Chapter 32: Dragon’s Teeth
The midnight moon shined through the clouds from on high. It was enough light for Night Guards to maneuver through the garrison with ease, especially with the flickering torchlight for those less accustomed to working in the dark. Princess Luna, Captain Hawk, and First Lieutenant Lightning Chaser stood at the forefront of a tent swarmed with Night Guards, Royal Guardponies, and the occasional magus.
The princess, being easily a head taller than everypony else, caught the attention of Professor Incantus and Second Lieutenant Skylar. The pair approached the group. “Highness,” they said together in a formal greeting and bowed.
“Rise and report.”
Skylar was first. He had taken the time to gather his armor and looked well, but given the late hour, he looked dead on his hooves. “Sergeant Jetstream is missing, Highness.” He wheezed a sardonic laugh. “We’ve set up a ten kilometer grid and are expanding in concentric circles after every pass. His bunkmate was the last to see him and reported he left Jetstream alone at eighteen thirty hundred hours.”
The many milling guards parted around the trio with an unspoken courtesy and allowed her to approach a scullery maid being interrogated by a soldier bearing the rank of captain.
“The maid here,” Skylar jerked his head to the pony in question, “claims to have been sitting outside the adjacent tent until nineteen thirty hours before leaving. She claims to have been... er, “looking for a roll in the hay” as the soldiers came and went. According to her, Jetstream never left the tent for as long as she was present.”
Her interrogator left the mare. She eyed his rump as he left and licked her lips. Luna caught a whiff of an unmistakable spicy and musky scent. “Make sure this mare is discharged until her state of mind is no longer addled by carnal needs, second lieutenant. Can her testament be trusted?”
“I have no justifiable reason to doubt her. She kept a notebook with a few fantasies concerning the soldiers as well as some of their schedules. Her details, however hormonally misguided, are accurate. She even recorded the time she noticed the sergeant’s door was locked shut from the inside.”
“Elaborate.”
Skylar halted by the front door. Ponies continued to file in and out when they duties required. A pungent scent wafted from inside, causing Hawk’s second to look inside the open tent curiously. “Sergeant Jetstream’s door was left open when the bunkmate left. After an undetermined length of time, the scullery maid noticed that his door was locked from the inside. Well, locked is not quite accurate. All of these tent flaps are built to close with rope loops and bits of wood. While not particularly sturdy, they are built for privacy and protection from the elements. The tent stakes are also firmly in place, meaning he didn’t finagle under the tent either. In short, the sergeant shut the tent flap and didn’t leave for the maid’s stay. He is not inside, so he can’t be more than two hours in the wind.”
Luna narrowed her eyes. “The coward has fled? I do not believe you would ask me to come myself if this is everything pertaining to his treachery.” A shift in the wind brought more of the foul smell to their sensitive noses.
“Indeed, highness. I’ve checked the records; all of his gear is in secure storage, untouched. All of his personal effects are in this tent, also untouched. It was well past shift change, so he couldn’t have snuck out easily, and no one recalls seeing him anywhere. He’s up and vanished.” Skylar carelessly kicked a rock in mild irritation. It rolled uselessly before stopping next to a cart full of hay bales and the slight burst of adrenaline seemed to sap whatever remaining energy he possessed. His head hung low and he legs wobbled before he regained the energy to remain standing.
The charcoal grey coat of Hexxus Incantus stepped forward and adjusted his glasses. With a disheveled mane, unkempt coat and fur, and bloodshot eyes, he looked even worse for wear than Skylar in terms of fatigue. He adjusted the black cloak identifying him as a Council member, better wrapping it around his pudgier abdomen to better provide warmth. “I do suppose this is where I come in. Please, Highness, step inside.”
Upon hearing that title, the magi and soldiers inside the tent filled out. Skylar joined Hawk, Hexxus, Lightning, and Luna and together they walked inside while Hawk and Lightning parted the tent flaps for their charge. The foul odor hit them in full. Hexxus sneezed. “Bless you,” Skylar said. “That’s a foul stench no matter how many times I smell it. We’re not quite sure why it’s in the air.”
“I have already requested the resources and ponypower necessary to analyze vapor samples.” He sneezed again. The caustic air had been stagnant until it was disturbed by those looking for the wayward sergeant. “It smells like somepony had some rotten eggs sitting around for a couple days.”
“Foul indeed,” Hawk agreed. “Some type of alchemy?”
