The first time I encountered the Everfree’s most unnatural feature, I almost went insane trying to figure it out. And don’t even get me started on how aggravated it made my companion.
That is an exaggeration, but also an apt description.
Wait... Let me back up. A lot. It's actually a rather interesting tale, the one about how we got there, so I suppose I'll save the Everfree's fuck you to all reason, common sense, and sanity for later.
Rarity had just given me my clothes — It was a suit-like getup for my Lycan and some red, dress-like drapes for my branches; both were enchanted by her to help withstand the elements. They were gorgeous. — and, in the process, completely used up the bits I had budgeted for them. I was left with a half-dozen bits to my name and the knowledge that I would need more soon enough.
Princess Twilight Sparkle came to my aid when I told her of my financial status and how Zecora had no need for more of my flowers at the time. Said aid came in the form of Compass Rose, Ponyville’s local cartographer and surveyor.
"Ponies occasionally have to go into the Everfree Forest," Twilight explained to me. "Compass Rose wants to map the forest out so that we don’t get lost, and so that we can avoid some of the dangers of the forest."
Which meant... "You want me to guard her and guide her?"
"Exactly," the princess replied. She grinned in a way that reminded me of a lesser version of my own gotcha grin. "And the crown is willing to pay for your services."
"How much are we talking, and how many puppets would you need? The more puppets you ask for, the safer she’s going to be, but the fewer I have defending and serving me and my allies."
"You have twelve puppets, right?" Thirteen, actually, but I didn’t correct her. I had told nobody about Taur yet, nor had I told them about my project that I was working on through Taur, at the moment. "Then, how about four puppets, at one hundred bits each per day?"
"And how long would you need them?" I asked in return. Four hundred bits a day was excellent money, especially for someone with no living expenses. Granted, escort duty meant working non-stop, so the actual hourly wage seemed rather low. Of course, I had no idea what a livable salary was here, so my opinion may have been completely off-base. And yet — hook, line, and sinker — I was caught. There was no way I was backing down from that offer.
"That depends on how long it takes you to map out the forest in detail. We’ll nebulously say two weeks, although I expect to revise that estimate as time goes on."
We hashed out the finer details of payment and such. Three days later, I met Compass Rose at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. The zap-apple harvest had come and gone, still having lasted only a single day despite my efforts. However, the zap apple trees did look and feel healthier, and their good mood spread to me as I waited for my client.
An unfamiliar pony scent tickled my four wolves' noses. Looking upwind, I spotted the princess and an earth pony mare, burdened with a massive backpack, walking towards the spot where my puppets were waiting. I called out to them.
"Lumber Jack!" Twilight replied, picking up the pace. Her companion, on the other hand, stopped in her tracks.
"T-t-timberwolves!" she stammered.
Twilight looking back at her and sheepishly admitted, "Did I forget to mention that? Whoops."
"You must be Compass Rose; Princess Twilight Sparkle told me about you," I said as I stood my wolf up to meet her. "I am Lumber Jack, and I will be your guide and guard." I extended out a curled-up paw so as to mimic a hoof for a hoof shake.
She didn’t grasp it; in fact, she remained rooted in place, eyes as wide a saucers. No, that last part wasn’t an exaggeration; ponies eyes can, if they feel so inclined, widen enough to match small saucers. "What, wolf got your tongue?" I asked.
"You can talk!"
"And with great skill, I might add. I practice daily. Now, if you’ll put aside your surprise, I’ll explain what to expect."
She nodded. "Sure, but... this is going to take some getting used to."
"Obviously; I wouldn't expect otherwise." I quickly outlined some of the major hazards and challenges that we’d face. I also listed some of the major landmarks that she might want to see. Compass Rose, in turn, explained some of the things that she needed to make her maps, such as high vantage points and the location of the major geographical features — especially bodies of water — she needed for her maps.
As soon as the two of us were ready to depart, I hoisted up her bags and set them on my one of my wolves’ back. "Oh, uh... Thanks," she replied awkwardly.
"Don't mention it. Now come; we have well over three hundred and fifty square kilometers of forest to survey, and I’d rather get started with this sooner than later." Actually, Taur could go much further than that, but I wasn’t too inclined to show it off just yet. The two of us — five if you count each wolf independently — set off for the depths of the Everfree.
"Kilometers?" Compass asked, trotting alongside the wolf carrying her belongings. "I’m not familiar with that unit of measure."
"Oh. What system do you use for distances?"
"Hoof lengths and strides. My hoof is oh-point-nine-five hoof lengths long, and one stride is four hoof lengths long - about the length of an average pony’s body," she explained.
I guestimated in my head. "Which makes a stride about a meter long, and a kilometer just under a thousand strides long, which gives me territory about... 150 square kilo-strides. Give or take a little."
