A week after I’d gotten everything set up in Ponyville, I was making my first sales run to Eezdraug. I didn't have a cart yet; however, I’d decided to make my own instead of pay for the one in Eezdraug, but it wasn't finished yet. On the other hand, I didn't have much yet to sell, either. What I did have were mostly sample goods to probe the market with. From Rarity and her contacts, I’d gotten gems and bolts of cloth. From some of the farmers, I’d gotten some herbs and spices that I hadn't seen on the other side of the fence, such as garlic and cinnamon. I was also carrying a couple boxes of tea bags, as well as the leaves in raw form.
These, plus a few other things I suspected might sell, were all securely fastened into borrowed crates that I’d strapped to my puppets’ backs. All but one of my puppets sprinted through the woods, towards the hidden city along the Sap Road, while the one remaining wolf stayed in my grove.
Even at a hard run, the journey along the path still took a good two hours. It was a good thing I’d set out early, otherwise, I wouldn’t have enough time to do anything once I got to the hidden village. But that still left me alone with my thoughts, as was common for me. To pass the time, I started singing with myself, something that was quickly becoming a favorite hobby of mine. It was a shame that I really had trouble remembering most of the human songs I knew, because I only could sing butchered fragments of those songs. Yet my singing faded away shortly thereafter as my memory of the song failed me, only to resume as a new song took its place in my mind.
When I finally arrived at and subsequently pierced the redirection barrier, I launched my puppets over the fence, one at a time, and yet swiftly enough that I barely broke stride. Less than a dozen meters separated my selves from Eezraun, the ring road encircling Eezdraug.
Even from here, the voices of travelers were clear, clearer than they had been just on the other side of the fence. I suspected that whatever mysterious power was imbued in that glowing fence somehow muted sounds to some degree, beyond what logic would have suggested. As for the voices themselves, I couldn’t understand them. Juzu and Muzen, who were quickly becoming good friends of mine, had very generously offered some of their time to help me start learning their language.
I couldn’t understand much of it, and I still had to mentally translate everything instead of understanding the words directly, but I was making progress. That said, the travelers on the road that I had just arrived at were still unintelligible to me, and I to the majority of them.
Having come this way before, I easily navigated to Juzu and Muzen’s home - well, their family’s home, but I had yet to meet any of their other relations. When I arrived, Muzen was there waiting for me. “Good afternoon, my friend,” he greeted to the lead wolf. Unlike me, Muzen had a prodigious talent for language; the slow, unsure drawl he’d had when we’d first met had now definitely faded. His accent was thick, sure, but he no longer struggled to find the right words.
“Afternoon,” I said back, nodding my wolf’s head. “How are you? Are your injuries healing well?”
“Yes,” he replied, nodding as well. “The healer has said that I am well enough to begin light sparring once more. I look forward to rejoining my brothers on the expeditions.” From conversations before, I knew that he was referring to his literal siblings, though they also counted as brothers in arms.
“Excellent.”
His faceless head moved, and if the direction was any indication, he was looking over my other puppets. I got the feeling his gaze was lingering on Taur, Lycan, O’Lantern, and the Ripper. “And who are your friends?”
“Me as well,” every puppet said in unison. “I am a puppeteer, and these are all my puppets.”
The fluid-like flesh where his face should have been rippled, while the flexible antlers on his head perked up, a pair of actions I’d come to associate with surprise from the flowing stone deer. “Truely? You would be a great ally on our expeditions if you can fight with every one of those puppets.”
My real body’s flowers perked up at that. “I would love to come on one, to see what they are like.”
“That could be arranged,” Muzen replied. “Come, let’s go.” He started walking south.
I hesitated for a moment, and then sent my puppets after him. “Wait, where are we going? The market’s north of us!”
“It is,” Muzen remarked, “but we are not going that way.”
“But I need to try and sell this stuff,” I protested, motioning to the crates supported by each and every one of my puppets.
The flesh of muzen’s head warped, forming a smiling mouth where previously there’d been no mouth at all. “Grandfather mentioned you to Chief Hiram. The Chief is interested in meeting you, and seeing what you have to offer.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Nothing has ever crossed the barrier before. You are something of a... celebrity? Is that the word? Yes. A celebrity.”
Back in my grove, the little bit of ego stroking made me hold my branches up just a bit more proudly. Though Muzen couldn’t see that, I was sure he saw the sudden, extra spring in the step of all of my puppets.
