That morning, practically everyone woke up late, and had to knock the dust out of the corners of their eyes when they went to wash their faces. At the table, everyone ate at a sedate pace, particularly Apple Bloom and Applejack, who did more picking at their food than actually eating it until they were nudged. Even the wraithling was eating more slowly than usual, and it was less savoring the food and more gauging the mood of the mess hall. Anna sat with them, as well as Maria, who was likewise being nudged to eat. As they ate, the trio described to her the floating cats they had seen the night prior, and her brow had furrowed in contemplation.
Anna patiently waited until everyone had finished eating before daring to speak. "So… Godcat literally commanded you three to… behold the March last night?" she asked.
The trio jerked up. "Wait, those floating cats were—" Sweetie began, eyes widening.
"Well, yes… both halves of Her, anyway," Anna replied, sighing. "She's… been watching Fantasia a little more closely than usual, it seems."
The trio shared glances, bewilderment taking hold. Godcat Herself paid them a visit last night? That made them wonder what She must have seen in them to warrant such a rare occurrence. They turned to Anna and allowed themselves to relax; at least they hadn't been smited by divine fury, so maybe they were still in Her favor? "So… Godcat's taken an interest in the Aerie?" Sweetie managed.
Anna weighed the question, then shrugged. "Kinda has, ever since we bested Her in combat," she answered, using a claw to gesture to herself, then to Lance, Matt, NoLegs, and Natalie as she said that. "And sometimes… I get the feeling we're not moving fast enough for Her liking, in regards to finding out what happened with the barrier."
"Which means y'all gotta get a move on, or else y'all might get smited," Apple Bloom said unhappily, her bow wilting with the statement.
"Yeah, but… there's been less smiting lately, if you catch my drift," Anna said, sighing. She conjured a sheet of paper and began looking it over, before taking a quill and some ink out of the ether and scribbling some things onto that parchment.
"What's that?" Scootaloo asked, tilting her head.
"Well… Natz asked me to make a copy of the list of inedibles I keep in case we go on adventures, on hoof, of what not to eat or touch. She said you guys wanted it for your report, so I'm just double-checking quickly and making… alterations before I hoof over the copy," Anna answered, wilting a little. Even the vines on her legs sagged and shriveled slightly, as if waiting to grow mouths solely so they could scream to the uncaring heavens. "Before I came along, those three were practically having mushroom sambas every other instance they went on hoof to journey across the lands."
"... what's a mushroom samba?" Sweetie Belle asked, a brow raised.
"You get stoned off your ass," Katie proffered. "I should know—before I came to the army, and after I regained my sanity, I tried some rainbow-colored mushrooms in a jungle, to see if I could get my appetite back. Next thing I know, I'm having visions of a long-maned pegasus mare with blades in place of her primary feathers."
"Ah, yes, rainbow-colored mushrooms… that's on the do-not-eat list…" Anna muttered, shaking her head. "And believe it or not, Katie's first dose of shared love, during our little trip to Equestria, pretty much yielded the same effect—she was so drugged she couldn't tell what directions the polka dots went anymore."
The Crusaders frowned. "That can happen to changelings?" they asked in unison.
"Only if they went without love for long enough to effectively have a collection of tales under their belt. That is to say, if they survived that lack of vital nutrients somehow," Anna answered with another shrug as she continued to edit the list of inedibles. "Of course, you… don't get many changelings who can say they've survived that lack of vital nutrients, for obvious reasons." She tipped the quill's feathery tip at the wraithling for emphasis.
"Changelings can share love?" Scootaloo asked, wings buzzing at the thought.
"Yes, and it's prevalent here, just… mostly kept behind closed doors, alongside… certain activities you shouldn't know about at your age," Anna replied, her gaze flicking to Maria for a moment. "Though, sometimes sharing love is basically giving your excess to the sick, the elderly, and the young who haven't gotten down the feeding part yet… and somehow, one of us here qualifies for all three simultaneously."
"Hey, at least you don't look like you went through a magitek blender," Katie quipped, garnering a roll of the eyes from her superior in the process.
"And you don't look like you're infested with parasites," Anna quipped back, garnering some weak laughter from them both.
