//------------------------------//
// The source of it all 
// Story: Deer Me: Black Snow 
// by The Psychopath 
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"Need...food..." Yolumay strained herself.

"Where can I even find food?"

Yolumay collapsed onto the floor yet still managed to stretch her foreleg to the right to show an apple tree behind a few lines of its distantly related brethren. Stelimus hurried to it and plucked off a few apples, planting them on his growing antlers. He rushed back to his sister and placed a side of the apple in her mouth, allowing her to bite into it. A few hours passed that Stelimus help Yolumay by bringing her small amounts of food and water from the pond. He didn't want to overload her body, and she clearly looked like she hadn't eaten in a day. Stelimus sat down next to her and looked at his exhausted sister for a long period of time.

"So," he started. "what are you doing here? What happened to you?"

"I...don't want to talk about it." Yolumay rolled over to keep her face from her brother.

"Look, I'm your brother. I'm here to help you."

Memories of Gregary's late human siblings came back to his mind. He loved them so, but one of them had died and the other was still being treated after a devastating accident. Yet, they still taught him many things in sibling relationships and he knew that, regardless of how they acted in the past, there was always a chance for them to be the closest they could ever be.

"What..." Yolumay strenuously rolled over to look her brother in the eye. "Even after all I did to you?"

Stelimus raised a hoof and raised the volume of his voice. "ATTEMPTED to do," he corrected.

Yolumay only narrowed her glare.

"What?" The prince shrugged. "It's true."

"I still don't know how you managed to survive me. You were barely a few days old."

"Let's not dwell on that past. Let's talk about your current predicament. Why did Effervescence leave you like this?"

"She...didn't. I left and fled into the forest, hoping to find my way back into the tundra."

Stelimus put a hoof to his cheek. "That doesn't match. How would Effervescence even know where she was, then? Then how did she know you were here?"

The princess blinked a few times. "She did?! HOW?!"

Stelimus shrugged and his sister groaned loudly in response. "She really does see everything in this damnable forest." The doe put a foreleg over her eyes and started to cry. "I want to get out of here. I want to go home, even if I have to see that detestable figure that replaced me with you," she spat.

"Replaced?"

"Yes!"

"Huh. Well, before we develop on this further and splay your emotional tapestry of thoughts and beliefs before me, why didn't you go and get those apples yourself? Or even eat the grass here?"

"That apple tree just grew a few hours ago, and I couldn't reach it." Yolumay clenched her hooves. "I'm certain it was Effervescence that did that on purpose, just to taunt me."

Stelimus exhaled loudly through his nose. "I see. So...that also doesn't explain why you're starting to look like her."

The princess gradually sat up, taking a few minutes and refusals of Stelimus' help to find a comfortable position. "I...think I'm being affected by this forest."

"But the others who live here aren't looking like that!"

"I...really don't know what the cause is, but I know that you need to have a long life to start turning...or it's my aunt that started doing this to me."

"Why would you even leave her side, anyways?"

"Because I was tired with the way she was treating me! Everyone in my family has always treated me like garbage, and she was no different! She was trying to make me like her! She was teaching me about plant magic, something even dad didn't know, but..."

"But?"

"She kept trying to make me into someone like her. 'Delicate' and extremely feminine." She spit out the last words like venom freshly sucked out a wound. Stelimus unintentionally chuckled out loud when he thought about Yolumay as extremely feminine. "What's so funny?!" She roared.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Please continue."

"...She was starting to try and give me beauty products, even tricking me several times into going to a spa here so they could change my appearance. She even...put me in front of her crowd of brain-washed hippies and many of them actually tried to...woo me!" 

"Oh no. That's awful add so forth."

Yolumay bonked her brother on the head. "You think that's funny? These weren't just some 'pranks' she was doing. She was actively trying to change me. Day and night. I couldn't sleep as she was always awake. She even tried to slip some weird plants into my food. When I confronted her about them, all she said was 'You can't go back, so why not take after me? Think of it as a sermon to join a group worshiping a deity, which I obviously am'."

"Then why did you stay for so long?"

"Because I wanted to learn as much of that plant magic as I could. It's linked to the life magic she doesn't want to share, so I knew I had to learn as much about it as I could."

Stelimus started taking pity on this doe. It was clear that her issues with him stemmed a bit further than wanting to take a throne. And she was pretty tough to endure all of that in this place for years. Still...

"Why did you try to kill me so long ago? Why do you hate me?"

"Because..." Yolumay averted her eyes. She couldn't look at her brother anymore. He was actually hearing her out and even helped her.

"That's not what I asked you. I said 'why'."

"..."

"Answer me!"

"Because you replaced me!"

"What does that even mean?!"

