My Little Pony: Symphony of Fire

by LordStarKnight


Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A walk in the forest with friends is a nice thing, but today, the elements of harmony didn’t have a smile on their faces. They weren’t in a forest like any other, and this was no ordinary hike. Their friend Zecora was leading the way with Celestia's famous disciple, Twilight Sparkle. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were following them closely with a constant vigilance. Every sound springing from the forest’s chaos surrounding them caught their eye. All their muscles were stretched like bow ropes ready to act. Just the opposite of their friend Pinkie Pie, who was jumping and humming behind them continuously, and Fluttershy, who was shuffling her hooves with eyes full of fear. The gigantic trees that encircled them and blocked the sun did not reassure her. One of the team members was missing and Pinkie was openly regretting her absence.

"It's a shame that Rarity couldn’t come," she said with a smile. "She’s missing the whole adventure part."

"Are you kidding?" The element of loyalty sneered as she flew quietly above the others. "I'm sure she's happy to not mess up her pretty shiny shoes."

"Come on, Rainbow Dash," said the orange farmer to defend Rarity. "You saw that she was really tired. She stayed up at least half the night."

"And someone had to keep an eye on the Crusaders," Fluttershy added. "I would have gladly done it, but it wouldn’t have been very nice to impose myself instead of Rarity, seeing how tired she is."

The fearless Pegasus expressed her concern.

"Besides, are you sure it was a good idea to let her do this if she's so exhausted?"

"She insisted," recalled the pink pony, "and it's not the first time she watch over them."

"She is definitely the element of generosity," confirmed the animal caretaker.

"And with Big Mac at the hospital with Granny Smith for her monthly checkup, we didn’t have many other choices," Applejack added.

While the four ponies were finishing worrying about their stylist friend, the young purple unicorn continued to learn things from the zebra that served as their guide.

"And you say that everything this thing does is eating, sleeping, and singing?"

"That's how it occupy its daytime, but of course I do not follow it all the time,” Zecora confirmed.

Twilight knew it well. Zecora had her own business to deal with, not to mention her own need to sleep.

"Of course. It's just that the more we know about this monster, the better we'll be prepared to deal with it. "

"I understand your concern, my dear friend Twilight. But to me, saying it is a monster does not seem right. "

"You see?" Pinkie appeared by surprise. "Even Zecora thinks he's not dangerous."

"Pinkie, please!" Twilight reprimanded, beginning to worry about her friend's endless optimism. "What makes you say that, Zecora?"

"Not all the songs I heard were terrible. Most of them were quite sharable."

"Really?" Applejack wondered. "Excuse me if I don’t believe it. The one it was singing when the girls found it was awful."

"You said it!" Rainbow Dash confirmed. "Even Scootaloo is afraid to be alone now. I can assure you that when we find this thing, I’ll make it regret every word of it! Spike would have loved to see that, I bet."

"He must be out of bed now by now," Fluttershy reported. "Are you sure he won’t worry that we’re gone, Twilight?"

"Don’t worry, I left him a note to explain where we went. After all the good work he did, he deserved a bit of rest."

"That's nice," said the element of kindness.

"And then I left him a chore list so he would not get bored."

"Aaaaand there’s the Twilight we know," laughed the blue pegasus.

"Oh come on, Rainbow Dash," Twilight replied lightly. "I just asked him to clean up and get the books that the borrowers didn’t bring back to the library."

“Because you haven’t opened it for a while,” indicated Pinkie, making the disciple of Celestia shamefully laugh.

"Yeah well...” she concluded, “a little walk over town never hurt anypony."

"You mean it would have been good for this one?" Pinkie asked, pointing to a wooden wolf head.

Each of her friends jumped in fear as they realized what the element of laughter had between her hooves. The pink pony was holding the head of a Timberwolf.

"Where did you get that?!" startled Twilight.

"Right here," said Pinkie, pointing to the ground, "with all the other pieces."

The ponies and the zebra looked around and realized that they were walking in the middle of a real Timberwolf cemetery. Wherever they looked, the floor was strewn with pieces of wood that served as part of one of those beasts’ crunchy bodies. Here was a paw. There, a piece of jaw. Further, an half-crushed torso. Each of the team members, less Pinkie, froze in amazement. Fluttershy's eyes filled with fright.

