//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Everfree // Story: Hidden in Plain Sight // by DJ Leftwing //------------------------------// “Well, this must be the Everfree Forest,” The Doctor mused as he stared at a wooden sign that clearly stated, “DANGER, KEEP OUT!!” in big red lettering. Never one to pay much heed to warnings, The Doctor simply walked past the sign and proceeded to enter the wood. “Okay, I’m supposed to be finding somebody by the name of Zecora, so I’ve just got to find out where they live…” he said to himself as he looked around him at the gnarled, twisted trees. “Shouldn’t be a problem!” Three minutes of boring walking later… “I’m lost,” The Doctor stated as he tried to determine which direction he had just come from, only to realize that every tree looked the same as the one next to it. “I am so terribly lost.” A bird of some sort screeched in the distance, followed quickly by a rustling in some nearby bushes as a small flock of sparrows evacuated the territory. The Doctor spun around at the noise, only to come face to face with more trees which seemed to be darker than all the rest around them. The bark on these trees was a very, very deep brown. They were so dark, that had The Doctor been human, he would have sworn that they were pure black. However, they were the only variation in the forest that the lost Time Lord could see, and therefore, they presented the most logical path to follow. With a snort, The Doctor pushed his way through the branches of the trees, and emerged on the other side. Standing in front of The Doctor was a castle. Not a magnificent, pristine castle like the one that one would find in Canterlot, no, this was a castle straight out of a nightmare. It was a massive structure, built entirely of a black marble brick, held together with a dark gray mortar. Most of the structure had fallen into disrepair after thousands of years exposed to the damage of the Everfree, though there was one tower that remained intact. At the top, a lone tattered flag flew on a stone flag post. A mild wind blew through the clearing, weaving through the remains, and at times moving in such a way as to cause a whistling howl to come up from the stone, almost as if the building itself was crying in agony. When the stones were silent, so was everything else. While at most times, one could hear the rustling of small animals or the call of an owl, in this clearing there was absolute silence, save for the wind. The Doctor took a cautious step forward onto the remaining floor, and finding that it would support his weight, proceeded to walk towards the remaining tower. It was a total of twenty meters as the bird flies, but due to detours made necessary by the decayed state of the once grand structure, it took The Doctor close to thirty minutes to actually reach the base of the tower. Once there, The Doctor could see that the tower was in fact a lot taller than it originally appeared, and much less stable than one would think. The structure was riddled with holes where bricks had come loose over time, and he could even see that the spire was swaying in the wind. Very carefully, The Doctor pushed open the wooden door, only for it to fall off of its hinges. Inside the tower, placed at the exact center of the room, was a pedestal carved out of white marble, offering a direct contrast to the black surrounding it. The top of the pedestal was carved in the shape of a talon gripping a sphere, indicating that the stand was intended for an orb of some sort. However, the claw was empty. Whatever it once held was gone, stolen or lost long ago. The Doctor approached the mysterious carved holder, and slowly reached his hand out towards it. His fingertips were about to touch the stone before he realized what he was about to do and jerked his hand back. Instead, he withdrew his sonic screwdriver from his jacket pocket and aimed it at the pedestal. After a short wait while the screwdriver did its work, The Doctor was informed, that the pedestal was in fact made of marble and that there were no harmful effects associated with touching it. Satisfied, The Doctor returned the tool to his coat, and again reached out to touch the artifact. As soon as his fingers touched the marble, he was frozen. He could not move, not even in the slightest. This was because there was one thing that he had forgotten to take into account, one thing that the sonic could not detect: magic. ---------- The world was black. Not a single thing could be seen, everything was consumed by the oppressing darkness, and no matter how hard he tried, The Doctor could not think of any way to remove the fog that obscured his vision. Suddenly, a voice from somewhere inside his head, a voice that was certainly not his own, whispered to him, “Why don’t you try opening your eyes?” He was first assaulted by the brightness of the light that seemed to emanate from everywhere, and nowhere, at once. The second thing was the cold. The world around him was freezing, and even his coat didn’t seem to help in the slightest. The Time Lord blinked a few times, slowly bringing his surroundings into focus, and soon discovered that he was standing in a forest. Not the same forest that he had just left, but a different one, a much brighter one. The light had a yellowish hue, almost in direct contrast to how cold the woodland was. The trees were spread out in a haphazard pattern, no two closer than six meters apart. Looking up, The Doctor could see that every single one of the trees was dead, as not a single leaf could be seen. Looking down confirmed that the grass was dead as well, and gave a small crunch whenever he took a step. The forest was perfectly silent, much like the