//------------------------------// // 7. The End of Evolution // Story: Brave the Ulvenweald // by Silvermyr //------------------------------// SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! The cultist whimpered weakly at the last snap and trembled in Twilight’s magic. She had curled up in a protective ball as far as the magical grip allowed, but it was still painfully possible to see the unnatural limpness of her hooves. ”Twilight! What is happening to her!?” Fluttershy asked frantically. She had already galloped up to the crippled pony and stood with her forelegs pressed against the semi-solid bubble of magic, peering in at the cultist. ”I don’t know!” Twilight replied just as frantic. What if it was her magic that was crushing her? She had to lighten the pressure! But that might be just what the cultist wanted! Twilight stood still, not knowing what to do but feeling more and more stressed with every indecisive moment. The cultist screamed. With a horrible, sickening crunch the cultist’s legs and back started twisting backwards, further than her anatomy would allow. Twilight stared, transfixed by some morbid curiosity as the cultist’s spine splintered and coiled into a conformation it could never be in. The lurching convolutions spread further up her body until her forelegs began to stretch as if she was being tortured in a rack. With six hollow cracks, each one punctuated by an excruciating scream, the joints in her forelegs dislocated. They continued to stretch until they were almost one and a half times their normal length. At this point the cultist had completely unraveled from her curled up position and twitched spastically, every part of her body exposed and racked by the hideous torture. Her hooves began to splinter and entirely new bones became visible in the ruptures, bones Twilight never knew existed. The convolutions finally reached her skull. For a moment she stared at Twilight, and something sharp seemed to flare in the depths of the cultist’s copper-red eyes. Then she closed them and the skull began to grow. It grew outwards, cracking loudly around the area of her ears. The pony’s mane seemed to sag for a moment as the skull bone could no longer support it, before something reaffixed and regrew. Twilight looked back to the legs. They were still unnaturally long, but they were no longer dislocated and broken. The bones in her forelegs were growing in front of Twilight’s eyes! Growing to meet the dislocated parts and repair themselves. Muscle tissue twined and stretched over the newly formed bones and inflated like grotesque balloons under the jet-black coat. The body too underwent the same treatment. With a series of loud pops, her ribs snapped, splintered and regrew, longer and thicker than before. The pony’s entire chest expanded and rippled like hot wax when a host of new muscles crisscrossed under her coat to link the fractured parts of her body together. She still screamed, but the rawness in her voice did not seem to be just from her screaming. It was like her voice itself had become lower and harder in her throat. Twilight looked back to the pony’s skull. Or rather, where there should have been a pony’s skull, for there was nothing ponylike left. It was sharp and pointy, canine in its design with small golden pinpricks for eyes. No pupils or sclera, just restless pools of molten gold. The ears had bent backward and the large mouth was filled with glittering teeth. The cultist smiled and a ripple seemed to pass over her body. Twilight’s breath caught in her throat; the cultist suddenly felt slippery in her magic! It was like trying to hold a sphere of water with only her hooves. Twilight struggled to compensate for the lack of balance, but to no avail. The cultist slipped out of her magical grasp in a way that Twilight knew was impossible; like she was droplet of oil gliding through water. The cultist floated out of her magic grip and the magical field, now empty, promptly collapsed in on itself. The cultist, Twilight and Fluttershy all stood frozen, taking in the new body. She was bipedal and the hooves were replaced with long paws, gleaming obsidian-like nails extending from the each of the five nimble fingers. The body was almost drop-shaped, thin and lean towards the back but with a robust chest and shoulders. Her forelegs almost reached the ground. The muscles under her coat looked like spun metal wires, an impression only accented by the glossy black coat with the patches of orange evening light shining down on her. The skull had grown to become larger than any pony’s and was shaped just like that of a wolf. Between her legs she had a shaggy tail. The saddlebags now hung on her chest, skewed and ill-fitting on the new body. ”I am Moonglint Dusk, acolyte of His Majesty King Sombra. He chose me to bear this blessing, to be his weapon against the immortal enemy, the alicorns.” She licked her lips slowly, hungrily. Her stomach rumbled. ”How fitting that you, who stopped us in the Crystal Empire, would be the first I got.” She took a step forward. The