//------------------------------// // Wild Wolf, Wild Wolf // Story: Blood Moon // by Electric thunder //------------------------------// Joel… Celestia was appalled not much of what she saw, but more of what was heard, the shadow of the cell kept most of what had physically happened, but the sound was describable as a worker being crushed under a collapsed wall of brick. What arose from the blackness was a different being entirely; it was taller, broader, and more disturbing than the frail human. A twinge of concern shivered its way down the alicorns back. The large creature stepped forward; the majority of its left side was cascaded with the shadow, the other lit by the orange flame of the hall way torches, its eyes gleaming and looking down at the princess, judging with its blank, canid face. The deep inhale and exhales from the creature almost echoed in the stone halls. “Do you speak, can you even understand what I am asking you?” Celestia braved to say to silent creature. “Who are you, is…Joel still the one I-“ “I have no name…I am not what you call me” The beast interrupted with a deep, harsh voice. “So you can speak?” The princess was taken back slightly in surprise. “I speak because I wish to ask, I talk because I have the desire too” He, It, whatever it was, almost said in a tone to undermined Celestia. “Then answer my question, where do you come from, and why do you attack us? “I came from the forest, I came to hunt because I had the desire to” It answered quickly “You should be lucky none of my ponies were harmed farther than they could be treated, who were the other two that attacked?” “A Female…and a male, they interrupted the hunt” He paused momentarily Celestia sighed, she did not know how to continue, she was almost too afraid to leave it to itself here, but there was little to ask from it, the creature was being uncompliant on purpose, or it simply did not have the knowledge to fully answer her questions. Celestia was falling back on the latter of the two. “So-“ “I felt everything…The pain, the anger…what are you doing to us?” Celestia was cut from her speech again. “W-what…what do you mean, what are you talking about?” Celestia stammered but regained her posture, trying to stay dominate over the beast. It did not reply, but raised it hand to show its now scabbed knuckles. “I need answering for the crimes committed on my people, and he had inflected the wound to himself” The Princess responded strongly. The answer seemed to displease the creature, but he said nothing of it. “You know all that I do, I do not know more than what I spoke, what is or fate?” It grumbled. “That has yet to be decided, but since no death had occurred it will not be anything rash or unjust, I shall be this merciful, not on you, but the other you share existence with” “We are the same, We simply are…together” It corrected her. “What do you mean by this?” Celestia asked with a raised brow. “If I wish to hunt, I take my form…if I wish to fight, I take my form…he is inside of me as I was in him, When I tire he takes his form, I take my place inside him” He spoke pausing for a second or two as he spoke. “What does this have to do with anything?” “Mercy shown on him, is given to me, action taken agents me, his action agents him” The beast spoke with a raised paw once again. “Fine then you both shall remain here, until a judgment has been decided” When the princess finished her statement, the creature walked to the bared gate, grabbing onto it with its massive clawed, hands. “What are you…” The silver coated bars of the cell door, started to creek and moan, yet the creature looked as if it was putting in no effort to pull the metal apart. Celestia looked in shock as the bars started to bend at the physical effort of the creature. “Stop!” She commanded, but it continued to pull. The Alicorn acted with haste and wrapped its hands and wrists in a bounding spell, she concentrated trying to fight the raw, physical power as it continued to struggle with deep grunts and heavy breaths. The creature then gave a deep, loud, rage filled roar, the stone echoing the sound three times over in a attempt to break the Alicorn. It worked. The maw of the creature was merely inches from the snout of Celestia. The act broke, just for the briefest of seconds, her concentration on the spell giving the beast a chance to pull the bars father apart as the spell shattered, Celestia collapsing. It took a step out of the cell, and pushed even greater, thus freeing its body from its cage. Celestia went to stand, but was pushed back to the ground with a thick leathery paw. “I shall be this merciful” It spoke. Celestia grimaced, and blasted a hard wall of magical force, sending the creature of her body and some feet down the hall. It stood to its full height, then bolted down the connecting passage way. “By the divinity...” Celestia Bolted up right and charged down the Hall after it. The Princess came around the corner into a the connected hall but she only managed to catch a glimpse of the wolf creature as it leapt from the unharmed warden into the left corridor. Celestia ran to the warden who had regained his standing. The wolfs shadow was all that she could see as it soon disappeared up the stairwell before her. “You majesty! I-I-It came from nowhere…sent me to the floor faster th…” Celestia vanished into a large wave of magic. She had teleported away. “…than I could react” The warden said to himself. “Ah buck my ass…easy Job they said, nothing happens they said!” The earth pony