We didn’t have far to go - really not even a half-dozen blocks. Juzu worked for the Chief, so it made sense then that they would live close together. But when I got there, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Eezdraug gave off a feel similar to a medieval European village, and so I, for some reason, kept imagining Chief Hiram’s place of governing being a large building in the center of town. I intellectually knew that to not be the case, but I couldn’t shake the image. So when Muzen announced that we were here, I still found myself surprised.
We were at the shore of a lake, and a good sized one at that, as it was likely a couple of acres in area. But that was the least surprising thing about it. For one, it was green and sparkled, as if filled with glitter. For another, swirls of other colors occasionally drifted through the liquid, which was far too viscous to be water. And finally, it moved.
Two swirls of red, which looked suspiciously like eyes, drifted past us as we walked along the shore, only for the slime to begin to stir. From the surface, and made of the slime itself, a figure rose up. And in that moment, I realized two thing.: First, that this must be Chief Hiram himself.
However, the second thing was a little harder to explain. To use an analogy, imagine growing up in a world inundated with the scent of vanilla. Vanilla in every meal; vanilla scented candles, soaps, perfumes, air-fresheners; vanilla in everything and on everything. In fact, there’d be so much vanilla, that everybody would become scent-blind to the smell and not even realize that the scent was there. Then imagine waking up somewhere where vanilla didn’t exist, and they’d never even heard of vanilla. And then, after spending a while in the vanilla-less place, imagine running into someone who smells of vanilla, after having not smelled it for a long time.
That was what I was feeling from Hiram. It wasn’t a scent, but at the same time, the sensation was as emotionally invoking as one, and it seemed terribly familiar. And the emotion it filled me with? Homesickness, of all things, which made no sense seeing as I was literally rooted at my home.
In the fraction of a second it took for me to be nearly overwhelmed by these emotions, the slime figure emerging from Hiram’s body had coalesced into a humanoid figure. Well, it was more of a minotaur in shape than a human on second look, but close enough.
And then Hiram spoke. <<??? Why ??? Me ???????.>> His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if he was using his entire body to project the sound. He spoke in that other language, so while I was in awe of the strange acoustic properties of his voice, I could not understand most of it. What I could understand was the body language of Hiram’s slime minotaur. It crossed its arms, as if hugging itself, and frowned deeply. Its eyes, tinted a pale red, looked down towards the “ground,” refusing to meet my puppets eyes.
And then Muzen whispered into a puppet’s ear, “He asked, ‘Why do you all fill me with such a strange emptiness?’”
That wolf whispered back, “Tell him I don’t know, but that he’s not alone in having strange feelings.”
Muzen’s antlers drooped slightly at my comment, but he turned and relayed the message anyway. After Chief Hiram heard that, he said something back to Muzen, who in turn pointed to my puppets with his antlers and said something in return. I heard my name, so I assume he was introducing me.
The slime minotaur slid forwards across the surface of the massive, sapient geluv’s surface. When it reached the edge, the slime under it surged forwards, creating a path for it to continue on. Finally, as it approached my Ripper, it looked it in the eye. The feeling of homesickness increased, and yet at the same time, it was no longer as unpleasant as it had been. There was something in the slime minotaur’s eye that was eerily familiar, and yet reassuring at the same time. The sudden but faint smile on its lips suggested to me that I wasn’t alone in that feeling.
Hiram’s construct stuck out its hand in greeting. Without thinking about it, I shook it back. Unlike when the pet gelal touched me the other day, the wood of my puppet’s hand did not go numb, nor did the magic fail. It only tingled slightly, but pleasantly as well. When I pulled my Ripper’s hand back, it came away coated in the translucent green slime. Instead of wiping it or trying to clean it off, I just curled that hand into a fist.
With Muzen translating, Chief Hiram said, “It’s good to meet you, Lumber Jack the Outsider. Juzu has spoken much about you.”
“Likewise, alpha Hiram,” I replied.
“I hear you have some goods to sell my people?” Hiram said through Muzen.
“Yes.” I started setting down the crates of goods. “I have-”
<<Wait.>> I didn’t need Muzen to translate that one for me. “There are other, more interested individuals at the dock.” As Muzen translated that, he added in a motion with his head to indicate the place in question. Sure enough, there was a dock, with a pier jutting out into the lake of slime that was Hiram’s own body. There were even small boats sailing atop Hiram himself.
Muzen, unprompted by his Chief, added, “I should have thought of that.”
“Thank you,” I said. I scooped up my crates again, but before I could start walking, the chief’s slime surged forward across the ground and under the feet and paws of all of my puppets, plus Muzen.
Suddenly, we were lifted off the ground. My bipedal puppets nearly fell, but Hiram moved to perfectly counter the motion, leaving them all dry and upright. The surface surged, sending us swiftly racing towards the pier, faster than I could have run.
