Anomaly
"Y-Yes, I know, but if you could—No, no—Please—If you would just—If you could—I-I—S-Slow down, please…"
Animalia of the Everfree Forest were as various in communication style as they were in species. All had different ticks and idiosyncrasies; all were unique in their own, special—albeit sometimes frustrating—ways.
"D-Dead? What do you mea—Hold on, Oh! Eeep, I—E-Explain, please—I don't understand—You. You said 'dead', right?—Please…"
Squirrels were neurotic, bears spoke as slow as grinding glaciers, rabbits were openly rude and disobedient, birds had their heads in the clouds, and dogs were often inappropriately cheerful.
"S-Stop for a moment—Um, if you wouldn't mind…"
Moles were deaf, owls kept repeating themselves, cats had enormous egos, and mice were extremely quiet, but when they did try to make themselves heard, they were squeaky and nearly unintelligible—Fluttershy could empathize.
"I-I just want—I just…"
Tortoises communicated through light gestures of the head and neck, crickets were self-deprecating, ferrets talked with their mouths full, and raccoons…
Well, raccoons were serial interrupters.
"Bandit, please—I need—I need you to—STOP!"
Squeaks of "death" and "bang" were strangled, and all was silent under the rising sun. Fluttershy, the generally quiet, yellow hermit and animal whisperer, sat on her haunches at the edge of her doorstep, looking down at a very agitated masked mammal. She cleared her throat and gave her best apologetic smile.
"Uh-m, sorry, but could you please just say it again—uh—slowly, please?"
The raccoon—"Bandit" to his late brother, Zsaz—took a deep breath, preparing himself. He began slowly, squeaking and making grand, sweeping gestures with his paws toward the forest. He mimed walking, foraging, and scampering with his brother through the ominous, but plentiful, woods. Gradually, the dictation picked up speed, and the frightened critter's chattering blended together into an incomprehensible stream of anxious conjecture and onomatopoeias leading up to one, final, unexpected BANG!
Fluttershy's muscles seized and she scurried backward as Bandit threw up his arms and collapsed, exhausted, onto his small back.
"Oh… Oh my. Maybe I should talk to Twilight…"
The yellow mare trotted back and forth across her porch, biting her lip and casting the occasional glance toward the wintry Everfree. Wrap-Up wasn't for a few weeks yet, but the Weather Team rarely touched the cloud layer over the forest, and sometimes snow remained on the ground for over a month after winter officially ended. Whatever killed Bandit's brother—a small tear welled in the corner of her eye at the thought—it didn't hibernate, and was at large in the forest.
Maybe it was the same predator that incurred the wrath of Mama Manticore?
Slowing to a stop, the Everfree Hermit rustled her wings decisively and snorted, blue eyes narrowing dangerously. "Bandit, you go inside. There's some fish in the cabinets: get Angel to show you where… I'll be back soon." Giving the prone raccoon a quick nuzzle, she left.
Princess Twilight would be informed, and a search party gathered.
Whoever did this was getting a stern talking-to.
About halfway to town, Fluttershy's righteous anger quickly disappeared, chipped away by every rattling explosion and terrified shriek from the town proper.
Now deathly afraid, she hurried on.
Lyra Heartstrings was a unicorn, and she was damn proud of it. She was, of course, aware that her specific genus wasn't her doing, but rather a mixture of heredity, blind luck—her parents were both earth ponies—and a night of drunken sexcapades in Canterlot. None of that mattered, however, and as she trot down Mane Street at ten o' clock in the morning she reveled in her own, unique unicorniness.
She was a sort of sea-foam green color—Lyra didn't know the specifics, but that made it even more special—a very magic-y color, she kept her mane short to accentuate the length of her perfect, spiral horn, and, though she tried to only use magic when it was socially acceptable and necessary to do so, flaring her golden aura for simple, menial tasks was a guilty pleasure of hers.
Nopony really noticed, and that was completely fine with her. She did it for herself: she was a proud pony, a proud, educated pony.
