Soldier of the Night

Soldier of the Night is a darkly comic slice-of-life adventure fan-fiction written by Skyfire Storm, released on August 7, 2014 on FIMFiction, and on December 29th of that same year on FanFiction.net, Soldier of the Night, or SoTN, is by far Skyfire's most well-received story to date.

Description
Like all mares and stallions, Stormfire has dreams, hopes and aspirations, and like everypony else, he has a story to tell. His life dream is to protect his friends and family, and a certain princess, but just how far will he go to protect them? And why does he want to protect them in the first place?

Summary
Chapter 1 begins in the city of Gryffsvale on the border between Itaily and the Griffon Empire, where our hero is born. His father, Blazefire is a soldier, while his mother, Equinox works on the city's weather team, being the one of the only two Pegasi on a team made up entirely of Griffons. At the height of the First Griffon War, Blazefire is sent to the battlefields hundreds of miles away to replace a fallen soldier, and leaving a tearful Equinox and their yet-unborn foal behind.

Soon enough, a month passes since Blaze's departure, and Equinox, though she still misses her husband dearly, tries her hardest to move on and prepare for the birth of their foal. With the help of two of her friends, a female Griffon named Ava and a Pegasus mare named Buttermilk, she manages to make sure that her due date for the foal goes as planned. While at lunch at Ava's home in the outskirts of Gryffsvale, Equinox begins to feel strange, but she dismisses the nauseating feeling she experiences as just cramps. After excusing herself from the dinner table, Equinox goes upstairs to the bathroom, but along the way, the cramps become more intense, and eventually she feels pain. However, before she could react to the pain, she is noticed by Buttermilk's young son, Corn Cob, who asks her if she is alright, to whom she fibs that she is. However, suddenly, she feels a sharp pain in her abdomen, which spreads across her body in seconds. Letting out a shrill scream which alerts her friends downstairs, Equinox is flown to the hospital by Ava's husband, Vortex, a hospital worker, followed by Buttermilk, Ava and Corn Cob in a carriage. After arriving at the hospital's maternity ward and going through a long, stressful and painful labor, a heavily sedated Equinox manages to give birth to a blue Pegasus colt, whom she names Stormfire, the 'Storm' part of his name coming from her occupation, and the 'Fire' part of his name coming from the name of the foal's father, Blazefire. Watching as the small colt nuzzles against her, she caresses his tiny mane with her muzzle, tears of happiness rolling out of her eyes as she does so. She is now a mother and that is whom she'll be til the end.

The chapter ends with Equinox being taken home by Vortex, who works at the city hospital, in a wheelchair along with her sleeping colt. On their way home across town, they discuss Stormfire's future and whether or not Equinox will be a good mother. Vortex points out that Storm may end up being a future genius beloved by everypony, like what Einspone or Starswirl the Bearded were, and still are seen as, but Equinox admits that she would rather have him follow his dreams. Upon arriving home, the mother tucks her young son into his crib upstairs, before opening an envelope that came in the mail from the Equestrian Military, which stated that her husband was found dead on the battlefields.

Several years pass, and the mother and son adjust to their life without Blaze, especially Equinox, who came to terms with her loss early on. The six year-old Storm, meanwhile, is completely oblivious to the fact that his father was killed in action, and goes on to start school at the Griffsvale Junior School, where he befriends a young Griffon named Sharpbeak and a Pegasus filly named Rainwynd.