"Wait, wraiths can have parasites?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Depends on the type, and the element they wield," Anna answered. "The wraith-alicorn Matt and Natz told me about… well, he had bugs crawling in him, supposedly. Then again, coming back in such a state must not have been pleasant for him." That got disgusted expressions from the three, who stuck their tongues out at the thought. "Then there's the cursed trees, which are basically their own ecosystems…" She shuddered. "Had the bad luck to almost become one a few times myself…"
"... and cursed trees have their equinity, right?" Scootaloo hedged.
"For a few years, until the pain from their horrific transformations more or less drives them insane and the geases put on those unfortunate souls forces them to follow the same village mantra that damned them to begin with. And as an added bonus, the transformation triggers only when death is about to knock on your door, or if you otherwise get your cutie mark and it happens to have something primarily wooden in it, so…" Anna shuddered again. "For another thing, the transformation can even alter cutie marks as they manifest, and I got to learn that the hard way." The wood on her legs rustled briefly. "It is not pleasant, and I am glad the Elements of Harmony turned my case into something that won't bring ruin and despair to my body anymore."
"Lana was lucky," the Crusaders didn't hear Anna say. And that in itself was a tragic thought; the poor ponies who wound up becoming trees must've had their own thoughts and dreams at one point, only to have that cruelly ripped away from them until they more or less became wooden automatons. Furthermore, the Lieutenant-General sounded like she barely got out of that same mess by the skin of her teeth—which made her existence as a timberpony all the more perplexing in the end. The more they heard about Greenwood, the worse their mental image of that village became—in a way, not unlike what they heard about the nobility back home, if for completely different reasons.
Poor mare probably wouldn't get to stand in front of said nobles of Canterlot again without them verbally tearing her to pieces over the wood adorning her body. They started wondering if diplomacy had to be a pain in the posterior, or if certain individuals were dead set on making it such a hurdle to begin with.
"Of course, then you have cases like Sarah, whose curse didn't trigger when she got her mark. I'm going to guess it was because she wasn't within a thousand miles of Greenwood for that to have happened, and that her mark had metal in it due to being a halberd," Anna said with a shrug of her shoulders, as she reached the bottom of the list of inedibles. "She did tell me she earned her cutie mark in Fenrir's proximity, so maybe he had something to do with it."
"Wait, they got her too?" Scootaloo asked.
Anna grimly nodded. "The less said, the better," she replied firmly. "In fact, pretty much all the surviving adults of Greenwood had it too, but nowhere near as bad as I did… largely because unlike me, they complied with the geas."
"And what did the geas make you do?" Sweetie pressed.
"Forced me to be quiet about everything going on in Greenwood, lest the curse trigger prematurely," Anna answered uneasily, wilting with her reply as she added the finishing touches on the list of inedibles. "And also made me… perform certain activities which I am not going to taint your ears with, and boosted my fertility for those who… shared a room with me, shall we say, back when the elders were strangling me every other night to see if they could make the curse trigger… for no other reason than their amusement." She put the paper on the table and regarded the trio with a haunted look in her eyes and a firm frown, basically silently telling them to 'not repeat to anyone else what they had just heard.'
"And also, they instilled self-loathing in me, and tried to make me adopt their racist views. If you want to know why they boosted my fertility… euch," she said with a shudder, her expression twisting in disgust. "Well… have you three heard of eugenics?"
"Where one group of ponies, or one species, is claimed to be superior to the others, and made to make more babies than those considered worse than them to improve sapientkind overall?" Sweetie proffered, shuddering as she was seeing where this discussion was going—namely, another drunken rant from her sister when all was said and done. "The three tribes tried that before Equestria's founding, and it didn't go over too well."
Anna nodded. "Exactly. And just like the three tribes, Greenwood's practice of eugenics… left much to be desired. They… tried breeding the gryphon out of me, to make an honest mare out of me…" The disgust in her words was palpable enough that it made her wooden claws curl upwards and almost into themselves with a sickening series of gnarly crunches, before they twisted back to their standard formation with the wood fusing seamlessly once more. "Truthfully, I'm glad the elders are dead now—even if I am stuck helping the other villagers learn that what they touted was unacceptable."
"Euch. Sounds just like what that nasty foalsitter told me would happen, even if I started paying attention to her so-called lessons…" Sweetie Belle groused, her face twisting in disgust over the entire topic of discussion. "Why are there ponies still like that? And is that way of thinking illegal here?"