The slime minotaur protruding from the main body moved alongside us, keeping pace, though it did lose much of its detail as we moved. By the time we’d gotten to the pier, a few seconds after we’d started moving, it was an only vaguely humanoid blob. But it started reforming as we slowed down. Hiram gently set us on the dock while the minotaur stepped up beside us. For a second, I thought it had detached from the slime, but then I spotted a little tendril threaded through the spaces between the wooden planks of the dock, connecting it to Hiram’s main mass.
The slime minotaur motioned for us to follow it. He led us through the crowd to a spot that, other than having a few deer milling about at, was empty. Muzen translated, “Here. Unpack your goods. Show us what you have to offer.” As he spoke, other deer wandered over to us, likely drawn by my novel appearance.
I set my crates down and opened them up. From within, I withdrew the various goods I’d brought, as well as a picture-filled catalogue of various goods from Ponyville and the surrounding Equestrian towns. Two of the products I’d gotten from Rarity were a woolen jacket and a cotton dress, both of which were embroidered with her mark, and which she’d insisted I dress my wolves in. I donned the dress swiftly — and it looked good on me — but for the jacket, I had to stifle a laugh, and then failed to hold it in when I remembered the look on Rarity’s face when I told her that she was literally asking me to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Muzen gave me a confused look, but I only answered with a dismissive chuckle and shake of the head. As soon as I was ready, I pulled out a sheet of paper with a little speech written on it, which also happened to be one of my practice translations. I started to read off of it, or at least I tried. My voice caught as my other puppets gazed upon the growing crowd. Wordlessly, I handed the scripted speech to Muzen. One pitying look later — holy fuck, I’m glad my wolves can’t blush — Muzen took the script and read it off to the crowd.
I looked back at my stand, only to realized that in my moment of distraction, Hiram had had replaced the small pile of gemstones on the table with the stone tokens the deer used, and was happily eating them. Later, when I counted up the tokens, I’d realize that he’d paid me more than I would have asked for them anyway, but for now, I was just gawking at the size of the token pile. I wondered where had he gotten the tokens from anyway. I bet he probably kept them inside his own body like I did with valuables inside my wolves.
With Muzen’s help, I drew in a crowd to show my goods. They seemed utterly disinterested in the cloth, but my supply of cinnamon, garlic and tea leaves were bought up almost instantly. I’d also thrown in a few of my allies’ zap apples, though I was more stingy with them. When I asked about the deer’s excitement towards my edible goods, Muzen told me that their food options here were limited due to poor soil conditions, and exotic flavors usually had to be imported into the city from further in the exclusion zone, usually at high cost and high risk. From what I gathered, I could probably double my asking price for the food products.
An hour later, and I was nearly out of the sample goods to sell, and I’d made quite the sum. If I had to guess, the six hundred tokens I’d earned translated to roughly two thousand bits, give or take a few hundred. The only problem was that I couldn’t exchange it for bits directly. I had to buy goods here, and sell them back in Ponyville — not that that was actually an issue.
I’d sent O’Lantern and a wolf off to browse the pier and the main marketplace for goods to sell in Ponyville. I already knew they had cheap, abundant leather here, as well as a variety of animal products. I figured those, along with the few special requests I’d gotten from Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends would be good enough to get me started.
When I’d sold everything save for the cloth, and in only an hour, I packed my crates and my money up and hoisted them onto my puppet’s backs. “That went well.”
“It did,” Muzen said, though he sounded somewhat disappointed.
“Hm? You sound bothered.”
“No,” he replied. “I just wish I’d tried that strange fruit of yours. It looked... good.”
Taur reached up his sleeve and pulled out an apple, though it was one of my silver apples instead of the rainbow fruit. “You should have told me.” I buffed the apple on the manticore fur of my robes. “Here, try this one. I’d been saving it for when I met the Chief, but you can have it instead.”
“It looks... metal,” Muzen remarked hesitantly.
I held it out to him. “It’s not. And it's just as sweet as the zap apples. I grew it myself.”
One of his tentacle-like antlers stretched out and wrapped itself around the fruit, lifting it up to his newly reformed mouth. He took a bite.
I swear I could see his whole body stiffen. Suddenly, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, he devoured my apple, stem, seeds, and all. A green, slimy tongue emerged and licked his lips, searching for every last trace of the fruit. When he was satisfied that every last morsel was devoured, he turned to me.
“You like that?”
He nodded. “Very much. It's so sweet and juicy!”
My various puppets smiled. “I’m flattered you think so.”