“Sulfur,” Lightning corrected. She sniffed the air and nodded, confirming some unvoiced suspicion. “Scent’s too sharp. Maybe mixed with niter. Unless...” She sniffed the air a few more times and her ears perked in surprise. “No, just sulfur.” There was something odd in the way her eyes shifted as she started searching the tent. Insignificant, seemingly normal, objects caught her eye: the beds, the nightstand, the grass. She blinked, squinted at the bunkmate’s bed, and smiled.
A typical officer tent, it contained little other than a bed, dresser, and cabinet for a pair of officers. An envelope was half hazardly splayed on the nightstand, but the room was otherwise kept clean.
Nothing was out of the ordinary. Except that every blade of grass was blackened and dead. The devastated flora crunch and crumbled to dust under their hooves. Crushed grass marked the past paths of guards and magi as they came and went. “I haven’t had much time to investigate, but what I have has only asked more questions than answers, not that there was much to discover to begin with.” Hexxus sighed. For the first time since he arrived, Luna could see the toll stress had done to the stallion. Already well into his fifties, age and duty had weighed on him before, and the endless supply of mysteries and danger throughout the past week had done little to ease the burden.
Hexxus shook his head and his face became one of impassive professionalism, brightening his once downtrodden demeanor. His lips curved as if he heard some unspoken joke. “That awful stench has its source in this tent, but we can’t find anything capable of producing it. Whatever did, I assume it is now gone as the smell is noticeably lighter than it was once we first entered. We can only guess that it killed the grass in the process, but that is nothing but baseless conjecture.
“The only other thing of note is the good Sir Skylar interviewed the chap who bunked with Jetstream and he said this was not here when he left. Now the dead grass is by no means dangerous or anomalous, but the fact prevails that it wasn’t here before and it no longer contains any residual bacterial life. In addition, we can find no normal signs of fire, which is what looked like killed the grass, but there are no usual signs of a fire like smoke damage. I cannot even discern why the damage does not extend beyond the tent.”
“Hmmm?” Lightning hummed, looking over the whole tent in a calculated search. As the mare was a seasoned tracker and investigator, the detail was absorbed into her mind like a sponge. “Magic?” Her eyes scanned over the tent once again, looking for something.
“You will have to explain this to me, professor,” Luna said.
“As you wish, princess. And I don’t know just yet, first lieutenant. All soil contains varying degrees of life; bugs, worms, or simple soil bacteria live in just about everything. What we have here is completely dead. Preliminary samples contain no life whatsoever, not even fledgling seeds for grass. Now this can very rarely occur in nature, but this is rural farming ground that just suffered through a week of rain. There should be something. There just isn’t.” Hexxus through his hooves up in exasperation. “It would be interesting if I could think of a possible reason why it’s here. I can detect no recognizable magic and I don’t see how this in anyway relates to your missing escaped pony, and that is all I have to offer at the moment.”
“Very well, you two. Continue your investigations as necessary. You both will receive all available funding and resources needed to assist in Sergeant Jetstream’s capture,” Luna said. The pair bowed in thanks.
“If I may?” Lightning asked Hawk. He in turn gave Luna a questioning look, who nodded. Lightning walked forward, twitching her bat wings in delight at being able to begin a hunt. Hawk ran a hoof through his silver mane and sighed; she would never change.
Lightning approached Jetstream’s bed and made another visual sweep. She started sniffing his bed, looking for anything out of the ordinary. She picked at the sheets for any hairs or particulates, then started examining the stitching. Done with that, she wormed her way under his bed.
“Ah, thought so,” she exclaimed in triumph.
“What is it?” Skylar asked, surprised that he missed something in evidence collection.
“Stop talking. It’s distracting.” Wiggling out, they could see something that looked like plastic in her teeth. She set that on Jetstream’s bed for evidence collection.
“Wh – ”
“Stop that. Stop thinking.”
Her next target was the nightstand between the beds. Her eyes marked a scuff mark at the base, and moved onto the letter. She held it as if it were a viper and gave it the usual scrutiny. Paper type, ink, address, name, strokes, all absorbed with an eidetic memory. Taking the letter subpoenaing the missing sergeant out of the envelope, she examined it for a few seconds before placing it back inside.
Finished with that, she started on the dead grass, but something caught her eye halfway through her examination. The four waited as she laid prone on the ground, examining something they couldn’t see. She rose and walked out of the tent, returning a moment later with a vial and a glass small glass slide. She scooped some thick but minute traces of gray powder into both and set them onto bed. Returning to her work, she slid the garbage pail out of her way and continued examining the grass. Skylar and Hexxus winced in disgust as she cautiously dug out a small sample of dirt and licked it.