"The way of thinking… well, truth be told, anyone we find spouting that nonsense, we just geld on the spot. Then we tie them to trees, and let the wildlife pick and choose what parts of them are getting removed," Anna muttered, shaking her head. "As for why there's sapients still sporting said way of thinking… most I can chalk it up to is their entire family trees are family cacti."
"Every pony in a family cacti is a bad pony?" Maria guessed, looking up at her mother.
"Cactus," Anna corrected, lifting a claw to pat her child on the head. "And yes." She regarded the list of inedibles, and magically lifted it in the air before it glowed in a bright green light that split in two. When the lights faded, there were two sheets of paper, one of which floated over to the Crusaders for them to use as they saw fit. "Handy duplication spell, which I use in conjunction with a bottomless quiver spell so my arrows never run out. Not so taxing on resources, and I never have to worry about running back to the base before jumping back into battle during heated fights."
The Crusaders whistled in unison, and turned to behold the list of inedibles. There were various names for plants they hadn't known existed, each with a short, concise description of what particular plant had which particular effect when ingested, further accompanied by scribbled, simplistic drawings with splashes of color to show what they looked like. Amusingly, at the very top of the list, were the rainbow-colored mushrooms that had been mentioned earlier, with a drawing of a hoof next to it to show its height. It came complete with an explanation reading: "makes the ingester see sounds and hear colors for twenty-four hours after consumption, and sometimes undergo weird visions."
Next were an item labeled as Seeds of Blight, featuring a smoking seed puffing out red-green discharge—kind of like what they had seen impacting the wraithling's head whenever she spoke out of turn. Their effect made the Crusaders shudder: "afflicts ingester with Greenwood Blight, and is the core for the Greenwood Geas, used for turning ponies into cursed trees. If not consumed in ten seconds after forming, or stuffed into an open wound, it disappears in smoke. Produced by ponies afflicted with Greenwood Blight."
The trio glanced at Anna, worry creasing their brows. She could make the Seeds of Blight? Anna sighed and nodded, figuring there was no getting out of this one. "No, I have not seeded anyone on purpose. At least… anyone that can be considered living in the truest sense of the word," she said, shaking her head. "Most I have done is remove an… accidental seeding that occurred during the manifestation of my cutie mark, which… turned the entire room I was in into a greenhouse in the process."
"Did the old alicorn of Greenwood know about this?" Apple Bloom asked, only to wilt as Anna nodded.
"He… was the first to be afflicted with the Blight, long ago. He's how Ashwood came to be, before it burned down in Ragnarok and a wildfire—Ashwood was made up almost entirely of cursed trees, made of innumerable previous generations of past villagers," Anna said grimly, shaking her head. "And my geas would go on the fritz every time we even approached the area… that is, until Lance found the active spell circle keeping it going, and unknowingly broke it." It was her turn to wilt again. "It was… powered by my flute, Sarah's harp, and… our missing body parts."
… Greenwood—or at least, the area surrounding it—had warranted Ragnarok. That sounded as if it could not get any worse at this rate. The Crusaders shuddered, struggling to envision what lead to that thought process which spiraled into apocalyptic spell usage. "So… how complex is a geas?" Scootaloo asked, wings buzzing with the question. "I mean, a flute, missing body parts…" She looked pointedly at the wood on Anna's legs. "Like… all that effort, just to control one pony?"
Anna nodded. "Yeah, all that effort. Geases are… considerably complex. You gotta carve the right runes in the right places, make a spell circle, either use missing body parts and sentimental items to power it for extra security and as a catalyst, or you can just brute force it with raw magical power… and in the end, it can still backfire. Just one little piece of it gets broken, and the whole thing comes apart like a house of cards."
Anna pantomimed a house of cards falling, through plucking off an invisible card on the bottom row. She continued, "And after that, whatever kinds of geases you carved into that pony cease to work completely, and cannot be used on that individual ever again. Sarah and I… we can't be made silent again. We can't be made to have boosted fertility anymore. We can't be made to bend over backwards to please cruel elders who just want to watch us suffer."
She gestured to Lance. "He… can't be made to act like a wannabe tyrannical lunatic anymore, either. Nor can those who geased him make him do… whatever else it is they wanted to do." Anna shrugged. "And trust me, when I heard about it directly from him, even I thought it was stupid with what they were trying to make him do." She looked at the trio evenly again. "Again, eugenics. That is all."
