Twilight Sparkle, resident princess and librarian to Ponyville, was trotting down the path to Fluttershy’s house, smiling in the cheery morning sunlight. Her cutie mark, a pink star burst with five smaller white stars around it seemed to twinkle in the sunshine. The purple alicorn’s saddlebags were full of various supplies, and her number one assistant, Spike, was perched on her back, still grumbling about the early start.
Spike was a baby dragon, completely purple with green spines that ran the length of his head, back, and tail. He was rubbing at one of his green, slit-pupiled eyes with the back of a scaled claw. “I still don’t see why we have to get up so early,” he complained.
“We are going to help Fluttershy with her animals. We promised remember?” Twilight said, and Spike grumbled an affirmative response under his breath. Yesterday, Fluttershy had told them she had some chores she couldn't do herself that Twilight’s magic could help with, and Twilight had agreed to come in the early morning, knowing that the shy pegasus was often up at the crack of dawn to care for her animals. Spike had to come because Twilight didn’t trust him to stay at home and not eat all the ice cream in the library. As Twilight neared the cottage, she slowed down at the sight of animals arranged before the house. They had formed some kind of protective wall around the lawn, from bears to squirrels, all standing together with menacing faces and gleaming black eyes, daring anyone to get close.
Twilight stopped about ten feet away, and regarded the wall of animals curiously. She had only seen this once before, and it usually meant something big was happening with Fluttershy, something that she wanted to be alone for. Twilight cast her gaze to the small cottage, and a large brown bear growled a warning. Twilight usually would leave her friend to her own devices in this circumstance, but she had made a Pinkie Promise yesterday; a promise she was obligated to keep.
“How are we gonna get through?” Spike asked, seemingly forgetting that his dragon scales could repel any attack that the animals could muster, and that he could probably waltz right through the line with no problem. Twilight, on the other hoof, was not so hardy, and she thought she saw the same growling bear eyeing her. Twilight mulled the problem over for a second before coming up with the obvious answer.
“Teleport,” Twilight said, and Spike nodded. Not wanting the animals to notice, Twilight walked back down the path a couple dozen yards. When she was sure that the animals had lost interest in her, Twilight pictured Fluttershy’s front porch in her mind, before concentrating. The purple unicorn horn on her forehead was encased in a magenta aura, which danced and spun around her horn as she activated the spell. With a bright flash Twilight was standing on the front porch of the cottage, behind the animal wall, Spike still on his perch on her back. None of the animals had noticed the white flash; they were too busy sweeping the path ahead of them, looking for anypony who might be passing by.
Spike hopped off her back, and Twilight knocked lightly on the door with a hoof. She stood there for a moment, but no one answered. Twilight frowned slightly and knocked again, a bit louder. Maybe Fluttershy hadn’t heard her? With no answer the second time, Twilight knocked again, doing her best to keep the noise down while still being audible. Twilight’s frown deepened when there was still no answer.
“Maybe she’s asleep?” Spike suggested, with a shrug, hopping down from her back.
As Twilight was just about to pull the door open herself, it swung open. A small white rabbit with black eyes eyed them, its suspicion evident . Angel Bunny, Fluttershy’s main pet and helper around her home, was looking as grumpy as ever as crossed his little arms over his chest and tapped his large foot, waiting for Twilight to explain what she was doing.
“Hello, Angel,” Twilight greeted the small rabbit. “We are here to help Fluttershy.” Angel seemed to mull Twilight’s statement over before nodding grudgingly and hopping out of the way, letting the door fully open. Twilight slowly trotted into the main room of the house, her eyes narrowing as she struggled to see. The room was almost completely dark, something she would have never expected in Fluttershy's normally cheery home. All of the windows were still covered, as if they had never been opened in the morning. The back door to the cottage was open a crack, shining a beam of light through the small kitchen and onto the wall next to Twilight. Angel hopped in after Spike, forcefully shutting the door and vanishing in the darkness.
“Hello?” Twilight called. “Fluttershy?”
There was a small noise from upstairs, and Twilight though she heard Fluttershy’s soft voice. “I’m up here, Twilight! Could you come up here, I mean, if you don’t mind . . .”
Twilight trotted up to the stairs, Spike following close behind. The short hallway on the next floor was also dark, but one room’s door was completely open. Sunlight was streaming out of the room, and lit up the painted walls. Twilight went over to the door. “Hello Fluttershy! I’m here. . .” Twilight trailed off when she saw the room. Fluttershy was standing next to a bed, her hooves and wingtips stained slightly red. There were huge bags under her eyes, and she looked like she was struggling to stay awake. Fluttershy's state was worrying enough, but it was the bed’s occupant that stopped Twilight.
“Is that a wolf?” Spike exclaimed from behind Twilight, peeking around her hind legs. Indeed it was, as far as Twilight could tell. A huge wolf, bigger than she was, was lying on its side on Fluttershy’s bed. It was so big that its back paws were hanging off the edge of the bed. It was mostly black, but the fur on its stomach was white, along with the bottom of its tail. A manacle and broken chain were attached to one foreleg, and a small blue earing glinted in its right ear. It had a large concentration of fur around its neck and shoulders, looking like a small lion’s mane. There was a white pattern of fur consisting of a diamond with a dot in the center on its forehead, and a few other swirls on the eyebrows above its closed eyes. The wolf’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, and Twilight could tell it was unconscious.