Characters

 * Stormfire -  the main protagonist of the story a tall, muscular, dark blue-coated Pegasus stallion with a troubled past trying to make it in the Equestrian Lunar Guard. The story is centered around his dark past and partly explains how he grew up in an unfamiliar society to what he was used to, Equestria, and how he had come to accept it as his home.
 * Blue Night - Storm's marefriend and eventual wife, a weather mare working on the Cloudsdale weather team. She is a beautiful, kind-hearted, yet very shy and meek Pegasus mare with prodigious musical talent, whom Storm met on his first lesson at flight school. She is skilled on several musical instruments, most notably the piano and the guitar, but despite her professional achievements, Blue struggled with making friends, having been rejected at one point by the only friend she had due to her lack of a cutie mark, until she met Storm, with whom she started a blossoming relationship not long after she befriended him. Their relationship is severed when Storm returns to Cloudsdale for Gust's wedding with his new marefriend Lilli, but fate brings them back together in a later chapter.
 * Equinox - Storm's mother, who raised him single-handedly for over ten years after his biological father was presumably killed on the battlefield during an ambush, until she married an old flame from high school, High Wind.
 * High Wind - A rough and tough, yet good-hearted weather pony from Cloudsdale. One of Equinox's closest friends in high school, High Wind fell in love with her the moment she and Storm landed in Cloudsdale and married her almost a year later. Although it took a while for Storm to get used to High, Storm eventually accepted him as his stepfather after saving him from a gang of bullies.
 * Gust Wind - Storm's elder stepbrother, a struggling guitarist whose life is turned around and improved by Storm's actions. Later on in the story, he opens his own music store in Cloudsdale.
 * Mist River - Storm's younger stepsister, a weather mare who helps Storm stick to the right path.
 * Hurricane Force - Hurricane was, prior to becoming Storm's best friend, a cruel, heartless and sadistic bully who continuously tormented Storm and his friends, but over time, his feelings towards Storm softened, and he ended up apologizing to the stallion during a flight lesson. He is never seen again, implied to have moved schools in between chapters, until Storm enlists in the Lunar Marines.
 * His initial hate and distrust towards Storm stems from the fact that he lost his own father, a Royal Guard, during the Great Griffon War at the hands of a Griffon soldier.
 * Thunderblast - Storm's close friend in the Royal Guard who introduces him to many aspects of Guard life.
 * Solar Flare - Another Guard who is close friends with Storm.
 * Singer Case - Storm's friend in high school, an aspiring singer and musician originally from Canterlot, whose backstory is explored in Finding Home.
 * Violet Petals - Storm's other friend throughout his schooling.
 * Originally both these characters were meant to play much bigger roles in the story, but this idea was scrapped when Skyfire Storm feared that Soldier of the Night may turn out to be too similar to his previous fan fiction as a result, the highly negatively-received Blue Skye's Story, in which the title character's two closest friends were Singer and Violet. Regardless of this, Skyfire is still on friendly terms with their creator, Auto-Buscus, and is open to the possibility of a cameo appearance for these two characters in a future chapter.
 * Night Shadow - Another one of Storm's friends in the Guard, a half-bat half-Pegasus stallion implied to be from a bat pony city close to Vanhoover. He and Storm are both Princess Luna's personal guards, and as such are given the nicknames 'soldiers of the night' by the other Lunar Guards, which provides the basis for the title of this story.
 * This particular OC, along with Thunderblast, belongs to Thunderblast, and his story is told in The Veins Run Deep.
 * Tornado -Storm's former boss at the Cloudsdale weather factory and a former soldier himself, now suffering from PTSD and depression after the loss of his brother during the Griffon War.
 * Blazefire - Stormfire's biological father, a soldier who is killed by a Griffon on the battlefield in the prologue.
 * Lilli- a female weather pony from Vanhoover, whom Storm befriends in Chapter 27 upon moving there. For a short while soon after, they become a couple.
 * Rainwynd- an old friend of Storm from the Griffon Empire. Implied to have moved to Equestria several years after Storm and his mother moved there themselves, she becomes a famous actress almost overnight after auditioning for a blockbuster film which earns millions at the box office.

Reception
Soldier of the Night has received exceptionally positive reviews, having garnered 35 likes and 4 dislikes as of October 2016. It has racked up many views, currently with 941 story views, and over 10,900 total views.