"... has Fantasia learned nothing from what happens when you try to practice eugenics?" Sweetie Belle asked, incredulous over the fact that the conversation had derailed so much, eugenics was becoming a recurrent theme.
Anna shook her head once more, then affected a dopey expression of mock cheer and raised her front claws to wave them sarcastically. "Nope! Our history is nil, and apparently, we peasants only deserve to know the commands of our so-called betters and nothing else!" she said, before sticking her tongue out and making a face as she dropped her claws. "Eugh, can't even sound convincing when I put it like that… no wonder I have trouble sleeping at night…" she grumbled. Welp, that ruled out naptime for this Lieutenant. Maybe they should get her sleeping meds… but what kind of such products existed on Fantasia?
The Crusaders consulted the list of inedibles and death once more, and ironically found a plant called wet nightmares—an innocuous mushroom with a very vividly pink color scheme on both cap and stalk, with the effect as follows: "knocks out ingester for 72 hours, and makes them have weird hybrids between good dreams and nightmares regarding ponies they have a romantic interest into, or random ponies if romantic interests are not present." Sweetie looked up at Anna and gestured to the plant.
Anna… wilted. "Believe it or not, after the Godcat incident, I was the one to try that plant. I couldn't look at my cohorts for a week after," she said bluntly. "I don't know why the plant chose them, but at the time… and it still holds true today, I do not have a romantic interest in them."
Katie slammed her hoof on the table, and barked out a laugh—the first genuine laugh of the day at that. "Y-y-you say that, and yet that night I spent in th-the tank, I heard everything!" she said, only to get a Seed of Blight right to the schnoz in response, which bounced up in the air and landed spinning on the bridge of her muzzle, where it popped as she regarded it cross-eyed.
"Your mouth. Shut it," Anna commanded curtly, a hoof outstretched and the wood attached to it forming another seed from a weird, pink flower growing in her frog. Katie merely leered at her, and the flower retracted into the wood along with the seed. She turned to the Crusaders and added, "You know the drill by now." At their nod, she let herself relax.
The trio sighed and turned back to the list of despair and desecration, when… something weird happened. A villager from Greenwood strutted up to the table, roughly around Anna's age, and wrapped his leg around her neck like they were the bestest of buddies. Then that villager let go, lit his horn, and magically lifted one of Anna's forelegs just to clasp his hoof around the wood. "Aw come on, you can't be thinking about silly things like that—at your age, you should be getting married," the oblivious bastard said, before Anna wrenched her claw away from him and turned to glare at him.
"Oh, for the love of…" Anna grumbled, briefly turning to the children once more. She magically lifted the villager over her head. "I'll be right back." She moved to stand and trot away with the villager, causing Maria to watch her go.
"Why does he want you to get married, mommy?" Maria called, causing Anna to halt.
"He thinks I need a big, strong stallion to guide me around like a cow with a nose ring," Anna replied. "I'm going to set him straight."
"I'm just trying to help," the villager said, as the soldiers moved to pick up some of the tables wholesale and scoot them to clear a hole for the imminent thrashing the bastard was about to receive. As soon as they cleared the hole, the villager was plopped in the middle of it, and made to sit.
Anna clenched her claws for a moment, and shook them before forcing herself to relax. "You just don't seem to get it," she hissed, an eye twitching. "You were around my age when the elders found out about my existence, I would assume?" At the villager's nod, she moved over to deliver onto him a firm backhoof to the face that sent him sprawling onto the floor. "Which means you're perfectly, acutely aware of what those elders did, since the entire Godcat-damned town saw those idiots parade me around every other day!"
"Parade you… what the…" Apple Bloom trailed off, trying desperately to grasp what Anna had meant by that.
"Showed her off to the community like a prize pig, while punishing her, I would assume," Katie proffered, shaking her head at the thought. "And by 'prize pig,' I mean 'village outcast.'"
"Oh," the trio said in unison, eyes still glued to the exchange.
"But… we didn't know any better, because the elders said it was for the greater good," the villager said, only to be magically yanked in the air by his tail, with his hooves dangling as he was brought to Anna's eye level.