That is why, when everything went to Tartarus, Lyra Heartstrings kept her cool, and took the time to properly analyze the situation from behind the empty cart of the local Apple Merchant and Element of Honesty.
Number one: frightened screams, i.e. "The horror! The horror!" "We are all gonna die!" etc… Happens every other Wednesday.
Number two: loud, guttural shouting in… Germane: coming from Town Square. Definitely Germane. I know Germane… but nopony even speaks it anymore! It's a dead language! What is this?
Suddenly, she wasn't alone.
"Lyra? Do ya have any idea what's going on?"
The teal unicorn glanced at the orange earth mare hunched next to her and shrugged. "No clue. Need to get closer." A sharp "crack" punctuated her statement—like a tree snapping under too much weight.
"All right," Applejack muttered, peeking out from behind the cart. "Ah think we can do that. Just follah me." Another loud noise rent the crisp, winter air. With a flick of her blonde tail, the farmer darted to the next cart that made up Market Row—Harvest's antique carrot stand—and Lyra quickly followed her.
Number three: more noises—sharp, rattling—like explosions? Magical discharge?
Gradually, the slinking, skittering mares made it to the edge of the small Ponyville market district, avoiding fleeing ponies of all shapes and sizes and flinching at every loud "bang" emanating from the Square ahead. Applejack made it to the edge of the last cart first, and Lyra waited behind while the orange mare quickly peered around the corner at the fountain beyond.
She stared for a moment then backed away, a look of abject confusion crossing her face. Silently, she waved Lyra forward, and the curious unicorn scurried to take a look for herself.
What she saw… was an anomaly, to say the least.
Number… Number four: three bipeds, over five feet tall standing around the Fountain of the Sun. Moving jerkily—agitated. Ponies running about in panic.
One of the bipeds raised an odd, metal object in the air, rustling its large, grey clothing—they were all clothed similarly, it seemed: uniforms perhaps? A controlled set of fiery explosions emanated from the end of the metal object, causing further panic amongst the Ponyville citizenry. The shortest of the three grabbed its compatriot's metallic noisemaker and forced it downward, shouting in Germane.
Listening intently, Lyra tried to figure out what they were saying:
"Dummkopf! hören sie auf abzufeuern!"
"Aber sie hören nicht!"
"Das erschrecken sie mehr wird nicht uns überall erhalten!"
Lyra felt something nudge her flank, and she glanced back to find Applejack looking at her expectantly.
"What's happening?"
"They're—uh—I think they're arguing."
"Arguing? What are they?"
"I don't know, but I'm going to try and get closer."
Before the apple farmer could protest, Lyra stood and dashed into the Square, hugging the edge of the crowd until the fountain was between her and the creatures. She kept low to the worn cobblestones, slinking below the lip of Ponyville's single monument to the Princess of the Sun to get as close as she could to the trio without them noticing.
They stood close together, facing outward with metal noisemakers raised. Skin pale, muzzles flat and drawn tight around short, pointed snouts, they looked positively unique… but not quite in an ugly way. Hollow, exasperated eyes—smaller than a regular pony's—darted back and forth beneath the brims of grey, tortoise-like helmets, following every movement; catching every scream, yell, and panicked squeal. Each of them looked haggard and tired, and the red tint of dried blood stained whole swathes of their dull-colored clothing.
Only one spoke now, shouting loudly to try and garner some sort of attention from the fleeing ponies. Lyra listened carefully, translating under her breath as best she could:
"Please stop running… need help… hurt in forest… need water, medicine… where is your—polizei?—where is your… your hospital?" Lyra watched grimly as one of the creatures throatily coughed into his front paw. The appendage came away red with bloody mucus and the teal unicorn shuddered at the sight. Her mind was made up then and there. They weren't dangerous: they just needed help…
And she would be the one to help them.
