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// Prologue 
// Story: A Ponyville Outcast 
// by Shadowboltwriter 
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   The red stallion ran as fast as he could through the tangle of the Everfree forest. Right behind him a heavy and loud set of wooden legs tore through the ground and brush behind him. He was breathing heavy, refusing to stop running. The timber wolf suddenly leaped off of its hind legs in an attempt to finally catch him.

As both a saving grace and a death trap, the stallion tripped on a large root that was jutting out of the ground, sending him rolling down into a sinkhole that was next to it. The timber wolf flew above him and landing awkwardly on the edge of the hole, its wooden body making an audible cracking sound as it collided with the ground.  The stallion pushed his head up, disoriented from his fall. He immediately saw the brown creature and moved backwards until his back touched dirt.

"Come on Void... do... do something."

His panicked eyes frantically scanned his surroundings for something, anything useful. All he saw was dirt, roots, rocks, and that timber wolf. The wolf had stood back on his feet and was now staring at its prey.

"No... come on..." Void searched desperately for anything that could save him. All he could do was shut his eyes as he prepared for his attacker to jump on him. The wolf leaped once more, determined to catch his next meal, suddenly being engulfed by a huge blast of magic, shattering it into several pieces. 

Void cracked open one of his eyes to see what he had done, the colors of dark magic still evident around his curved horn. When he was finally assured that his attacker wouldn't be trying to kill him anymore he let his body sink to the ground in unsteady breaths.

Then the green aura appeared around the pile of sticks and Void was reminded that a timber wolf can put itself back together. He pushed himself up and scrambled to get out of this hole and go... somewhere else. His run eventually slowed to a walk after Void no longer heard anything from behind him.

Void threw his body against a tree trunk. That was one of the closest calls he's ever had here. He needed to be more careful or prepared about the this type of thing. His ears twitched as he listened into the dark forest around him. Silence.

"That's good... I guess." 

Void heaved himself back onto his hooves and looked around himself. He had completely lost his sense of direction when he was running. "Just pick a path I guess." Void declared. After looking around for a moment longer his hooves moved toward the direction he believed might bring him back home. Might. He really had no idea.

He walked for what felt like hours, despite it only being a few minutes. His hopes were falling pretty fast. He stopped and thought to himself. What were even the odds of him actually getting back to his home? It was more likely he would walk for days and find nothing than actually get back to the small camp he called home. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted when he heard an oddly loud noise from deeper in the forest.

Void's thoughts started jumping to conclusions. "Was that a tree? Or another wolf..." Void continued letting his thoughts create worse scenarios of what caused the sound and what would try and kill him, but eventually he smacked his head against a tree to make him come to his senses.

"It's nothing bad... probably just a tree." Repeated in Void's head again and again until he forced himself to believe it. He was way too paranoid about some things. That was just how his mind had developed. To be afraid of so many things. He returned his gaze to the direction of the sound. Maybe this could be a way he could work on his nerves? Hell, at least he had a direction to follow.

Void tossed any other negative thoughts to the back of his mind and started walking. In the mighty two minutes he walked his nerves immediately started working at him again. What if something was ready to pounce on him? What if he was walking up to some kind of trap. He almost considered just turning around and running away from whatever was about to appear in front of him. Those thoughts were dispelled when he actually saw what caused the noise, at least what he guessed it was.

On the edge of his vision there was some sort of chasm, or ravine, or whatever you wanted to call it. A brief blur of blue flew into his vision, carrying the end of an old bridge and attaching it to a side of the chasm. Was that what caused that bang? The bridge falling? Well... that was comforting in a way. At least it wasn't some Everfree creature. Then again maybe one brought it down in the first place. 

That trian of thought wasn't allowed to continue as something else came into view, a bunch of other ponies that rallied up around the blue one that brought up the bridge. He couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but they seemed to be praising her for something. A bridge couldn't be that important could it? The group of ponies continued down the path that the bridge had opened. 

Maybe... maybe they were headed to find something? Who knows what they could be doing out in a place like this. Void didn't want to be seen by them... but something in the back of his head was telling him to follow them. Maybe it was because he just wanted to see that they didn't get hurt. Maybe it was because he wanted to talk to them, which was odd considering at the same time he wanted stay away from them.

Void's thoughts on other ponies was like a love hate relationship. He wanted to talk to them, maybe actually talk to a pony in the years he's been out here. But then again he didn't want ponies seeing him whatsoever out of fear. Fear that they might think poorly of him, like he was some monster. Should he even follow them if it meant they might see him? He'd somehow avoided it for so long already, why let them start getting ideas now?

But... something just kept telling him to follow them. They didn't have to see him. He could just keep his distance. Maybe something good might come out of it. That was a positive train of thought for once. Maybe it would be good to stay on those tracks. By the time he decided to follow them it had been a few minutes since the group he saw had started walking away, so he had some distance to make up.

He sprinted forward to try and make up the distance he had allowed to develop. After a few moments of following the path, from a distance away, and eventually something else sprung into his view. It wasn't the group of ponies he saw, but something else. A large stone castle took up his vision as he stepped out into a small clearing that surrounded it. It was astonishing to him despite its state of obvious disarray. 

"How have I never seen this?!" Void questioned as he walked up to one of the walls, turning his head in all sorts of directions to view it. He'd been in this forest for years, how had this slipped past him? Maybe it was because he never likes wandering away from his home. That was probably it.

Any more thoughts about the castle's beauty were cut off when Void noticed a flash of light erupt from one of the rooms. No, not even just a light. It was more of a rainbow. Did that group of ponies he saw earlier cause it? He hadn't even been thinking about them when he saw the castle. He decided to try and see if he could get a look of what had happened. 

He tried for a minute or two to find a way up to the room when he saw the group start walking down a set of stairs. His immediate instinct was to bolt as fast as he could back to the cover of the forest around him and hide. It didn't help that Celestia had chosen to raise the sun right now, probably making him stick out even more. He leaped and dove into a bush the second he was close enough and turned himself around to look at what was behind him.

The group of six from earlier all walked out of the castle, along with some other dark blue pony and... Celestia? That was definitely something, er- somepony, he never expected to see out here. Now that he looked, the dark blue pony next to her looked similar to her. They all kept walking down the path that lead away from the castle, looking really happy for whatever reason. 

Everypony eventually walked out of his sight into the forest again, the last pony to leave his sight was the purple pony. He didn't really like calling her that but it was all he had to go by. She turned her head around, probably to get another look at the castle, probably amazed by it as much as Void was. When she turned her head back around to keep walking, but then before she turned completely around she did something that immediately terrified Void. She locked eyes with him.

There was no doubt she saw him. They probably looked at each other for several seconds before Void's instincts suddenly kicked in and he bolted in the opposite direction. Who knows what he would look like to her? She probably thought he was some other creature of the Everfree.

"Hell, I might as well be." Void thought as he ran back into the darkness of the forest.