"Sure you didn't, because nopony bothered to expand their damn horizons beyond the village gates," Anna hissed, glaring into his eyes and soul with her own. "If you want to learn why I am not yet married, look no further than those who taught you that my birth would bring the end of the worlds or something." With that, she dropped him and marched back to the table, her face a portrait of rage as she made to sit back down.
As soon as she parked, she slammed her face into the table, but not before moving the empty tray aside first. "Bastards, the whole lot of 'em…" she grumbled into the table.
The Crusaders took their minds off of the altercation and decided to ask Anna a question that had her jerking her head back up the instant it left Sweetie's mouth, "So… I've noticed you don't really have names based on your cutie marks. Why is that?"
"Well…" Anna rubbed the back of her head with a claw. "In my case, my full, legal name was given to me by my dad when I was born, and the same goes for Sarah. Lance… he chose his own name, because his folks didn't name him at all. Matt and Natalie, their first names were parent-given, and Natalie was adopted as a baby and therefore technically nameless before she was found, and their surnames, they gave to themselves once they stopped freaking out about their cutie marks. Lazarus… I'd have to ask, because I truthfully don't know squat about him."
"Natalie was a foundling?" Apple Bloom asked.
Anna nodded. "And you know how mares… nurse, right?" she asked. At the trio's nods, she elaborated a little further, "Well, Natalie was still in her 'I need milkies' phase, and her adoptive mother had just weaned Matt, so… she found herself nursing for a little longer than she expected, when a foray into the woods of the town she was staying at had her hear a baby crying and going off to investigate." She sighed, and decided to get back to the current main topic, "But why were you asking about our naming conventions?"
"Well… I was asking, because I heard about a phenomenon in Equestria, where a mare in labor has… well, I heard it was like glimpsing into the future of their foals as they come out, and then choosing their names based on that. Does that happen on Fantasia?" Sweetie asked, only for Anna to wilt again.
"It… happened to me when I went into labor… but all I saw was darkness, and cold," Anna answered, sighing. "Nothing past that. Mom always told me she had the glimpses too, but those didn't affect her and dad's naming of me and my sister." She shuddered. "But she said… days before the gryphons struck the village, she had seen me bringing forth catastrophe alongside five figures that were somewhat blurry in her vision." She seemed to sink into her seat. "And… through burning down Greenwood, I technically did… bring catastrophe."
Oh. Sweetie's ears fell flat against her head. "Did… did I strike a nerve?" she asked tentatively.
Anna shook her head. "No, just… remembering all of that… and some of which I did with my own two front hooves… it's unpleasant," she muttered, shuddering at the memory. "But because of the Royale Hall of Brawls and its cutie-mark-extermination issues, practically nopony's dared to name their foals after their potential talents for ages now."
"Royale Hall of Brawls?" Scootaloo asked.
"The site of the Royale Catastrophe, before it was destroyed," Anna elaborated. "And yes… every time I've heard the name, I thought it was stupid."
The Crusaders traded looks, then turned back to Anna again. "Did Natalie's adoptive mom have the visions when she was found?" Scootaloo asked.
"I think she might have, but I'd need to double-check. Natalie was practically a newborn at the time, so maybe?" Anna muttered with a shrug. "I know she had a vision with Matt, but he wouldn't tell me what his mother saw, just that his mother might have been really freaked out by even remembering it. Neither would Lance, which… given what his mother and her husband did to him, would make sense. They probably crammed all sorts of lies into his head before he got his ass kicked."
"And how were you named?" Scootaloo asked, turning to Maria.
Maria wilted a bit. "Old daddy wanted to name me Maria before the meanies took him away," she answered uneasily. "New daddy chose my last name." Anna pulled her into a hug, less constricting than the last one she gave her, which she reciprocated. "Old mommy didn't tell me about any visions…"
"They would have named her in her old home, come puberty," Anna mouthed to the trio. They nodded in understanding, and waited for the adoptive mother and child to break their hug before continuing with the discussion.
"So are last names chosen based on quirks the ponies notice about themselves?" Sweetie asked.
"Depends on the individual, though in my case, I was named fully by dad because that was Greenwood's naming schtick, so he went with that," Anna answered with a shrug. "And every villager of eighteen years gets a title, always capped off with 'Of The Forested Flock,' or something like that. I… never got that, as technically, I was never really accepted in the village to begin with. Neither did Sarah, truth be told."