cute bob associated with a pony’s walking was gone, replaced with an undulating, skulking stride. Hardly a sound could be heard when she stepped on the moss. Twilight stepped back, flared her wings and lowered her horn, more wary than she wanted to admit. She knew that metamorphic spells were possible -she had even been subjected to one when she became an alicorn- but this was something else entirely. The cultist had not changed shape from a magical standpoint, like for instance Discord or a changeling would do, just reaffixed her bones and muscles into a new shape. The magic was certainly crude, crude and painful, but it did seem to have worked, somehow. She could not even begin to imagine the dark inspiration needed to come up with a spell like the one she had just witnessed. ”Fluttershy, back away,” Twilight said. ”I will handle this.” ”Will you now?” Moonglint asked menacingly. ”Well, we’ll just see about that,” Moonglint crouched and then sprang forward as if launched from a cannon, jaws open and teeth glistering with saliva as if to rip off a piece of her. Twilight quickly teleported away from her reckless charge and followed up with a blast of magic. The lilac ray hit the cultist in her chest and knocked her slightly backwards, but other than that, the magic just seemed to spread over her coat and run right off her. Again, Twilight thought of how water flowed over oil. The Cultist shook her head and sprang forward, dark and swift as a shadow. ”Huh?” was all Fluttershy had the time to say before Moonglint appeared in front of her. The long arms and claws raked through the air mere inches away from Fluttershy’s muzzle. The shy pegasus froze up in terror and would have slumped to the ground if Twilight’s magic had not held her up. Moonglint snarled angrily, slashing and biting after Fluttershy’s legs as Twilight quickly teleported her friend out of harm’s way. She could see Fluttershy shaking when she glanced over her shoulder. ”That’s not fair!” Twilight screamed, rage coloring her voice. ”This is between you and me! Leave Fluttershy out of it!” ”Fair? Fair!?” Moonglint snarled angrily. ”There is only one rule in this forest, Sparkle: Survival of the fittest! There is no such thing as fair!” The cultist and Twilight both began to circle one another, searching of an opening. The cultist’s stomach rumbled again. ”You know what, Sparkle?” Moonglint said without taking her eyes of Twilight. ”I’m an alchemist by trade. From the minotaurs to the centaurs to the zebras, I have studied with all of them.” She reached one of her arms up to the bags on her chest and pulled out a small, angrily red vial, hardly longer than one of her fingers. ”And here is one of my own recipes: a fertilizer.” ”Not impressed,” Twilight spat back, though she kept a wary eye on the vial. Moonglint would not have taken it out unless it could help her. ”Mind your step!” She shouted, jumped upwards and backwards, onto the roof of her house and threw the vial straight down into the small plantation. It looked like a wildfire sprouted. A twisting, spiny and foul-smelling wildfire of aggressively red vines shifting towards brown as they grew. They snaked up the house, into the windows and over the ground, straight at Twilight! Twilight flew up and threw a glance at Moonglint, who stood on the roof of her house watching the vines near her warily. Twilight felt something grasp around her hoof. She screamed and looked down. There was no ground beneath her. The entire clearing was covered by a mesh of angry red vines, so many they could use one another as support to grow on until they reached her. She blasted them with magic to cut them off. A few drops of red sap ran from the vines that still clung to her lower leg. She shook her hoof, but the severed vines refused to fall off. Instead they twisted themselves around like snakes and wriggled, wrapping around her leg tightly. ”Pop quiz, Sparkle! How do you kill an alicorn!?” Moonglint jumped back from the roof and up into the gnarled oak, further from the vines that tentatively groped over the roof. ”You suck them dry with your Leechleaves, that’s how!” Twilight begun to feel dazed. The clump of vines around her front leg were already starting to swell. ”Get off of me!” She shouted at the vines and pulled with her magic. They did not come off; it was like they had already begun to ingrain themselves into her body. ”Get off! Get off!” She screamed, panic in her voice. There was something deeply unsettling with these vines. The fact that they were feeding of her made them unbearable. ”GET OFF OF ME!” She screamed and summoned magic into her horn. She felt the magic diffuse into every part of her, like it would when she used her most impressive spells. Her entire body was crackling and sparkling with magic. She felt a bottomless relief at the stabbing pain in her forelegs that told her the vines had been completely evaporated. She locked her bleary eyes at Moonglint and felt a tingle from the tip of her tail to her horn as every ounce of magic she had rushed through her, and out