An ear-splitting scream resonated through the Everfree Forest.

Rainbow Dash began to have difficulty to fly because of the quivering mass that had clung to her.

"Fluttershy! You're heavy!"

The members of the expedition moved closer to each other like a litter of frightened puppies, huddled together as if to preserve what remained of their feeling of safety. The only one who didn’t seem to need it was examining the woody skull she held like an old deflated balloon.

"Mother of Celestia! What happened here?” Twilight asked.

Applejack took a deep breath and approached a broken paw. This one had a slight halo with a sickly neon green light that surprised no one. From the time they lived in Ponyville, the elements of harmony had already seen Timberwolves and understood how they worked. Killing these animals was not easy, contrary to what their theoretical fragility indicated. When their pieces are separated, some kind of magic made them slowly return to each other. It was one of the many strangenesses typical of the Everfree Forest that gave it its nightmarish reputation.

Except that this time, the infamous wooden dog had been cut into pieces so small that it was difficult to grasp what some of them were before. They hadn’t just been separated from each other, most had been simply crumbled, but still they were returning to their place in the anatomy of their owners. Twilight remembered a passage from an encyclopedia she had read a long time ago. She remembered that repairing themselves after so much damage was longer and more difficult, but still possible. This made them more impressive, and by extension more disturbing to her.

"Do... do you think it's the monster that did that?" Applejack offered.

"Would it be capable of such savagery?" Twilight asked.

The zebra hermit, strengthened by her time in the Everfree, exposed her opinion with a voice as imperturbable as an old oak.

"Well, this creature is not really gleeful. But remember, timberwolves are not peaceful."

Celestia's disciple understood what her striped friend meant. But the carnage she had under her left her less than reassured. They were just beasts made of wood, but she had never seen a scene of such violence before. The idea that a thing capable of unleashing such devastating fury not far from Ponyville squeezed her heart with fear. A question from Applejack brought her back to her senses.

"What do we do with them, Twilight?" she asked, pointing to a moving piece of timberwolf.

The young unicorn didn’t take too long to act. Her horn lit up with her usual purple aura and magically lifted each piece of wood around her. Without great effort, she scattered them at a prodigious speed.

"We can’t stop them from reforming," the magician explained. "But like this, it would take them a few more hours."

A yellow mass fell from the sky in a bush. Her head poked out to quickly ask, "Can we go now then?"

The team hit the road, following Zecora closely. The orange farmer realized that somepony was missing. She glanced back and saw Pinkie, still holding her timberwolf head on her hoof.

"To be, or not to be, complete," she declared. "That is the question. And the answer is Not. "

Applejack looked at Pinkie, shocked and slightly disgusted.

"Pinkie, that's really dark."

The pink pony seemed surprised.

"It is? That's new."

She threw away her macabre accessory before joining her friends, jumping like on springs.

"Maybe when we find it," imagined the element of laughter, "the monster will sing for us one of its songs Zecora told us about."

xXx

In a different part of the forest, Kenneth Marshall was walking with serenity, a little song on his lips. He didn’t add the music this time, to remain discreet, but it didn’t prevent him from smiling.

“I wanna set the universe on fire

Feel it burn tonight

Set the universe on fire

There's no end in sight

Bring me to the holy raging power

Where I find my destiny

The universe on fire

You're my guiding light…”

Despite a restless night, the day seemed particularly promising. The sky was sunny, and these stupid wooden wolves had left him alone for some time and he had finally found a way to sleep without having back pain the next day. He still had a hard time believing it, but he seemed to have got used to his new situation despite his phantasmagorical side. Two or three weeks ago, he was in one of the largest cities in the world wondering how he would eat the next day. Now he spent his days fishing and singing in a forest straight out of a fantasy novel.

At first everything was very disturbing and complicated, which seemed normal considering the situation. He was lost in the middle of a wild labyrinth filled with impossible creatures. But he remembered his uncle's advice, had taken his courage in its hands, and faced the dark wood one step at a time in search of a sign of civilization. The march was not as difficult as he feared it might be. It was actually pleasant enough. The restful symphony of nature, a mixture of rustling leaves and bird songs, was interrupted only by rare encounters with hostile animals more incredible than the rest. But after the surprise of the discovery, Kenneth took care of said creatures with a powerful song. In general, they fled before the end of the first chorus. He had had bigger fears on New York’s streets.

