//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Southlands 
// Story: King of the North 
// by Sanguine Eyes 
//------------------------------//

The winds blew rocking the long ship as it drifted through the waters in eerie silence save for the soft lapping waves against the dense wooden hull and iron nails. No noise but the icy wind and the icy waters touched few ears present to hear it until the bow plowed into the sandy banks and a single figure veiled by his heavy cloak landed in the soft wet sand. Splashing into the inch deep water receding back until another icy wave pushed back up the nearly lifeless beach, the figure stood tall on his hind legs, upright and firm. He waved at the long ship before slowly turning and continuing his voyage south.

A little uncomfortable with how fast the frozen tundra yielded to sunny fields as the magic of the crystal heart pushed back the ancient frozen cold much like his own home once did. He said nothing and acted no differently as he continued forward with a soft limp. His seemingly endless forward momentum didn't stop at the gasps and concerned shuffling of Crystal ponies ducking away from his path, or from the silent onlookers staring in fright as he walked the paved streets. He only slowed to a stop when spears levied at him as crystal ponies clad in polished silver armor stared at him with uncertain eyes.

His lips parted from under his hood and he uttered in a low calm tone. "Lähettiläs... Calm... I am here to speak to leader of Empire." Reaching out he watched as the guards flinched, noticing the heavy claws pinching the scroll delicately, the wax seal was one that they did not recognize but they didn't know much else to do. He had not broken any rules and if he was a foreign diplomat, they had to let him in due to their standing orders. They just didn't quite know where he could have possibly been from.

Escorted firmly by two guards who twitched and sweated as this creature strode between them. Despite his relatively thin figure he clearly towered over them and the claws drove fear into them, as did the soft clank of his left leg on the crystal floors as he slowly made his way forward. The awkward aura didn't stop until they stepped back in unison as Princess Candace stared down at the lone figure from her throne. 

She blinked and sat upright to address the creature before her. "I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza... I welcome you in these halls stranger, might I inquire of your name, nation, and goals."

He raised his chin to look up at her from his lowly spot below the lofty throne. "I am Odger, I am of the deep North, and...." He breathed deep as if he weighed something heavy on his mind, as if he disapproved of the message he was ordered to relay. "... I have been sent by my king to establish trade relations with the Crystal Empire and request further diplomatic connections deeper south into the land of Equestria."

Cadence blinked looking him over as he unslung his bags and placed a series of items before him on the floors of the throne room. A few small ingots of metal, a few scrolls, a heavy thickly bound book and a small item wrapped in cloth. "These are gifts from the North. Iron, gold, copper, and silver for trade, scrolls containing the king's requests and expectations for a treaty, books retaining the knowledge and history of the north." He paused and unwrapped the cloth to display oddly beautiful hairpins. "And finally, a gift from the king himself, as he has forged from his own efforts a gift to you the leader of the Crystal Empire."

Cadence watched as he stepped back and didn't so much as flinch even as the items lifted from the floor to her. She inspected them all, the ingots were the purest metal she had ever seen, she was no expert but it looked like they had been borderline magically grown. The hair pin was of extremely fine quality all the way to the point where she was certain that  even the most capable pony smiths and jewelers could not make something like it. The book she set aside, and the scroll she unraveled and gawked at. It was very neatly written in a very formal and proper way, but the scroll had to have miles of writing in it. Just peeking over it she couldn't find a single objection to anything mentioned in the scroll, if anything it almost looked like an overly favorable request that more resembled a cultural exchange and obscenely high level of gift giving which greatly favored the Empire.

She rolled the scroll up and blinked, looking down at the figure she raised just one more question she hoped would not be offensive, but considering the extremely generous propositions of this king she hadn't heard of before she felt a little too curious. "Um... This all looks rather flattering, but I do hope I can pose just one question... what are you?"

There was an odd silence and the clawed fingertips raised the hood and pulled back, letting the thick robes hit the floor and revealing the pitch black fur, scars and runed armor.





The ice covered castle crumbed and creaked as the winds of the massive storm renewed in strength. The blood leading into the heavy stone building froze instantly upon the ground. The honor guards lasted mere seconds against the single figure that stepped through the shattered door he had just pulverized with the latest honor guard's dead body. The last of the honor guard stood with his spear leveled at the new threat. He lunged at his foe as was his duty, but a hand with three fingers extended firmly slipped past the spear as a powerful arm waited for the shaft of the weapon to enter within range before it closed around the weapon at an awkward angle crushing the wood and snapping the spear like a twig. The three clawed fingertips punched through the fur, skin, and muscle, forcefully tearing out the fourth cervical vertebra from the wolf's neck. The last of the Honor guard fell to the ground limp as a wet rag, dead as the others. The invader looked up at the twelve foot tall hulking mass of fur claws fangs and muscles waiting calmly with predator eyes cast down from the  throne of bones and pelts.

