A Timber for a Wolf (Comment-driven)

by Solarkness

Arc of Other Part Three

You stare at the Tatzlwurm, and it stares back. Slowly, you move backwards, towards the hole it made.

You keep the sword close to your chest, not showing any weakness. You wonder if you will meet the one who made the tunnels more symmetrical if you follow that hole.

You become painfully aware of how slow you are moving. Excruciatingly slow, almost as if some cosmic entity slowed time for all but your mind down.

Heh, as if that could be true. And if it would be, you most likely would find some way to exploit it.

Finally, you reach the hole. The Tatzlwurm hasn't moved yet, just having watched you. If you wouldn't know any better, you would say it found you amusing. Once you finally are out of the Tatzlwurms sight, you turn around and bolt.

Stealing a glance back, you see the Tatzlwurm falling down onto the ground, and digging through. You remember them having some sort of echolocation, and realise you cannot escape it if it doesn't want you to. Yet, you keep running. You don't pick fights you cannot win, so you just keep running. While you are unable to escape it, it also is unable to fully kill you; However, losing your stuff wouldn't do you any good.

You feel the ground shaking beneath you, and a threeway crossroad coming up ahead. You first move for the right path, before quickly jumping towards the left, narrowly dodging the Tatzlwurm that is now blocking the right path.

It roars at you, coating you in its saliva. It would have quite possibly infected you with something, if you would have been an actual living creature. As it is, you just repeat your flight, down the left tunnel. You once again sneak a glance backwards, and the Tatzlwurm is half-running half-crawling after you through the tunnel. Atleast this time you are able to see it.

You scream as it has already closed half the distance, and find the strength in yourself to run even faster than before.

You realise you won't be able to lose it, and stop while turning around, grabbing the sword in your chest. However, as you look down the tunnel, all you see is a new hole directly in front of you.

You gulp, before feeling a slight tremor shake the earth. Realising what it means, you jump in the last moment... into the hole the Tatzlwurm made.

You curl together while falling to keep the damage the fall would do to your body as small as possible. Right when hitting the ground, you take note of several things: Incredible pain, broken body, swamming vision and there is no way out of there.

You whimper, being effectively incapacitated by the pain. You wish you still had the body from when you went on this journey; The longer a Timberwolf uses a piece of wood, the less he feels pain when it is hit.

You grunt, trying to get your act together, but fail horribly. You think you even feel your leaves above your eyes leaking water.

You curl together, believing it is time to try and leave it all behind again...

After all, nobody is there to help you, nobody knows, nobody cares... That last one was a lie, you realise. Dalekarian would care! Maybe not in the good way, but he would.

You stand back up shakily; Dalekarian would probably have exclaimed his battlecry 'EXTERMINATE' when the Tatzlwurm appeared, and charged.

You feel the ground rumbling, and breath in. The polluted air did not do you any good, but you breathed it anyways, slowly, to slow your heartrate. You grab the sword in your mouth, very tight, and concentrate on where the shaking is coming from, and when the Tatzlwurm will arrive.

Dalekarian wouldn't have gotten in this situation. Neither would your counterpart; Your counterpart would rather die screaming than run away.

You count the seconds until the Tatzlwurm arrives: Three, two, one...

You jump up, making a salto and slashing around you. Your sword hits the back of the Tatzlwurm, somehow getting stuck. You hold on to the sword as the Tatzlwurm digs into another wall, nearly flattening you with the stone it did not dig through.

You grunt, concentrating fully on simply not letting go of the sword, before the Tatzlwurm arrives in another tunnel, one that is symmetrical, and staying there. It's obvious that it wants you to jump off so it can chase you again, but at the same time, hanging there wouldn't help either of you two.

You manage to remove the sword and jump off. As the Tatzlwurm digs into the ceiling, most likely planning to turn around and try to eat you again, you watch the tunnel you are in now.

The side opposite of the hole the Tatzlwurm made seems to lead into some kind of cave, and if your vision isn't impaired, it is the one with the scrawlings.

You can see a light in the end of the tunnel on your side, and decide to go for it.