Stepping out from behind the fountain, Lyra carefully clip-clopped toward them, smiling hesitantly and wracking her brain for a proper greeting. One of them immediately noticed her, pointing its metal device straight at her and nudging its companions. The other two glanced in her direction briefly, but kept their full attention on the rest of the square. The shortest one kept shouting.
The creature trained on Lyra only started to get nervous when she was less than four yards away, backing up into his counterparts and prompting an angry bark from the shouting one.
"G-Guten tag," the unicorn forced, smiling as cheerfully as possible. "Wie fühlst—uh—Wie fühlst du dich?"
Three metal barrels suddenly converged on her muzzle, and all was still. The darkness clinging to the inside of each hollow bore felt ominous, alive even.
Number Five: those are probably not noisemakers…
"Sprechen sie Deutsch?" the shortest biped asked, clearly skeptical. When Lyra didn't immediately answer he nudged her with the dark, metal tube and she flinched.
It was cold.
"Sprechen Germane," Lyra answered, inching away from the combined chill of the other two creatures' stony expressions. Her partner in tentative conversation paused, a confused expression on his face, before breaking into uproarious laughter.
"Sie sind ein lustiges mädchen," it chuckled, bumping one of its friends with a foreleg. "'Germane', ah? Lustiges. Ich liebe pferde." The taller creature, clearly unimpressed, grunted and continued to watch the unicorn skeptically.
The leader—or at least Lyra thought the vertically challenged one was the leader—crouched down, still laughing quietly, and looked her directly in the eye. An odd smirk crossed its surprisingly expressive face, and, slowly, it asked for help.
Lyra Heartstrings smiled amidst the screams of her fellow townsfolk—still panicking, as Ponyvilians were wont to do when "disaster" struck. What she was doing was absolutely unprecedented in pony history… well, for the last century or so… but still! First contact with a previously unknown intelligent species! This was her moment! Her fifteen minutes under Celestia's Sun!
Bon-Bon was going to be soooo jealous!
With as much ceremony and dignified grace as possible, Lyra opened her mouth to speak…
… and in one instant everything went terribly, terribly wrong.
A bright flash of purple erupted right next to her, and a voice of absolute authority enveloped the Square:
"What the hay is going on, here?!"
The leader of the three creatures stumbled backward, falling to the ground in surprise, while his companions raised their noisemakers toward the source of the voice, obviously frightened.
Lyra, thinking as rationally as a unicorn of her caliber could at that moment, did the only thing that made any logical sense: she tackled Twilight Sparkle.
She went down rather easy… for a princess.
*Yelp!* "Wh-Wha—"
Before the lavender alicorn could properly express her distaste in Lyra's actions, the spot she had been previously standing erupted in rattling, roaring thunder. Covering her ruler as best she could, Heartstrings felt the sting of cobblestone chips penetrating her soft skin, and the pressure of small projectiles burrowing through the air just above her flank.
Number Six: those are definitely NOT noisemakers!
Lyra scrambled to her hooves and stood protectively over Twilight—whether to protect her from them or them from her she didn't know yet—amidst further screams and guttural shouting. She tried to calm the frantically swiveling creatures; to get them to lower their weapons; but the words caught in her throat.
"Bitte! Uh… Uh… Oh, Celestia, beruhigen sie… unten!"
Another, louder cry from above cut off any further attempt to placate the creatures, and two metallic weapons pointed toward the prismatic streak racing down from the sky.
"Twilight!"
Lyra blanched and looked up."Horseapples…"
Twelve sets of explosions tore through the winter air.
Clouds were damned comfortable. Damned comfortable.
It was a wonder that more pegasi didn't own cloud houses, or even just cloud beds! Most Ponyville residents of the winged variety had groundside homes, and slept in feather and spring or even hay cots. Rainbow Dash didn't understand it: for any serious sleep—the kind where she wasn't spying on Applejack while she worked—she always slept in complete comfort on a bit of errant weather.
She loved her midmorning naps just as much as her mid-afternoon naps, and took both as seriously as a good night's sleep.