She gave me a curious look. "Wait... three questions: How accurate are those numbers, what shape is your territory, and does your ‘territory’ extend to the other side of the forest?"
"I’m guesstimating on those numbers a good bit, and simplifying for speech, but I’m fairly sure that they’re reasonably accurate. My territory is a circle around my tree, and no, I can’t get to the eastern edge. North, south, and west, yes, but not the eastern edge. Why?"
"Motherbucking exclusion zone," she swore under her breath.
Now what did she mean by "exclusion zone"? After swerving around a tree, I asked her.
"The everfree exclusion zone is, if my sources are correct, an area of the forest where wild magic surges up from the ground. If you didn’t know this already, magic in large amounts distorts space - it makes things bigger on the inside. And, apparently, forests. Worse, the effect gets stronger the closer we get."
"So the forest is bigger than you anticipated?" I supplied, though I figured from Compass Rose’s expression alone that I was spot-on.
"Yeah, and we’re going to have to at least find the upwelling so I can draw my map appropriately." She grumbled, "I wish I’d known; I’d have gotten a unicorn to come with us so I could more accurately measure the local spatial curvature."
Hmm... well, that explained some of the oddities that I encountered on my daily hunts, things such as routes that would logically be shortcuts actually taking longer, and other things of the like. "You know, I think I just might know where to start looking."
She looked up at me, eyes brighter than before. "Really? That’s great!"
"No, that’s what I’m being paid for."
We fell into silence for a while. My four wolves fell into a diamond formation, with Compass Rose at the center. As we walked, Rose would occasionally pause to take a compass reading, look at her various doohickies that were obviously magic but completely alien to me, or jot down some notes.
At one point, she stopped us and stated that she needed a better vantage point. I offered to lead her up a nearby hill, but she just shook her head. Then, without fanfare, she walked up a tree.
Let me repeat: SHE WALKED UP A TREE.
It was as if gravity had made a quarter turn just for her, save for the fact that her mane and tail cascaded down appropriately.
How?!
No... wait... "You’re psychokinetic, aren’t you? You stuck yourself to the trunk with magic."
"Bingo," her voice answered from inside the canopy.
"Is that normal for you earth ponies?"
"Not really," she called back. "Everypony can stick things to their hooves to some degree, but only earth ponies are strong enough to lift more than one eighth of their body weight per hoof. It takes a lot of practice to get strong enough to do this, though."
"Impressive. I wonder-"
*Snap*
My ear branches swiveled towards the source of the sound. It originated from somewhere opposite the tree, so I wasn't worried about Compass, but a snap that loud doesn't come without some weight behind the breakage. I sniffed the air.
The only large animal nearby was Compass herself, but the scent of rotten flesh and sap tickled my nose. Slowly, drifting at a quarter of the speed of the scent, came a familiar tingling sensation. I relaxed.
I barked a friendly hello. Slowly, three timberwolves emerged from the underbrush. North, the former Alpha and current Beta of my pack, controlled the two larger wolves, while Northeast, an Omega, puppeted the third.
I called them North and Northeast because that was how they were oriented relative to the real me. To them, I was South and Southwest, respectively. We didn't have names; we had directions.
Alpha! Northeast yipped happily. Alpha! Alpha! Alpha!
North whacked the excitable omega with its paw. Silence, North growled. Respect betters, West.
Northeast whimpered and submitted to the beta.
Presence, why? I growled inquisitively.
Smell food, North replied, join hunt. Its head turned towards the tree that Compass Rose was in.
I could hear her breathing heavily, even from here, never mind the strong stench of her nerves. If I had had real eyes, I would have rolled them. Instead, I settled for temporarily dimming the glow of my wolves’ eye sockets. Not food. Is ally.
They gave me a weird look. I suppose that would be understandable, as I had used growl-yip — "ally" in the same sense as the zap apple trees — instead of growl-yip-yip — "ally" in the sense of a pack that works alongside your own.
"Umm... Lumber Jack?" the tree-bound earth pony called out.
Every wolf immediately looked her way, though I quickly forced my attention back on the two trees’ puppets.
Food! Northeast barked.
No! Is ally! I commanded, growling deeply as I dropped into a defensive stance.
"Lumber Jack, what’s going on?"
"Nothing, Rose," I replied. "These two idiots are from my pack, and they seem to think you’re food. All they need is a hint of light persuasion to the contrary."
Give food. Hungry, the beta snapped at me.
No food. I shook my four wolves’ heads.
GIVE FOOD, North repeated with emphasis.
Is not food! I barked back, but I don’t think North was listening to me anymore. North had been the previous alpha, before I took over. Though North wasn’t the best pack leader we’d had, it was a strong enough timberwolf that its reign was uncontested. But when I’d taken over, I think I might have left it with some resentment for me.