"You no doubt have gone to challenge me, coming when you think I am at my weakest, coming thinking that the storms, the result of my hunt has crippled my nation and left me as but fodder, but never the less you came only to die..." The massive wolf rose from his throne carved from bones and decorated with the hides of those who had defied him as the seven foot tall invader looked up at him with no discernible fear, only regret and sorrow.

The lone wolf looked up at the massive overlord of the north. "Fennir.... you have sinned. You have thrown this world out of balance. You could not rule your own world and you have done nothing but fail to rule this world... Now the Susi damned by your actions... the damage you have done with your great hunt is irreversible... all for your petty desire to rule..."

Fennir bellowed in a deep guttural roar as he leaped off of his throne cracking the stone beneath his paws as he stood tall. Bringing his weapon to bare. The handle carved from the bones of the elder Elementals and the blade melted down from the holy shrines erected in honor of the Othin, the father of all, he hefted the hundred pound weapon with a single hand. Growling and grunting in anger he looked at the much smaller foe before finally speaking. "What right have you to challenge me? I am power itself... the physical  manifestation of strength and battle, it is my blood right to rule... I a-"

Fennir's voice was cut off as his mouth filled with blood and he lurched back from the impact. He could feel the clawed fingers wrapping around his heart from the open hand that had just plunged into his chest. "Your birthright is death. Power alone can never truly rule. All your mindless actions have done is cost this land of its true rulers and damned the lives of every soul within... The Kaar are loose, the Elementals have been slain leaving the entire nation to a frozen doom, the all prey have been driven out, the children of this land are in chains and I am never to return to my home. It was decided that your actions will be my responsibility to repair, even though the infinite damage you caused cannot be repaired. It still falls to me to do the impossible and to undo what you have done at least until balance has been restored."

Blood oozed steadily in a stream out of Fennir's chest and mouth as his massive hands tried in vain to pry the smaller wolf away from his heart. "You... can't... w...what... who are you?"

"Not who, but what... I am now Susien Kuningas.... I am the king of wolves.... ruler of the North, and you... are a mistake of the past... a mistake who will be remembered as a vile stain upon the North." His grip over Fennir's heart tightened and with one swift motion he tore out the giant wolf's heart letting the once powerful mass of muscle and fur fall to the ground. Staring at the heart in the palm of his hand still slowly pulsing as it tried desperately to supply the life blood to the body of creature it was just removed from. The now lone wolf breathed deeply looking in sorrow at the body before him just past the organ in his hand and to the cold frozen stone, the steaming puddle of blood slowly freezing in the endless winter. "Fennir... Fennir the tyrant, Fennir the heretic, Fennir the world eater.... you are no more... and this world is lesser for your mere existence..."

The King of wolves looked up at the crumbling castle as he held Fennir's heart high. Opening his mouth he closed his eyes and dropped the heart within his gaping maw and swallowed it whole.

"This land bleeds, I have much to do..." His eyes glared out the door he had just came in through before turning about and heading down into the dungeons.






2000 years later


"And so this wolf king guy just fixed everything?" The cyan blue pegasus gave a skeptical look at Twilight.

"Of course not, according to this book he did his best to undo the damage done by Fennir's great hunt." She smiled eagerly plunging back into the ancient book that Cadence had just sent her the day before.

"So the great hunt was when Fennir killed all the Elementals who controlled all the weather?... Why couldn't they just get a few pegasi to do it for them?" Rainbow smirked imagining the fun of leading a hardened weather team to plow through an uncontrolled storm to save the kingdom of the north and getting some illustrious medal for the heroic deed. Her fantasy was interrupted by Twilight's voice, which at this point she was very used to.

"No, there were no pegasi within a thousand miles. And at the time the only pegasi there were in existence, was the pegasi tribe and they were not really on speaking terms with anypony. Plus controlling the weather was not the ONLY thing that the Elementals did. They kept the peace, those Kaar things I mentioned are vegetarian dragons. They eat the iron trees to keep the iron forest from invading and overrunning the rest of the north. The Kaar, despite being vegetarians are non sentient, very violently territorial, and breed like rabbits... they sound terrible."

