If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment “Dad, why don’t you use your magic making a sword?”

Cross Tree smiled at his son over the tongs he gripped with his teeth, carefully swinging an angry red ingot over to the anvil in the center of the workshop. He quickly placed it in the vise, and with a few masterful flicks of his hooves the sizzling ingot was secure and the hammer was held aloft in the hoof grip. He brought the head down with practiced precision.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

“I use my magic to make art. I use my hooves to make tools. And a sword is not a work of art. It’s a tool, just like everything else.”

He glanced at his son after each hammer stroke. Dark blue eyes, cool green hair that made Cross Tree taste mint whenever he saw it, a dark green bush of a mane. Tough little muscles on his ungainly coltish limbs. Little Reveille still wasn’t quite used to the loud noises of the workshop, and his eyes and ears still blinked twitched with each resounding whack of hammer on steel. He had once shied away from the sparks when he was very young, but now he stood firm in his oversized goggles and thick apprentice apron, watching the sparks dance. Little yellow grasshoppers, he’d called them when he first witnessed the act of forging. Cross Tree could call that progress, at least.

“But dad, you use your magic to make everything else. I think it’s cool how you make everything hover in the air and fling it all around, like whoosh! Shyew!”

Cross Tree couldn’t help but smile as Reveille wildly flung his front hooves around. Thank Celestia he wasn’t a pegasus; the boy was flighty enough. “Yes, I guess that is pretty cool. But the fact remains that a sword needs to be made with your hooves. You need to feel the heat. The weight… every blow that goes into creating it. You need to know the sword so you have respect for it.”

The ingot was slowly, surely taking shape under each well aimed strike of the hammer. He could already see it in his mind. He saw the long, pleasing shape of the blade, the engraved hilt, the frightful tip that pointed with singular instinct towards whatever object was placed in front of it. Needing, wanting to cut and stab.

“You see a sword is not a nice tool. Take my hammer.”

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Reveille wrinkled his nose. “It’s noisy.”

“Yes. But it’s helpful. This hammer has been with me since I opened the shop. But it’s helped me make pots, pans, shoes, nails, other hammers, axes. Rakes, water pots, helmets, armor. This hammer creates things. If I ever used it to hurt something or somepony, I’d be ashamed of myself. But a sword…”

The ingot was beginning to flatten out. He felt it becoming harder, less pliable, the blows echoing through his bones that much more clearly. Reveille waited patiently as his father brought the ingot back to the forge and heated it back to its former red hot intensity. Since he couldn’t let his body wander while he was helping Dad or making his own little bits and baubles in the forge, he let his imagination bumble around instead. The vivid colors of the fire and the metal his father heated reminded Reveille of a sunset, or maybe Mama’s hair. She had the most beautiful hair in the world as far as he was concerned.

Cross Tree returned with the ingot heated to a proper temperature. Again, he placed it on the anvil, flicked his hooves, resumed working.

“See how it’s red all the way through? You can see the glow, this baby’s hot.”

“Yeah, Dad.”

“Give it a few test blows with the hammer…”

Reveille blinked every time, watching the little yellow grasshoppers dance.

“It shapes. See that? You have to get a feel for the temperature too. You’ll get used to it. Anyway, a sword is a tool that’s not used for hammering. It doesn’t get you firewood or dig up crops. It’s made for one thing and one thing only.”

Cross Tree stopped hammering and looked directly at his son. “Do you know what that is?”

Reveille’s dark blue eyes twitched between his father and the ingot, still taking shape. He shifted uncomfortably on his hooves.

“To… to hurt things.”

“That’s right. It’s a tool designed to hurt things, nothing more. That makes it a weapon. And that’s why I don’t use magic. I might use my magic to wield the sword when I’m done, but I have to know it inside and out. Whatever I do with this sword has to come from me and me alone. It will be a part of me, because if it ever needs to be unsheathed, Princesses forbid it, I’ll use it on a living creature. I need to know the kind of pain I’ll cause.”