Trivia

 * Skyfire considers Soldier of the Night to be his 'masterpiece', despite not holding a very high opinion of the story himself. He also considers it to be what his previous OC-centered fan-fiction, Blue Skye's Story was meant to be all along.
 * Most of the characters featured in the story are OCs that Skyfire either created or ones that belong to his friends. Canon characters will appear in the story, however, they won't play as big of a part in it as the OCs do.
 * SoTN is set in the 'Thunderblast-verse', an alternate universe devised by both Thunderblast and Skyfire Storm, where most forms of modern technology do exist.
 * Most, if not all, of the Equestrian cities featured in the story are depicted as being much larger both in terms of area and in terms of population than their canon counterparts, with Canterlot being roughly the size of Washington D.C. in terms of population, and Cloudsdale about the size of Philadelphia, PA. Ponyville, has been featured previously in the story and is anticipated to be featured again in a later chapter, is similar in size to a town located north of Columbus, Ohio, and despite suburban developments taking place at its outskirts, still retains much of its medieval-style look and charm seen in the show.
 * In this alternate universe, Equestria is heavily modeled on the late 20th century United States, whereas the Griffon Empire is based on several Central and Eastern European nations, most notably Russia.
 * The story is set in the same universe as Under the Moonlight, its sequels, The Veins Run Deep and Millennia: Beginning, due to the fact that Skyfire and Thunderblast, who authored said stories, are good friends and often cooperate with each other while writing. Thunderblast's OC of the same name appears in this story as a Guard whom Storm befriends in Canterlot. Soldier of the Night will contain many references to these stories, and some of Thunderblast's other alt-universe fan fiction.
 * Originally, Skyfire Storm wrote each chapter in FiMFiction's built-in text editor, before copying and pasting the finished product into an OpenOffice document, which was then reformatted properly and uploaded onto FanFiction.net as its own chapter. Finding the process of publishing a chapter on said website tricky, instead of copying, pasting and reformatting the chapter, Skyfire had begun downloading .html files of new chapters and transferring their contents into an OpenOffice document. Future stories will end up being published on FiMFiction only.
 * According to Skyfire Storm, the idea for the story came to him while spending a week of his summer break at a friend's house. After noticing the sheer amount of dislikes on his first story, Blue Skye's Story and it's ill-fated sequel, he begun to consider writing a completely new story, combining elements of Blue Skye's Story with a much darker, more mature storyline, a departure from the light-hearted tone of the former story. This idea eventually grew into SoTN not long after, which to his surprise, received very positive reviews not long after the first chapter was published, though due to the fact that he was using his cell phone to type up the chapter, some parts appeared rushed.
 * The chapter has since then been heavily polished and refined, as have several others.
 * Unlike Blue Skye's Story, SoTN does not feature dates at the start of each chapter, though the story is confirmed by its author to be set from 1989, which is when Stormfire is born, to 2015.
 * Dates will be brought up in passing by characters, or generally implied by factors such as advances in technology or societal and cultural changes taking place.
 * Skyfire believes that one of the reasons why his previous story was so negatively received upon completion was the fact that each chapter started off with a date.
 * Storm was originally going to be called Lonestar, however Skyfire Storm changed his mind. This name was later used for the character of Blue's brother, a pilot in the Equestrian Air Force, who makes an appearance at Storm and Blue's graduation.
 * The original title for the story was simply Stormfire, and only while writing the second or third chapter did Skyfire come up with the name Soldier of the Night, both a reference to Storm's career in the Lunar Guard as one of Princess Luna's two personal guards (the other one being Night Shadow, from The Veins Run Deep) and the fact that in the later chapters of the story he is deployed into a foreign war zone as part of the Lunar Marines.
 * The idea of Storm working in the Weather Factory in Cloudsdale (and later Vanhoover for a while) before enlisting in the Guard was lifted directly from Skyfire's previous story, Blue Skye's Story, where the title character worked as a weather pony prior to becoming a Guard, albeit with some differences, two of which are listed below.
 * Unlike in Blue Skye's Story where Blue Skye chooses to become a weather pony in order to follow in his parents' hoofsteps, Stormfire is suggested the idea of joining the Weather Factory by the high school's principal, impressed with the flight skills that he had developed over the summer break. After spending some time contemplating it, he joins up, not looking to impress his parents but to earn some easy money, and hopefully improve his flight skills.
 * Another element which was not present in Blue Skye's Story was that of parental pressure. In SoTN, after growing bored of weather work and immediately in the wake of discovering his cutie mark after rescuing a tourist from a pair of thugs, Storm begins to contemplate quitting his job at the Weather Factory and hopefully enlist in the Royal Guard. However, his stepfather, a high ranking weather pony himself interferes in his plans and hopes to have Storm be the best weather pony he can possibly be. In chapter 17, however, High Wind's attitude towards Storm changes for the worse immediately after he discovers his cutie mark and from that moment on, Stormfire sets out to improve relations between himself and his now estranged father. Both of these elements were not present in Blue Skye's Story, where Lightning Fast (Blue's father, who served as a base for the character of High Wind, Storm's stepfather) gives his blessings for Blue to become a Guard.
 * Several subplots within the story, most notably one which explains what happened High Wind's wife, were either tweaked several times or revised entirely, including the entire third act of the story, which originally involved Stormfire and two of his friends in the Guard being sent to the Griffon Empire to take down a bat pony soldier building a powerful weapon posing a threat to national security.
 * The new third act of the story will feature Storm and Hurricane Force being sent out as part of the Lunar Marines to the icy wastelands of the Northern Griffon Kingdoms, thereby experiencing war first-hoof just like his own father did. A couple of years pass, and he returns to Equestria, battle-hardened and stricken with PTSD and tinnitus. A guard psychologist recommends that he takes at least a couple of weeks leave or even quit the guard all together, but Storm declines, and goes onto receive the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions on the battlefield. He also marries his sweetheart Blue, and starts a family with her, before he is deployed into the Griffon Empire at the end of the story, tying it in with Thunderblast's fanfiction War Never Changes.
 * Skyfire believes this change in plot will enable the story to live up to its name.
 * The political situation between the Griffon Empire and Equestria in this story is inspired by Skyfire's fascination with American-Soviet relations during the Cold War, although the Cold War thankfully never escalated to a full-scale war, unlike what was depicted in the story.
 * The story's theme song is Dream Theater's 'The Dance of Eternity'.