So, when Dash was awoken from her slumber by the sound of panicked screams, she was immediately rather angry. When the vase containing her grandmother's ashes—on a shelf just outside the door to her room—exploded in a puff of ceramic and grey dust, she went from angry to ballistic in nearly ten seconds flat.
Bursting through the cloud floor of her home, she directed the full weight of her ire on Ponyville Square, where panicking often ensued for almost no reason whatsoever. This time, however, there was a reason.
A reason that made Rainbow's stomach clench.
Down below, three tall… somethings… stood ominously above a shaking and shouting green unicorn. And under the unicorn…
"Twilight!"
Dipping downward, Rainbow spiraled into a steep dive, gathering as much speed as she could for an aerial assault on the three monsters threatening the town—and her friends—below. She was going to save the day or die trying. Why? Because Rainbow Dash was a mean, lean, flying machine! A paragon of prowess! A master of disaster! Queen of the skies! The ideal pony to take on any—
Sharp pain lanced through her right wing, and Rainbow Crash was falling.
"Buck!"
Still spiraling—with much less control, now—the sky-blue pegasus did everything in her power to right herself before slamming into the cobbles below. With a sob of pain she spread both her wings and tried to slow her descent, but it was too late. Missing her target completely, Dash barreled straight into her lavender friend, just barely missing the teal unicorn who stood over her.
Everything after that was a bit of a blur…
An inane stream of fuzzy color and blurred voices pounded against Dash's skull, so she clutched at it with her hooves, trying to alleviate the pain. They came away red, and the rainbow pegasus felt her heart skip a beat.
"Nien! Nien! This is all a huge misunderstanding!"
"Rainbow?! Twilight?! What the hay is happening, Lyra?"
"Applejack! Get them out of here!"
AJ? Applejack was there? Good. Good. She wouldn't let anything happen to her, no no no. Rainbow felt warm. She knew she shouldn't, but that didn't matter. What did matter was the orange and yellow blotch hovering over her, breathing hot, gasping, frantic breaths, tickling the tips of her primaries, stiffening her shrieking wings.
Suddenly, with a loud, feminine grunt, the blotch was gone: replaced by a huge, grey shape. Something metallic glinted in the afternoon sun, and the screams of the ponies around her escalated desperately.
"Nien! Bitte!"
"Nopony points… whatever that is at my friends! Ah'm gonna kick your flank into next week."
"AJ, back off or they'll kill her! Nien!"
Rainbow just stared dumbly at the shape above her—the ominous metal object pointed aggressively at her face. It was familiar, what it was, but…
Oh her head hurt so much and the shouting was getting louder and she just wanted to scream and the ground was soft and shifty and warm—
A distant crack echoed through the Square, and, reflexively, Dash's ears flicked back against her skull.
"Heckenschütze! Heckenschütze! Stürzen!"
A great weight pressed against Rainbow's chest, and she felt suffocated under a sea of wet redness and gray cloth. Darkness took her, and the pain disappeared.
It was a good hit: not very clean, but good.
Pile sprinted along the forest's edge, side burning and bleeding from overwork as he relocated. Rifle in hand, bent at the waist like an infirm, the "heckenschütze" weaved along the thin tree line, looking for another viable perch. Snow crunched and spat loudly under his shoddy boots, but, screaming and shouting as they were, Pile doubted that either the Germans or the little horses would hear him. He was silent by comparison.
Cottages and thatched dwellings flashed by past the trees to Pile's left, and the sniper counted them as he ran—a sort of habit he picked up; calming—and contemplated the decisions that led to his current predicament.
He ate raccoon that morning: leftovers from his hunt the day before. It had been a novel experience for the young Russian… if only he'd known how the rest of his day would play out. Stomach full, he'd gathered his rifle, binoculars, the rest of the sardines, and a clip or two of ammunition before following the game trail down the mountain—cautiously, of course. When he made it into the tree-choked foothills, it had been mid-morning.