Reveille didn’t fully understand. Cross Tree knew he didn’t. Reveille saw his father as the biggest, strongest pony in the world (except maybe for Mama). Who’d even want to pick a fight with him? One look of those fearsome orange eyes and even a hydra would go running scared! He didn’t want to think about his father having to hurt things. It just didn’t make sense. Dad didn’t start fights, and he never, ever hit another pony, not even when he was screaming mad like the time he found out Grape Vine had hit Peach Tree and made her cry. Real stallions weren’t supposed to make their fillyfriends cry. But Dad had snatched that bad stallion by the ear with his teeth and thrown him in jail himself. Mama had been upset, since because she was a Guard she thought she should’ve handled it, but Reveille thought Mama just wanted to smack Grape Vine around herself too. Peach Tree was nice, and she really liked the flower Reveille brought her. He hoped the bruise on her eye went away soon.

“But you’ll never have to do that, right Dad?” he asked. “I mean, we live in Equestria! It’s safe here, right? Mama and the other Guards keep us safe.”

Cross Tree’s hammering slackened off. He leaned away from the anvil and looked over Reveille’s head, to the Mistypine Forest at the edge of their town.

“That they do, son,” he said quietly. “That they do.”

---

That night, Reveille snuck downstairs when he heard his parents talking in low, worried tones, which made him worried. Even though it was way past his bedtime, he thought he was grown up enough to be able to listen in on adult talk.

“I don’t want to hear it, Cross Tree!”

“But dear, the boy’s got to learn how to use the things if I’m going to teach him how to make them!”

“Learning your trade is different from learning how to fight! I don’t want my only son near the accursed things outside of the forge. We agreed when we married, Cross Tree! He follows your career, not mine. What if he gets ideas about going into the Guard?”

“Then he does. And who are we to stop that? Songbird-”

“No, Cross Tree! I joined the Guard to protect ponies. And I’m protecting you two on top of that. Isn’t that enough to worry about?”

“He’s growing into a fine boy, Songbird. Learning to fight didn’t corrupt you! It made you the pony I wanted to spend my life with.”

“Don’t sweet talk your way out of this one! I joined the Guard so nopony else would have to. There’s so much out there that wants to hurt us, Cross Tree… I can’t put my little boy in the front lines of that. I refuse!”

Reveille dared to peek his head around the corner, looking through the hall to the front room. Cross Tree sat Songbird down on the big couch in front of the fireplace, holding her gently, stroking her wings and smoothing down her feathers. Mom always liked it when Dad stroked her wings. Reveille guessed it was a pegasus thing.

“I just get so worried, Cross Tree. Other ponies don’t know what we know in the Guard! We’re so safe here, and I want it to stay that way, but it makes it so easy to forget… so hard to see what’s really out there. I don’t want my child to deal with that!”

Cross Tree touched her under the chin, lifting her head. They whispered a few things that Reveille couldn’t hear, and he didn’t dare go closer. After a few minutes of talking, they kissed for a long time and disappeared over the top of the sofa. Reveille decided he wasn’t needed and crept back to bed. After all, they’d kissed, and kisses made everything better.

---

“One bar isn’t enough. It has be folded and layered with other bars, one after the other. And then you have to make it hot enough to weld those layers together. The last sword I made was for Duke Cordon Bleu. It had to be folded sixty times, end over end.”

Another day, another sword. Reveille no longer blinked. Long hours of wrestling pots and pans into shape with Dad’s trusty old hammer had seen to that. He watched intently as that same hammer came up and down, up and down. The grasshoppers flew free and danced over the floor, bouncing off their aprons.

“But it’s the quenching and reheating that makes it strong. What have I told you about the quenching and the tempering?”

“No blade is made strong unless it’s held over the heat.”

Reveille watched his father pluck up the sword and take it over to the quenching tank. They used good old fashioned water for this part. Reveille often flinched when the blade went into the water, and he did now. Something about the way the heat boiled off, screaming like a pony in pain, was just off-putting to him. If that was what it was like to be tempered, he hoped he never had to go through it.

“Why do we have swords?” he asked, remembering the conversation he heard between his parents a few weeks back. Cross Tree stopped, leaving the blade in the water as he looked up at the colt.

“Why?” he repeated.

“I mean. Equestria’s safe. And we have Guards… I know we live on the border… but why do we need swords? What’s ever gonna happen that you have to hurt somebody?”

Cross Tree let his eyes drift to the Mistypine Forest.

“Because the safer you are, the more dangerous the world gets.”

Reveille tilted his head. His father had a very strange, faraway look on his face. He hardly ever got it, and it was usually when he was totally focused on his work, absorbed in the dance of materials and tools as he levitated them all about the workshop. Reveille couldn’t help but be intensely jealous that his father was a unicorn and he was a regular old earth pony.

