A Timber Tale

by Glen Gorewood

Prologue: What is now

The Everfree Forest, a place where magic runs free in everything uncontrolled, untamed, and purely wild. Jumping into the smallest creatures making them more, a rabbit into a genius of love and war. It's magic would turn a hydra into a queen, and a bear into a butler for a little Pegasus afraid to fly. For ages it has stood, surviving the wasteland of Discord, the rule of the two sisters and the fall of one and the battle that was the prelude to the mare in the moon. The wrath of dragons, the revolutions of ages, countless invaders countless defeats and still it stands strong. Being as it is has made many a scholar question how it came to be, the princesses admit it was there when they first founded Equestria, and Discord as good as admits this as well.

Some vines in the woods are in fact as old as the kingdom, some trees one massive symbiotic network with roots intertwining underground in a city without occupants; a kingdom without a ruler but the mighty Everfree itself. Rivers and gorges carve through it but over time the forest subdues them, the beasts within generally content to stay within it's borders and not wander into the realm of ponies and others. Though ponies build thier homes on the outskirts, and a few dare dwell within the outermost edge, none have penetrated deep within to it's heart not even the princesses themselves. For though the Castle of the Two Sisters lies deep in the forest, it is still by the inhabitants considered the outskirts, the innermost edge at best. Within the outskirts rests the Tree of Harmony, mother of the elements holder of the balancing sway of light versus the chaotic push of the dark. Nowhere but within this ancient forests embrace could such a tree exist, for nowhere but here do places of the eldest time still breathe as if new. Beyond it's borders the equines have sway, and further out the Griffons play, if we go further still Dragons we see; and ever we spread more beings there be.

In recent times a village has borne, by the edge of it's borders of bough and thorn. Respecting it's power while living beside it, the ponies themselves have long since learned how to become a part of it's system. To the Everfree they are the carriers without, carrying it's seeds and saplings to the edges of this land and beyond. It's fruit a farm has taken and grown, it does not welcome them but allows them their home. Ancient it stands terrifying to most, for within it loves creatures of myth and and an ancient host.

Within this land of leaves and shrubs, berries and flowers, birds of all colors and shapes and many a creature never before seen or to be seen again; there is an anomaly.
A type of creature that unlike the rest within is not a part of the whole, a parasite that uses the ancient forest to subsist and exist. These beasts do not aid the forest, they feed from it, using it's wild magic to exist in a sort of pseudo immortality, stealing it's branches and vines living and dead to reform again and again. Giving nothing back but always taking, this is how it is now for these parasitic monsters who prowl throughout and within. Feeding on the animals that would otherwise be eating by true beasts, not a magical anomaly of instinct and hunger. Not a form on autopilot that does not give back to the land what it devours, nor truly need it to live. A ravaging mystical fiend, whose eyes glow with the wisdom yet savagery of one who has lived too long yet not at all. Body formed by branches and vines, leaves and thorns, flowers and bramble, twisting into a lupine body that is just barely that. A slathering maw whose spittle is as acid, a essence that feeds like a leech upon the forest and it's victims. A scourge upon the forest, a scourge upon those within, a scourge upon the ponies without, the Walking Timbers and Howling Boughs.

There do you see them? See them hunting their glowing eyes tracing trails they alone sense and see? Their muzzles smelling life in all forms, each unique one a potent aroma like the finest perfume, to them it is but food and feast where to others it would be a plethora of knowledge. Such a gift to be given to such feral beasts, such vicious monstrosities, a waste of what was and could have been. The monsters so old their names have changed a thousand times over, the souls who cannot rest but subsist on the living in all forms, the Devouring Branches, Timberwolves.

This is the story of one, whom like the others knows not it's age, name, origin, history, or even time. For millennia driven by instinct, trapped within the constrains of a mind from which no escape was possible. Observing then dreaming, remembering then hunting, a tortured existence in a body that is not allowed to die. Memories of before conflicting with what it is now, knowing what it must do with what it's body desires, what seems to it like mere years has in fact been untold centuries. An ancient realm that is no more lives on within it, the memories of what lie at the forests core, though not the origin of the forest. An ancient promise, a sleeping phantom, a spell left incomplete, and magic will turn the key to begin the ballad anew.

Now let us begin.

A Princess has returned, a chaos god reformed, Magic has born itself anew in a vessel for eternity to mourn. The ancient feral fiend has been returned to the depths, an ancient insect queen has failed in her quest. The multiples of one have returned to the pond below, across the forest whispers speak of a time so long ago. And now it is upon us, awaken once more from your sleep, feel the creak of timber bones and wild magic do you weep.

Deep within the forest, resting in a cave, a large Timberwolf feels a shudder in it's frame. It's body wrapped in vines of color, body of the hardest tree, jaws of flora of all kinds, tongue of an ancient plant the forest no longer sees. It's claws are as of ironwood, it's eyes do truly blaze. Within an awakening soul long lost to haze, it stares into the forest it's mind slowly becoming clear. And with a yelp it begins to form words only the trees can hear, in a voice so long lost it no longer has a name.
Jaws open and out comes an impossible sound, whispers on the wind carry it up into the clouds. A princess is out studying the stage is clearly set, so as the words pass it's lips the world holds it's breathe. For with this one action it sets in motion all the rest.

And coming from it's floral jaws a voice so melodic and clear, echoes through the air both far and near.

"Where am I?"

Author's Note:

This is the tale of Timber, one whose name was once known so long ago. The truth behind the Timberwolf kind, and what they left behind, a quest for something forgotten in memories beyond time. A promise thrice betrayed, magic turns the key in a day, and then begins the Ballad of how the Timberwolves became this way.

The general idea is that the Timberwolves are not what they seem, in fact you could say they are far more than they appear. Their bodies merely vessels for beings who in their fear, sought to save everything but sacrificed all they held dear.

Critiques welcome.

Comments

[Efadd]

a spell left incomplete

From one to another, another to one;
The mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled;
From all of us together, together we are friends;
With the marks of our destiny made one;
There is magic without end!