The sun had moved slowly toward its peak as Pile weaved branches, twigs, leaves, and pine needles into his hair, the seams of his coat, and his ratty boots. Mud plastered his face and bare hands, and the sniper lamented the loss of his hat before setting off, properly camouflaged for his simple purposes—he had hoped to hide in the branches of a tree and just watch. Trekking south, the marksman kept an eye ahead and an eye behind, wary of the Guardian that seemed to have vanished into the crisp, forest air.
Pile made the edge of the settlement a little after the sun began its afternoon descent, and… well he hadn't known what to expect, but what he saw simply baffled him:
Little rainbow horses trotting rider-less through the streets, speaking casually to one another in a language Pile had trouble recognizing. From his perch in a particularly tall tree at the town's edge, the sniper had the time to take note of a very structured market system, seemingly governed by the small tattoos marked on the natives' colorful flanks. Rose-tattoo sold roses. Apple-tattoo sold apples. Etcetera. It was… controlled.
The familiarity of it all had been disconcerting.
Horses trotted through the market, ate at the small café on the corner, and generally acted human. There was a main street lined with walk-in shops, restaurants, and even a barbershop. A small path leading through a gazebo went directly to what looked like a town square, giving him a direct line of sight on a rather large, decorative fountain and a Victorian-esque government building. Everywhere, there had been horses.
Watching them, Pile had once again begun to wonder if he was really dead.
His insanity was no longer in question: just his transience.
Pile had pondered his mortal coil and watched for what seemed like hours as three tall shapes left the trees a hundred meters to the east, and the locals began screaming.
For too long, he watched and he thought…
… so long that he had only realized what was different when the shooting started.
It had been sudden: a jolt and moment of incredible panic. Rapid bursts of a submachine gun rattled the air, and the screams—so human; so young—became something different… had held deeper meaning.
Pile remembered tensing and steadying himself on his perch, searching for the source of the weapons-fire, paranoid and waiting—just waiting—to be shot. Vetrov's silver bullet had never come, and the gunfire had petered out just in time for the alarmed marksman to spot its source: three shapes, similar in height and build to himself. Carefully looking through the scope of his rifle, Pile had confirmed that they were, indeed, human—depending upon one's point of view, of course.
The Germans had arrived… rather loudly, and amongst much alarum by the locals.
So they, too, escaped judgment? Very well.
Back-to-back, facing the comically fleeing quadrupeds, they hadn't seemed to have noticed Pile, so he calmed his twitching heart and settled back to continue his observation. One of the three soldiers raised a rusted maschinenpistole in the air and shot off a few more rounds. The sharp reports drew a flinch from the observing sniper, and he remembered the feel of his fingers tightening around the stock of his own weapon.
Yes, he would watch: he would watch them carefully, and he did.
Pile hadn't wanted to get involved yet, and, as far as he could see, there had been little reason for him to. The Germans, despite the gunfire, didn't appear hostile toward the natives, and one of the town's residents—green like nothing Pile had ever seen—was communicating with them. Things were dying down around the square as well, fleeing horses slowing to witness what they probably believed would be the demise of their green comrade.
He remembered thinking that if they accepted the Germans, perhaps they would accept him as well. He could get proper medical treatment and some supplies. Pile had decided not to worry about the Germans, continuing to work under the assumption that both he and they were already dead. They were someplace else, and their war was over.
Deep down, Pile had been unsure whether or not the Germans thought the same way, but he had stupidly ignored the notion.
That was why, when the blinding flash of purple light nearly blinded him, and the Germans began firing on the horses, Vetrov had been unprepared. He had blinked and rubbed at his eyes, smearing the mud that covered his face, before frantically scanning the Square for… well he hadn't known what he was scanning for.