“Let me explain it to you, son.” Cross Tree sat down on a bench and patted the space next to him. Reveille always liked a chance to be close to Dad and hopped obediently up. Cross Tree pointed at the forest. It stretched out before the village, dark and inscrutable. A single path cut through the trees, heading east. A little ways up that path was a single Guard outpost, the final checkpoint of ponydom before the rest of the wild, untamed world claimed the land. Mama sometimes was stationed at the outpost, but usually she was out on patrol. Even so, Reveille didn’t like looking at that path. That single road out of Equestria, out of everything he’d ever known, shrouded by trees and possibly crawling with monsters.

“We live on the very borders of Equestria. And Equestria is a big, big place. And you’re right. It is very, very safe. One of these days I hope to show you the cities I’ve been to… Manehattan or Las Pegasus. But safety… safety comes at a price, Reveille. That’s why we have the Guard. That’s why Celestia and Luna are always on their thrones and never take a day off. The Forest marks the end of places good ponies go.”

Reveille nodded. Only bad ponies and exiles, or even worse, ponies who just plain didn’t want to live in Equestria walked down that path and past the Guard post, never to return. He couldn’t even fathom it.

“But the very fact that we’re safe means that somepony is keeping the danger away, like your Mama. You remember the stories about how Equestria was founded, and then the Princesses came?”

“They put everything in order,” Reveille said, remembering his school lessons. He liked hearing about the Princesses. “And they took all the bad things out of Equestria and made them leave.”

“That’s right. But you can’t have one without the other. It’s like hot and cold. Take all the heat away, you get something very cold, but all that heat is still out there, floating around. If you create a very safe place with no danger, all that danger has to go somewhere.”

He pointed at the forest. “Out there, son. That’s where it all is. All our neighbors who are jealous of us, all the monsters that were run out of town… it’s all still there. Waiting for us to let our guard down. If you go up that path, and there’s no telling what can happen. That’s why we’re here. That’s why all the nobles in this county still carry their swords… just in case somebody with a bad case of pony hate comes stomping over that horizon. That’s why I make swords. That’s why I’m teaching you how to make them.”

Reveille scrunched his brow, deep in thought. If weapons and fighting were going to keep them safe, why was Mama so upset about him learning to do it?

“So swords are good?”

Cross Tree smiled. “A sword is only as good as the pony that carries it, son. Remember, it’s a tool. That hammer of mine is used to make things because I choose to use it that way. The swords I make will never be used to hurt another living creature unless they force us to use it. Celestia forbid any of them are pulled out in anger. That’s the problem, really… anypony can pull a sword and think that just because they have one they can do whatever they want. But that’s wrong. A sword doesn’t let you do that. A sword doesn’t give you anything except the ability to hurt things. It’s you that has to make the choice when to use it.”

Reveille looked down at the half-finished sword, still smoldering in the quenching tub.

“What if you pull it out when you aren’t supposed to?”

“Bad things happen, son,” Cross Tree muttered, and he got that faraway look in his eyes again. “Bad, bad things. A sword… a sword can make a pony into a protector… or a killer. It hurts you, too. Whether or not you’re the one getting cut.”

“But you’re not a killer, are you Dad? And neither’s Mama.”

“No, son, we aren’t.”

Reveille breathed in sharply. Hearing the world was such a dangerous place was fearful and exciting at once. “I’ll never be able to use a sword to protect ponies unless I learn how to use one, will I?”

“… No, son. You won’t.”

“Then I want to learn.”

---

“Blank flank, blank flank!”

Reveille hated the walk home after school. Without a teacher around to keep order, mean little Opal Eye was free to tease the other students. He hated her and her little gang, but since a real stallion never made a filly cry, he just held his head high and pretended to ignore it.

Ever since his father gave him a little wooden sword, he’d brought it to the local fencing master after school to start learning how to whack things with it. He was strictly forbidden from ever bringing it into the school itself, even if that didn’t make much sense to him since pirates and bandits would obviously go after a school that didn’t have swords. But afterwards, he liked to wear it on his belt and pretend he was one of the ponies that kept everypony else safe, like Mama. Oh, she’d thrown a fit and gave Dad the cold shoulder for a week! And she’d boxed the fencing master’s ears too for going along with Dad. His stomach still groaned thinking about the deserts he’d missed during that time…

But today she’d promised to start helping teach him, too, as long as he promised he’d never, ever join the Guard. Reveille didn’t like telling fibs, but he wasn’t sure he could promise to never do something for his entire life, ever. That was an awful long time to never do something. What if he got bored?

