch. He looked at the uniform, and saw a brace of grenades. If they got much closer, then they could probably start lobbing them into the Equestrian trenches. Cold smiled. The unicorn didn’t have a rifle. That made his job easier.

Another leapt in the ditch, then another, and then another. Just as he had hoped, they were all regrouping right in front of him. Cold kept waiting, with one eye he glanced at the gun in the darkness. For the past few days they had been chaining ammunition belts together into one continuous of 2,500 rounds. That was enough to fire for four minutes without stopping to reload. He reached down and touched the water jacket with a hoof. It was cold. Good. He couldn’t have the barrel melting on him.

Unicornians were hopping into the ditch at a steady pace now. One of them began to leap in around 70 yards away, and then caught with a burst of red, his body rolling into the ditch. There were maybe fifty in there now, but that wasn’t enough. He could see a few unicorns talking to one, who must have been a sergeant. Cold looked for anything that would identify that pony as different, but couldn’t find it. ‘Oh well,’ he thought, ‘they’re all dead anyway.’

More and more hopped in, one just 5 feet from where he sat. He silently thanked Celestia that the muddy tarp made for a convincing enough earthen wall. The trick was to keep waiting, wait until it was packed from end to end with no room to move, but before they charged out. He just had to be patient. It wouldn’t be long now though, not at the rate they were coming in.

“How much longer?” Joe whispered. Cold raised a hoof for quiet, he couldn’t afford for them to be heard, somehow. It was getting close though. He debated with himself for a moment, then made up his mind. He slowly backed away from the Periscope, water sloshing beneath his hooves as he moved. He sat down behind the machine gun. It was all ready, locked, loaded, sighted in. He put one hoof under to aim and help hold it steady, and his other rested on the fire spade. He looked over to Joe.

“Ready?” Joe leaned over and bit down on the string. Once he pulled the tarp would come up, and they wouldn’t be hiding anymore. Cold felt something in his chest. Excitement, a buzz of adrenaline. His planning and digging and weeks of setup were about to pay off.

“Alright Joe, here we go.” Cold said, adjusting himself one last time as he aimed down the sights at the tarp. “Pull!”

Joe pulled the string, and the tarp came up, revealing a ditch packed from end to end with Unicornians. The one nearest to him looked over at Cold, his eyes widening slightly. He was only 5 feet away. Cold lined up the sights on him, and pressed down on the spade.

From this range Cold could see everything the Browns did in horrific detail. He watched as the first several rounds impacted on the unicorn’s side, each leaving a precise .3 inch diameter hole. He watched as the bullets erupted out of the unicorns other side, carrying with them flesh and bone and blood as they continued until they buried themselves into the next unicorn. The bullets worked their way up the first unicorn, going along the neck and up to the head. One shattered the unicorns jaw, the next went through the unicorns wide, lifeless eyes, and shattered the skull, ejecting brain matter across his dying comrades. The force of the bullets finally threw the first unicorn to the ground, revealing that the next several were already dead, killed by the bullets that went through their comrade.

Several of the unicorns began to turn to face the machine gun, just in time to be cut down. One began to charge with his lance out ahead of him. The bullets ripped his legs out from under him first, shattering his bones and forcing them through his skin. The unicorn fell to the ground, five more rounds going through his body and out the other side. At least 30 were dead so far.

Up ahead one of the unicorns raised a shield between his group and the machine gun, but Cold had been prepared for this. His belt had alternating ammunition. Tracer, ball, Armor piercing, hollow point. The bullets smashed into the shield, it began to crack. The first armored piercing round went through, and the shield shattered. Less than two seconds later the ponies behind it were dead.

Some Unicornians tried to throw their lances, levitating them off of their backs and hurling them at the machine gun before they were cut down. They were all missing. The fifty yards of ditch closest to Cold no longer had unicorns in it, it had corpses.

A unicorn leapt down from the field into the perceived safety of the ditch, just 10 feet away from Colds gun. He went right through the path of the bullets, the first one ripping his muzzle from his face, the second through the back of his neck and spine. He was dead before he hit the ground. More kept leaping in, right into the bullets that tore down the rest of the ditch.

There was nopony left alive in the ditch that was close enough to do anything to the machine gun now, but the bullets that it fired easily sailed through the air to their intended targets.

Cold could see a unicorn crawling out from beneath a corpse, just ten yards away. With a green glow the unicorn took a grenade from his brace and pulled the pin. Cold swung the machine gun over, hitting the unicorn 4 times from right to left across the center of his body. The grenade fell and the unicorn slumped over on top of it as Cold traversed the machine gun back. The grenade went off, blowing the pony open and up into the air before gravity took hold and brought the ragged red pile of flesh back down, getting hit by more machine gun rounds as it went. A leg landed just a few yards ahead, but the machine gun kept firing.