The Germans had been swinging their weapons blindly, aiming at anything moving, when the blue one struck: a flying horse—a spirit? a Guardian?—streaking through the overcast sky toward the anxious soldiers. Pile had watched, motionless, as rattling bullets clipped its right wing, and what had once been an attack reminiscent of a Luftwaffe strafing run had become a death spiral. The crash had been muffled by another body, and the conflicted sniper aimed at the Germans, the fountain, the horses, the cobbles…
It was the screams that had finally gotten to him. The rainbow equines, inhuman as they were, had screamed like women—young women and men and children—and the guttural shouts of incensed Germans only made the illusion more real. One of the soldiers had stepped into his sights, standing bloody and ragged above the blue sky-horse and its companions, weapon at the ready, and Pile fired.
About three hundred meters to the south, a young Aryan had doubled over with a loud grunt, spitting blood as he fell atop two barely conscious ponies of blue and lavender. The other two Germans, shouting in surprise, had been quick to find cover behind the fountain, and Pile's fate had been sealed.
Jumping from his tree amidst blind, whizzing gunfire, the sniper had torn through the underbrush along with the German bullets, and now he was hidden once more, but needed a new sight line on the Square. Pile didn't know exactly what he should have been doing anymore, so he decided to finish what he started.
He wouldn't allow these creatures, whatever they were, to undergo the same fate as so many of Pile's comrades.
Still running, the Siberian came upon what looked like a schoolhouse nestled near the edge of the forest: one with an ruddy, red bell-tower. He strode purposefully from his cover beneath the trees toward a small, ground level window and tested the lock.
A sonic creak and jerk as the window rose from its position on the sill resounded amid scattered screams and beleaguered shouts, and Pile grinned.
It was time to work.
Shambles. All of it: so much bloody shambles.
Strange, whining explosions clattered across the town square, and invisible knives tore at the trees and undergrowth at the town's edge. There was something in the forest, and it had gravely injured one of the Germane-speaking creatures. It was there, now, thrashing weakly on the cobblestones, leaking thick blood and shredded entrails onto two Elements of Harmony from a gaping wound in its belly.
Lyra did her best to ignore the dying thing, focusing on dragging a soiled purple body from under its weighty flesh. Next to her, Applejack, her pegasus friend's colorful mane clenched in her teeth, did the same.
The Square had finally managed to empty of extraneous ponies, and the streets were practically deserted. Princess Twilight's tail in her jaws, the green unicorn hardly noticed the sudden emptiness—it certainly hadn't gotten quieter, what, with the noisy weapons and the angry shouting and… and the gurgling pleas for help…
"H-Helfen sie mir… Bitte… Bitte, Karl… H-Helfen…"
She was crying. She didn't know when it started, but they were tears all the same.
"H've l'most gt 'er," snarled an Ozark voice, and Lyra felt the weight of the dying creature shift as Rainbow Dash was pulled from underneath it. With a phlegmy grunt, Lyra yanked with all her might, and the Princess quickly followed suit, leaving the beseeching creature to writhe alone on the cold cobblestones.
"K-Karl! Wacht—*cough*—Wachtmeister, bitte!"
Twilight shifted, snorting and grunting as she slowly came to when Lyra kept dragging her: out of the Square, toward the Cider Bar that cornered into the market district. AJ had already slung Rainbow over her back, and was hightailing it to the hospital. Lyra could hear her hooves beating—like the beasts' metal weapons—down the street.
"Wh-Whu?"
"Cover your head, Princess," Lyra spat as best she could through a mouthful of indigo tail. "Just hold on."
Across the Square, a heated, nearly unintelligible debate was taking place in Germane, ending with one of the bipeds breaking cover, sprinting toward his fallen friend. A crack—closer now—sounded to the east, and the running beast's head jerked back with an echoing "clang". The metal helmet that adorned its cranium jumped, flipped once, and landed on the cobbles with a loud clatter.
"Scheiße!" yelped the creature, unharmed aside from the loss of headgear. It skidded to a halt, scrabbling for purchase on the wet road, and fled back toward the fountain.
It made it seven steps.
Lyra didn't even hear the explosion that time, but the evidence was clear: a sudden spray of blood from the running creature's upper back, and the sound of skin grating against the cobblestones. Almost immediately, the shortest of the three creatures was on its feet, weapon rising above the roofline… and began firing on the schoolhouse tower—hopefully emptied in the earlier panic.