Fluttershy smiled sleepily. “Hello Twilight, hi Spike,” She said, before turning back to something on the wolf’s side Twilight couldn’t see. “Twilight, could you come over here please?” Twilight nodded, and skirted along the edge of the room to make it to Fluttershy’s side, carefully eyeing the huge wolf. When she made it to Fluttershy she gasped, and held a hoof to her mouth in shock.
Three huge vertical slashes had ripped open the flesh on the wolf’s side, and the fur around them was crusted with dried blood and dirt. There was a bowl set on the bed next to the wolf’s side, along with towels, some clean and some used, and other various supplies such as gauze and a small box of band aids. Fluttershy was using one of her feathers to gently scoop out dirt and small stones that had been caked into the gaping wounds, dropping them into the bowl atop a growing mound of grit. The most shocking thing was the sickly black coloration of the exposed muscle , an unnatural change from the normal red. An almost nauseating smell of ash wafted over her, and Twilight blinked rapidly to try and clear her sinuses.
“Fluttershy, what happened?” Twilight asked when she had regained control of herself. The only explanation that she could come up with was that the wound were caused by a manticore, the only creature she knew of that have big enough claws to cause such devastating damage. But Twilight had never seen an actual wolf in the Everfree, just timberwolves, the distant magical cousins of the flesh and blood species. Timberwolves were magical wolves made out of wood and sticks, and were smaller than this wolf was.
Fluttershy continued cleaning the claw marks while replying. “I found him in the Everfree forest last night. He was bleeding very badly, so I brought him back here to patch him up.” Fluttershy finished the middle wound and moved onto the last one, switching the blood stained feather for one of the last remaining clean ones on the other wing.
“All by yourself?” Twilight asked, incredulous. Twilight knew the shy pegasus could be strong when she needed to, but she couldn’t imagine her hauling a load this big, through the Everfree and in the dark no less! Twilight’s already high opinion of her friend went up a couple of notches.
“Yes,” Fluttershy said softly. She then frowned, the ultimate look of concern in her eyes. “But I'm worried. His wounds aren’t infected, but they are still this color, and they stopped bleeding a while ago.” Now that Fluttershy mentioned it, Twilight did find it strange that wounds this devastating weren't at least leaking some blood. That wasn't good. “Do you think you could help?” Fluttershy asked, glancing at Twilight. “I’m not good with magical ailments at all, and I've never seen anything this bad. . .” Fluttershy trailed off as she focused on cleaning the last slash and dumping the dirt into the half-filled bowl with a flick of her wing. She gingerly folded her wings to her side, smearing a blood and grime on her coat as she did so.
Twilight bit her lip and nodded. She had done some preliminary study of medical magic back in school, mostly just to sake her own curiosity, and she felt grossly adequate to attempt something like a major healing spell. But she couldn't let Fluttershy down, nor let a creature die just sitting in front of her without at least trying. She lit her horn and reached out to feel the wolf with her magic, and she recoiled in surprise. Inside the wolf was magic. That in and of itself wasn't surprising; every creature and thing in all of Equestria was brimming with the stuff. But this magic was different than just the life magic of some creature. It was pony. It was slightly different than was she was used to, but the essence that allowed the numerous races of the world to achieve sapience was undoubtedly there.Twilight made a mental note to examine the wolf further when she was done. This deserved further research, but now was not the time. She focused back on her task.
Twilight let her magic run over the wolf's body and magic, and she imagined that this was what doctors felt like when they treated serious wounds. The wolf's magic was weak and fluctuating dangerously, making it hard to actually sense anything concretely. After a moment, Twilight pinpointed the three claw wounds with her mind and let her magic drift over them more fully. She found nothing magical on the surface, so she pushed a little deeper. She didn’t have to go far to find something.
Black magic, as dark and evil as anything Twilight had ever felt, was creeping slowly towards the wolf’s beating heart, a surely deadly poison. She could feel it, and her repulsion was almost a physical force. The magic felt like lead being poured into her bones; a chill that settled into the center of her gut. The wolf’s body was fighting back, attempting to pushing back the poison, but the dark magic was winning, an ever steady crawl of death. Even if the wolf had managed to somehow survive on its own, recovery would be extremely slow and excruciatingly painful. Twilight could help with that.
Twilight carefully grasped the ends of each line of poison with her magic, fighting the urge to recoil as its slimy essence oozed into her aura, and gently started to pull outward, her action guided by something she couldn't quite place but knew was right. She snagged the bowl in her magic and held it below the wounds, grimacing in concentration, the light on her horn growing steadily brighter. A small trickle of black viscous fluid floated out of one of the wounds, held aloft in Twilight’s purple aura. Then another, and another, until hundreds of drops of poison were pouring into the air from the wolf’s body, forming into a sphere which rippled and swirled in Twilight’s telekinetic grip. Creeping red color began to fill into the wounds, replacing the dark shade it had been, and blood began to weep from the gashes. Fluttershy rushed to press what clean towels she had onto the wolf' side.