The bunkmate’s bed was next and subject to a similar peculiar exam. Eyes level with the sheets, something had once again caught her attention. For a second time, she exited the tent and brought an item for evidence collection, this time a full water bottle and an evidence bag. She plucked something from the bunkmate’s bed, sealed the bag, and set both on Jetstream’s bed.
“Bring the bunkmate in, will you?” she asked Skylar without looking. Skylar, having been ordered not to talk, eyed Hawk questioningly. He nodded, Skylar sighed, and walked off to fetch the other soldier.
Lightning walked toward the bunkmate’s empty bed and put her cheek against the covers. She spread her hooves out slowly in both directions, eyes closed. The remaining trio just looked on and let the strange mare be.
At that moment, Skylar’s burly form escorted in another soldier. This one looked like most Royal Guardpony pegasi, except he had a splotch of chocolate brown fur over his muzzle. He looked confused at being inside the tent and reeked of alcohol.
“He’s not...” she began, but trailed off. She got off the bed and approached the stallion.
“I, uh...” He started babbling incoherently before she silenced him with a hoof to his mouth. She put her other hoof on his head and turned him so he was looking at Skylar to his right. Without any warning, Lightning leaned forward and licked his neck.
Red blossomed across his head and neck faster than dye spread on cloth. “Hey, hey, hey!” Lightning let go and his eyes went wide with shock. “Let me buy you a drink first before we get to that stage.”
“I don’t need him anymore. He can go.” Lightning turned without looking at him and walked away. The stallion withered under the cold shoulder, his alcohol-induced confidence shriveling with every step she took away from him. With a smile and a snigger, Sylar escorted him out. The stallion walked gingerly, as her inexplicable and deeply personal action had caused more than his indignation to rise.
“I hope,” Hawk began, a smile also on his lips, “that lick will produce something a little more fruitful than a cold shower for a poor stallion.”
“I needed to taste his scent to better rule out which was his. And I’m not that exploitative.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Only when it is necessary.”
“Only when you can get away with it.”
“You have nothing on me if I can prove sexual harassment was necessary to solve a pertinent case.”
“The courts will disagree, especially after I tell them about what happened at the Night Court last year.”
“You try telling them why I needed Blueblood alone with a lizard.”
Hawk laughed, the noise deep and throaty. Luna smirked, clearly in on the joke, while Hexxus and Skylar only looked on, confused. Lightning saw their bewilderment and said, “I’m not telling them if you’re not, captain.”
“Agreed. It’s caused us enough paperwork already. Although, he was a lot more amiable afterwards...”
“While reminiscing has proved enjoyable,” Luna interrupted, “bigger concerns lie ahead. Please continue, Ms. Chaser.”
Lightning did just that. She spread herself across the bed once again, sniffing occasionally. After nodding her head in confirmation, she moved away form the beds and opened both Jetstream’s and the bunkmate’s dressers. There were small, compact things, hardly capable of holding more than the most basic clothes like shirts and doublets for underarmour protection. She started sniffing random garments, taking in the scents of both soldiers in order to discern them from each other. She found a picture in Jetstream’s dresser. A stallion with a scar under his chin sat and smiled gleefully with a little gray filly with a silver mane. The pair were underneath a large oak tree in the middle of some field, but both participants expressed the happiness and delight associated with a familiar place and happy memory.
She put the photo away and moved towards the trash bin. It contained the usual miscellaneous paper, debris, and trash one would expect. She extracted one item in particular: a single cigar just barely used. “There you are...”
“You act as if you expected it to be here,” Hexxus commented before sealing his lips tight in remembrance of her warning.
“I did. You can smell a hint of the smoke in the air and on the sheets. You were looking so hard for the source of the sulfur, you didn’t smell what else was in the air. I smelt it before I even came in.” She put the cigar with the evidence. In one final odd act, she licked the sheets on both beds, tasting the scent.
“Okay, let’s see what we got.” Taking the water bottle, she used the liquid inside like a lens to examine the gray powder.
“We have microscopes and magnifying glasses if you need them.”
“Too tedious,” she responded. She put both down before lifting up the cigar. She sniffed the tip before removing some of the filling and eating it.
“Sweet, Celestia, what are you doing?” Skylar exclaimed. “That’s evidence, you foolish mare! It might even be poisoned!”
Lightning blinked and stared at him. Although he was second in command of the base, she still outranked him. She stared at him for a few more moments before he broke the silence. “Well, say something!”
