God, if you are listening, I just want you to know one thing.
The minty green filly dodged, hooves leaving marks in the forest soil as she avoided the wooden beast's jaws snapping shut inches away from her neck. Its jagged fangs found only air.
You are not funny.
Another one pounced. In the blink of an eye, the filly vanished and appeared with a ‘pop’ in previously empty space above the timberwolf, positioned to deliver a kick with her hind legs.
Herbivore eaten by plants. Really? That's cheap. Is that a karmic punishment for all the cacti I killed in my old apartment? I swear, they just decided to die by themselves one day!
The timber wolf staggered back, pieces of bark crumbling and falling off, revealing a fibrous mass of uncovered muscle made from plant matter. Hearing a twig snap behind her, the unicorn dropped to the ground, claws of the third monster barely missing her nape.
How many of these things are in this accursed forest? This isn't a pack, this is a whole damn hive! There are more strangely colored canines here than in an average furry convention!
Landing on a bed of slimy wet moss, she rolled to the side, avoiding another attack. The duped timberwolf buried its fearsome teeth into some shrubbery instead.
Dodge and weave, that’s all she could do now. Normal tactics just didn't work on them. There was no standing your ground with those things. No proving that you just weren't worth it as a meal. Even when she destroyed them, they just reformed nearly instantly! Vicious hungry monsters, with nothing behind those angry glowing eyes.
She heard her own heart drumming loudly in her ears. The world was fuzzy. Her lungs were on fire, and the timber wolves were everywhere and they kept on coming.
Too many to fight, nowhere to hide. Run, run as fast as possible.
Stark expression on her face, gaze focused, she reached into her pocket with her magic. Waiting for the moment to give the wolves a slip, before the rest of the giant army of snapping jaws and sharp claws had the chance to catch up.
The wolves started circling her, ready to pounce again. Bit to the side, just a little more…
Now!
A small, metal cylinder landed between the confused wooden beasts, exploding into black smoke, before they realized what happened. A green blur dashed past them.
The filly aimed at the denser parts of the undergrowth. For once, being tiny aided the unicorn in some way. Howling was echoing behind her. Already alerting the rest of the pack about her location? Shit.
The bigger bodies of the timber wolves bulldozed through the vegetation, sending dirt and greenery flying in their rush. The smell of pony flesh and magic tantalizingly close. This one smelled different from the others. Alien and so… enticing. The strange power resting inside their prey would sustain the pack for weeks.
The timberwolves were getting close, despite her mad run in the hard terrain, even running across a river at one point. Yet, she just couldn't lose them! Worse, it was like those things were tracking her on radar or something! No matter what she did or where she hid, they just continued finding her! But she still had some tricks up her sleeve.
Using her powers willy-nilly would cost dearly. Each use was more time forced to stay in this place, unable to get closer to home. But with no other options left, it was time to get creative.
God, I hope this works without hands.
With a pack of timber wolves following close behind, the filly ran and ran, straight towards an old oak tree. Hooves thundering on the forest floor, sticks and leaves flying around her and staying in the air, floating.
Crap, crap, crap!
Too much power leakage, too broad and unfocused. That wasn't a good sign this soon, but she had to continue now.
The timberwolves were close, snapping at her tail. The tree right there! Its ancient trunk towered above its neighbors.
The hunters were filled with bloodlusted glee. Their prey was trapped now! Soon they would all feast.
Then she reached the tree.
And continued running.
Gravity bent around the pony foal. Reality got smacked over the head with a barstool again as the filly ran vertically up the tree, in blind disregard of all conventional physics, rushing towards the branches at the top. The wolves uselessly barking below her, the rest of the beasts gathering at the trunk. Some of them tried to climb, only to fall back down and break into pieces.
She grinned. “Suck it, you termite ridden flea magnets! Yeah!”
Reach the canopy. The forest here is dense enough that I can just jump from tree to tree and avoid them all together. “No meat for you, you hear me? Ya stupid vegetables with anger issues! This piece of… flank? Flank. This piece of flank stays alive one more day!”
Her smile vanished quickly as she noticed the intensifying green glow coming from the timberwolves.
“What the-”
The wolves were intentionally throwing themselves at the tree now, breaking apart. Their discarded parts slowly being enveloped in an eerie glow.
Well, that can't be good.
The pieces of bark, twigs and wood started levitating, swirling in a miniature tornado of timberwolf gore. Slowly, the parts combined into an enormous beast. The creature was bigger than two grizzly bears stitched together and thrice as angry. Nothing but a few tons of concentrated hatred, hunger and savage rage, radiating evil energy strong enough to make a lawyer blush.
Please don't climb, please don't climb, please don't climb…
With what she would swear was an evil smirk, the enormous beast raised a single great paw and tore its hardened claws into the tree, cutting a giant chunk of wood from the oak. The tree tilted to one side, rumbling, and the sound of cracking wood rang out through the Everfree.
Phew! No, wait. This is worse, actually.
She jumped, gripping the next tree and nearly lost concentration on the gravity defying power as the wolf simply turned and cut the second tree down, while the oak she previously climbed fell to the ground in a rain of splinters.
Think, think! I can't keep this up forever! Why did I think this was a good idea? Stupid horse brain!
Terrified birds and squirrels were jumping ship. Scanning the forest floor for anything to get her out of this hairy situation, her eyes panned over a rock formation, hiding a hole leading underground between it. The rocks were falling inside as the ground shook from more felled trees. Wait, were those giant bear tracks near it?
It didn't really matter to her what they were. It was a cave. A potentially unstable cave.
This just might work.
Jumping again, aiming to get closer to the cave, the mega timberwolf kept destroying the trees around the filly. The ground shaking more and more. Destabilizing the cave with each impact, getting closer to her goal as she felt her energy deplete.