He cocked his head to the side, and then his antlers twitched. “Wait, you grew this? As in, on your own branches?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, no! Of course not!” he insisted, though there was a slight twinge to his voice. “But those other apples, did they come from someone, too?”
“Hahaha, no,” I replied cheerily. I then quickly explained to him the nature of most apple trees and of my allies. He looked relieved when I told him that no, the people who bought the apples at my little makeshift stand weren’t eating the parts of intelligent creatures. “Anyway, thanks for your help, Muzen. Here, I promised-”
I’d been reaching for some of the tokens I’d earn to compensate Muzen for his time, but his hoof stopped Lycan’s paw. “No,” he declared, “I want to go outside.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, beyond the barrier. I want to see the world you come from. We have as much trouble crossing it as you said the outsiders did. But you can cross it. Take me with you. That will be my payment.”
Well, that worked for me. Every token I kept was a little more I could invest later. “When do you want to leave?”
“Really?” I nodded. “Thank you! Tomorrow, then, at sunrise.”
“Sure thing.” I forgot what I was going to say next, as a loud commotion nearby caught my attention. Many deer were all headed one way, excitedly chatting among themselves. “What’s going on?”
Muzen stretched his neck, extending it well beyond what the underlying bones should have been able to do, and surveyed the growing crowd. “There’s a hunting party coming in. I think they caught something big.”
My interest piqued, I started in that direction while asking my friend what he meant by “hunting party.” I’d been under the impression that they, like the deer from Earth and the ponies from Ponyville, were herbivores.
“There are monsters further in, and the further you go, the bigger they get,” was all I got in the ways of an answer. Muzen picked up the pace, and I couldn’t help but notice the excited bounce in her step. The way his hooves seemed to pop off the ground reminded me of Rarity whenever she started to talk about something she was passionate about.
We came upon the crowd, and noticed that they were gathering around one particular pier, where a tarp-covered barge was docked. I saw the tarp ruffled as a deer came out from under it, and in that instant, the air was saturated with the scent of blood, and not deer’s blood. The deer themselves smelled like nothing, blending into the environment around them, so it left me curious as to what creature had spilled that delicious-smelling blood.
And when they finally pulled the tarp back, I, along with the crowd around us, gasped. I’d seen hydras before, as they often wandered out of the swamps, but this behemoth put them to shame. And it wasn’t quite a hydra either; the best description I had of it was the Japanese Yamata no Orochi, the eight-forked serpent. And it was massive: one of its sixteen eyes was big enough that two of my wolves could fit inside the socket with room to spare.
Just how they managed to slay that thing, I couldn’t fathom. From what I’d gathered so far, this world had not yet developed weaponized firearms, and the people of Eezdraug were even further behind technologically than those of Equestria.
But for how surprised I was by the slain beast, Muzen was showing an equal, if not greater, measure of excited joy. He shouted something in his native tongue, repeated it, and then grabbed the closest of my puppets and dragged it to the barge.
“Muzen!” I shouted when he dislocated Lycan’s arm. He stopped, realizing that the limb he’d been pulling was now a pile of wood scrap on the ground. I quickly closed the distance and levitated the wood back into place. “What the hell, Muzen? Got ants in your pants?”
He looked at me blankly for a second... or I think it was blankly. It’s hard to tell when my friend is currently lacking a face with which to emote. “That’s my brother up there!” He then motioned to the deer on the barge.
“Oh, cool.”
“Come!” Again, he dragged me forwards, though this time I was prepared for it. Moments later, he was hauling my puppet onto the barge. He let go of me and embraced his brother. “Tavu!”
<<Muzen! ????????>> Everything he said after Muzen’s name was lost to me, but I could follow the tone of the conversation. Muzen was excited, while Tavu (if I'd heard his name correctly) was happy to see Muzen.
Muzen pointed at my puppet and introduced me to him. I greeted him, but unlike Muzen, he couldn’t speak the same language as me, so we were stuck with Muzen translating. From what they told me, Tavu and his group were hunters that sought out the giga-fauna of the exclusion zone. The orochi — for lack of a direct translation — was prized for its leather, bones, and fatty oils. The rest of the body was usually either dried and smoked to be used as an emergency food supply, or was dumped into Hiram for for the massive slime creature to eat.
After learning that, I sought out and easily acquired a good twenty pounds of orochi meat, as well as a flask full of its blood, both of which tasted amazing to my wolves. As soon as I had those things, I recalled Taur, along with the meat and blood, back to my grove. I couldn’t wait to sink my roots into that succulent flesh and drink up its blood. And If I could make the blood into growth solution, I’d be really happy.