“I was waiting for you to discover how stupid your comment was.”
“Lightning...” Hawk warned.
“Pffft. If somepony used poison, the horny maid would have seen a pony carrying his carcass away. Since there was an anti teleportation bubble placed over the entire base since the discovery of the Farlander’s ability to teleport, that rules out a unicorn blinking in and out of the tent with him. Either way, nopony saw anyone strolling off with an unusually large burlap sack shaped like a pony. And the reason why I can do what I wish is because there’s no pony better than me.”
She sniffed. “Plus, awful waste of a good Highlands brand.”
“You can tell the difference by taste alone?” Hexxus asked, amazed.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. Hawk glared at her with an unspoken demand to behave herself. “Yes, I can. I smoked as many cigars as I could over the course of a year, one a day, and examined the ashes of every one.” Hexxus and Skylar both blanched. “This is a Griffin Highlands brands produced somewhere between five to seven years to go. The Highlands have a higher alkali content in the soil that makes it taste saltier and the type of ashes confirm it.” She pointed at the gray powder. “I got the year because the Highlands pulled an exceptionally good crop then, but high rains reduced the quality for the next three years. This is a good one.”
The pair stared at her with mouths open. “I’m curious as to how long it would take you to discover this without me. Ignorance must be bliss.”
Lightning continued with one more piece of evidence, the bag that turned out to be nothing but white hairs. She turned on a desk lamp and examined the follicles under better light. Removing one from the bag, she gave a brief sniff before putting it back. “Okay, I believe that’s everything.”
“So, first lieutenant, to where did the cur flee?” Luna asked. Luna could feel her muscles tensing again and again.
Lightning licked her lips. “I haven’t the faintest clue, princess. I think the better question is whether or not he was murdered.”
That caused a stir. Hexxus cast a spell to halt sound from carrying out of the room and Hawk was the first to start grilling the tracker. “There better be good reason for this accusation, Lightning.”
“I said better question. I’m still not sure,” she defended herself. “I’ll start from the top. I’m certain the maid’s and the bunkmate’s testimony accurately conveyed events, at least everything else corroborates their story.” She sat down, crunching grass under her rump; it was going to be a long explanation. “The maid claims the sergeant did not physically leave the tent for as long as she left.”
Hawk noticed the choice of words. Given his company, he’d had a lot of practice. “”Claimed?” You said you were certain she is correct.”
“I said she claimed he did not physically leave. Let me finish, please. The timelines fit, but too many things don’t add up. The only thing for certain is that he was here at eighteen thirty hours. The only thing the maid’s testimony proves is that he did not physically leave until nineteen thirty hours, and I am growing more and more certain that whatever happened to him happened before she left.
“After the bunkmate left, that’s when things get fuzzy. What I don’t understand is why Sergeant Jetstream started lying on the bunkmate’s bed. Those hairs,” she nodded towards the bag on the bed, “are his. His scent and sweat is all over it. I needed the bunkmate here to rule out which scent was his in case somepony else was in here. Getting it from the source is the best way, despite alcohol tainting his scent and amateurs contaminating the evidence. So far, the only scents on the bed are from the two of them, with the sergeant’s scent being far stronger than it should be in cramped quarters.
“What I can’t make sense of is why he was in the bunkmate’s bed. The scent and the ashes on that side of the tent confirm Jetstream was on his bunkmate’s bed for a lengthy amount of time. Why? He’s got his own bed.
“I found the cigar plastic wrap under Jetstream’s bed. Little shreds of plastic caught in the box spring confirm the cigar as his and he hid it under his own bed due to it being contraband. Considering he stayed on the bunkmate’s bed and that there are no sweat stains on his own, I conclude something else was indeed in here.”
“Wait, wait, wait... you just said no pony came or left,” Hexxus said. “How is that possible? It is a paradox, unless Jetstream left after the maid did.”
“What time did you and Skylar get here?”
“Twenty hundred hours. Why?”
“I severely doubt he managed to chat with a guest and escape in a half hour window of opportunity with a garrison looking for him.”
“I believe you said something,” Luna said. “Not somepony, something.”
“Considering the cigar and the lack of any other scents, yes. I think something was in here with him in the hour between when the bunkmate left and when the professor and second lieutenant arrived. Why else would he sit in a bed that is not his and not even finish a cigar that’s three hundred bits a box? If he was going to be leaving, why smoke...” she looked at the cigar, “about five minutes of a cigar and throw it in the garbage? Why not take it with him? Why not take the bag of bits he has in the back of his dresser? Because he was busy with other things on his mind.