"Soooo.... these Elementals kept them from fighting and over breeding and stuff?" Rainbow Dash then proceeded to imagine a fight against an army of dragons. This process was not too uncommon for her. Twilight was her friend but sometimes she was just a little too boring. It did them both good to half listen and enjoy what could be enjoyed, even if Twilight caught Rainbow lost in her own imagination from time to time instead of listening to what Twilight considered to be extremely interesting and exciting content.

"Yes. The Elementals kept EVERYTHING in order, from the weather to public relations to even the crops. In fact there are hints in this book that suggest that they even had some part in moving the sun and moon or perhaps even more back in the ancient times. But the point here is that when the tyrant Fennir came in he was jealous of the position of power and enslaved the Susi clans to hunt down the Elementals then he forced the Susi to eat the dead Elementals so that they would gain their power and hence make stronger soldiers before he moved to take over other nations." Twilight squee'd with glee as she flipped a few  more pages and showed Rainbow Dash the picture of a wolf holding chains that lead to the necks of other wolves then another picture of a smaller but still pretty big wolf standing atop those same chains now broken and each group of wolves that were once chained now had some sort of glow about them, not to mention very happy faces. "I mean he was not exactly a good guy what with some of the stuff he did AFTER that... but he still freed the Susi from enslavement and did all he could to undo what that evil Fennir did."

"So king wolf guy saves the day and then what?..." 

"Susien Kuningas was his name... or.. um.. title I think... and yeah he saved the Kingdom of the North, or as the book says 'The Kingdom of the Great North'. Then he took all the tribes who ate the Elementals and taught them how to use the magic they gained from eating the immortal Elementals. This turned them all into three tribes of magic users, druids, shamans, and oracles. They created a whole new types of magic which they used and even still to this day use to control the weather, keep the peace, and foresee future incidents. There was even one in here about them foreseeing an age of darkness and they had to try and warn some foreign leader named... um... Aurinko Pylly... I have no idea who or what that is... but basically it didn't work whoever he was, Aurinko Pylly misunderstood or just didn't trust the wolves and there was some sort of war that lead into an age of darkness. But all in all this is just fascinating. I had no idea that such an amazing culture and history was beyond the frozen north.... hay, its hundreds and hundreds of miles beyond even Yakyakistan , beyond the great northern sea even! Heck, its got to be somewhere close to or right smack dab in the middle of the North pole, its just amazing..." 

"Um... Twilight?... exactly why did all this come up? you just starting going on and on and on about how amazing it all was... where did you get the book and why exactly did all this come about?" Rainbow hovered in her spot with the odd silence with only the sound of Rainbow's softly flapping wings to note as Twilight stopped in thought.

"Oh.. yeah... I totally forgot about that... Cadence and Shining just received an emissary from Kingdom of the Wolves asking for an alliance and trade. Cadence was even gifted with this book as well as a few other really cool gifts. But one of the requests made by the Emissary was apparently to continue southward with the Crystal Empire's help to talk to Equestria, There's a lot of stuff in the air right now but Cadence sent this all to me thinking that as long as they want to make friends she might as well call up the Princess of Friendship try and make new friends for all of Equestria?"

Rainbow blinked and settled down into a spot next to Twilight trying to get another look into the book. "So we could see one of these legendary wolf things someday soon? Will it be this... um.. susun kunugs?"

"Susien Kuningas! And no, most likely not, he was just a Susi, its what they call their race, he was a bipedal wolf... a VERY powerful wolf but not many beings live that long, not even Princess Celestia is that old. Its probably his great great great great great great great great.... um.. you get it. One of his descendants, but still expect them to be very proud of their warrior heritage. Even before Fennir came along all they did was battle among their own clans. Fennir just made them wage war against the Elementals, and Susien Kuningas makes them fight the out of control Kaar so they can both regulate their population and... um...." She paused to look closer at the book eyes going wide. "Um... feed his people with the flesh of the Kaar.... Ew, they eat dragons?"

"Whoa... hard core Twilight... I'm not sure whether to be happy sad or frightened... Do you really think Equestria will so quickly warm up to... um, well... meat eaters? I mean, think about Fluttershy. She'd probably faint on the spot even looking into a toothy maw of some giant wolf."

"We've accomplished dozens of inter species relations, Dragons, Griffons, Hippogriffs, even Yaks and more... a few of those eat meat from time to time... its nothing we can't handle.... I think." She poked her nose back into the book trying to find more. "I am excited none the less, this is amazing and I cant wait to see what kind of friends these Susi tribes of the North will be..."







