Getting out of Hell

by Draco Rex Solis

New World, New Problems

It was a normal day for the creatures of the Everfree, manticores, timberwolves and cockatrices hunting deers and every now and then the occasional pony that wandered a little too deep. It wasn’t hard to know why no sapient being wanted to enter this one forest, but to every rule there is an exception, and this time, it’s Fluttershy, she was entering the forest because Angel had another one of his trademark tantrums when he doesn't want to eat and jumped out of an open window, running to the tree line.

At least, that was what she would be doing, if a foul smell hadn’t reached her, and if a pack of timberwolves wasn’t hunting her right now.

She was running for only 5 minutes, but for somepony who doesn’t exercises too much, she was already exhausted, but she knew that she would die if she stopped, and with adrenaline filling her she ran nonstop, until she saw the wooden bridge of the supposedly haunted Castle of Everfree 10 ( 32.80 feet ) meters away, everypony was told to not go near it, because it was there that the Pony of Shadows lived, even the creatures of the forest dreaded it, but right now she hadn’t any other choice, she entered the small clearing, but before she could reach the bridge, one timberwolf smashed onto her side, sending her tumbling onto a rock, Fluttershy silently whimpered as she saw the 6 wood wolves slowly making their way to her, as she tried to stand up, an overwhelming pain on her ribs and left hind leg made her collapse, before she lost conscience, she saw 3, tall, pony like silhouettes jumping over the rock she crashed into, standing between her and the wolves.

I started to stir awake, commanding my eyes to open, but they wouldn’t obey my command, my entire body screamed pain from the berserker rage that the Slayer was on.

Remembering the fight, I sighed internally. ‘That was a good sword… It will be difficult to make one equal’. While I was still trying to remember a few thing that Orion and Jinx were trying to say to me before I was punched into the portal, I heard something whispering on my ear.

“Wake up, Hell’s champion…” the voice said, so soft and motherly, it seemed like it was Arachne’s.

"Arachne..." I murmured

"No. I'm not her, once the time comes, you will know who and what I am, and what I need you for. For now... WAKE UP!"

I jumped to my legs, adrenaline and fighting instincts at maximum, and looked around frantically, trying to find whoever was talking to me. Seeing that there was no one here, I looked around our destination. It seemed to be the inside of an old castle, with old tapestries, both then and the cobblestones with burns and what seemed to be holes that were created by some kind of energy. ‘A battle happened here, years ago it seems’.

As I calmed myself, I looked behind me, seeing the last signs of the heptagram, its runes slowly going away, their energy spent. With its dim light, I could see the forms of what I assumed to be Jinx and Orion, but they seemed different.

I tried to walk to then to see better, but as I tried to walk, I fell flat on my face.

“Ouch.” Ok, this was humiliating. I tried to stand up, but as I moved my hand to push me up, I saw, red fur? Taking a better look at my body, I quickly took notice that fur was the least of my problems, WHY MY BODY IS THAT OF AN EQUINE?!

“W-What?” I tried to flex my limbs, scared by this sudden transformation, and everything felt so natural, looking more closely, I noticed that I wasn’t a full horse, I had patches of scales here and there, and even my skin was tougher than that of a Horse, claws on the places of hooves, six on hind hoofs, 5 on the fore hoofs, sharp teeth and my four horns, the exceptions was that the top ones where now curved forwards, like my jaw horns, my fur color was red with black on my shoulders, chest and belly, my tail was dragon like in appearance, with fur going from the base of it to the tip, it connected with my mane, and its color was red at the base that slowly turned into golden at the ends.

I heard grunting sounds, and looked to the others, they were starting to wake up, I noticed that they too were turned into dragon-like horses, but their main colors were different, Jinx fur was a deep purple with black, here mane and tail started with purple which turned into an ocean blue at the ends, and Orion was Orange/Black (fur) and Orange/brown (mane and tail).

“Is everyone ok?” Jinx grunted as she stood up, I noticed that she stood up to all four legs. Orion did the same.

“Yes,” I said, urging my limbs to move, but failing once again. “But I think that something went wrong with the runes.”

“And why do you think that?” She asked, finally looking at me before stretching like a cat, giggling as she saw me trying to discover which limb does what.