“Why smoke the cigar? The room is immaculate and all the clothes are folded according to what we are taught in boot camp. Why a sudden inclination to smoke and roast the local flora? Not doing so would provide less evidence.
“Why not go AWOL immediately after his secret was out instead of waiting several hours? He would have had plenty of time to leave once he got word the Miner was moving underground. Being temporarily suspended, no one would have questioned him going into town and disappearing into a coach or into the forest. He had every reason to leave as soon as possible.
“The only variables that I cannot explain are the grass and the sulphur smell, but I see no other reason why he would use a bed that is not his own and sweat like he was being threatened at knife point. Something else had to be in here with him doing exactly that. Our assumption has always been Jetstream threatened the Miner for some reason. That never sat well with me. What reason? Why? There’s nothing to gain. I’m starting to believe more happened down in those caves than we know. I think he smoked that cigar not because he had a craving, but because something else was in here with him, the organ grinder to Jetstream’s monkey. He needed to settle his nerves... Or he knew he was about to die...”
“He... in an interview, he once said he felt like his head was full of holes. Like his memory was chopped to pieces and stitched together...” Skylar’s voice was rattled with solemn horror. “I thought it was just nerves and selective amnesia...”
Luna and Hawk’s eyes were wide. The implications were terrible, and the ramifications were equally great if the truth got out. A murder right in the middle of a garrison? On a pony who was already under investigation?
“What do we do? What do we say?” Hexxus was completely lost, unable to comprehend an answer to anything.
“Continue as we were,” Luna declared to them all. “Until we have answers, Jetstream is wanted for question on the assault, battery, and intimidation of the Miner. Despite the evidence, it is naught but suggestive and circumstantial. Until we have answers, real answers...”
Luna’s eyes hardened. They needed to know, especially if the case was related. “In case it is, there is something that needs to be addressed. Listen carefully. I must tell you about an entity named Herobrine...”
A iron-gray squirrel lodged deep in the Everfree Forest burrowed at the base of a great and twisted beech tree. A hidden test of hazelnut and walnuts was buried under several layers of old leaves and carefully placed bark. The forest, especially this forest, was a dangerous place to live. It was best to have little stores of food to matter who or what you were.
It stuffed his cheeks full of as many nuts as he could fit, along with a few in his arm for good measure. Eyes open and ears alert, the squirrel carefully climbed up the nearest tree. It placed its claws on the bark that would not bend or break so easily. Doing otherwise would no doubt leave marks for larger, more dangerous predators to follow.
The squirrel had learned from others of its kind and fellow scavengers that safety and fear were necessary in order to survive in such a dangerous and violent place. The darkness of night blanketed the forest. Darkness never left the forest, even if the full moon or shining sun were at their zenith in the sky. Leafy overhangs always concealed the sky. Even under the most searing, burning heat, there were stretches of the forest that never saw the light of day. Some monsters woke up in the dark, but some also fell asleep.
The rodent knew the risks of venturing out at night, but it also knew that the monsters that prowled in the darkness were big and ignored the smaller creatures of the evergreens. Fear and caution were always necessary, just in case. Once, far in the past as its ancestors recalled, large quadrupedal animals lived in the forest. Legends existed of their multihued bodies –
It ducked its furred body close to the tree, clinging to the shadows close to the tree’s heart. A flock of several massive eagles dove through branches and hanging vines. Some of those vines drew close to the avians as they passed, but quietly returned to their respective places as they scattered and flew. Finding a hole in the canopy, the eagles rushed through it and out of sight.
The forest was quiet. That was a bad, very bad, portent; it was a paradoxical antithesis to the very nature of the Everfree Forest. Trees, vales, cliffs, and canyons were vibrant and filled with some kind of life, yet the omnipresent silence of the nocturnal denizens hinted at something terrible: they were all listening for something even worse than them.
Something stampeded through the forest undergrowth, crushing ferns and rotted stumps in its wake. Focusing its recently acquired night vision, the squirrel saw a herd of elk. Their large horns scraped against trees and each other. One buck accidentally smacked the broad side of his rack against the tree and flailed to his back as it threw him off balance. The buck stumbled to his feet and trailed after his companions.
Silence crossed the forest once again, and this made the squirrell truly afraid. It could hear other, bigger creatures fleeing into the forest, creatures a lot bigger and stronger than elk or giant eagles. Something worse was near.