Wood split and shattered up above as the explosions clattered to Lyra's left, and suddenly Princess Twilight's tail was tugged from her mouth, and the noise stopped in a flash of lavender manalight.
"You will stop that this instant!" the alicorn shouted, gripping the towering creature in a cloak of levitation magic. Her eyes slowly widened as she caught sight of the other two on the ground: one still barely clinging to life, while the other lay motionless, sprawled facedown in a growing pool of blood. "B-By order of the Alicorn Diarchy I place you under arrest f-for crimes against the s-state…"
The creature floated closer: it wasn't listening. Straining against Twilight's magic, the biped's cold, green gaze never left the schoolhouse bell tower—shrouded in the shadow of an overcast sky. It kept struggling, even as it began to shout over the Princess, yelling for the benefit of another: one unseen.
As it went, Lyra translated as best she could, both for herself and the only other pony still within hearing range. Later, she learned Twilight was fluent in Germane, as well as seven other world languages. It didn't matter. Translation made the words sound more real to her.
"Sowjet?! Können Sie mich hören?!"
"… can you hear me?"
"Wir sind die einzigen zwei verließen!"
"We… we are the only two left."
The Princess floated the creature closer: they were just feet apart, now. She eyed it nervously, and a bead of sweat traced its way down her brow. It must have been struggling hard.
"Es gibt nicht mehr: gerade die pferde!"
"… no others: just the—just the… equines?"
"Töten sie den Führer und wir können die stadt nehmen!"
"Kill the leader,"—Lyra's gaze flickered from the schoolhouse to the alicorn tensed next to her—"and we can take… we can take the town." Twilight shifted, clearly unsure of herself, and began shouting the creature's Stalranda Rights, circling and trying to put the biped between herself and the building toward which it had been staring.
"Die pferde helfen ihnen nicht. Ohne mich sind sie allein!"
"The equines won't help you. With—Without me, you will be alone."
Other ponies had begun filtering back in, now. Some peeked in from the market to the east; others, various pre-made hiding places around the square: a barrel here, an empty cart there, and the hollowed cellars beneath City Hall for good measure. Hundreds of frightened eyes trained on the new princess, searching for something calming to cling to.
Unfortunately, she wasn't in any position to find that something.
"Be quiet! Sei ruhig!" she shouted, keeping low to the ground, looking at the roof of every building; the darkened windows of every house, hovel, and hotel. Lyra, struck with a sudden feeling of responsibility—her long dead spirit of nationalism, perhaps?—joined her, shielding the alicorn with her body and serving as another pair of eyes as she kept brainlessly spewing out whatever the detained creature said.
"Töten sie es! Sie sahen, was sie uns antaten!"
"Kill it. You saw what they did to us."
"Wir taten nichts! We did nothing!" Twilight negated, now actively trying to preserve her own safety.
"Sie jagen sie! Sie helfen ihnen nicht! Sie sterben im Wald!"
"They will... hunt you. They won't h-help you. You'll die—You'll die in the forest."
"SHUT U—"
The shot came from nowhere—a muffled 'crack' from the ether—and Lyra froze. She looked to Twilight, and nearly threw up: her muzzle was flecked with blood and slivers of skull, eyes wide, mouth open in mid-shout. The princess started hyperventilating and her eyes rolled back into her head and Lyra didn't know what to do and… and…
Twilight fainted, magic imploding with a loud pop, and the creature fell to earth in a slump—minus a head and spewing sticky, maroon ooze onto the street.
Hooves pounded across the Square: the other Elements, probably. Lyra didn't care anymore. Looking around her, all she saw was blood and broken bodies. Her eyes flickered to the schoolhouse, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun, and she swore she caught the slightest flicker of movement.
Something grasped her hoof, and Lyra looked back down on the bloody paws of the grievously injured—but still somehow living—biped.