North, ignoring my command, sprung towards Rose’s tree in an attempt to scale it and bite her. Its wolves never made it. Outnumbering North four to two, my wolves quickly pinned the beta’s puppets to the ground.
With one of my wolves, I bent its head down and pressed its muzzle against the muzzle of North’s own. Ponies, zebras, and Other’s kind alike would call it a kiss, but there was nothing romantic about it. A tendril of my magic pushed its way deep into North’s construct and towards the other’s transmission seed. The moment it touched, we were connected in the most visceral, dangerous way that timberwolves ever could be.
I yanked. North’s branches — its real branches on its real body — groaned from the stress. I could feel North pulling back, but its attack was surprisingly weak.
No... I hesitated, and re-evaluated. No, North was not weak; I was strong.
I pulled harder.
*CRACK!*
North screamed in agony, and with good reason. I’d just snapped a second-tier branch clean off its true body. The beta would live, and the branch would grow back so long as the trunk and the roots remained unharmed, but the scar and the humiliation would leave a lasting memory.
OBEY ME! I snarled.
The puppets beneath my own nodded, and then fell to pieces as North relinquished control.
AND YOU! I turned to bark at the omega, but Northeast was already belly-up for me. Good wolf. Go to self.
With a small, frightened yip, the single puppet of the omega flipped over and retreated with haste. I nodded, satisfied. "You can come down now."
The leaves above rustled. Rose landed with four soft thuds on the spongy dirt below. "What was that all about."
"Politics," I answered simply, all the while trying not to show the pain I was in. I may have snapped some of North's second-tier branches, but the beta managed to snap a few of my third-tier branches in return. The difference was, if the Other's memories serve me right, equivalent to North having a shattered jaw, while I had a broken finger or two.
"Were they really going to eat me?"
"North — those two on the ground — was. Northeast, on the other hand, was just a pup who would do anything his betters tell it to do."
"It? Why it? Doesn’t that sound a little... degrading? Actually, are they smart, like you?" Rose asked. "Sorry, that just caught me a little off guard."
I waved a paw dismissively. "People are he, she, and they. Wolves are it, unless they are smart, like me, but I’m the only intelligent timberwolf." As an afterthought, I added, "Or at least, as far as I know."
"You don't know if there are others?" Rose asked me.
I shrugged. "Mmmm hmmm. One day, I felt like I was burning, and then Pop! There I was." I paused, struck by a thought. "Wait, how did I just do that?"
"Do what?"
"Say 'pop'. I don't have lips; there's no way I could even make that sound," I answered. Months of sapience and I only now questioned my ability to speak. Even when I had been practicing, I hadn't questioned it. "Bah, just another mystery. I'll deal with it later."
Compass Rose wrote something down in her notes. It probably had nothing to do with me. "If you say so," she replied. "Come on; let's get going before Chompy there wakes up."
"Chompy?" Whatever. I surrounded her and grabbed her bag, slinging it onto my wolf's back. "Ready."
"Without you, these herbs would be difficult to find. Your help has been so very kind."
My Lycan smiled back at her. "You're my oldest friend and an honorary pack member, Zecora; of course I'd help you."
The shamanistic alchemist emptied the satchel of herbs onto her workbench and sorted through them with a critical eye. Some she pulled out for immediate use, while she separated out the useful parts of the rest to store for later, discarding the useless parts.
As she worked, I picked up the discarded stems and leaves and began to weave them into my puppet's body. With little conscious effort on my part, they wove themselves in such a way that gave the appearance of tendons and muscles over my wooden "bones." Inspired by that, I grabbed some of her expired herbal powders and threw them in as well. To my amusement, the dust stuck, forming a skin-like layer.
"Hey, Zecora?"
"Yes, my guest?"
I asked her the question that was on my mind, thanks to my other puppets interacting with Compass Rose, "How much do you know about the magical upwelling in the forest?"
"In truth, I do not know much," Zecora answered, momentarily pausing her ingredient preparation. A brief silence fell as she searched her memories, with only the bubble of a cauldron and the crackle of a fire providing ambiance. "What I do know is such: there is a fountain of magic that surges up from the ground, capable of twisting all the life around. That is why the Everfree is so wild; the effects of such turbulent magic is not mild. In fact, I believe it to be part how you came to be; only near an upwelling could there exist a magical tree."
Interesting. It sounded like something worth investigating in more detail, if this upwelling was as powerful as Zecora and Compass Rose implied it to be. Whether it was something to covet or something to avoid, I knew not.
"Do you know where it is, then?" I asked. "My other puppets are escorting a cartographer as we speak; finding it is important to her maps."
"Sadly, I do not know where it could be; its location is something of a mystery," she replied.
Baffled, I asked, "But how is that possible? Surely something powerful enough to warp space and mutate the local flora and fauna would leave trackable traces."
"The upwelling is southeast of here; its direction is quite clear. And yet there is nothing more that I can say, for it seems to try and keep ponies away."