You run, sometimes jumping over the Tatzlwurm appearing right in front of you, sometimes sliding beneath it. You also have to jump to the right or left to keep running, or maybe even stop, because the Tatzlwurm is very persistant.

As you get closer to the light, you notice the Tatzlwurm attacks getting rarer, before they simply stopped.

You stare at, what you now realise is a door, the white light, wondering whether you should open it or not.

Are you just going to stand out there?

You jump back startled, before slowly entering through the door.

---

Actual You

You stare at your for now to be 'roommates'.

Please tell me I don't have to share with them...

"Well, 'mysterious stranger who won't tell his name'," Honorable Sense laughs a bit at that, "You will all occupy the same room for now. While they might tell you their names are things like 'Tactician Genius', rest assured that these three pegasi have the names 'Flight Short', 'Running Wave' and 'Smoke Weed'. Now, I am sure you all will want to get to know eachother, even if the new addition will be only temporary."

You glare at Honorable Sense, who closes the door behind you. "Now, you three, I want to make one thing clear..."

What do you do?

Comments

[Baraka Obama]

"dibs on top bunk!" you holler and launch yourself at the bed

however, you vastly overestimate your jumping skills and proceed to slam your face into the post thats holding up the bed, you crash through the post and land in the mattress which unfortunately had someones rock collection spread out. the bed posts then give out to the amount of stress you've caused it, and it collapses on you. you groan in pain with a loud ringing noise going off in your head probably meaning you got a concussion or someone crashed a gong on your head for the lulz (you hope its the latter since concussions really suck), it may have been just you but, you swore you could hear the faint calling out of "my rock collection!"

Meanwhile in the mess hall...

a certain half demon was punching a crimson knight in the face for looking at him funny,

"hmmmm" war said, while not stopping with the face punching "someone was caused harm and it wasnt me..."

"hey" he says to the guy he just stopped punching "does that seem weird to you?"

the crimson knight was too busy being unconscious to answer

"oh well,I can always harm him later, back to work" and resumes with the punching

meanwhile on a rock farm...

a lone tear fell from the eye from a certain grey pony. then promptly was sucked back up into the eye

"rocks were harmed today..." the pony said "i feel like I must punish those who did so, but its too troublesome..."

meanwhile back to you

you suddenly feel like your life is going to be awfully short at this point, but who knows, it could be the possible concussion talking

you poke your head out of the gap between the beds to see your roommates staring at you incredulously

"whoops" is all you manage to say before the pretty colors envelop you into unconsciousness

[Solarkness]

7034200 Is it okay if I change War's speech? I changed this part:

"someone was caused harm and it wasnt me..."

to "Someone was harmed, and not by me..."

[Solarkness]

7074251 Actually, they came from several old headcanons of mine about the origin of Timberwolves. Some of these might have been adopted from other people, I don't know.
It primarily came from the idea that Changelings are, while they are part of a hivemind, essentially immortal. If they die, their essence, soul so to say, stays anchored in the Hivemind, however the self-awareness is lost as long as they have no body. They act as relays for other changelings during that part of their lives. However, in the unlikely event that they lose their connection to the hivemind, they start fading away and dying. In the Everfree-forest however, the residual magic is strong enough to keep them alive. At the same time it deforms them, changes them. They become half-ghosts. When that happens, their self-awareness is re-activated, and they realise what happened to them. Usually, they panic and unconciously *grab*, for lack of a better word, nearby sticks and leaves. Those usually aren't rotten and dead yet, but not connected to a tree anymore. They still have enough magic in them to react, but not to overwhelm.
And if you kill a Timberwolf? Chances are, you only disconnected them from their body. To truly kill one, you would have to keep them away from the unusual high lingering magic in the atmosphere of the Everfree forest. Elsewhere, they wouldn't last very long, because the lingering magic wouldn't be enough.
What you come to know as Timberwolves are nothing more than souls that should have moved on a long time ago, anchored to a physical body.
Well, that was an old headcanon of mine. I might even use it for some other story in the future, but not for this one.