Cold couldn’t really tell what was happening at the far end of the ditch, until he saw a small group of unicorns at the far end try and charge forward and out of the aim of the terrible machine gun. As soon as they stood up the equestrian rifles cut them down, their bodies rolling back into the mass grave. There was nopony left alive in the ditch. Only bodies piled up on top of each other. Cold let his hoof off the spade.

The machine gun didn’t stop firing though, still blasting down the length of the trench, bullets impacting on Unicornian bodies with sharp geysers of blood. Cold looked over to Joe, who looked over the scene in horror.

“JOE! MAKE IT STOP!” Cold yelled frantically. Joe couldn’t hear, or wasn’t listening. Cold slapped the firing spade, but the gun kept firing into the dead, making the corpses shudder with their impacts. “FOR CELESTIA’S SAKE JOE! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP PLEASE!”

Joe suddenly turned and stamped down hard on the ammunition belt, breaking it. The machine gun fired off the remaining few rounds, then finally ran out of ammo. Cold stared at the ditch. It was filled from end to end with bodies, red from their blood and the blood of their comrades. Above the rifles still fired, but nopony was getting into the ditch. Slowly Cold looked down. The water at his feet was turning darker, and he looked up to follow it to the source. A river of blood ran from the Unicornian bodies down the trench, pooling up where he sat. The Browns smoked, and clicked occasionally as it cooled.

‘I did this,’ Cold thought.

Manifest had just reloaded for the fifth time, snapping his rifle back up and quickly firing at another unicorn that was crossing the field. The amount that was crossing was definitely thinning out, but there were still all the unicorns in the ditch to worry about. Manifest fired at another one crossing the field. Suddenly he heard an explosion, and saw a carcass fly out of the ditch into the air, before quickly falling back in.

Off to the right he saw a group of unicorns stand up and charge out of the ditch. He quickly traversed over and fired, almost as soon as the group stood up they were cut back down, one unicorn making it four steps before he was shot by four separate rifles, his blood shooting out in different directions. Manifest aimed back to the field. The incoming unicorns were turning and running. He let his hoof off the trigger, but continued to look for any Unicornians that were still trying to advance.

Out in the distance, at the very edge of where his vision he saw another line materialize out of the rain. Fresh Unicornians, ready to join the battle. ‘Celestia! There’s more!’ he thought in alarm as he aimed at them. They were still too far off for him to shoot, but he readied himself. The rifles slowly stopped firing as everypony reloaded, trying to ready themselves as best as they could for the second wave. The first fence was already mostly done for, if they were able to push past the ditch, odds were good that they would be able to break through.

Out ahead the retreating Unicornians regrouped with the reinforcements, the line stopped briefly. The equestrian guns fell silent as the Unicornian wave stood just out of effective range. Manifest aimed and readied himself. He could hardly hear anything thanks to the constant gunfire. He saw a unicorn step out in front of the others. The unicorn stopped for a second, turning to address its soldiers. He faced front, and took a single step forward. Manifest heard a shill whistle overhead.

His hoof touched the ground, and then the unicorn exploded in full view of both armies, his body scattering itself into the air before mixing in with the kicked up mud and becoming inseparable. The shrieking overhead grew in intensity, several pitches occurring at once. The Unicornian army stood frozen in shock or confusion, then the ground started erupting beneath them. The explosions happened simultaneously, happening so quickly that when the noise hit the line Manifest couldn’t tell when one began and the other ended. The sound came from all directions, from the impacts in front and from the artillery firing behind.

The Unicornian line disappeared in a cloud of dirt, each round blasting corpses, mud, and dust into the air. Through the cloud Manifest could see shadows racing forward to try and escape the barrage. The Unicornians began bursting through the dust, but they were scattered and uncoordinated, their orderly advance reduced to a blind charge in seconds. Manifest aimed at one and waited for a moment until he got into range. He fired, and a second later the bullet hit. The rifles started up again, barely being heard over the thunder of the artillery.

Manifest aimed for another target, setting his sights on a large one that burst out of the cloud. The unicorn was clad in heavy silver armor, tinged with the brown of mud, his mane and tail stood out as a dull red. ‘Mage’ Manifest thought, steadying his rifle. Suddenly the ground in front of the Mage deformed, and the mage only had time to open his mouth as the artillery shell at his feet exploded. The mage was blown into the air, his body landing heavily onto the ground, immobile.