The only exception was a poor manticore which had the inadvisable idea to attack on a bad day. She had hoped to make a snack of him and screamed to his face, to which the musician responded so violently that it remained petrified throughout the entire song before running away with its scorpion tail between its legs. Afterward, Kenneth himself wondered if he had not been a little brutal screaming some Children of Bodom like that.

“Great Cthulhu... Maybe I was a bit too hard on the big kitty,” he thought.

It must be noted that Kenneth had a lot of things in mind on the day of this noisy meeting. He had finally come out of the forest and found an inhabited village, but the relief he had felt at the beginning evaporated when he saw its curious inhabitants in the distance: horses. Or rather, given their size, ponies, and he couldn’t even be sure about that. Kenneth spent hours watching this unknown people from afar, hidden behind trees and bushes.

The creatures he had discovered this time had everything to be classified in the equine family, from the mane to the hooves. But the comparison stopped there. Not only did their anatomy differ in proportion to the ponies he knew, but they had such a variety of coat colors that for a moment he thought he was on acid. There were not only ponies, by the way, but also unicorns that did magic and pegasi flying at a crazy speed. Their big eyes, their colorful hair, the childish tattoos on their flanks, not to mention their bodies which were blue, yellow, pink, purple, blue, gray, white and everything in between.

And that wasn’t the most disturbing part. Beyond the look of these little horses that almost made him want to vomit rainbows, what destabilized him the most was the impression he had when observing them, or rather the absence of a certain impression. Despite their appearance, he didn’t feel like he was observing animals. Against all logical explanations, watching these ponies was like watching other human beings. Most of them were wearing clothes, buying things with gold, or reading books in the shadow of a tree. Kenneth could concentrate on their morphology, but nothing changed it. There was a spark in their eyes that gave him the feeling of observing people just like him. Their behavior, their expressive faces, and the marks of affection that some exchanged reinforced this feeling. This discovery confirmed what he had supposed without ever believing it fully: he was no longer on earth.

That day, in shock, he began to roam the forest like a zombie. The discovery had shaken the foundations of his psyche like an immense wrecking ball. He had the feeling that contemplating this multicolored spectacle any longer would have made him definitely fall into madness. Especially because, when he was listening carefully, he thought he could hear them speaking English. His own language. So he had retired into the woods to avoid the situation, allowing time to think it over later. It wasn’t easy; his old beliefs constantly sought new hypotheses to justify the non-existence of what he saw. It was a confused and complex battle that used each of his neurons. His sanity seemed to hold up on scanty twigs.

And this poor manticore had the misfortune to disturb him at this very moment. Kenneth slapped him away like a mosquito. After that, he had collapsed in the cave he was occupying without even bothering to do so on his old mattress. It took him two days to accept that he was in another world, a world of fairy tales. Two days of prostration, passing from consciousness to unconsciousness and vice versa, doing nothing but cogitate and feel the flow of time. But in the end, he finally got up. In a moment of mental emptiness he had seized one of his books that had escaped his cataclysmic journey. He read it from the beginning to the end and thanked his favorite author for the gift he had given him. Like the protagonists of H.P. Lovecraft’s novel, Kenneth had discovered a new and incomprehensible aspect of the universe. But unlike them, he had not stumbled upon something that was purely awful or trying to kill him, not for now anyway. He was very lucky. To refuse this new reality, like some of the characters in the novels that he rediscovered, would bring him nothing but madness and death. Kenneth decided to seize the chance he had and accept this new face of the universe.

After filling his stomach with grilled fish and wild berries again, and cleaning his black and red checked shirt, the musician approached his new situation more serenely. He didn’t want to meet these multicolored beings who had made him panic like that. He suspected that he would probably never find a way to return to his planet, but that didn’t matter to him at all. He didn’t have anything that made him want to go back, except perhaps the graves of his mother and uncle. But for Kenneth, it wasn’t worth the risk of being captured and dissected by an alien species, or extra-dimensional beings for all he knew. He was certain that this was the fate that awaited him if he went to meet them. That's what any government would do, he thought. He didn’t want to take that kind of risk. His previous meeting, a few nights earlier, had confirmed to him that he was not a very reassuring being for those from this world.