“Hey blank flank!”

He rolled his eyes. Ignoring Opal Eye never worked. She was even stupider than Gumshoe. At least he got the hint after a while. Why couldn’t Opal Eye just leave him alone? She and her friends just shouted at him from a distance, trotting along like they always did.

“You want a sword for a cutie mark? That’s so lame! No monster’s gonna be afraid of a wooden sword!”

“Yeah, I bet you’re gonna get splinters! And then you’re gonna go home crying!”

“I bet it’ll snap! And then a hydra’s gonna eat you up!”

He couldn’t take it today. He shouted over his shoulder.

“I’m not using it forever! I’m gonna make a real sword, all by myself! And when some monster comes along and makes you cry, then you’ll be sorry! You’re gonna go home scared to your moms and I’ll be the one to save all of you stupid girls!”

That shut them up. Opal’s little gang looked at him all weird, and then they all whispered among themselves. “Blank flank!” one of them called, before they began to run off to do whatever stupid girls did by themselves.

Opal Eye stared at him weird for a while longer, a bright yellow spot against the green grass beside the path. He noticed she didn’t shout at him when she finally left.

---

Another day, another sword. They didn’t make these often. Reveille came to enjoy it when they did. Training had been going well over the last year, and he was looking forward to the day when his father might let him craft his own blade to use.

“When you reheat the sword, that’s what makes it softer. Just like when you need it soft during hammering, you want the metal to have a little give when you’re done.”

“What good is a soft sword?”

“It won’t snap. It’ll bend. But it won’t break.”

Reveille could just hear another lesson coming. He gingerly worked the partially completed blade into the furnace, stoking the coals with it. He’d learned long ago to ignore the heat. Wearing the hood helped.

“It’s okay to bend?” he asked over the roar of the flames.

“Sometimes,” his father answered, working the bellows. “Better that than to just snap. Like how you ignore bullies instead of just… flying off the handle, hitting them. You let their insults just sort of… bounce off you. It seems weak, at first. But it’s really what makes you stronger than they’ll ever be. Heh, maybe we should be making shields instead of swords…”

He turned and looked Reveille in the eyes. “I’m proud of you, son. You’re just about the only colt in your class who hasn’t gotten into a fight, even with those other troublesome foals. You’ve taken my words to heart.”

Reveille wasn’t sure what to say. Getting compliments always made him stutter and go quiet. But at least he knew he was doing the right thing ignoring bullies. Even Opal Eye had slackened off in recent months. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called a blank flank.

“When we’re done here, take the day off,” his father said. “You’ve really been coming along in your lessons. You deserve a break. You finish your homework for the weekend?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

“Good boy.”

Reveille did take the rest of the day off as his father suggested. He went into the hills above the town with his practice sword, as he usually did. He’d been practicing a long time now, and his birthday had come and gone without much ceremony. Learning the trade, learning the sword was his new passion, even if it hadn’t gotten him his cutie mark on either front.

He liked these hills. They were always green and grassy and quiet with a great view of the town to the west, along with the rest of Equestria. On a good day you could see the mountains of Canterlot on the horizon. Up here he could go run around and pretend he was fighting monsters. Maybe a baldyak, or a manticore. Or a mandragor! Those had tentacles and teeth and everything. Yes, a mandragor was a perfect creature to battle!

He hurried back and forth over the hills, enjoying the soft grass and the sound of a few bees and birds in his ears while he valiantly held off the mighty beast from the forest, swinging the sword and remembering the routines he’d been taught. Thrust, parry, swing! Find the opening… jab! He alone was the last line of defense. He couldn’t give an inch and couldn’t forget a single lesson. Flower heads and blades of grass went flying as he lunged and struck the shadowy beasts laying siege to the town.

He was so caught up in his practicing that he almost didn’t notice Opal Eye sitting not far off on another rise, looking down at something. He rolled his eyes and put his sword away. Stupid girl! Didn’t she know it was dangerous out here, and only trained swordponies like himself should be this far out? The forest was almost frighteningly close, but he knew Mama had gone on a patrol recently and reported nothing.