Yolumay stood up and, although wobbling a bit, managed to stand in front of Stelimus. "Because you're the only stag father has had in so long! I have a longer lifespan because of his damned bloodline. I'm thrice your age yet still look like a young doe in her twenties! Most of us don't survive for long with him because of the spirits or dad's siblings!"

"Wait, so Grimliss HAS killed 'my' past siblings before? He seemed obsessed with avoiding such a thing, so mayhaps these siblings did something extraordinary to him."

The princess tapped her chest several times. "I was the one who was supposed to inherit the throne! I was supposed to be loved by my own parents! I was supposed to get all the attention." Her tears started pouring from her eyes and she was having trouble breathing because of it. "Instead, they were all disappointed in my existence. They...mother weaned me for a while then let the others take care of me, but even they didn't care much. They wanted a stag, not a doe, not for inheriting the throne, mind you. That stubborn fool will never die anyways."

"Does it have to do with the alliance with the ponies?"

"Yes. When I would walk in the streets, I could hear them all whispering behind my back. Many wouldn't even hide it either. I was a doe, and they didn't want that."

"Hmmm. Knowing the idiot that passes itself for a father, this means that if you were the one to become pregnant from a stallion, you would have dishonored their 'god-king', sullied his lineage, and ruined yourself in the process."

Yolumay sniffed and wiped some tears from her eyes. She actually looked mildly pretty when she wasn't scowling. There were still rough edges of a warrior, but not that of a heartless ones. And her eyes were bizarrely glistening.

"Oh God. It's like watching an anime from the seventies and eighties!"

"I tried to train myself in warrior combat to please our dad after he told me to do so. I even became one of the best fighters. Not THE best, but one of. I even studied books on warfare and the like, but it wasn't enough for him. I wasn't the child with the gender that he wanted."

"But wouldn't my impregnating of a pony still be a 'disgrace'?"

"It would, but with a lesser impact. It would just mean that you were talented and tricky enough to disgrace them and 'improve' upon their lineage."

"Hmmm. Weird ass nobility thought patterns here, yet the does have still been performing tasks many males have. I don't get this society. Makes no sense. So your reaction to me was jealousy?"

"The second you were born they cheered and I heard it. You were getting everything I wanted. It's not fair!"

"OY!" Stelimus bonked his sister on her head as vengeance. "If I could've chosen who to be born under, it sure as hell wouldn't have been to those things that are supposed to be our parents. I mean, mom is alright, but she isn't ideal. That's all there is. I've been actively going against dad's wants because he isn't humble nor willing to be a good father. He uses us for his schemes."

"And he tossed me onto my aunt when he had no use for me."

"Exactly. We need to get out of here and return to the Crystal Kingdom for now."

"What?! Why not--"

"Really? really? After what you just told me, you really want to go back there?"

Yolumay opened her mouth to say something but closed it back up.

"That's what I thought, now wait right there. I need to talk to someone. And we can forget me learning anything from my aunt here. Plant and life magic and essences can wait."

Stelimus adjusted himself and started to focus. The lights around Yolumay and himself flickered and started to dim, then the prince opened his eyes, revealing them to be pure white. White cones filled with spirits quietly wailed as Stelimus' sight and mind faded into the spirit world and towards his uncle.

"Grimliss?" He asked.

The stag looked away from his short table briefly to see his nephew standing behind him.

"Stelimus! Glad to see you...You didn't already get killed by your aunt, did you?"

"No."

"Good. So what's the pleasure of this immediate visit. Already missing us?"

Stelimus shivered in horror. "No. I need to get Yolumay to the Crystal Kingdom and I need your help doing so."

"Your sister? I thought she was trying to kill you!"

"She was, but I can't leave her here to die! She's even starting to look like Effervescence."

Grimliss nodded. "I see. She's being corrupted. Okay, listen closely, Stelimus. The two dracoliches she killed have returned to my swamp on account of my magic. I can send you another undead creature that will burrow in that exact spot you are in then take you to the kingdom. It will take a week at most, three days at least. Not because of the distance, but because of that living forest's roots."

"Will it eat me again?"

Grimliss took on an innocent pose and placed one of his toes on what would constitute as a mouth. "Maybe."

"It's either that or you'll see your sister dying. She's being corrupted by your aunt's forest. It sees her in a bad view, most likely because your aunt doesn't like her. The ponies still know magic and will help, but keep her well fed and hydrated. She's very stubborn that one. So long as she still has her strength, she'll make it. Now go."

"Huh, so that's why he didn't react," Stelimus thought out loud.

"What? What was that?" Yolumay asked.

Stelimus turned towards his sister with an overly happy expression. "Good news, sister! It even means I'll get to amuse myself with our dear, sweet aunt." He evily wrung his two fore hooves together. Diabolical!