of her. A thunderclap followed as the magical beam rushed towards the surprised Moonglint. The she-wolf threw her arms up over her head and curled up for protection. The magic onslaught hit like a giant hammer, knocking Moonglint clear off the roof and into the forest behind it. ”TWILIGHT, BEHIND YOU!” Fluttershy suddenly screamed. Twilight whirled around the at the same time as a… creature? dropped down from the trees around her. A tangle of Leechleaves, looking almost like a living creature, fell onto her wing. It felt like a thousand small teeth punctured her skin as the vines immediately began to wrap around her, entangling her wing and sending her plummeting towards the ground. The vines beneath her twitched and writhed in anticipation. ”NO!” A terrified Fluttershy screamed and caught her, just inches over the mesh of vines. They stretched after her, but Twilight cut them down with her magic. ”Twilight, where do I go!?” Fluttershy peeped. The entire forest was practically a hellish tangle of Leechleaves. All except for… ”Her oak tree! The vines don’t grow in that tree!” Twilight shouted and burnt away another offshoot reaching for them. Fluttershy flew like never before, twisting and clipping about the ever encroaching vines both from around her and from Twilight’s wing. She practically crashed into the oak, grabbing on to a thick branch and stopped there. Twilight quickly disentangled and stumbled forward, away from Fluttershy to prevent the vines growing on her wing from reaching her friend. Twilight stopped for a moment, then closed her eyes and concentrated. She could not afford to use up all of her power on removing the vines from her. She had to be clever. Her horn glowed, she clenched her teeth and sent a jolt of magic through her wing. It felt weird and none too pleasant, but slowly she could push away the roots in her wing. She wanted to throw up at the thought. She had roots of a plant inside of her! And she was pushing it out, feeling every disgusting movement! The clump of swollen vines fell of her with a thump and landed below the tree. ”I! Don’t! Think! SO!” Moonglint’s voice came from somewhere in the entanglement around Twilight and Fluttershy. With a ”Whooomf!” a real wildfire suddenly erupted among the vines, burning a large swat of them to crisp in a moment. On the bare ground stood Moonglint, her coat smoking slightly and with another vial in hand, this one noxiously green. ”Solar Flare, a zebra recipe.” Moonglint jumped from the ground and up into the tree. She met Twilight’s glare with her own. Her stomach rumbled again, this time accompanied by a twitch of Moonglint’s eye. Fluttershy was behind Twilight on the same branch. ”Where are you going to run now?” Moonglint snickered and slowly began to advance on them. ”I’m not!” Twilight bit back and shot forward. They were all standing in a tree, and Twilight was well aware her disadvantage. Hooves were not good for balancing on branches while Moonglint’s dexterous paws and claws certainly gave her some measure of balance. Twilight had to finish this quickly somehow, before she literally slipped up and fell. ”But you should!” Moonglint snarled and leaped forward. The two of them clashed in the middle of the tree, both half blinded by leaves and boughs. Twilight ignited her horn and struck with her forelegs, only to find her hooves blocked and caught by Moonglint. She let her spell fly straight into her opponent’s face. Moonglint howled in pain, took hold of Twilight’s hooves and all but threw her away, out of the tree. She righted herself just as a multitude of red vines attacked her from every angle. More out of instinct than anything else she teleported back into the tree only to be caught by Moonglint again, though her right eye now looked red and swollen. The she-wolf was panting heavily and stared wide eyed over Twilight’s shoulder. ”Let her go,” Fluttershy said simply. Moonglint growled angrily, but somehow Twilight felt her hooves come loose. She was so surprised she even forgot to get away from her enemy; she just stared, slack-jawed and confused at Moonglint. The she-beast did not move. She only stood and stared, transfixed by something behind Twilight. ”You are the reason so many animals have had to be eaten,” Fluttershy continued. Her voice was cold as a blizzard. ”I understand that predators must eat. I don’t blame them. But ponies are not predators; every death at the hooves on the hunters in the village are on you, aren’t they? You made them hunt?” Moonglint nodded. ”Meat makes a pony’s body stronger,” she explained. Twilight risked a glance behind her, even though turning her back on her enemy felt wrong on every level. Fluttershy was Staring, and not even Moonglint could withstand the overwhelming weight of the Stare. ”Turn back into a pony,” Twilight said, matching Fluttershy’s cold tone with her regal one. ”I will take you back to Equestria.” ”I… I can’t,” Moonglint said. Through her raw voice it was still clear she was afraid. ”I can’t turn back on my own. I must drink a potion from my bag.” Only