abandoned castle that he had just left, the only difference being that it was not punctured by the wind’s howl. There was no wind. With a shiver, The Doctor began to wander his new location, hoping to find some kind of exit, or even some clue as to where he actually was, but after what felt like an hour, the scenery around him looked exactly the same. The Doctor glanced at the sky, hoping to find some indication of what time it was, but all that he could see was white, which gradually faded to a light orange as it approached the horizon. This place had no indication of life, no indication of the passage of time, no indication of weather, no indication that it was actually anywhere at all. Suddenly, it hit The Doctor. This place wasn’t anywhere. It was nowhere, a limbo as one might call it. It should have been inaccessible, impossible to enter; somehow, he had found his way into this forbidden realm. Upon realization, The Doctor began to think. He thought of the place he had left, the abandoned castle, and imagined that he was still standing there, with his hand outstretched and lying flat against the marble pillar. Slowly, the trees around him began to morph, taking on the shape of the tower that he was working so hard to remember, and very gradually beginning to solidify. With a last surge of thought, The Doctor completed the scene, and as the walls came into focus around him, he released the image from his mind. He was once again standing in the tower, the stone pedestal in front of him, and now, gripped in the talon was a green crystal sphere. The orb was slightly translucent, and inside could be seen a smoke like substance, swirling around as if moved by an unseen force. A light green aura surrounded the ball, and at times a humming could be heard coming from it. The longer The Doctor stared at the orb, the more he felt as if he knew it from somewhere, as if he had seen it before. The orb was hypnotizing, capturing the Time Lord’s attention and drawing him ever closer to it, until finally The Doctor picked it up and removed it from its holder. It was warm, and that warmth seemed to spread through his body as he cradled the sphere, nullifying the harsh wind that was now tearing its way through the ruins. The once quiet whistling of the wind was now a full howl, and the tower above began to visibly sway in the barrage. A single brick dislodged from the crumbling walls and fell, hitting the floor and smashing into a thousand tiny pieces directly beside where The Doctor was standing. “Run,” the voice in his head said to him, perfectly calmly and without a single hint of fear. “Hey, that’s my line!” he yelled back as he turned on his heel and began to sprint out the door. The green orb was still grasped in his hands, impeding his motion and slowing him down. However, he could not seem to let it go. His mind refused to tell his hands to drop it, so as he ran, he carried the precious crystal, until he was outside the ruins. Once he was relatively safe outside the castle remains, The Doctor was able to take a better look at the object that he now had in his possession. His earlier observations proved to be correct, and the orb was in fact made of a crystal of some sort. It was not a crystal that he recognized though. Not even the sonic screwdriver could identify the mysterious substance. The clouds inside the globe had stopped spinning, and were now simply floating there. Unable to think of something to do with the artifact, The Doctor simply placed it into one of his jacket pockets, which were able to easily hold the sphere due to being “bigger on the inside.” With that out of the way, he once again set forth on his journey to find Zecora, and just as before, he quickly got lost. ********** Bon-Bon was happy, because she finally had the house to herself again. Lyra had gone off to find Pinkie Pie, which could either take all day or a few minutes, and The Doctor had gone off to find Zecora in the Everfree. She could finally return to baking the treats needed for the surprise birthday party that Pinkie was throwing next week for Mrs. Cake. While the pink party mare was superb at making baked goods, she just wasn’t up to par with Bon-Bon on the candy making front. She had just finished with a tray of hot candies when she heard the front door open and a multitude of hooves come in. ‘It must be Lyra and Pinkie Pie. I better tell her where her human is before she starts to panic.’ She carefully set the tray down on the cooling rack and placed the tongs next to it before turning to head out into the living room. To her surprise, there was a third pony in the room that she was not expecting, Twilight. “I don’t get it! I left him right here, and now he’s gone. He wouldn’t have just wandered off, he doesn’t even know where anything is,” Lyra said, not even noticing her roommate standing in the doorframe. “Maybe he went upstairs to check on Bonnie!” The mint unicorn turned and trotted up the stairs before Bon-Bon could even let her know of her presence. “Hello Twilight, Pinkie Pie,” the candy maker greeted, surprising the two visitors. “Oh, Bon-Bon, you’re awake. Lyra said you were passed out upstairs,” Twilight replied as she sat back down after standing up to spin around. “Oh, I was, but I woke up a w\little while ago and had a talk with our other guest. Then I went back to baking candy for the surprise p…” “SHHHHHHH!!!” Pinkie interrupted, suddenly appearing between the other two mares. “Pinky, neither of the Cakes is here right now, so they can’t hear us if we mention the p…” “But what if they can still hear us?” she interrupted again. “IF they could, they would already know about it because I told Lyra the other day when I…” Suddenly, a