Noticing that both of then weren’t startled by this like me, I turned my head to Orion.

“Am I missing something here?” I asked as I finally discovered how to stand on all fours legs, still wobbling a bit. He then answered.

“I was going to tell you this, but then the rage filled Slayer appeared,” Orion began. “Each pair of runes had a different set commands to the heptagram. The majority had to do with creating and stabilizing the portal, but the last 2 had the command to hide our true forms, making then as close as possible to the planet’s apex species.” He told me.

“So…” I began, trying to tell myself that this wasn't an hallucination from Nurgle. “What are you is that the apex species of this planet are dragon-like horse beings?”

“No. What I am saying is that this is as close as the portal could hide our true Identity. Now, let’s…” He began saying, but stopped as we all sensed 2 things that we were very familiar with, blood-lust and fear, 6 beings chasing another one smaller, coming towards this place.

We all jumped over the rock as soon as the small winged horse smashed onto it, standing between her and the wood wolves, they jumped back a little as we touched the ground, but restrained themselves and started to walk to us, head low, growling, as they did that, each one of us selected a group of 2 and charged, Orion and Jinx took the ones on the left and right, respectively, and I jumped on the middle.

As soon as I punched the ground, my Argent covered claws released a fiery wave of Argent that went on the direction of the two that I had chosen, they managed to dodge around it, albeit with burns on their hind legs. Focusing the Argent on my horns and extending then, I gave a charged head but on one of then, my horns perforating his side as he tried to dodge again, I then launched my head back, sending it howling in pain down the ravine as the Argent fire finished the job. Seeing that I was distracted, the other managed to jump on my back and started to bite on my neck, but my hardened skin and scales gave him tooth-ache, I bucked like a mad bull and launched him against a nearby tree, shattering it completely.

Looking to the others, Orion killed his last by smashing it with his fore claws and Jinx ripped one apart by biting it on its neck, severing it from the body.

Just as the adrenaline from the short fight was leaving our bodies, we noticed one thing, the remains from the wolves that weren’t burned to ashes were glowing on a green energy.

“Is that… Corrupted Argent?” Just as Jinx finished her question, the sticks and leaves that made their bodies started to converge on a point, we all watched flabbergasted as a much bigger wolf like creature came to life on our eyes.

“Jinx, Orion, go protect the little horse, I deal with this one.” I said to then before looking back to the new enemy. It snarled and barked, thinking that his size would be enough to frighten me. It wasn’t working.

Taking on a hunched over biped stance - which we discovered that this dragon-horse hybrid form could do - making myself twice as taller on the process, I Channeled Argent on my fore claws, making then longer and sharper. “Do you want a piece of her?!” I challenged, grinding my claws against each other, to which massive wolf growled.

“Then you will have to make it past me.”

We charged at each other, it tried to use itself as a battering ram, but I dodged it, cutting one of his hind legs clean off, I launched him against a tree away from the others, a burning stump where his leg used to be. He smashed against the tree, but ignoring the burning, it quickly managed to get back on its feet, letting out a frightening howl, he charged again, maw open.

“You don’t know when to stop, don’t you?” Tired of this shit and with a life to save, I moved my head back, I started to concentrate Argent on my throat, a glowing orange light could be seen from the outside, contrasting against the black fur and scales.

Just as the wolf crossed the 6 meters ( 19.68 feet ) mental line I fired, a bright, fiery red and orange hellfire beam exited my mouth, the wolf noticed it too late, he got hit full on as it tried to dodge it. The wolf rolled on the ground, trying to stop the hellish fire from consuming it, but only hellish beings can survive against hellfire.

Dropping back to all fours, I trotted back to the others… Who were now talking to a rabbit?

“…your friend, little one?” I heard Jinx asking to the small rabbit, who was crying next to the horse, which had 3 nasty cuts on its side from the wooden wolf attack, whom I now could take a better look at. In addition to the wings, it was yellow in color, had a pink mane and tail and 3 butterflies on its flank. It was here that I noticed how different we looked, even if we were similar to then, clearly looked like predators, if this one looked like this, the others wouldn’t be so much different.

“There is a village nearby, we can ge…” Jinx started after hearing the squeaking and thumping with its foot on the ground.