now did Twilight remember. She did, in fact have the saddlebags still slung over her chest. ”I don’t think so. You are not getting into that bag. In fact…” Twilight applied her magic around the saddlebag to magic them off of Moonglint. ”Heighten your arms,” Fluttershy commanded. Moonglint whinnied, but complied. Twilight removed her bags. Moonglint let her paws fall slack, slicing straight through Twilight’s magical field in a way that she knew was impossible. Twilight saw the beast crack a smile before it disappeared behind a veil of piercing blue fire. Twilight backpedaled and hid her face behind her hooves to protect against the blazing heat. ”Fluttershy!?” she called out, ”are you okay!?” ”Look out, Twilight!” Fluttershy called just as Twilight felt like anvil dropped onto her back. She coughed and fell flat over the branch she was standing on. When she looked up she saw Moonglint leaping at Fluttershy, paws poised to strike. Without thinking she rolled around and grabbed after Moonglint’s legs, tripping her. They both jumped to their feet again, only for Twilight to be knocked on her back again as Moonglint all but threw herself at her, aided by her massive weight. ”Just give up and…!” she snarled, grabbed Twilight by her wings and roughly threw her down into the ground. ”become plant food already!” ”NO!” both Twilight and Fluttershy screamed. The last thing Twilight saw was a pale yellow streak dashing towards her, but it was not fast enough. Before Twilight had even understood what happened her eyes were covered in red vines. She felt a million needles prickling all over her coat. She screamed out in pain, repulsion and fear. When she felt a bunch of vines wriggling into her open mouth, every ounce of rational thought yielded to a type of wild panic concentrated on only one thing: survival at any cost. She reached for her magic, but rather than shaping it into a proper spell she just let it pour through her horn, more and more and more. For a moment she was blinded with a harsh white light. When she saw properly again, the ground around her was bare. She rolled onto her side and tried to vomit; an instinctive action after the brutal attack on her mouth. She coughed and sputtered, but realized that the vines were gone, both from her and the clearing around her. She tried to get up on her hooves, but stumbled and fell. Her legs no longer supported her. Her head was hammering. Her vision was swimming. Her heart felt weak in her chest. ”Blood loss,” she thought absently. ”Where… where are we?” Fluttershy asked beside her. It sounded like she was calling from very far away. ”I must have teleported…” Twilight mumbled. ”Dunno where we are… I can’t see right. F-Fluttershy, are you…?” ”I’m fine, Twilight, don’t worry about me.” ”We need to… get out,” Twilight said and staggered up. ”Must get to Celestia and Luna… they can… even if I can’t defeat her…” Twilight took a few stumbling steps in a random direction. ”Must hurry…” Fluttershy nuzzled her friend quickly and then draped Twilights’s wing over her back. She could not do much about Moonglint, but she could and would keep her friend on her hooves. They just had to rest until Twilight felt strong enough to send them home. The shadows were long now, as the dusk begun bleeding into evening. Fluttershy determined an approximate direction and begun guiding her injured friend through the woods, back towards Equestria. ***** The patch of vines was all still, strangely still. Moonglint still could not see very well since Twilight had sent a blast of magic straight into her eye, but she still felt like she should see something. Leechleaves were not gentle, most ponies would thrash and scream as they were completely sucked dry of every drop of liquid in their body. The stillness either meant that the alicorn had greeted her end with a calmness befitting her, or there was something wrong. Sadly, Moonglint had no good way of determining which of these two possibilities were true, as she could not waltz down into the vines herself to look. Still, in her beast-shape, her sense of smell rarely lied to her, and if that was the case then there was something wrong with this situation. However, leechleaves had the annoying side effect of smelling like weeks old cheese, something that made her sense of smell less reliable in this particular case. She grunted and turned away from the clump of vines where Twilight should be buried. She had to think. As the adrenaline started to draw back, she became all too aware of her hunger. Of course, that was nothing surprising. She had only eaten a light lunch off the forest floor earlier today, and then she was a pony. This new body needed much, much more food to work. That being said, she still could not leave the alicorn to chance; too much was at stake. She bent her legs and launched herself from the tree into the tangle of vines, tapping down and leaping away before the vines even realized she had been there, and dashed into the forest. There was still something she could do to ensure Twilight fell into her paws.