//------------------------------//
// The Forest 
// Story: The Void of Harmony 
// by Mordred 
//------------------------------//


3 weeks later

I slowly floated down to the floor after meditating most of the previous night, having discovered, in this world at least, there was a sixth focus school that was nowhere to be seen in the game. I had examined all of the abilities in the school, and they were interesting, to say the least. They largely focused on three things, those being sleep, shadows, and dreams. The first, main ability in the cluster was something called “Nightwalker” which, according to the vague description I had of it, was the ability to enter a realm that would allow you to enter the dreams of all who were asleep at the time.
I was thinking of what I should call this school when I was interrupted by knocking on the door. I opened it to find a guard with his hand raised to knock again, but he quickly put it down when he saw that the door was open. He bowed his head slightly, saying, “Princess Luna is ready for your expedition to the Everfree Forest, but I must say I heavily advise against it, as there are many dangerous creatures in that forest,”
I shook my head, and told the stallion, “You have seen Luna and I on the training grounds, yes? Unless we run into something unexpected, we should have no problem doing what we want in that forest,” The guard shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘I tried’, and led me out to a gilded chariot, with two pegasi guards between the yokes, and Luna standing, tapping her hoof somewhat impatiently, off to the left side of the chariot. She saw the guard and me walk up, and the guard saluted Luna before heading back inside, to do guard stuff most likely.
Luna hopped on the back of the chariot, and impatiently said to me, “Get on already, I want to be there as fast as possible.”
I shrugged and hopped on next to her, and the guards took off, the chariot rising smoothly from the landing pad that we were on. The trip to Ponyville, the town closest to the Everfree Forest, was surprisingly short, lasting only ten minutes or so, and we disembarked at the edge of the Everfree.
Luna and I started walking toward the Everfree, when we heard a voice drawl, “Y’all do know that there is the Everfree Forest, right? Tha most dangerous forest in all ‘f Equestria?”
I turned slowly to look at her, who turned out to be one of the Element bearers that I had met a few weeks ago, I believe Applejack was her name, and said to her, “I believe that that was the point of us coming here, and so, if I may ask you, could you please leave?”
Applejack grumbled something under her breath and turned and started walking away. I turned to Luna who simply nodded, and we started walking into the deeper portion of the forest, not seeing that Applejack broke out running as soon as she was out of direct sight of us.

P.O.V. Applejack

What in tarnation were those two fillies thinking, intentionally going into the Everfree forest alone? Ah need to go get Twi and the other girls to go after them, and stop them from making any stupid mistakes. I was thinking to myself while running to the Golden Oaks Library, to get Twi to help me round up the rest of the girls so that we could go after those two. I slammed the door to the library open, shouting, “Twi, TWI, I need you for something!” Twi came rushing down the stairs, and skidded to a stop in front of me.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Ah cut her off, saying, “Two fillies, I don’t know whose, just went into the Everfree forest, and the younger one said that they knew that it was the most dangerous forest in Equestria. Ah need ya to go round up the girls, and we’ll search for them, and hopefully find them before they get to hurt.”
Twi nodded, and said, “I’ll go get Rarity and Pinkie, you go get Fluttershy and Rainbow. They should both be at Fluttershy’s house,” Ah nodded, and Twi’s horn lit up, flashing brightly and she was gone. Ah sprinted back out the door, breezing right by Spike as he was returning to the library, knocking him onto his behind. After a couple of minutes of running, Ah arrived at Fluttershy’s, and Ah saw Rainbow performing some of her tricks in the sky while Fluttershy was feeding the chickens.
“Hey, AJ, what’s up?” Rainbow yelled.
Ah gestured for her to come down and called to Fluttershy, “Hey, Flutters, mind coming over here for a minute?” Fluttershy put down the bag of feed, carefully sealing the top, and walked over.
Ah was about to say something to Fluttershy when Rainbow interrupted, saying, “So, what’s up?”
“A couple of fillies went into the Everfree forest alone, but I couldn’t tell who they were. The one that did all the talkin’ acted like she knew just how dangerous the Everfree was, and they went in anyway, so I’m having Twi go and get the other girls so we can go and rescue ‘em,”
Flutters looked surprised that two fillies would go into the Everfree on their own, and let out an ‘eep’ when she heard that Ah wanted to go after them. Rainbow, on the other hand, looked pumped to go into the Everfree and potentially show off to some scared children.
Us three headed back to Twi’s library, and found Twi readin’ a book that seemed to be about the wildlife in tha Everfree, and Rarity was standing there sorta disgusted looking. Pinkie was bein’ Pinkie, that is, she was hopping in place, excited to meet new people.
“Alright, le’s get goin’ then y’all,” Tha other five shrugged and followed as Ah led them to the area in which they had entered the forest at. Ah noticed that there was a trail of broken twigs leading deeper into the forest, and the rest of the girls huddled up behind me as we entered the forest.
We’d been walking for five minutes when we saw the first signs of a struggle, which ended with two manticores dead in a clearing, and the path of broken twigs and branches continued. Twi stopped ta look at what killed the manticores, and pulled out a single arrow that was buried deep in the chest wound of one of them critters. The arrow looked odd, as it was solid gold with a glowing blue tail. Twi stuck it in the backpack she had brought with her, and we continued following the trail. After another eight minutes or so, we reached a hydra that had a scorched body and more of those arrows in its eyes and neck. It was also dead.
“AJ, did you see what types of ponies came in here?” Twi asked me.
I nodded, and replied, “I believe it were an earth pony and a pegasus, they looked to be around fourteen and sixteen, if Ah had ta hazard a guess at their ages. Any reason why?”
Twi turned to me and said, “The only way these burns could have gotten here is if there was an experienced unicorn with them, and these arrows are like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Ah raised an eyebrow at her, but we continued following the trail through the forest. Ah slowly noticed that there giant webs spanning the gaps between trees, and started hurrying. After another couple of minutes of walking, we heard a rapid clattering sound that disappeared as soon as we heard it, along with a thud. We entered a clearing and found a huge amount of carcasses surrounding a very large purple and gold object. It looked a lot like a tadpole, and it had weird legs sticking out of it, keeping it off the ground. We could hear the two fillies talking, but they were just behind the ship, and we couldn’t see them.