shook of the Princesses disappearance and charged up the stairwell shouting rants, threats, and various other curses. ---<=>--- Shining Armor, Captain of the Royal Celestial Guard, sat quietly in his office writing out reports, signing of wavers, and denying various letters for a month long leave instead of the usual week written to him by a various amount of his guards. It was tedious work, but busy work. It would keep the urge to stab every stupid letter about how the mess halls meals were not good enough because it lacked “The necessary alcoholic satisfaction” at a minimum. He gets more of those kind of request forms than he would ever like to mention to anypony. It was nothing but a slow moving Thursday to the unicron, who sat in his thin red velvet chair, hunched over a polished oak wood desk in his larger than most, white circular work space. He finished signing off on a stack of forms describing the new recruits, and making them official guardsponies. Shinning leaned back in his chair and sighed. In the slight aftermath of the attack on nightmare night, Shining had been doing much of what he was doing currently. Papers, forms, wavers, and letters of discontent on the ‘safety’ that some of the towns folk feel they are lacking. This was a usual routine for when the usual, unusual creature manages to stumble into the local town of Ponyville, and that usually was tied to his young sister and her friends. The unexpected became frequent, and that would give him more or less reason to create a system for such occurrences that often land on his desk, described in detail, in a small waxed letter. The system was mostly time management; the rest was organization of the paper work. Reports, wavers, and hate mail in that order would be stacked on the left side of his desk after any work concerning the castle has been dealt with. It was mostly a very little pile, so he had many, many hours to read all 37, five paged letters from “the concerned mothers of Ponyville.” He set down the 17th letter and pulled out a piece of beige colored parchment, dipped his quill, and began to write a response… Dear mother of Button mash, Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you again…I get it, we all get it, stop sending me the same god damn letter every other mother in fucking town has sent me, could you at all be at least more original than the same bashing on how I cannot handle my duties appropriately and I should retire… Thank you, Captain Shining Armor, Canterlot Castle The captain crumbled up the paper and tossed it to the side into the growing pile of similar venting notes he had written that day. That one made number seven. As Shining when and collected a fresh parchment, he almost fell from his chair when, unexpectedly, his majesty had appeared in a large white cloud of magic. “GAH!...P-princess wha…” He was cut off “The prisoner escaped, rally the guard, sound the alarm, do what needs to be done and STOP IT FROM ESCAPING!” In a second, Celestia was gone as mysteriously as she appeared. Shining Armor sat flabbergasted before his mind zapped and made the connection that the prisoner who escaped was the wolf he apprehended, and it was now running wild…in his castle. This just became a very, very interesting Thursday afternoon. In his dress blues, the unicorn bolted from his office rallying the two guards outside his doors and proceeded to the barracks on the floors below, gathering more and more of his men as he passed them. Seems the usual, unusual gene runs in the family… ---<=>--- The werewolf charged up the stairwell after taking a large bound of the guard he had tackled to the ground. The stairs lead straight forward before reaching a curved platform and spiraling clockwise up to the next floor. With a few powerful leaps, he crawled from the dungeon and out into a small rectangular room. There were small dark iron braziers in all four corners of the room; the left pair was burning a dark blue flame, the other two, a light gold. On the right side of the wall, pressed to the stone, was a small wooden table with a large loaf of bread, a half-eaten apple, and a small carved up with some kind of light auburn liquid. Directly ahead was an arched wood door, with a large iron bolt holding it shut. There was clamor of hooves, armor, and curses that started to echo louder from the stairwell behind him. The creature gave a light growl and charged the door with a hefty force and shattered the wood the bolt was attached to, sending the door into the wall with a loud crash. “HEY, I JUST PUT THAT DOOR IN!!” The warden clamored up to the opposite side of the room. “I-I’ll get you for that!” he shouted again. The creature turned around to face the earth pony. It took a deep breath and roared as loudly as its body could project it. The warden stood with his eyes wide, legs shivering. The creature puffed and bolted down the exposed, white stone hall. The new area was only a few meters in length, and ended in another, wider spiral set of stairs. The wolf, on all fours, ran upwards, flying over at least eight to nine steps with every lunge, the pale white stone would whisk by in a blur, as he climbed higher and higher. It was only a brief few moments before he reached a large open corridor. On both sides, there were large, elegant doors that were exactly parallel with one another. The corridor its self was about five meters across and maybe even ten in height. The walls were plain marble bricks stacked up to a semi-circle celling. There were two carved