The light dimmed and ate at the ambient moonlight leaking through the canopy. A wave of black started eating everything else hugging closer to the ground, the moss, lichens, stone, and extraneous plant life. It was higher up in the trees, but the eerie blackness sparkled with light and moved with a mind of its own.
Peering around a knot, it looked down for a better look at the forest floor. Everything was covered in waves of darkness, except for a lone figure. It was tall, but not nearly as big as most monsters. A manticore might need to take two bites to devour it, but there was something... wrong with the creature. Old instincts never forgotten through countless generations demanded activation of that age-old compulsion: fight or flight? Its hair stood on end, wary and fearful of the creature below.
It knelt and placed a limb against the mossy undergrowth. The darkness parted by unspoken command and yielded access to the soft loam. A soft thrumming haunted the air, an ancient and forgotten call unheard of since time immemorial. The creature was saying something, but so soft that nothing close could hear it. Underneath its palms, earthworms and grubs rose to the surface and fled in terror. The thrumming grew stronger into a steady pulse that beat to some eldritch heart. The rodent couldn’t help but watch in awe and horror. Something terrible was about to happen, something incredible, but terrible all the same. The siren call of chaos and death demanded tribute as the underground vermin fled.
Black, putrid filth leaked from the creature’s body and into the earth. Globules suffocated and destroyed whatever poor creatures the deathly ooze touched. It leached into the ground and water table, poisoning the earth and destroying the flora.
The ground shifted.
From within the depths of the poisoned earth, something new arose, begotten by old magic. Underneath the dark fog writhed the tormented souls of servants to a dark and angry god. It moved and pulsed in tune with the heartbeat.
“Uuuuuuaghhhh...”
Something groaned from within the squalid cradle. Out of the ground burst a limb topped with a quintet of digits. One finger hung off a an angle clearly broken. The arm was stained with the browns and blacks of earth, along with the effluvium secreted by the creature. The second creature lurched out of the ground in an uncoordinated heap. It was another bipedal creature very much like the first, only this one had skin splashed with red, green and white. It looked like it had died a dozen times before being born again from darkness and evil.
The air was cut by a loud, raspy hiss. A gargantuan, black creature descended through the open canopy. It was jet black and profusely excreting the same toxic sludge that birthed the dead creature, only this one was nothing but a fleshy ribcage topped by a trio of shrunken, sunken skulls. Black flesh clung to the the creature, some of it hanging off in meaty lumps. One of the heads hissed a sound akin to the final cry of a dying basilisk. The squirrel had rumors that the mountains were haunted by a creature made from darkness and shadows, but it never thought it was true. Even the mere sight of the creature made it relieve itself in fear; the image of three bodies melted into a solid, tormented body would give anything nightmares for months.
It glided behind the kneeling biped on a nonexistent wind and waited. It made the occasional death rattle but was otherwise silent. The same was true for the rotten biped. It was hunched as if wounded, but it waited on the kneeling creature as a lion tended to the pack leader.
More limbs burst from the ground. Some were many, distended, and hairy, while others clanked and rattled. Monsters. It was breeding and growing monsters. The field was alive with movement and cacophonous din. Moan, groans and cries pierced the air, the earth gaped and shadows split, revealing dozens, if not hundreds, of suffering faces.
Rather than watch the hell before it grow, the squirrel dropped everything and ran. It was beautiful. It could not help it, but the chaos held something gorgeous and wonderful, and fantastically terrifying. It ran and never looked back. Every step was an attempt to bury the images of the dead bodies, the floating corpse amalgamation, and the creature that was more monster than flesh. It needed to be stopped. The rodent had occasionally heard stories of a healer at the farthest edge of the forest with the power over all animals. Maybe, just maybe, that healer could help.
From branch to branch it ran from the creature kneeling in studious work. Little did the squirrel know the source of the creature’s motives. A god had challenged it and lived. Its role and intent had finally been revealed. Perhaps something a little more... drastic was in order. Freedom required a price, after all, a sacrifice. A hand clutched to its chest and wrapped around a chain binding itself.
Freedom... oh, sweet freedom. An eternity of darkness and sleep, of emptiness so vast that even the emptiness itself would birth life. It was enough to drive anything to desperation. Freedom. It was so close, oh so close, just a little bit farther...
One by one, monsters rose from the earth at their master’s beckoning call.
Minecraft/MLP:FIM crossover
For chapter updates and my ramblings, visit my page on Fimfiction HERE.
Chapter Commentary: LINK
Edited by: Cor Thunder, Material Defender, Retsamoreh