"Scheiße…"
Pile slunk quickly down the creaking bell tower stairs, choosing not to lament the fact that he hadn't understood a single word of the German soldier's speech: never learned the language.
He didn't really care, honestly.
Out the window, through the deserted schoolyard, and into the forest he went. He settled down beyond the tree-line, content to continue watching the town.
All he had to do was wait… it was what he was good at.
Lyra hadn't met Fluttershy. Never. The mare was a recluse, rarely coming into town for anything other than the most essential of supplies. Whenever anypony talked to her—with the exception of one very uncomfortable, frightening day—she squeaked and hid behind her fashion model pink mane… now that she had seen it in person, though...
Damn she is hot… but nopony ever goes for her, Lyra, or at least that's the consensus. "Leave the girl alone." Rainbow Dash enforced that, I think.
She should have felt bad, thinking like that, especially when there was somepony—thing—dying not four hoof-steps away, but she couldn't help it: clung to the feeling of desire, actually. It was the only thing that didn't hurt and confuse her.
"Uh—um—Oh, dear. Somepony get me a compress! A towel or a coat or… don't just stand there!"
The yellow pegasus was with the creature now: standing over it, putting pressure on its ruptured belly, trying—trying so, so hard—to put what had been lost back inside. She had gone from dormouse to doctor in less than six seconds, and the transformation surprised Lyra a bit. She knew she was the town's animal caretaker, but the sudden assertiveness caught her off guard.
She had checked Twilight first, of course, but the alicorn was already recovering from her involuntary slumber when she got there. The princess was now fully awake, taking turns scrutinizing both Lyra and the thing dying in the street. Heartstrings shifted uncomfortably, trying so hard to ignore the piercing, intelligent—most definitely twice as intelligent as her own—gaze.
She watched Fluttershy: watched until the librarian finally spoke.
"What did this?"
Lyra hesitated to speak, glancing to the east: the schoolhouse. "I—I don't know. C-Can't translate the word they used." The others listened, Pinkie Pie unnaturally silent, solemnly staring at the bleeding soul behind them alongside the town seamstress, Rarity. Applejack was doing Fluttershy's bidding. Rainbow Dash was in the hospital.
"Did you see it?"
Again she hesitated, avoiding Twilight's iron stare. Slowly, Lyra lifted a bloody foreleg, indicating the schoolhouse. She heard a gasp and the sound of hooves fading down the street: Rarity, gone to find her troublesome kid sister; the one who broke Heartstring's lyre along with her friends; the one who—
"Geist. L-Leinwand-Geist."
It gurgled with half congealed blood and floating flesh, and Lyra froze, her train of thought derailed and left to crash miserably into the side of some metaphorical mountain. Slowly, she turned around.
Fluttershy blocked most of the view: panting and scuffling and pushing and "oh my"-ing over red-stained gray death. It still moved, despite all of it, arms twitching and paws clenching on the rough cobbles. Still moved and still spoke, whispery and wet despite the butter pegasus' pleas for it to "hush, now; quiet, now."
"Heckensch—Hecke—G-Geist."
Giving the two magic-wielders a pleading look, Fluttershy began to weep. She worked as she cried, only breaking the monotonous sway of her hooves in the pond of red once: to shakily ask what it was saying. Lyra looked to Twilight, but the alicorn was miles away—staring like a dead-pony, mumbling under her breath.
Quietly, Lyra answered her: "'Ghost'. It's saying 'Cloth Ghost'."
Somehow, it knew what they were afraid of, whether from Lyra's pointing or the inflection of their voices, and it tried to warn them.
A Ghost in the Everfree Forest… one that they knew well enough to call by name.
Sowjet, or Hecken-something?
Lyra, didn't know—and, at that moment, she didn't want to know. Instead she watched as the sun slowly began to lower from the sky: watched the creature die.
When its eyes finally glazed over, and it wetly gasped its last, the sun was dipping below the trees. Fluttershy simply kept cleaning, whispering and muttering encouragingly into its one, upturned ear.
Nopony stopped her.