And speaking of Greenwood, the bumbling idiot who got the backhoof meandered his way back to the table, still wearing his oblivious grin that told the Crusaders he might need an extra concussion or two. Again, he wrapped his leg around Anna's neck, only to scream as Maria dug her claws into his pastern with enough force to draw blood. "Let mommy go, or I will rip your eyes off," Maria hissed in warning, causing the moron to release the Lieutenant-General before the young hippogryph released her hold in turn.
The idiot took a few steps away from the table. "You need to control that kid," he said, gesturing to Maria.
Anna turned to him, glowering. "Just… leave us alone," she said firmly. The idiot nodded, and moved to trot towards the table the other villagers were huddled at… and the Crusaders noticed said other villagers glaring at the imbecile as he approached.
"I reckon he's got a thicker skull than the head of the school board," Apple Bloom said tartly.
"Tell me about it," Anna agreed with a sour nod. She turned to Maria and added, "And next time that buffoon tries seducing my tail off, let me or another grown-up handle it, okay?"
Maria nodded, and puffed her feathers out. "But that pony was stupid, mommy! How else do you get stupid ponies to stop?" she argued.
Anna groaned, lifted a claw, and patted her child on the head. "Yeah, yeah… but he's not bad stupid. Just regular stupid," she clarified. "Bad stupid is what you should claw the faces off of. Regular stupid, you kick between the hinds and tell them to go away."
"... does Maria have to be vicious?" Scootaloo asked.
Anna firmly nodded. "Lots of foals on Fantasia… assuming that they live, or become undead, tend to have a mean streak a mile wide. Not in the bullying sense, but the 'everything is out to kill me, so I have to kill it first' sense. Lance and the rest of us… didn't, until circumstances basically forced that onto us," she answered unhappily. "There are those who haven't fully caught on to the moto, like Heather, because…" Here, she mouthed, "she's a little stunted upstairs, if you get my drift."
"Can't be a dull tool in the shed, otherwise you get discarded like the arcane shadows of the past before you," Katie added with a sour nod of her own. "One of the last bits of advice my former King gave me before the hive I belonged to got wiped, and… I'll admit, it's one of the very few pieces of his advice I still follow."
"What about the other foals of Greenwood?" Apple Bloom asked.
Anna shook her head. "They typically don't get training until fourteen, and it persists until twenty-one," she replied. "Of course, they're only taught how to wield simple weapons, like shovels and bows and arrows." She shrugged. "And not… complex items, like gunblades, because Greenwood could be considered backwater in that regard."
"But you have archery as your special talent," Sweetie pointed out.
Anna nodded. "Yes, but you have to remember: I technically have a curse mark," she replied. "Mine was altered by the Greenwood Blight, and further still by the geases until they came undone." She gestured to the scars on her body. "Besides, I've gotten pretty good at manipulating my Blight for mundane uses." The wood rustled as she said that.
"And by 'mundane uses,' you mean…?" Sweetie prompted, spinning a hoof in the air.
"Well, generally as extra armor, or giving unwanted suitors a bad case of the itchies," Anna answered with a shrug. "I just haven't tested it much, because I use my magic externally most of the time. Before last week, it was practically beyond my control whenever it decided it wanted to crop up."
"Wait, the vines on your legs are poisonous?" Apple Bloom asked.
Anna nodded. "I have two types, ivy and kudzu. The kudzu is what you see now; the ivy is tucked away, awaiting further orders," she elaborated. "As mom always said: 'leaves of three, leave them be.'"
"Applejack drilled that into my head too, 'cause ivy'll eat all the sunlight the trees need at the Acres," Apple Bloom said with a nod. Applejack winked at her.
Anna donned a wan smile. "I see your big sis taught you well," she noted dryly. "She did tell you to use gloves, right?"
Apple Bloom nodded. "And to wash my hooves after," she affirmed, garnering some laughter from the tables around theirs, as well as from Anna.
"Well, at least one of the sister worlds is being sensible," Anna said with a grin. The Crusaders nodded, and once more consulted the list of inedibles; it was a start to their biggest conundrum with the report, but soon, they would find themselves asking for something a little more substantial than a list of poisonous, weird flora.