He didn’t want to go talk to one of the ponies who gave him such a hard time in school. He hadn’t talked to her much even after she’d stopped teasing him so much. She usually just looked at him from a distance while he played with the other colts. But a good stallion, Dad said, protected other ponies. So he guessed he’d have to go and tell her off and herd her back to the town. Maybe he’d get an award from the Guards.

“Hey! Opal!” he called, hurrying over to her. She turned around and dropped a flower at her hooves, hastily kicking it away.

“Wha… what are you doing here?” she asked, pointing an accusing hoof. Reveille tossed his head back.

“I’m protecting the town from monsters!” he said. “There’s a mandragor right over that ridge that’ll eat you up if you don’t go home right now!”

Opal Eye’s eyes widened. Reveille noticed at this distance they were purple, but strangely enough seemed to change to a more reddish color, then back to violet depending on which way they were pointing.

“Liar!” she decided. “There’s no monsters out here.”

“Yeah huh! I was fighting one just a minute ago.”

“Oh yeah? Well where is it?”

Reveille felt his careful plans to get an award unravel in seconds. He hadn’t thought she’d actually ask for proof. Saying there was a monster out here wasn’t lying, necessarily. There really could be anything, depending on what slipped past the Guards!

“Uhh… it’s… right over that way!” he decided, pointing in a random direction. “But, um, it’s… dead.”

“If it’s dead, how’s it gonna eat me up? You’re lying!”

“I am not a liar! In fact, I’ll go right over there and investigate right now, and when we find a monster then you’ll be sorry.”

Opal Eye tossed her purple curls and sniffed. “My mom says monsters never come out of the forest. Let’s go over there and find nothing, cause there’s nothing there and you’re just being a mean old colt.”

“Pffft.” Reveille said, beginning to trot towards the next hill. There was a lone tree on it, perfect shade for sitting under. “Pfft! You’re the one who made fun of me last year.”

“Yeah, but that was last year. Besides, you’re still a blank flank.”

“Whatever.” Reveille kept his eyes open and ears up. As his fencing master said, right when you think your opponent won’t strike, that’s exactly the moment he was waiting for. If there was nothing there, there was probably something there.

They reached the crest of the hill and stood under the shade of the tree. He sighed with relief.

There really was nothing here.

“See?” Opal Eye said, swinging her tail. “Nothing.”

“Fine, fine…” Reveille said, deflated, yet relieved. What if there really had been a monster here?

A minute of silence passed before Opal broke it. “Reveille?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Yeah?”

“You remember when you said you’d protect us from any monsters that came by?”

“Yeah.”

“… Did you mean it?”

Reveille shifted uncomfortably. Then he nodded with confidence. “Of course I did.”

They stood in awkward silence, Reveille because he was embarrassed he’d been caught fibbing, Opal Eye because, well, she was a girl. They were weird.

“Well, let’s go home,” he said.

They turned around, and found a dead pony lying in the grass. They froze. Everything suddenly snapped into sharp focus. The red of the blood on the grass was more vivid than anything he’d ever seen. The noise of his blood pounding in his ears was louder than anything he’d ever heard. Opal Eye suddenly starting to shake beside him felt like an earthquake.

And the timber wolf that rose up from behind the corpse was the most frightening thing he’d ever seen.

“D… don’t… don’t…” he stuttered, trying to think of something to do, or say. Run? No, timber wolves liked it when you ran. Fight? With what? His puny wooden sword?

“Reveille,” Opal whimpered, and took a quivering step back. The timber wolf stood up, beginning to snarl. Reveille felt it in his chest. He didn’t know the dead pony. But he wore armor, armor the timber wolf’s teeth had found the gaps in. Guard armor.

And there on the grass sat a Guard’s sword, shimmering and beautiful in the sun, gleaming brighter than all the world’s lights.

“Reveille!” Opal squeaked. The timber wolf started to rise, the wooden limbs creaking and snapping ominously.

“Reveille!” Opal screamed. The timber wolf barked in reply. Pony guts hung from his teeth.

Reveille took a step forward.

---

He’d earned his cutie mark that day. Cross Tree was certain of it.