P.O.V. Mirage

After a few minutes of walking, Luna and I ran into a couple of manticores, which are basically lions with scorpion tails and bat wings. I was carrying my Akbolto Prime with me, so I made quick work of the one that pounced at me, shooting a couple of bolts into its chest, at which it collapsed to the ground. Luna had a slightly tougher time, as she wasn’t using a projectile weapon, but she dispatched her foe a couple seconds after I did, neatly stabbing it in the heart when it backed off slightly. We continued walking into the forest, breaking small twigs and branches so that we could easily find our way back out of the forest.
After walking another few minutes, we came to a bog that had giant stone pillars standing in it, and were in the middle of crossing it when a god damned HYDRA popped up out of the water. Luna started attacking its body with spells that seemed to burn it, judging from the large scorch marks it was leaving behind, and I was shooting the heads and necks, trying to bring it down. It only took one or two shots per head, and it went down quickly. We continued walking in the same direction, and I noted the giant spider webs that connected the trees. I also noted a set of eight glowing red eyes and shot in the center of them, killing it instantly.
I walked over and examined the corpse, and found a spider with a body that was about four feet long with legs that were each over six feet. I shrugged, figuring that it was on its own, and we continued walking. We reached a clearing that had a very familiarly shaped ship in it. My Liset Prime was just sitting in the center of the clearing, with some cobwebs covering it.
“What is that thing?” Luna asked, looking at my Liset. I was too busy walking up to it to answer, and noticed a spider leg twitching behind the leg of the landing gear. I walked around it, and found a very large spider twice the size of the previous one, and shot it. It let out a screech, and suddenly, from all directions, I heard clattering noises from all around, and saw a crap ton of the spiders surround the Liset. I pulled out my swords, channelling Madurai through both, and started hacking apart the many spiders that had surrounded us. Luna did the same, and also started using fire spells to burn many of the spiders that were trying to enter the clearing. After killing the spiders for a solid ten minutes, the rest fled, leaving about half the clearing filled with ash and the other half with spider carcasses. Luna sat down, and a large spider jumped from the edge of the forest with that familiar clacking, and I cut it down before it could reach Luna.
I plopped down next to her, and heard hushed voices talking as they made their way into the clearing. “Hey, Luna, who do you think that is?”
Luna looked at me with an annoyed look on her goo covered face, and was surprised to see that I didn’t have any gore on me at all, which she expressed promptly by saying, “How are you not covered with this stuff like I am?” I shrugged, knowing perfectly well that channeling dissolves corpses, and was about to tell her when Applejack peeked her head around the side of the leg we were sitting against. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she looked surprised to see us.
“‘Sup,” I eloquently said, too tired to deal with any shit. The rest of the Element bearers came around with Applejack, and started spouting questions that I didn’t care to answer. “Ordis, you there?” I said, over the questioning of the girls in front of me, blatantly ignoring them.
“Operator, I didn’t realize that you *BZZT* COULD DECIMATE THE ENEMY LIKE THAT *BZZT* sorry, Operator, I meant to say that I didn’t know you used melee outside the warframes.” A voice from the bottom of the ship said. A ramp to enter the ship came down, and Luna and the rest of the girls followed me onto the ship. The girls looked on in awe as they entered the technological marvel, and I was somewhat surprised how accurate the ship was to my own in game. The only difference I could find was a solid red hammer that looked like it came from Lord of the Rings sitting on the navigation console.
I ignored it for the time being and said to Ordis, “Ordis, take us to Ponyville so that we can drop off these six newcomers first, and then take us to Canterlot.”
“Yes Operator, we’ll be there quickly.” The ship took off of the ground and hovered for a second, before flying off to the small town on the edge of the forest. I kicked out the six Element bearers, and Twilight looked sad to not be able to study the ship further. Luna was asleep on her feet, and I woke her up when we reached Canterlot after about thirty seconds of flight. She wandered off the ship to go to her room, ignoring the guards that surrounded the ship in favor of a shower and sleep. 
I picked up the hammer that was sitting on the navigation console, and heard a voice say, “Thou speaketh to the lord of Dawn, lord and friend to the Olog and Uruk people! If thy wish is power, than thou hast found thy aim! If thou desire is domination of mine allies? Then may the gods have mercy on thy soul! Hold my Hammer aloft and strike it upon stone with intent twice, and thy call shalt be heard!”
I shrugged and went to put it down when I noticed a faint aura of Void energy surrounding it. I asked Ordis, “Could you trace the energy around this hammer back to its source?”
“Of course, but should you try to find something like that?” Ordis responded.
I shrugged, and simply said, “Might be interesting, so just do it. I’ll equip my Ivara loadout.”
“Of course Operator, may you *BZZT* RIP YOUR ENEMIES ASUNDER *BZZT* Sorry about that, Operator.” I shrugged again and began meditating while Ordis traced the energy signature back to its source.