The landing craft rocked in the rough frozen seas as the wolves sat in grave silence checking and rechecking their weapons. Axes, spears, swords, and finally the standard issue single shot trap door infantry rifle. Each soldier carefully guarded the leather pouch at their waist filled with two dozen rounds. Every last wolf within the landing craft had already loaded the first round into the weapon and waited patiently for the Druid in command to address them. The veterans sat up front and the newer recruits tried their best to sit in the far back. shivering and whimpering at the sounds of the battle on the shores of lake Seppa just outside the iron forest.

"Sons of the cursed blood... wake up and ready up... you young pups who are new... stick close to the veterans and clan wolves. Remember to shoot for the eyes and stay out of the way of the Shamans and Druids, if you are injured stay put... When the beasties think you are dead they will move on." The Druid overseer looked over the grim faces of the scrawny and young Susi about to engage in the battle. The vessel bumped against the shore cracking the ice and triggering the Druid's reaction. "And... GO!"

The front of the landing craft gave way and out poured the veterans followed hesitantly by the new troops who instantly grew cold in shock at the sight of the Susi who took their place within the boat. Scarred brutalized injured even souless looking empty eyes staring back at them. The only two uninjured Veterans pulled the ramp back up and the Druid on board flared his magic forcing the waters to surge and pull the vessel back out to the waters to return to the capital. The war cries and roars drowning out the calls to and from the long ships and landing craft, veterans charged forward followed by the young and inexperienced. Few looked back to see the Citadel which still poked up in the far distance as if taunting those who wished to escape the frozen battlefield.

One such desperate young pup stared back the way he had come whimpering before his eyes shot forward wondering where his squad had gone just in time to see the pale sickly white skin stretched over a powerful skull and powerful thick muscles, six beady eyes leveling on him. A cold panic shot up inside of him as the fumbled with his rifle trying to bring it to bear at the massive Kaar that stood up ten meters out of the snow it had tunneled in from. Its mouth opened releasing its signature guttural roar and massive claws rose to crush down on the lone youth. However, fate favored the pup as bolts of fire and lightning struck the side of the Kaar's head and a Shaman lept up its body. Plunging her axes into the dragon's head. Tearing through the skin and cracking the impossibly thick and dense skull she flooded the interior of the Kaar's cranium with torrents of lightning. The massive beast fell, stunned long enough for the Shaman step in and to slash open its throat allowing it to bleed to death, she stepped down glaring at the wolf pup shaking so badly that he couldn't stand.

"You are one of the cursed blood yes? What are you doing away from your company?"

"Y...Yes ma'am...I... I just  I just...g.." She swatted him upside the head interrupting his fearful stammering.

"Oathblood!" She barked and a nearby Clanwolf strode up with heavy muscle bound steps. "Find this pup's company and tell them not to expect him back." A heavier wolf he did not notice nodded and took off as the young wolf shivered staring up at the Shaman.

"W...wait! I... I.. I'll do better!" He noticeably cowered and his hands raised to shield his face.

She swatted him again. "Shut up... my personal aid got stepped on last four days ago. You are obviously not one for fighting on the front lines so shut up, you are coming with me as my new aid."

"But... I'm of cursed blood? do you really want me?" He stared up at her confused and still shaking.

Again she swatted him over the head. "Don't question me, out here in the iron forest no one cares if you are descended from the Tyrant... I have to write a report for the King's Shaman and YOU are going to deliver it, and if you return, I will decide on whether to send you back to the front lines or keep you as my new aide. Now come on little pup, we have a report to write, let the butchers and your brothers take care of the Kaar." She started in one directly only to pause and look back at the young wolf. "Pup! What is your name?"

He stopped and looked back very grateful that he managed to be pulled from battle but still very frightened at the possibility of his heritage coming back to bite him in the furry tush. It was very common for the descendants of Fennir's two hundred sons to be treated ill, even when the old king had ordered them to be treated the same as everyone else so long as they hunted the Kaar with the military when they became of age. 

"I am Jalm... Jalm of house Kynnen"

"Hrmm... ok then pup..." She grinned taking note of his name despite her intention to never use it until he consistently stopped cowering at everything that moved. 

Her stride slowed as she looked up. "I wonder if the Shaman is right, will Equestria actually want a treaty after all this time?" She stared up at the Citadel from the great distance with a smirk before walking off to file her report Jalm reluctantly and fearfully in tow.