With a gasp and one last pull, Twilight extricated the last of the poison and added it to her sphere, before dropping the mass into the bowl.Twilight shivered, a deep shake that threw out the last of the lingering effects of handling the vile magic, feeling suddenly like she needed to take a nice long shower to clean herself off. Without hesitation, Twilight lit the bowl on fire, containing the smoke and flames inside a magical shield, watching the poison burn and fade away in the roaring flames. This was no magic she had any intent of studying, or letting go out into the world. Spike watched his caretaker burn the bowl with fascination, from his position a few feet away that he had taken up when they had entered the room to better see what was happening.
Twilight dispelled the shield, a small puff of smoke drifting up into the ceiling. Fluttershy smiled at Twilight, and gave a quiet “thank you,” before turning back to the wolf’s side. Fluttershy was doing her best to keep pressure on the wounds, but the wolf was so large that it was almost impossible for her hooves to cover the necessary area. Fluttershy pointed a wing at a needle and some thread that at next to where the towels had been, giving Twilight a glance, a pleading look in her eye. With a gulp, Twilight grabbed a roll of thread from the bedside table.
Twilight had never actually had to sew up a wound, or anything really but she had read many books on the subject and was at least semi-confident in her magical abilities. This knowledge did not help the sickening feeling she developed as the sharp needle pierced skin and began to sew the slashes closed, Twilight's moves calculated and precise. When Twilight had finished the stitching, she cast a light healing spell over the wounds. The wolf should be ready to go in a two weeks, three at most with the amount of magic Twilight had saturated his body with. If Twilight was an actual trained doctor, it might have been sooner, but she had to settle with what she had. Twilight set the thread down and picked up a roll of gauze from the table, trying to keep her gaze away from the maze of cross stitches she had just made. She and Fluttershy carefully wrapped the bandages around the wolf’s side and stomach, Twilight levitating the wolf off the bed while Fluttershy wrapped in silence.
Twilight gently laid the unconscious animal back onto the bed and wiped her brow with a hoof. Spike had sat down at this point, watching the entire display, before speaking. “Fluttershy, you need a shower and about ten more hours of sleep,” he said bluntly. Fluttershy looked down at her blood stained fur and blushed, yawing loudly as if to further make Spike's point. Flushershy's face blushed a crimson red. “I'll go . . . take a shower,” she said, “But please come and get me when he wakes up, oaky Twilight?” After the pruple unicorn nodded, the yellow pegasus stumbled out of the room. After she was gone, Twilight and Spike looked at each other, both surprised at what had happened in the past ten minutes. Not only was the giant injured wolf incredibly strange, but Fluttershy had been confident and somewhat assertive, actually saying she was doing something without seeing if everypony thought it was okay first. It was strange, but not it a bad way.
As the pegasus left the bedroom to go clean up, Twilight sat on her haunches next to Spike with a thump, her eyes trained curiously on the wolf. “Well, that was interesting,” Spike said. He gestured to the bed with a claw. “What do you think?” He looked to her for her response, but saw her eyes unwavering in their attention, her horn lit magenta. He sighed knowing there was no way to get to her when she got like this, and settled in to wait until Fluttershy came back.
After a minute, Twilight let out a sigh of frustration. She couldn’t figure it out. The magic the wolf possessed was undeniably sapient magic; Twilight could have told you that from the time she was a filly. For all the world it seemed like it was just a pony in a huge wolf body, but that made no sense. Twilight started dictating the letter she would write to Princess Celestia when she got back home in her mind, continuing to scan the wolf with her magic. Another few concerning facts were the earing and manacle. The earing wasn’t that important, but it was an unnervingly pony like accessory. The manacle and broken chain, on the other hoof, was a completely different story.
This giant wolf had been locked up at some point or another by a pony, or other race, and it had escaped. Maybe some evil pony had wanted to use the wolf to their advantage for something, and had locked it up. Maybe a good pony had chained it somewhere to keep it from endangering their town. Twilight had no idea which one was true, or if neither were true but she had no trouble imagining the giant wolf killing somepony. It's size alone was fear inspiring, even when unconscious. Twilight shivered, and vowed to protect her friends and Ponyville if the wolf was indeed a threat.
The small dragon sitting next to her was of a completely different mind. “A giant wolf! In Ponyville! Could this get any cooler?” He wondered, ecstatic. Sure the thought that the black wolf might be a danger had crossed his mind, but he had cheerfully discarded it. If Fluttershy trusted the wolf enough to bring it into her house, why shouldn’t he?
As the two were engrossed in their thoughts, Fluttershy came back into the room looking much better than she had before. Her yellow fur and wings were still slightly damp, and her pink hair was dripping water slowly onto the floor. Some of the fatigue was gone from her face, and she smiled a bit at seeing the slumbering canine on her bed. Softly, without disturbing her friends, Fluttershy quietly trotted over and sat next to Spike, all waiting for the wolf to wake.