Taur leaped through the opening in my web of vines that encircled my grove. As he trotted towards me, he snagged a zap apple off the branches of one of my allies. Pulling out the flask of blood, I crushed the zap apple and let the juice drip into it. Then, holding it aloft, I commanded, Zap this, please.
As they had done with Discord, when he showed me this before, they zapped the blood with several bolts of magical lightning. When my vision cleared, I found Taur holding a vial of rainbow-glowing liquid. It wasn’t as bright or vibrant as the one made from Discord’s blood, but it still was beautiful.
Walking over to my trunk, Taur held out the vial. “Bottoms up.”
Now, unlike when I’d accidentally done this with Tirek’s blood to create Taur, I didn’t instantly blackout. Instead, I felt as if I was a human that had just been shocked in the hands. My whole body, plus the plundervines around me, shuddered at the sharp, unexpected pain. When it passed, I realized that I’d accidentally dropped all of my puppets.
“Lumber Jack! Are you alright?” Muzen anxiously asked me as my puppets pulled together again.
I groaned. “Yes. I just did something stupid and rash. I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.”
Despite the sun having gone down a long time ago, I still wasn’t tired. The lethargy that came with the night sky... didn’t. I was still full of restless energy, even after the moon had reached its peak. My whole body was tingly, from leaves to root-tips. Even my new vines were antsy, perpetually snaking around each other into an ever more tangled web.
Only once the sun had risen again did I start returning to a semblance of normalcy. I say semblance because, over the course of the night, I had grown again. The magic detecting, eye-like nodules on my branches were now well above the forest canopy, and for once, I could see further than my own grove. To the north, Ponyville glowed like a warm flame in the distance. Beyond that, Canterlot shone like a star on the mountain. Around me, the Everfree’s green glow swirled around and into me, while to the east, magic surged out of the ground like a geyser of green water, miles high. I knew that fountain of magic to be the exclusion zone, where Eezdraug stood hidden, and was the reason Eezdraug could exist in the first place. But seeing it like this was simply stunning.
To my disappointment, my branches bore no new transmission seed. However, the little crack in my wood where Discord had planted the vial of his modified blood was open slightly wider. It wasn’t wide enough for me to retrieve the vial, but now I realized what Discord meant by my “full potential.” Simply, the bigger and stronger I got, the more the seam would open. I’d be willing to bet that the moment it’s wide enough for me to get it out would be the moment I’m strong enough to handle it.
And with that goal in mind, a plan started forming in my mind. I needed blood, and I needed lots of it. Zecora had told me that magic came from the soul, and that the stronger your soul was, the smarter and more magically powerful you could be, to an extent. Thus, the blood of intelligent creatures would be more potent than the blood of mere beasts, and I wanted the blood of the most powerful creatures of all.
Still, Discord’s warning about his blood echoed in my mind. If beings that were powerful like him could hurt me if I drank their blood too soon, then it would be wise to start with lesser creatures and work my way up. And considering the difference between the effects orochi’s blood and Tirek’s on me, I decided that that would be the course of action I would take.
“Are you ready to go?” one of my wolves asked Muzen, who was wearing a leather vest and a pack full of supplies. He told me he was. “Great. Follow me, then.”
Muzen trotted behind my pair of wolves. When we reached the fence, I stopped and looked back at him with both puppets. “You know, I’m curious. Why have none of you ever gone out before?”
“The barrier spins us around. We always wind up back at the fence,” the flowing stone deer replied.
Strange. That meant that the barrier acted in reverse for things born inside of it. Whereas I had trouble getting in but not out, it sounded like they had trouble getting out but not in. I suspected that meant that a pony-deer pair could navigate with no issues at all. “No worries, then. Just follow me. Ignore everything else your senses tell you and follow my steps exactly.”
Quickly, we had scaled the fence and were starting to make our way outwards. Almost instantly, Muzen veered off to the side under the influence of the glowing fence’s magic. I quickly stopped and adjusted his path. Thrice more I had to correct Muzen before he wandered too far, but in the end, we made it through.
It took us a good few hours to navigate the trail I’d made towards Ponyville. We couldn’t exactly go very fast, as Muzen’s injuries, while mostly healed, were giving him trouble any time he tried to hit a gallop. But, we managed to reach the edge of town a little before noon. “Just a word of warning, the ponies here tend to be scared of strangers. They’ve gotten better about it, but don’t be too surprised if you get stared at or somepony runs away, ok?”
“I understand,” Muzen replied.
“Good. I think there’s a festival going on today, so let’s try and have some fun.”