She stopped, holding onto a branch. Barely catching her breath, her head aching from keeping the gravity at bay for so long.
The wolf approached, its steps heavy and lumbering, ready to finish the job and claim the pesky little prey trying to escape. It raised its cleaver like claws and-
Then the ground under it collapsed, leaving the wolf to stare for a second in bewilderment, before the cave swallowed the beast whole. The silence was then replaced by a great roar, pitiful canine yelps and a sound very much like a wood chipper doing something horrible to an old chair.
“Ha! Take that, you stupid piece of future IKEA furniture!”
The massive tree she was on started to fall, the ground too unstable to support its weight. In a desperate attempt at keeping herself from following it, the filly jumped to the next tree, her hooves slipping on the bark as her focus waned, the power holding gravity at bay faded, reality coming back at her with a vengeance, cheeky grin and a bar stool.
As gravity claimed her once again, a single bizarre thought entered her mind.
“Oh, come on, that's twice this week!”
The fall was long; she knew that much. The underbrush could soften it a little, but probably not enough for it to matter. If the impact didn't kill her immediately, the broken bones, concussion, internal bleeding or good old normal bleeding would get her soon after.
Her life flashed before her eyes, which was quite annoying, really. With the number of near-death experiences she collected, she saw it flash so often that the early bits became really boring and repetitive. It reminded her of only being able to watch one single movie while on a seventeen hour road trip when she was a child, because the rest got left back home.
‘Huh, I should check if they have any movies in this dimension. Who knows, maybe I will snag something to re-watch later when I nearly die again.’
With closed eyes, she felt the wind blowing around her. She didn't need to see to know that the ground steadily approached, a few moments left before the big splat.
All of her life condensed into a few seconds. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the boring.
A home with people smiling, a laugh with a friend, quiet guitar playing around a campfire. Loved people, missed people, normal people. Moments of peace, moments of struggle. Gas station late at night. Train leaving the station, nearly devoid of passengers. A simple conversation with a bus driver at five in the morning. Somehow, it was them. The gray, mundane, and human moments were what she missed the most.
She opened her eyes and pulled, reality straining under the pressure
All movement around her came to a halt, the world fell into silence. Reality got kicked in the teeth once again.
As gently as a feather, she reached the ground.
Wave of nausea came over her, the feeling best described as a bastard child from the unholy union of hangover, bad trip from weed bought in a shady alley when already blitzed, and a brain aneurysm.
Well, this ain't great. But hey, it could be worse.
The tree, floating in suspended time above the unicorn only moments earlier, fell. Burying the filly under its weight.
She didn't feel very good.
That by itself was a victory, because to feel at all, one has to be alive.
But that's of little consolation to someone who has a very good reason to not feel good, like, for example, a piece of wood sticking from one's foreleg.
Normal reactions to such a find are shock, probably followed by screaming. In this case, there was only seething anger.
You stupid idiot! You nearly got yourself killed! Again! Fuck! You are one lucky dumbass that the branch missed the artery, otherwise you could say the hope of ever seeing home again a big fat farewell!
The pony hissed in pain. Lifting the impaled limb up, red was seeping from it and staining her jacket. With her healthy foreleg, she applied pressure, acting more or less on muscle memory alone.
Fuck, there is no way I will be able to pull that thing out without bleeding out.
She needed real medical help, not the few pieces of first-aid training she barely remembered. But help was not coming. No one knew of her existence here, no one would find her, and no one would miss her.
The walls were closing in. The world didn't look real. This wasn't him. Nothing here was real. He wasn't real. He would die and no one would care. Alone. So alone. Even his name was lost. Nobody. Nothing. That was all that was left of him.
Her chest felt heavy, her breathing was pained and uneven, tears were flowing down her muzzle. Adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, only exacerbating the rising sense of dread.
The filly gave herself a mental slap. Get it together. This is not a good time to have a panic attack! Stop the bleeding, secure that stupid splinter, get out of here before more monsters arrive… find help. You can do it, so start doing it, you maggot!
And stop crying!
Out of her hiker's jacket, she pulled a roll of bandages marked with a sign of a snake eating itshis tail. Using a great length of them to mitigate the bleeding and secure the embedded piece of wood in place. The job wasn't pretty. Doing it one-hooved with depleting magic wasn’t made any easier by the tears clouding her vision.
Taking a deep breath, she got up on three shaking legs. She was a mess of bruises, filthy, and was starting to resemble an Egyptian mummy more and more by the minute.
Blood loss, bruises, and probably a concussion. Great, as if the rest wasn't enough. Now I can add brain damage to my growing list of problems. The infinite roll of bandages ain't gonna help much with that. The magelight orb is probably the only thing keeping me conscious at the moment.
It was clear she needed to contact the locals. She saw something from up in the treetops. Rows and rows of fruit trees, waiting like soldiers. An orchard that wasn't that far away.
Fear struck her with force.
The last time you tried that, you were nearly enslaved and used as a living gateway for a tyrant to invade other worlds, met a demon wanting to make you a living toy - well, living would be maybe an exaggeration in for what he was planning to do with you - and nearly got killed over a dozen different ways and somehow nearly lost your damn mind.
And before that, a glassed death world where you met Her.
The burns still stung.
One emergency jump after another. All of these horse worlds were dangerous, and you want to contact the locals when wounded?
Was it safe? No, not at all, but she wouldn't make it alone. This was a foolish endeavor from the beginning. She couldn't keep this up. Not at this pace. Not after months, no, nearly a year without pause. Without seeing a friendly face.
Meeting the locals under any circumstance would be insanity, but did she even have a choice?
With the direction set, the pony started limping away in her chosen direction; the sun dipping below the horizon behind her.
Let's hope that these ones are friendly.