Stealing apples was not a very moral thing. Kenneth knew it. But he needed something other than fish and handfuls of suspicious berries. Also, when he discovered a huge apple orchard outside of the city, he didn’t hesitate to make it a regular harvest point, especially since the fruits that grew there were particularly juicy and crunchy. He had gone there several times, always at night to avoid the owners. The flashlight on his cellphone allowed him that. Except that the previous visit, during which he had been surprised by three small fillies, was his last harvesting night. His cell phone was now out of battery after two weeks of reasonable restriction.

Now, Kenneth would have to collect his apples during the day, which was risky. Today, he was going there on a reconnaissance mission. It wasn’t exactly like his uncle did, but an innocent part of himself was having fun thinking that it wasn’t so different. He just had to walk discreetly enough to observe the orange pony and the red horse harvesting to get an idea of ​​how they worked. Perhaps he would see habits that could show him when to make his future pilferages. When he finally arrived at the apple trees, Kenneth was on the alert and walked discreetly towards the farm.

When he realized there was no distinguishable sound except the rustling of the leaves, Kenneth relaxed and wondered if the farmers were actually there. So he advanced to the big red building where said farmers lived, which seemed to be a strange mixture of house and barn. When he thought he heard a noise coming from the entrance of the half barn of the place, he hid himself behind a tree. He forgot about that, though, when he spotted something even more incredible. A small purple and green biped lizard, with a small red wagon full of books, had knocked on the front door on the house side. He did not remember seeing this little being in his previous observations.

"Holy crap!” he thought. "Is that a dragon? Awesome!"

He couldn’t hear what the little dragon was saying from where he was, but it seemed obvious to him that this kid was looking for one this house’s inhabitants, given the insistence with which he was knocking at the door. Kenneth jumped when the baby dragon turned towards him.

xXx

Spike was looking at the apple trees. He glanced through the window, but found no sign of any member of the Apple family. He sighed heavily. His list said that Applebloom had forgotten to bring back a book, but there was definitely nopony at the farm right now. Even though his day was busy, thanks to the list of chores that Twilight had left him, it wasn’t exciting at all. He had already done most of the housekeeping of the library when he cleaned it up last night, and getting back the books wasn’t very interesting compared to the adventures he imagined his friends were living in the Everfree Forest.

The little dragon was a little angry at being asleep until so late. If he had woken up on time, he might have been able to convince Twilight to let him come with her, but he was also angry with her for not waking him up and asking him if he wanted that. He also wanted to see that famous monster she had talked about in her message. If it was dangerous, he could have been a hero and look awesome to his dear Rarity. He could have shown his courage and strength to everypony. Instead, he was walking from one end of Ponyville to the other to get back some books. The child grasped the handle of his cart to continue his job, dragging his feet.

A loud crash made him jump. The noise came from the barn part of the house. Maybe there was actually someone home. Spike went to the big open doors but found no one inside.

"Hello?" he called. "Somepony there?"

As an answer, he perceived other noises coming from the other side of the barn. The sounds were coming from behind a large pile of hay and seemed to indicate that it was moving some things. Or rather searching, because some of the Apple’s tools were simply stashed here and there. Spike walked toward the source of this sound with curiosity. It seemed to him that the Apples were paying attention to their items. The dragon stopped, leaping in fear as he felt a pitchfork close to him.

"Hey!" he screamed with anger. "Don’t throw things like that! You could hurt somepony!"

The sounds of iron and wood clashing together stopped. Spike was about to lecture the pony who was messing with all of this when a brownish hand appeared from the shadow of the pile of hay and squeezed one of the pillars of the barn. The baby dragon was forced to lift his head. His pupils narrowed to tiny green dots. His little arms fell down, his little body frozen in fear. In all its immensity, a shapeless and naked brown mass was looking at him. The only normal thing with it was its eyes with black pupils, but even they were misplaced, as one was higher than the other. Apart from that, it was a deformed monstrosity. A gigantic nightmarish creature, clumsy and vaulted, erected on two legs. One longer than the other. His skeletal arms with hooked fingers were long like the branches of a dead tree. At the top of its puffy body there was a head covered with disgracious bulbous and no mane at all. It also had a bloated mouth filled with wrongly placed teeth, as if pushed out by its thick, pasty tongue.