“We can’t do it.” I simply stated, the 3 of then looked at me like they had seen a Lost Soul.

“What do you mean by that, Ravager?” Orion said, confused

“Take a look at the hor…” Jinx interrupted me.

“Fluttershy. She is a pony mare and her name is Fluttershy.”

“Right, Fluttershy.” I cleared my throat. "Take a look at her, then at yourselves, and tell me what do you see."

It took then a few seconds to realize what I meant.

“Predators,” Orion finally said after a few more seconds. “We look like predators.”

“Exactly.” I stated. “If we appeared on this village with her on our backs, they would see our claws and her cuts and they would think that we did it and are bringing her there as a warning."

“But we can’t leave her here to die! If we do that, we will be no better than the Daemons!” Jinx cried, looking at me with puppy eyes.

Pinching the bridge of my nose with a claw, I sighed.

“Alright.” I sighed again. “If we do this, no one can see us, we will need to be fast, put her on a place where she can be seen and get the fuck out there.”

We galloped as fast as we could through the forest, Argent making us faster than any creature could normally achieve, for outsiders, the 3 of us would look like a blur of red, purple and orange. On my back, the mare and the rabbit were firmly hold in place by my red Argent, Orion had used his Argent to slow down the bleeding so we had more time.

We didn’t stop for nothing, trees, rocks and even small critters that didn’t move away were smashed by our claws as we ran across the forest, here and there we would see some strange creatures, but they wouldn’t even try to get close to us.

While we were galloping, I thought that I had seen a mist following us on my peripheral vision, but whenever I would look at it, it disappeared.

“I think that we are getting near the edge of the forest! The vegetation is getting thinner here.” Orion's voice brought me out of my thoughts. We had arrived.

The forest ended up on a hill, the sun already high on the sky, a few dozen meters to our right, there was a road, following it, down a hill, far away from the forest the village could be seen, already brimming with activity. Making a head gesture to a nearby bush, we hid behind it.

“Satandammit, we were too slow.” I grunted

“There is something strange about that forest, it almost felt like it was trying to hold us inside it.” Orion noted, and in fact, I too noticed it, we were going fast enough to cover 10 kilometers ( 6.21 Miles ) in a few minutes, but it felt like hours passed and we almost hadn’t moved, I believe I saw the same smashed tree 4 times.

I was just about to say something, when I heard a female, authoritative but sweet voice.

“Alright class, stick together with your partner and don’t move very far from the main group! We are going to a safe part of the Everfree near Fluttershy's cottage to examine the different types of vegetation that exists there compared to the samples that I brought.” We turned our heads to the voice, on bottom of the hill near the road there was what seemed to be a school group, one teacher and a class of fillies. An Idea came to me.

“Alright, I know what do to, Jinx.” I said. “See that rock over there?” I pointed to a rock near the road, she nodded, already knowing what I intended. I passed the mare and the bunny to her.

She crouched, trying to make herself as small as possible, she made her way quickly to the rock, stopping a few times to hear if they are coming up. Finally reaching the rock, she gently put her down, trying to make her look like she just collapsed. She turned her head to the bunny and whispered something to him, he nodded and jumped down to stay near his friend, and like she went, she came back. Just in time.

“Miss Cherilee, isn’t that Fluttershy near that rock?” One orange winged filly said, pointing at the mare on the rock.

Looking at where the filly pointed, the purplish mare gave the biggest shriek I ever heard 'ouch, my poor ears'. At this point, a blue winged pony jumped from a nearby cloud?

“WHAT; WHO; WHEN; WHERE?!” She cried

“RAINBOW DASH!” The teacher mare yelled. "Go get a nurse! It’s Fluttershy!”

“We are done here for now, let’s go back to that castle.” I whispered to the others as the blue mare looked down at the yellow one, her eyes turning into needles as her skin paled, becoming almost white as snow, then, on another display of what seemed to be Argent, she flew faster than any normal being into the town, a rainbow trace behind her.

As the trio of Demon turned kirins made their way back into the tree-line, they failed to notice two things. The first was the orange filly ear’s flick at their direction, making her turn her head just in time to see a red dragon like tail disappear into the Everfree; the second was that the mist had returned and was again trailing them, this time, though, it was from afar, more carefuller.