Manifest turned to a group of unicorns running for a gap in the fence. He aimed and downed the first one. As he rechambered a machine gun turned to the group and fired into it, bringing almost all of them down before the machine gun traversed away to a better target. The artillery had broken up the charge, and now the Calvary was able to focus its fire on the groups of survivors. Manifest shot one of the last ponies of the group that he aimed at, then rechambered and finished them off.

The remaining Unicornians now began to reach the remains of the first fence, but the artillery had followed them, slowly creeping toward the Equestrian lines before halting about a hundred yards away. Unicorns still would burst through the dust, but not nearly in the numbers needed. For the first time in the battle Manifest believed that they could win, aided by the roar of the rifles and the thunder and screaming of the artillery. He continued to fire at the attackers.

One unicorn was hiding behind a barb wire fence taking aim at the trenches with a rifle. Manifest aimed and fired, his bullet smashing through the fence post and into the pony, who fell to the ground in agony. Manifest continued to find targets and fire, the action becoming one of instinct. He scanned the field as he fired. Another mage was approaching. He aimed. The mage flashed out of existence, and flashed back twenty yards closer and to the left. Manifest aimed there, but the mage flashed out again. Manifest saw the light that indicated where the mage would be, and aimed.

The second the mage appeared Manifest fired, hitting the mage in the knee joint of his armor. The mages legs gave out beneath him and he rolled onto the ground yelling out in pain. Manifest rechambered and shot it in the head, spraying its brains out behind him. He rechambered and fired at another Unicornian.

A few unicorns had leapt into the ditch ahead, but Manifest paid no attention, choosing to fire at ones who were bursting through the dust of the barrage. As he aimed his rifle at another attacker something quickly flew through his sight picture. He looked up and saw a grenade sailing through the air. Before he could react a green glow encompassed it, and sent it right back. With a sharp crack the grenade exploded just above the ditch. Manifest went back to shooting.

Manifest fired again, and sent the bolt back and forward. It was getting harder to operate, now when he got it to the forward position he had to pause and hit the bolt into place. He aimed and shot at another unicorn. There were only a few left, and no more were coming through the dust toward them.

He could see another mage running across the field toward him and quickly aimed. The mage was teleporting heavily, but Manifest was expecting this.as he did with the first one he waited until it flashed out, then aimed at the light the mage made as it flashed back in. The second the unicorn appeared Manifest pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He threw the bolt open, but no cartridge flew out. He was out. The mage was just yards away. It flashed out again.

Manifest heard the crack it made as it flashed back in to his left, and he spun to face it. The mage was in the trench, only a few feet away, between him and the twins. With a crackle a fireball sprouted up next to the mage, his eyes wild with fear as he looked at Manifest. Manifest braced himself.

The Marechester popped up over his shoulder, and Repeater let loose as fast as possible, the muzzle blast immediately blowing out Manifests left eardrum. The first two rounds bounced off of the mages armor with sparks, but they knocked the unicorn off balance. The third one grazed its neck, shooting blood out sideways. The fireball went out as the mage reached up to the wound, the fourth round shattering the hoof that he raised. The mage fell over, clutching at his throat. Bloody turned over and saw the mage on the ground, and quickly brought his rifle to bear. With a flash Manifest saw the rifle recoil into Bloody’s shoulder and the round enter into the back of the mages head. erupting out of his mouth with a spray of brains and blood. Manifest looked away and started to reload.

He aimed his rifle at the field again, but nopony was trying to cross now. A hundred yards away the artillery shook the earth, but no unicorns burst through the wall of dust it had created. The few on the field were running west, as fast as they could. Manifest let his hoove off the trigger. The rifles kept firing, the few runners dropping. The shells stopped falling, shifting off ahead into the rain, out of sight, but still being heard. Slowly he begun to feel the rain again. He waited, either for an end or a third wave.

There was a break in the dirt cloud, and Manifest could see a unicorn through it, just barely, around 400 yards away. One final “BOMF” issued to his left, and a second later he saw the pony fall. The dust moved back, and Manifest couldn’t see him anymore.

A shrill whistle sounded off behind him. “ALL CLEAR! RECONNAISSANCE SAYS THEY ARE RETREATING!” Manifest wearily let his rifle lower. His shoulder screamed in pain, his rifle smoked and smelled of burnt wood. Nopony celebrated, or even spoke. The artillery thundered in the distance, but Manifest heard something through his good ear.

He looked at the field. There were bodies everywhere, piled on top of each other in places, stretching out as far as he could see. Without the roar of the rifles, or the booming of artillery, Manifest could hear what was happening in the field.

He could hear screaming.