I cocked my head in confusion. "Hmm?"
"I mean that the upwelling does not want to be found. Any who walk near get turned around."
"How?"
She didn’t know. And so, with curiosity teased but ultimately unsatisfied, I made myself busy helping Zecora with her work. And while it turned out that I wasn’t very good at potion making, Zecora appreciated my help with her more menial tasks. And if sweeping, cleaning, and preparing ingredients let me spend more time with my best friend, well, who was I to complain?
Three days went by. Each day, there seemed to be twice as much conversation between Compass and I as the day before. That still wasn’t much, but it was nice to be on friendly, conversational terms with the mare, whom I was starting to consider a true friend instead of just an objective for money.
Don’t get me wrong, I was still protecting her primarily for the money. However, I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason now.
As for Compass, she seemed to be in an irritable mood. She loved camping, and she loved surveying the land, but she was always glaring at her map sketches now, as if attempting to burn them with her mind. Her instruments — and even the stars — were similarly scowled at.
Finally, I could take no more of it, and gave into my curiosity. "What’s with the angry looks?"
"This doesn’t make any sense!" She wailed. "All my measurements are wrong!" Unfurling her prototype map, which was nearly indecipherable thanks to the sheer amount of writing on it, she jabbed at a spot that was even messier than the rest. "That is where we should be, and there—" she jabbed at another, equally messy spot, "—is where we are. My compass and beacons in Ponyville say we are in one spot, and yet our actual, physical path couldn’t possibly take us to this spot."
"Is teleportation a thing?" I asked.
Her death glare focused on me. "Yes, but we didn’t teleport. I’d have vomited if we did." She shuddered visibly.
."Ok... Not that I don’t trust your skill, but did you account for curved space?"
"I did, but that still doesn’t match up with how we moved."
I puzzled over the map for a bit. Eventually, I asked, "Where was our last correct measurement, and which way were we going?"
Compass Rose tilted the map so that she could read it better. "Here, and 125° from north, a little bit more east than due southeast."
I compared that point to our expected and actual location. "We turned almost 90° clockwise, didn’t we? That’s one hell of a turn not to notice." My puppets frowned as an idea came to me, only to be reinforced as I remembered Zecora’s words. "What about mental suggestion? Or illusions? Could the forest literally be messing with our minds, in order to keep us away?"
"That—" She cut herself off, squashing down what I guessed was disagreement, based on her tone. "You might actually be onto something with that."
"Thanks!" I cheerfully replied.
"Come on, let’s get back there," she said as she started folding up her maps and stowing them away. "I want to see how this exclusion zone works — and now I see why they call it that."
Thus, Compass and my four puppets retraced our steps, and while I led, she kept a close eye on her namesake tool. Progress was slow, as we moved at a steady walk instead of a brisk canter, but eventually my companion called out to halt. "We just turned again."
Turning completely around, I examined the path we had just come through. And despite recognizing the plants that we had just passed, I could see no traces of our actual passage; there were no prints in the soft soil, no displaced branches or leaves, no snapped branches, and no scent. Our path simply didn't exist. In fact, no path existed — the area looked as if no animal had ever set foot in it. "Ok, that's not possible."
"What isn't possible?" Compass Rose asked, so I explained my observations. "Freaky. Hey, send only one of your wolves through so we can see what happens."
Agreeing with her plan, I sent off my weakest wolf puppet with the goal of walking in a straight line. It failed almost instantly. From its perspective, I was moving it in a straight line, but that was not at all what I was seeing from my other, stationary puppets.
Around the walker, the forest twisted in time with its movements, bending in such a way that my wolf could not visibly see the motion, as it was perfectly canceled out by its own movement. Whatever was making my wolf turn, it did a really good job of hiding itself behind the illusion.
"Why did you veer?"
"Didn't you see the forest bending?" I countered.
"What? No, all I saw was you suddenly turn."
Oh. She didn't see the same thing as me. That complicated things. I needed more information.
Frowning, I pulled my wolf back, and then tried again. This time, however, I walked my puppet with its eyes deactivated and black. Using only my observing puppets for navigation, I made the explorer trudge forwards, one step at a time, and carefully readjusted its position after each.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I made forwards, linear progress. Each step was harder than the last, for as I went on, I felt as if I had to keep spinning more and more in the wrong direction just to keep moving.
And then it vanished. Compass gasped. One moment, it was there, and then it wasn't.
Except, it was.
Let me explain: whatever defining line this effect was trying to prevent us from crossing, my wolf had just crossed it. The forest magic, giving up trying to ward us off and maintain the illusions, simply obscured my wolf from view.
My wolf, however, was still very much in the same place, and very much still under my control. So, I opened my wolf’s eyes. As their green light returned, I gazed upon what the forest never wanted found.
I didn’t expect a glowing fence.