//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: The Forest of Dreams 
// Story: Glowing in Everglow 
// by Darkmoon9 
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Diary of Cozy Glow

Even during our short time here, we have heard a lot about the Forest of Dreams, it was a wild and dangerous place, reminded me of the Everfree Forest back home. Cipher and Silverwing also told us they wanted to join the expedition into the forest. I accepted as Silverwing seemed to be a powerful warrior, as a Griffin he was huge and imposing and he carried a massive halberd, Cipher was someone whose intelligence I already had started to respect, maybe not as an equal, but close. Staybright gave us a drawing of what Lilac Blossom looked like and urged us to set off immediately. We left the city exited through the South gate and Silverwing, the one with the most wilderness experience among us started tracking her trail, which he picked up with little difficulty.

The forest of dreams was dark and gloomy, sunlight barely being able to penetrate through the dense vegetation even during the middle of day. It did indeed remind me of Everfree, where I had taken several expeditions in order to retrieve the artifacts necessary for the ritual to drain magic from Equestria. I also happened to stumble across the cracked skull of a foal during one of my trips to Everfree, the wounds suggested death by blunt force trauma, probably not caused by a beast, but a blunt weapon like a mace. There were stories surrounding Everfree that gave even an archvillain like myself the creeps, one of them about a village of undead ponies calling themselves the Unmarked, whose denizens would kill any pony who had received their mark of destiny who ventured into their territory. For those reasons are part of me didn’t want to go deeper into the forest of dreams in fear of what horrors we could encounter inside. But I tried to push my fear down and continued deeper into the forest.

Silverwing seemed to have little difficulty following Lilac Blossoms tracks. He told me it was obvious she had little wilderness experience and seemed to be fleeing in desperation. We emerged into a sun-drenched glade, filled with long grass and wildflowers. A clear trail had been trampled straight through the glade, it looked like the pony was in a hurry. As we entered the glade, two tiny flutterponies, small equines with butterfly wings, the size of a pixie, came out of the long grass and stared at us aggressively, telling us to leave immediately. I asked them what was wrong, they told me that a giant pony had just charged through the glade and destroyed their homes. I told them we were hunting for the very same pony and offered to bring her to justice. The flutters told me that they didn’t care and threatened to beat us up if we didn’t leave immediately. I found this threat amusing considering their small stature. Yet Sunset suggested that maybe we should go around anyway just to avoid a conflict. I reluctantly agreed, flutterponies could be such dicks, and that was something that applied to them in my own world as well. Nevertheless, we went around the glade and continued into the forest.

Eventually as we were walking past a large tree, we noticed the roots arched out and formed a natural cave. A gleam of green came from within the cave. We saw a wolf and her cub emerge from the cave, they looked hungry, hungry for pony flesh. We had little choice but to fight them off, yet we had a giant Griffin on our side, so I was confident we would be able to overpower them. But it turned out that this wasn’t even necessary, as Silverwing gave the wolves an intimidating roar, they scuttled off with their tails between their legs. 

When we searched the wolf’s lair, we found the skeletal remains of a pony. The skeleton did have the remains of a lilac mane, so we initially thought this might be the corpse of Lilac Blossom. But on closer examination, I realized that the tail and coat were both brown which did not match Lilac Blossom. Additionally, the skeleton had been picked clean and therefore had obviously been there for a while, maybe multiple months. There was no way to identify the body, but it carried a jade statue of a prancing pony, which was what produced the green gleam that could be seen outside the cave. I took the jade statue for “safekeeping”. 

With no success in our search so far, we headed deeper into the forest, the trail became fresher and more obvious as we headed deeper. I felt we must be getting close, so it didn’t surprise me at all when I saw a pony in a tattered maid’s uniform drinking from a stream ahead of us. She does not seem to have seen us and looked both exhausted and muddy. She had a gray coat and a lilac mane with a mark of destiny resembling a Lilac Blossom. When she saw us, she surrendered immediately as she was too scared to run. Silverwing approached her and told her she was under arrest for drugging Prince Shining Horn. Lilac Blossom’s eyes ran thick with tears, I asked her about her side of the story. Sobbing back tears, she complied, explaining that she had been having relations with an earth pony named Brown Ochre. If her family found out they would be scandalized, as they are a family of fine upstanding unicorns. 

Some unicorns in masks grabbed her and Brown Ochre yesterday and told her to drug to the Prince with a sleeping draught or her coltfriend would be killed and her family would be told about him. They took her into the palace and she was given a pouch full of gold and a vial full of liquid. They promised that it was just to make him sleep so people could steal something from his room. The pony who gave it to her even drank some of her vial to prove it wouldn’t hurt anyone before she agreed. Last night she put the vial in the Prince’s milk and took it to him as normal, when the news broke she realized what she had done and panicked. All she could do was to run away and hope the strange ponies released her coltfriend as they promised. Sunset promised that we would make sure her partner was safe and Lilac Blossom seemed very grateful to her for this promise. 

On our way back to the palace, we ran into a gem gnoll, a strange bipedal dog creature who’s features resemble that of a hyena, their counterparts in my world were known for their greed and attraction to gemstones, he was alone and except for the hyena it used as a hunting hound. The dogs snarled and attacked, not seeming intimidated by the small group of ponies and the lone Griffin. Lilac Blossom screamed and covered behind a tree as the gnoll and the hyena lunged at us. I gave my companions and inspiring speech, pushing them towards greatness, there was great power in my words, more so than ever before. Were I drawing upon some ancient magic without knowing it? Silverwing, inspired by my speech and enraged by the gnoll roared and charged the gnoll, delivering a blow with his halberd, while Cipher flanked him and struck him with a hidden weapon he had attached to his front hoof, killing the gnoll instantly. The hyena tore at Silverwing, causing a minor wound, Sunset struck the hyena with a bolt of fire, wounding it. I tried to use the short bow I have acquired in town before we went out, holding it in my mouth while I used my right wing to draw the bowstring, but my inexperience showed and I missed, martial pursuits were never my forte. However, the enraged Silverwing managed to end the wounded hyena in a single blow.  

Sunset offered to use her magic to heal the wounded Silverwing, he agreed. Sunset placed her horn on the wound, speaking a few arcane words, a bright light emerged from the horn, healing the wound as she touched it. As by instinct, I memorized those words, my subconscious knowing that they would come in handy one day. I took the studded leather armor of the corpse of the gnoll, modified it to suit a pony and used it for myself after cleaning the blood off it in a nearby creek. I thought it might be useful protection in the future.

When we returned to the palace Staybright was glad to see us return with Lilac Blossom, Sunset argued that they should show mercy given that she was blackmailed into the deed, however Staybright didn’t relent and saying she does deserve punishment for what she’s done. Sunset turned towards me, as if she was asking me to utilize my impressive charisma to help Lilac Blossom, reluctantly, I tried my best to argue with Staybright that Lilac wasn’t really the true villain here and that we should save the punishment for the true bad guys. He eventually relented, Lilac Blossom thanking me, giving me a hug in the process. I didn’t know how to feel about that, so I just stood there awkwardly. 

Staybright decided to pay us each 250 gold crowns (the currency used in this world instead of bits) each for our troubles. I decided to show him the jade statue found on the corpse in the cave. Staybright told us it had been stolen from the palace the previous month, the corpse in the cave was probably the thief, who perished by wolves. He gave us a sum of 400 gold for its return, which we split evenly among us. Staybright thanked us for our services and asked us to return tomorrow after he and his staff had a chance to examine all the evidence that had been found.