The burial was a surprisingly short and quick affair. Nopony liked to be reminded of how dangerous their location was. To have it shown to them so brutally… so bloodily. Timber wolves never made clean kills. Songbird had hunted the beast down and slain it herself with her patrol. He didn’t blame her.

He’d wished his son would never even see such a creature in his life. But fate dictated otherwise. Finding him covered in blood, the blaring bugle on his flank. From what they could piece together, he’d done his best to run back to the village, to warn everypony. He hadn’t gotten far. Just far enough.

At least he’d only suffered a few cuts. The ear, though, was mangled. That was going to be with the boy for the rest of his life.

Nopony knew how he’d driven off a timber wolf alone, save for sheer luck. But he’d done it. He’d gotten his cutie mark, being the early warning system. Guarding ponies. Songbird had been livid with rage that one of these beasts would dare try to hurt her son, and wracked with sorrow that she hadn’t been able to protect him.

But that was the point of the Guard, wasn’t it? Somepony had to be there, on the outpost, but that somepony was a son or a brother or a mother. Keeping the land safe, but having to risk so much. Even though their swords were pointed outwards, it cut both ways. Eventually, somepony got hurt, and behind them was another pony who couldn’t understand why their loved one had to be it. For there to be safety, something else had to be dangerous to threaten it. For there to be peace, there had to be a sword that would eventually be drawn, and blood would spill and not care where it landed.

But that day had been long ago. Today was Reveille’s first patrol as a fully fledged Guard.

“You sure you’re ready for this? Nopony will fault you if you decided to take an inland posting.”

Celestia, the boy… the stallion… had such wonderful eyes. Eyes that were keen and sharp, deep and blue as the ocean. He’d promised Mother he’d take a vacation the moment he got his things squared away, and go to the ocean. Manehattan. He’d finally see Manehattan.

“Dad, I’ll be fine, for the last time. It’s okay. If I got through Mom’s training, I can handle one patrol.”

He’d be going into the woods, with the other Guards. Rooting out anything that might have taken up shop near the town. He had good eyes for that, was usually the first to spot something that was wrong, and the first to alert the others. Always looking for their safety ahead of his own. Yes, that day had changed him. Made him more grim. Dour. Ready for action. No more playfulness.

The wolf had ripped that right out of him along with most of his ear.

Nopony went untouched when a sword came out of its sheathe.

And Reveille had his own sword now, sharpened, polished, ready to kill. But he’d never even needed to draw it yet. Somehow, to Cross Tree’s unending pride, he’d try to find some way, any other way, to avoid having to let it shine in the sun, beautiful as it was. He’d taken his lessons to heart.

“Be careful, kiddo.”

“Always. Keep the fires warm for me, Dad.”

“Of course.” He looked over Reveille’s broad shoulders. “Opal’s waiting.”

“Ahh… she hid from me, I know it. She wants to be the last one I see before heading out.”

“Is that bad?”

“Nope. Just how I’d hoped, actually.”

They hugged and parted, Reveille walking down the path from the house to the road. Opal leaned casually on the fence, then joined him as they started walking down the road to the Mistypine Forest, where the outpost waited for him. Where his future waited.

They stopped near the hills overlooking the town.

“I’ll still be here when you get back,” she said quietly. “I don’t leave for Canterlot for another three weeks.”

“I know,” he said. “We’ll make it count.”

“Not unless you get sent to the hospital again,” she said, and here the walls broke down. She’d become tougher the day of the wolf too. Worried more than she needed to, sometimes, about him. And she’d never been good at showing her feelings in the first place. But here, with him, in the quiet wind with nothing but the chirping of birds to see them, she couldn’t stop herself.

Their lips met with the same passion as the first time they had.

“You come back,” she said simply. “I’ll be waiting.”

“And I’ll be heading towards you,” he murmured. “With every step I take.”

He turned towards the path and began the long walk that all border guards took, holding his head high, wearing that mangled ear as a badge of pride. He’d forged the sword himself. And out there, he’d be the one to decide when to use it, if he had to. He wondered, sometimes, what life would be like if he’d never encountered the wolf, never bothered to take up the sword… but then he knew that somepony else would be out here, and he couldn’t have that on his conscience. Danger was now his lot in life to own. Maybe someday he’d pay for it in more blood. He knew now that nopony held a sword without it cutting away something of theirs in return. It changed you.

But as he entered the path into the Forest, he knew that for him it’d been for the better.