The creature stared at Spike with the curiosity of a predator examining an unfamiliar prey. A raucous roar, like a gurgling, gushed from his gaping mouth. Spike screamed and ran to the exit, propelled by terror. His little legs moved at full speed. But one of the monster's huge hands slapped him to the ground, his fingers like iron bars. The dragon kid screamed for help as she lifted him off the ground. The child struggled with all his strength, trapped in his icy grip. It was useless. The thing was too strong. Its mouth was a few inches away from the child's little head.

"Let me go ..." tried the little dragon.

The monster silenced him by tightening its grip. The cold and wet feeling of its hand disappeared for Spike. Only pain remained. Step by step, the vise tightened on his small body. Spike felt the fingers of the thing compressing his bones. He wanted to scream, implore the creature to spare him, but he could not anymore. The air could no longer pass. His mind froze. What was this new fear? The words couldn’t form in his mind. He never had to think about that. It was unthinkable. Impossible. Was he really gonna die?

"Hey!" screamed a new voice.

The brown monster barely had time to move his eyes as an unknown mass hit its face. The shock catapulted him backwards, making him let go of the young dragon. Spike inhaled so quick that he coughed. When he finally could breathe again, he looked up at his savior and found something that made his eyes widen for the second time: a second giant creature. But this one was very different from the other. It seemed like the same thing that hurt him: two arms, two legs, a head, eyes and a mouth positioned in the same place. But not only was it dressed, with a checked shirt red and black like fire and smoke, but everything seemed more harmonious in its anatomy, more proportionate.

The newcomer didn’t give him time to observe it for long. The first monster got up just as the dressed thing stumbled on to scream at him. The second struck him again on the head before punching on its target with many blows of an incredible violence for the young dragon. Suddenly, the blistered horror grabbed his opponent and threw him like a twig against one of the barn’s wall. The living projectile growled in pain as his pitcher screamed at him without seeming hurt. Neither the dragon nor Kenneth had the impression that this thing had suffered from the punches it received.

The new creature clenched his teeth and got up again before attacking the brownish monster again. He dodged one of his enemy's arms and punched his puffy chest. It did not flinch. The human ended up understanding. It was only the raw power of his attacks that had moved his opponent. It did not feel pain.

"Shit..." pronounced the human before receiving another blow from the monster.

The musician had been thrown to the ground so violently that his head was spinning. A bit of blood appeared on his lower lip. The creature was ready to crush it under its big misshapen foot when Kenneth rolled to one side, got up in one motion, and threw himself at his enemy with all his strength, making it fall again. Without waiting a second, the metalhead bombarded the swollen head of the thing with blows even more violent than before, but his target grabbed his head with his skeletal fingers and threw him back. The shock against the ground filled his back with pain. Kenneth stood up grunting and found the little dragon frozen with bewilderment.

"Are you stupid?!" screamed the human. "Get the hell out!"

This admonition was like a slap for Spike, who got up and fled at the speed of lightning. Kenneth avoided another blow from the monster before standing in front of it. He stared at him straight in the eyes. What he saw was different from what he had seen with all those ponies in town. There was nothing in the look of this monster. Nothing but savagery in its pure state. He was delighted. He could go wild without hesitation. The creature screamed to the musician. The metalhead screamed at the monster. Each one charged the other.

xXx

In the kitchen of the famous Carrousel Boutique, a snack was ready into a saucepan. The owner of the place removed it from the hob thanks to the magic of her horn and called the first concerned by this batch.

"Girls! The popcorn is ready!"

Three small and energetic fillies came at full gallop. Everyone sat at the table under the benevolent gaze, though a little tired, of the element of generosity. Watching over Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle was always a busy task. Their incredible impatience to discover their Cutie Mark always plunged them into alarming situations, but to see these little foals using all the energy of their youth at the service of their curiosity was something so adorable that nopony really wanted to scold them. Rarity nevertheless thought that it was necessary to keep an eye on them. This was one of the reasons she had agreed to stay with them while her friends explored the forest in search of the famous monster who lived there. That and the famous dress she had to finish for her client from Canterlot.