scream could be heard from upstairs, before a panicking Lyra came galloping down the steps. She must have tripped over her hooves at some point, because she tumbled down the last few stairs and landed in the room resting upside down against the couch. “He’s kidnapped Bonnie and run away!” she sobbed as she tried to regain her footing. “He hasn’t kidnapped Bon-Bon Lyra, just calm down,” Twilight said as she helped the fellow unicorn to her hooves. “But he has! She wasn’t upstairs in her room and I can’t find The Doctor anywhere,” she said, tears starting to drip from the corners of her eyes. “I’m not in my room because I got up a couple hours ago to do some more baking,” Bon-Bon said as she walked into Lyra’s line of sight. “Bonnie!” the distressed mare exclaimed as she flung her hooves around her roommate for the second time that day. “I thought you’d been kidnapped.” “Yes, I heard. Now could you please let me go, you know I don’t like being hugged.” Once the hugger released the huggee, Bon-Bon continued, “As for where The Doctor is, I told him he ought to try to find Zecora in the Everfree, so that’s probably where he is.” “Oh okay, that makes more sense then you being kidnapped. Not as much of an adventure that way though,” Pinkie said. “I would have been like a really big game of hide and seek!” “Yes Pinkie, but it’s a good thing that he didn’t kidnap Bon-Bon. Oh, and I guess we won’t need your expertise after all,” Lyra said to the bouncing pink mare. “Okie doki loki. I’ll just go back to preparing for the you know what for you know who!” she replied before leaving through the window. “…” “So the human is gone?” the more studious of the two unicorns asked Bon-Bon. “For now, yes. He’ll probably be back later after he visits Zecora’s.” “Did you remember to tell him to take the second trail into the Everfree, not the first?” “Everypony knows not to go on the…oh. Oh no.” Bon-Bon sat down on the floor with a hard thump, slowly shaking her head from side to side with a distressed look plastered on her face. “I sure hope he makes it through all right….” ********** “Tree, tree, tree, tree, stump, tree, tree, tree. Wait, that’s the same tree from earlier. Or is it? I just don’t know anymore,” The Doctor muttered to himself as he wandered aimlessly in the dark depths of the forest. It had been at least 20 minutes since he had last seen sunlight, maybe longer. The passage of time was impossible to discern this deep in the Everfree. For all he knew, he may have been absent form Ponyville for well over a day, or possibly only a few hours. All The Doctor did know is that he had not yet found Zecora, and that he probably was not going to. He was about to give up all hope of finding anything meaningful ever again when he unexpectedly stumbled across a stone archway leading into a clearing at the bottom of a ravine. It was a nice clearing, unlike the clearing that the castle had been in. Bird calls still filled the air, there was a nice breeze, and the sky was actually visible above, casting the last light of the sun on the grass. It was twilight, and the setting celestial body placed the scene in a warm orange glow, gently luring The Doctor into a false sense of security. He was standing in the center of the clearing, admiring how the ravine offered such a stark contrast of appearance to the rest of the forest, when he heard a low growl come from somewhere behind him. Slowly, The Doctor turned around to find that he was staring into two beady black eyes; the eyes of a manticore. ********** A light knocking came from the far side of the room, causing the three mares that were seated in said room to look up from their game of Ponopoly. After a short wait, the sound came again, and reluctantly, the mint green unicorn got up out of her chair to answer the door. On the opposite side stood a light brown earth pony stallion with a shaggy dark brown mane and tail. His medium blue eyes blinked a few times before he broke out into a huge smile. “Lyra! I knew I’d find the house again eventually,” he exclaimed, stumbling forward as he attempted to walk inside. “Doctor?” Lyra asked, carefully helping the ill-balanced individual through the doorway. “Yes, it’s me. I regenerated, just like I said I would. I’m still not ginger though, and I have the strangest urge to break out into song. Look, I even have this nifty hourglass on my rump!” “That’s your cutie mark, it represents your special talent,” Lyra explained as she made sure her friend had settled on the couch comfortably. “Mine is playing the lyre, and Bon-Bon’s is making candy.” “And mine is magic,” Twilight added, causing The Doctor to take notice of her for the first time. “Hey, you’re that unicorn from this morning. You threw me out of your tree…house.” “Yes, and I’m sorry about that. I panicked and I may have overreacted.” “Perfectly understandable. I’m The Doctor by the way.” “Yes, you told me before. I’m Twilight Sparkle.” “Fantastic to meet you Twi…” “Hey! I just realized your accent’s gone!” Lyra interrupted, causing the two to cast a quick glare in her direction. She quickly shrunk down under their disapproving stares. “Yes, I suppose to you it is gone. I myself feel as if I’m talking in an accent now, it’s a bit strange to tell the truth. I guess anything can happen during regeneration, eh?” “So Zecora was able to help?” Bon-Bon probed as she returned from getting an extra bowl of soup. “Actually, I never spoke to Zecora. The regeneration happened a lot differently than I originally expected.” “What do you mean?” questioned Twilight, who was now holding a legal pad and a quill in her magic, ready to take notes. “Well, it started when I got lost….” Chapter written by Twilight Sparkle