Sunshadow lifted his head from grazing in the brief rest period as he saw his best friend, Flamefrost, walk out into the meadow. Sunshadow hadn’t seen his friend in almost a week. He thought back through all that had happened in the past few months since their run-in with Eclipse and the relief that came with realizing Blackstorm was alive again.

Starfall had taken pretty much total control of the situation because of her training in the Golden Meadow, so the council was happy to let her lead. She had issued two major parts of the pegasus army, Eclipse’s Guard and Training.

Darkblaze was in command at Horsetail Falls, because he was the only one of the three black foals to have the silver starfire. If Eclipse escaped, it was the Guard’s responsibility to chase him down, capture him again, and if possible, kill him.

The other two black foals, Nightpearl and Blackstorm, stayed in the Sun Herd area to take control under Starfall of the second wing of the army, the steeds in Training. All capable steeds were required to enter one of three options: snipers under the command of Cloudpepper and Star, spies under the control of Clawfire, sky herders under Morningleaf and a beautiful dun mare with dark blue wings named Oceandusk, or the main army under the command of Brackentail, Redstorm, and several newly-made captains.

The elders also helped, those of them who could move their wings made baskets and ones who had lost control of their wings watched the active army members in drills and reported back to the soldiers’ captains, and in some cases, to Redstorm.

All of this went through Sunshadow’s mind as he looked at Flamefrost, who was ending his rotation of Eclipse’s Guard. The buckskin steed walked over to his captain to request a break to visit his friend. Foxfire, the chestnut pinto captain with wine-red wings tipped in ice blue, granted Sunshadow a break, knowing that Sunshadow and Flamefrost were very close.

Sunshadow thanked Foxfire and walked closer to his friend, eager to talk and catch up with him.