She had hoped to be able to advance her work while keeping an eye on the crusaders. But it was only a semi success. Apart from a few seams, she hadn’t done much. The girls were demanding a little too much attention. They were always asking her to play or help them think about new idea of activities. It was quite a tiring day. But after the fright they had suffered, the stylist couldn’t refused anything to them. In particular to her dear little sister, Sweetie Belle. She nevertheless took advantage of this snack to leave them sugar and return to her seam for a moment. Her eyelids were a bit heavy but she was doing her best to keep them open, at the risk of getting stung. To hold on, she began to hum a tune. It was only after a while that she realized it was the music she had heard last night near the forest. The stylist wondered if it had been played by the famous singing monster that her friends were looking for. After hearing the terrifying tunes her friends had told her, she doubted it. But at the same time, she had no better explanation. It was difficult to her to admit that Sweetie Belle's monster was the same being who played something so beautiful. At the return of her friends, if she did not fall asleep before, she would probably have an answer.

As she was about to finish a hem, someone began to pound at the door. Rarity was grumbling when she recognized Spike's scared voice. The white unicorn galloped to the entrance under the curious gaze of the crusaders. Opening, she discovered the little dragon completely mad and stammering. His hands were moving in all directions and his lips were moving too fast to form clear words. Rarity tried to stop this avalanche of rough sounds.

"Calm down, Spike! What's happening? "

The young dragon didn’t seem less panicked, but this firm interruption gave him the opportunity to take a deep breath and express what he had come to announce.

"There are monsters at the Apple Farm! Two huge monsters! "

“Monsters?!” screamed Rarity.

"Yes! They are super tall with gigantic arms and they don’t even have fur! "

This short description was enough to awaken the fear of the stylist. It matched the description of the creature that her friends were looking for in the forest right now. There were two of them? The idea froze her with fear, but she couldn’t stay like this. She had to see what was happening, at least to get a clear idea of ​​what these creatures looked like. With the other absent, she was the only one who could see what this creatures were and maybe discover what they wanted. She glanced at the crusaders, whose eyes were tinged with terror.

"You stay here. I'll be back soon."

With that, she levitated Spike by magic to place him on her back before galloping at full speed, without taking the time to close the door. Rarity crossed Ponyville without paying attention to what was in front of her. She jostled several passers-by without stopping, but still shouting apologies behind her. She didn’t even slow down when she passed on a puddle of mud. She didn’t know what was giving her so much energy, but nothing seemed able to stop her. She had to see, at all costs, this thing that had scared her little sister. The thing that had played that bewitching music last night.

After her grueling run, Rarity finally arrived at the Apple Farm. Everything seemed quiet. Then she heard a terrible shock against a wall. Spike came down from her back and pointed to the barn. Before they could take a step in his direction, a red mass passed through the wooden wall. The heap of red and black cloth seemed to moan in pain, sprawled on the ground like a puppet without strings. Once again, the unicorn and the dragon did not have time to understand of the situation. Another mass, abject and unsightly, appeared from the tear in the barn. As it passed through, it widened the hole in a terrible wooden crunch.

It was Rarity's turn to be overcome by dread. She had encountered disturbing things during her adventures with the elements of harmony: timberwolves, Discord, changelings, even Nightmare Moon, but she had never seen anything so monstrous, so scary. The deformed creature stared blankly at the stylist. She was stuck on the spot. As for Spike, he was in a worse state. Those black pupils imposed on his mind the memory of an all too recent pain. He felt like choking again. The little dragon trembled as he fell backwards.

Rarity ordered the creature to not approach, but it didn’t seem to listen to her. It looked like it discovered nothing but a new target. The thing began to approach the ivory unicorn with a heavy and clumsy step. For each one, Rarity and Spike moved back two. Rarity looked frantically around her and used her magic to propel everything she saw at the monster: apples, a barrel, a crate, Granny Smith's rocking chair... But nothing stopped, nor even slowed down, the disgusting creature. The objects bounced off or broke on it like against a stone pillar.

