Chapters
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Iron Quill dreamed of distant Equestria that night, of campaigns fought and won and prices paid to forbidden things. When he did wake, it was to another harsh knock on the tent outside, and the nervous face of Chain Mail appearing inside. “It’s your, uh… circus performers?”“My what?” he asked, not even getting the words out his mouth before several of the ponies forced their way in. Cozen was at their head, with Sylvan Shade in the rear looking extremely uncomfortable to be there. Cozen…-
231.4 K •
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Iron Quill woke without his extremities buzzing and without a headache. He sat up, cleaned without interruption, then dressed in the underclothes he'd worn under his armor for half a lifetime. He exited the tent, nodding once to Chain Mail beside it. "Excuse me," he said. "Chain Mail. Have there been… reports, since your watch began?""A few," he answered, saluting. "What do you wish to know, Lord Commander?""Have there been any more deaths? Children and foals among the camp followers would be the most…
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231.4 K •
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If Iron Quill closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the beating drums were the pacing orders of the siege engineers, directing a constant stream of flames down on Rockroost. The distant screams occasionally cut through the grinding wood and gears of the trebuchets as earth ponies marched around reloading them—but he hadn’t hated those sounds then.They had filled him with satisfaction.He felt none of that now as he walked to the far end of the arena, where a simple box was marked in the stone. He…
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231.4 K •
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Iron Quill wandered through a field of the dead. His legs faltered under him, and more than once he nearly lost his grip completely and had to spread his wings to keep himself moving forward. But he had to keep moving—if he wasn’t here to give these ponies final mercy, who would?The Solar Legion—fifty thousand stallions and mares, along with uncountable numbers of sellswords, mercenaries, and other hangers-on—lay on a battlefield as vast as a city. Nightmare Moon hadn’t burned them with Alicorn…
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231.4 K •
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Penumbra was gone for hours. Iron Quill had other tasks to do in the meantime—being the Lord Commander of the army wasn’t a position ponies aspired to because it was easy.He reviewed proposed settlement maps for the caverns, in particular one that Silver Needle had drawn up just the day before.“We might not even need a magical solution to this,” she said, gesturing at her illustration. “Ponies have been living in frozen environments before, and we’ve always managed.”“Ponies in the Empire…
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231.4 K •
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Iron Quill watched from the front of his camp as the army passed. They marched in tight order, with many of the soldiers looking eager to be moving. Don’t worry, I’ll have you all working soon enough.But ultimately it wasn’t these soldiers or their captains that he feared. These troops were demoralized, but he hardly needed to force them into doing something whose only intention was warming them up. Their captains were now suitably frightened into submission… though he would’ve preferred they…
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231.4 K •
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Some part of Iron Quill hoped that some of what the Polestar had done had made him magically immune to the cold. But as he returned to the colony beside the exhausted princess, he was disappointed. The air still caught in his chest with his first breath, sucking what little of his strength was left and assaulting him like a physical force.As he entered the cave, he stopped for a moment to appreciate Nightmare Moon’s work. A gigantic metal spike pierced the ceiling now, almost directly overhead. It…
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231.4 K •
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It didn’t feel quite right to call Moonrise a city, in the sense of the places in Equestria that were cities. But neither was it a military camp anymore, since nearly two months had passed since any of them had done anything remotely military. Given the two options, Quill preferred to think of it as a city. It wasn’t a place for soldiers to wait until they fought again—it was a place for them to live, with no more expectations beyond that.Quill passed through the outer barrier to the central warm…
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231.4 K •
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Sunset Shimmer took one last glimpse around the block, crouching behind the low wall on someone’s front lawn and watching Canterlot High with sharp eyes. There was a single security guard in the building, but he kept a regular route, circling around the entire perimeter every hour or so. According to her watch, he should be on the far side within the next thirty seconds. The screen glowed faintly in the darkness, illuminating the little moon-phase tracker at the top. If you were ever right about…-
27.2 K •
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Sunset Shimmer had emerged into what looked at first like an ancient, abandoned cathedral. The ceiling above her was huge and vaulted, in elegant stone arches that suggested a gothic construction. Where the hell am I? Some theories of the mysterious portal suggested it led to a parallel version of America, where the post office was the only government and magic was the dominant force in people’s lives. Clearly that wasn’t the case—or if it was, this America had a much longer history than the real…
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27.2 K •
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