Soldier of the Night

Soldier of the Night is a darkly comic slice-of-life adventure fan-fiction written by Skyfire Storm, and published on both FiMFiction and the FanFiction website, albeit at a later date. The story concerns Skyfire's original character, a Pegasus stallion from the Griffon Empire by the name of Stormfire and in essence, describes the major highlights of his life, from his birth in the Griffon Empire to enlisting in the Royal Guard, and from his love life to the moment when he is drafted into the military in preparation for the second Griffon War. 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, amassing 27 likes and 2 dislikes, along with almost 700 views as of October 1, 2015. Right now, the story is 149,709 words long and to this day, it is a work in progress, and is expected to be finished by February 2016.

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, 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 done 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. (to be continued)

Characters

 * Stormfire -  the main protagonist of the story. He is a mid-blue Pegasus stallion with a troubled past trying to make it in the Equestrian Royal Guard. The story is centered around his dark past and 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. She is a beautiful, kind-hearted, yet very shy and meek Pegasus mare with 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, until she met Storm, with whom she started a blossoming relationship not long after she befriended him.
 * 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 - prior to becoming Storm's closest friend, Hurricane was a cruel, sadistic bully who was always there to torment Storm. However, over time, Hurricane's attitude towards Storm softens noticeably, and he eventually apologizes to him during a flight lesson. Their friendship grows into an almost unbreakable bond, that is unfortunately severed when Storm and Hurricane, along with a half-bat pony, half-Pegasus Lunar Guard friend of theirs, Night Shadow, leave for the Griffon Empire in order to track down and kill a rogue bat soldier, who claims he has a weapon capable of destroying an entire Equestrian city. However, unfortunately, Hurricane is blown apart by the weapon which was set to 'low settings', mirroring the fate of Storm's birth father on the battlefield.
 * 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.
 * Violet Petals - Storm's other friend in high school.
 * Night Shadow - After Hurricane's tragic death, Night Shadow becomes Storm's closest friend. He is a clever and cunning bat pony stallion who along with Storm and Hurricane, is hired for the job of finding and killing Onyx Shadowblade, a bat general whom he knew very well.
 * Tornado - Storm's boss at the weather factory and a former soldier himself, now suffering from PTSD and depression after the loss of his brother during the Griffon War.
 * Onyx Shadowblade - A ruthless and sadistic general in the high ranks of the Bat Pony Legion, Onyx took pleasure in killing innocent Equestrians for sport. After the peace treaty between the colonies of the Bat Pony Lands and Equestria was signed in between chapters, Onyx, apparently convinced that he is being hunted by his own soldiers who have turned against him and his policies, flees to the Griffon Empire, where he builds a magic-powered weapon capable of levelling an entire city with a single blast.
 * Blazefire - Stormfire's biological father, a soldier who is killed by a Griffon on the battlefield. He meets his son face-to-face when the latter has a near-death experience after being shot several times.

Reception
Soldier of the Night has received mostly good criticism and currently has 27 likes and 2 dislikes. It has racked up many views, currently with 700 story views, and over 6,682 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 an alternate universe where most forms of modern technology do exist, however Skyfire has tried to steer away from including technology in order to make the story slightly more true to the show itself.
 * 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, however, is similar in size to the small city of Delaware, OH. In this alternate universe, Equestria is heavily based on the United States from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s.
 * The story is set in the same universe as Under the Moonlight, its sequels and The Veins Run Deep, due to the fact that Skyfire and Thunderblast, who authored said stories, are good friends and 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.
 * Unlike Blue Skye's Story, SoTN does not feature dates in each chapter, though the story is implied to be set from the late 20th century to the early 21st.
 * 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.