In panic, Rarity even swung tools at this horror. The fear made her lose precision. Most passed by the creature without making it flinch. Then an axe ended up in its face. The creature stopped walking. Rarity too. She didn’t know if she was more surprised by the fact that she could stop it or simply by what she had done. She had just thrown an axe into someone's head. But she stopped thinking about it when her eyes crossed those of the other monster slumping further, its shirt torn and dusty. Its face, half hidden by what she thought was a smooth black mane, was covered with bruises and blood. For a second she could see all the fatigue and pain weighing on the strange creature's shoulders. Then the unthinkable happened. Re-directing her gaze to the brown monster, Rarity found that it had not stopped looking at her. His skeletal hand grabbed the axe planted in its face and pulled it out, without any effort.

“It can’t be…” she murmured.

The creature had nothing more than a small gash on one of its filthy brown boils. It stopped only because of the surprise facing something new. Except for that, it had nothing. This frightful impossibility ended up staring directly at Rarity. Spike was screaming at her to run away, but she couldn’t move anymore. What could she do? She was nothing like Applejack or Rainbow Dash. She wasn’t a warrior. The monster resumed its heavy approach towards her. By the time the unicorn was finally about to flee, two arms grabbed the chest of the brown horror. It was thrown back and lost balance, collapsing grotesquely, then got up quickly to faced its first opponent again.

Kenneth was out of breath. He had already been hit, but never so much. Every bone in his body made him suffer. He could barely feel his fingers after punching this creature so much. This thing was not made of flesh and bone, he was sure about that. It was more dense, and more painful to punch. This thing didn’t even feel pain. But despite that, he was standing in front of this gigantic horror. His enemy screamed again and they resumed where they had left off. The metalhead dodged his arms before plunging his weight against his target’s legs. He managed to overthrow it and struck a new deluge of blows in its face, with more fury than ever. It was useless again. The monster grabbed the musician and cast him away. Kenneth landed against a wooden fence that broke on impact. He felt even more pain than before.

However, the young man didn’t stay on the ground for long. It was like fire was flowing through his veins. Kenneth rushed towards his opponent and hit him again, plunged into a state of trance where only his opponent and fury existed. The thing he was facing did not feel the pain, but Kenneth didn’t care. He dodged each of its attacks and struck him again with his fists, feet, knees, and head without stopping. The creature didn’t have time to react. Whatever it tried to do, the metalhead stopped it with another brutal assault. The young man in red began screaming and strafing his opponent so quickly that it lost its balance. He took advantage of an opening to rise and swing both of his feet in the figure of the brown creature. It fell backwards and ended up with a piece of broken wood across the chest.

A piece of the barrier crossed the vanquished enemy from side to side. It didn’t move anymore. Before Kenneth's lost gaze, the creature melted like a plastic toy in a microwave. From his hideous face, from his crooked fingers, from his puffy mass, only a big, shapeless brown mass remained, like an old pile of mud. The musician ended up on all fours under the weight of fatigue and pain. His breath caught in his dry throat while drops of sweat blew from his injured face. He stood up with difficulty. He almost lost his balance when he stood up on his legs, shaking like an old branch. Once on his feet again, he spat a bit of blood on what had been his opponent.

Once his level of adrenaline came down, his mind remembered where he was, and especially who was there. He turned his wide eyes towards the two spectators of this unimaginable brawl. The white unicorn and the little purple dragon were staring at him. Their tiny pupils testified the mixture of dread and amazement that had invaded them. In an instant, Kenneth lept like a tiger into the apple orchard, teeth clenched to withstand the pain that every step awakened. The moment he disappeared into the darkness of the apple trees, Rarity regained her senses.

"Wait!" she screamed.

She tried to run after this curious being, but it disappeared among the trees like a shadow. In addition, part of her was still trembling with fear. She didn’t dare to take another step. She suspected that it was going back to hide into the Everfree Forest. This idea made her stop. Her gaze then rested on the remains of the other creature. The disgusting mass made her want to move backward, but something caught her attention. A greyish trickle of dust was flowing from a slit in the soft pile, like a pierced pocket. Rarity, her curiosity sparked, approached it and thought it was finally possible to perceive what this monstrosity was made of, but also that what flowed from it was not dust.

"Ashes? And… clay?"

She was completely lost. Stranger things had already happened in Ponyville, but nothing so brutal. She hoped that her friends would soon arrive. She had so much to tell them.