pillars that split in a Y shape over the doors and crawled all the way to connect with a thick stone arc that conformed to the bend of the celling. In a split second decision, the creature crashed through the door to its right, and came in to another even larger passageway with columns of marble, and huge arched openings to let the sun poor into the area. Outside, clouds for told a storm as the sun was setting in the a far horizon, turning the sky from blue, to gold, and soon a blood red. Down the passage were a collection of paintings, empty chandeliers, and long red knitted carpets with glossy gold edges. Farther down the hall banked to the left with another door at the end. Right as the wolf continued his flight, a bizarre sound came from behind. When he looked over his shoulder the white alicorn from the cell had glared back at him, horn glowing in a sparkling aurora. “You shall not leave this castle!” There was the sound of clanking metal, and thundering hooves, as a detachment of 15 guardsponies led by a unicorn in a large navy blue coat with gold trimming, and white button up. “By my authority, you are to surrender!” The unicorn shouted. The werewolf growled deep and imposing, testing their limits and establishing his dominance over the equine force. The soldiers dropped their spikes into a defensive line and marched as the Princess advanced on him simultaneously. The creature did a take on both sides and even before the alicorn could react, ripped the carpeting and leaped out the open window and dropped a whole story in a small courtyard. Down there, in the center was a large water fountain with a large statue of dragon casted in polished bronze with water pouring from its gaping maw. There were trimmed hedges, and large vines along the pillars that held up the overhang. “HALT! IN THE NAME OF TH-THAT’S NOT STOPPING!” A guard yelled as the escapee charged away through an open cast iron door. “Capitan, I thought I told you to lock down the castle!” Celestia hissed. “Pardon my disrespect, but it’s not my fault we have more doors than enlisted soldiers” Shining responded calmly. “I...for…” Celestia sighed “I’ll wake my sister, as long as the main gate is locked, it should buy us time to find it” and once again, she teleported away. Shining armor shook his head “Sargent, get Lt. Wings have his troops fly circles around this castle, everypony else is going to patrol and take sentry, I want to know if a butterfly leaves this place, got it?” “Yes sir!” The guard saluted and took the detachment with him. “I really…really hate my job sometimes” The lone unicorn muttered. “wait…why didn’t we just stop him…damn it…” The captain sighed “…damn it…” ---<=>--- He was dreaming…or that’s what it felt like to Joel. He knew what was going on, he could feel the strain in his body as the wolf did as it pleased and he could here every word spoken to him. It was like having your eyes closed and reliving a memory. The sensation he felt were the same that the wolf received, it was a very strange state of mind. After a little while, Joel started to slip back into earlier memories. He went as far back as to the first night. It was supposed to be easy prey, an easy kill. The small pegasus was at his mercy, his ravage hunger demanded filling. Yet fate would have otherwise when a challenger to the hunt ambushed him, and tackled him to the dirt road snapping and growling. The challenger was female, she was smaller than he but none the less vicious as she attacked the pinned wolf. The female looked down at him with fierce eyes biting his shoulder and neck. Joel could feel the pain as she attacked. It was long battle back and forth between the two. Eventually, Joel got his paws under the female and launched her over his body and into the foliage behind him. In a quick movement, he rolled onto all fours, and shot into the wood line after the female, the hunt was over, it was now a challenge of territory. The sent was hard to follow, but the female had started farther into the woods, she was heading in the direction of the herd. Joel felt the aggression in his body, the blood rush as he charged after the female. She was strong, almost desirable, yet there was a feeling that held is desire. He could feel that there was more to the female than just a random lone wolf, she was different. The sent started to waver, as another breeze carried in a wave of new sents, so many at once it over loaded his stimuli in his nose, he lost the trail. He stopped and started to sniff the earth, maybe he could find it again and soon he found the sent again, and followed at a slower pace. As he followed his nose, Joel could hear the sound of festivities, like loud laughter, music, shouts, and screams became more clear and audible. The elevation rose up sharply a few feet and then flattened out in a cluster of bushes that were covered in the scent of the female. Joel cleared the hill and before his eyes was a small village all alit and covered in some strange décor. More of those strange ponies filled the perimeter walking in and out of the town, even flying over it. The smells, and sounds that came from the town were distracting, they made it almost impossible to track the female. Joel slowly started to stalk in the fields up to the village sticking to the ground following the weakened trail. In the calmness of it all, loud, terror filled screams soon flooded Joel’s hearing, stopping the hunter in his tracks. He realized he no longer needed his noise to hunt, he knew where the female was…