The Hag, the heroes, and a few other things

by Amaranthine Thought

Breaking harmony 2

A few days passed as I prepared for my next attempt at the crystal tree. I grew used to my new form, taking great pleasure in realizing the odd range of movement my limbs had, as well as the strange ability to grasp with my hooves. In some ways, I had regained my hands. I was clumsy yet, but growing better by the moment.

My age restricted me yet, but I felt younger. Less pain greeted me when I turned or bent, and my face was more youthful now; I even had a full set of teeth again!

I really stepped in a thorn bush when I managed to convince that beast from earlier to share his kill with me. I waited with breathless anticipation as I grilled the hunk of meat over a small fire I had constructed. With teeth, I could, once again, enjoy the pleasures of a diet consisting of things beyond soup or gruel! Or so I thought. Unfortunately, it seemed my diet now resembled the diet of the body I inhabited.

The entire day after, I was sick, wishing I was dead, the forest unable to assist me due to the purely natural affliction. What really got to me was that I had done it to myself.

I was despondent whenever I wasn’t in crippling agony, sad over the loss of an ability I thought I had regained. I did get some benefits from my new form though. I could eat nearly any plant now, and they even had a variety in tastes that I took to tracking, sampling everything and remembering what had tasted the best.

On the third day of my arrival I was ready to fight once more and I set off toward the tree with a sack loosely tied to my barrel filled with… a green bush with pointy leaves that I had uprooted. I’m not sure what it was called, but it was fairly tasty, like a yam.

I arrived at the tree and glared at it with determination. The streams of power had strengthened around the necklaces, the bonds around the spirits growing stronger. That was almost certainly because I had been preventing it from regaining its hold on the woods. The thing’s power was strangely weak at the start of its grip, and I had easily broken its tenuous hold day after day.

“Right.” I said, “Today, I begin the freedom of your captives. If you let them go, I might even think about forgiving you your trespass.” I waited for its response and receiving nothing, assumed that it was defying my offer of mercy.

“You brought this on yourself then.” I backed up, prepared myself and leapt up, grabbing onto the necklace with the blue gem in the shape of a balloon with my front hooves. It stuck fast and I hung there as I reached out and struck at the power beyond.

The tree reacted, its power burning and cutting into me as I continued to strike against it. It felt as though I was running through thorns. That were on fire.

The spirit just beyond jolted at my battering of its cage and surged forward, slamming into the far side, straining against its bonds. The forest reached out and strengthened me, bolstering my endurance so that I could endure the pain and continue my attack.

Every blow was agony, every moment a torment of fire and blade. Without the forest I would be a lifeless husk on the floor, dead from my exertion and burned away by the tree’s power. It seemed hopeless, even with the prisoner’s assistance and I slowed in my attack. I can’t do it I thought before my stubborn nature took hold. I would do it or die in the attempt.

Suddenly, the necklace gave way slightly. A sense of purpose filled me, and gave me strength far beyond what I might have been capable of normally. I slammed against the power with the greatest sense of understanding I ever felt, seeing exactly where and how I needed to strike to break its grip. With a powerful snap the necklace broke into two. Its gem shattered, glittering bits sparkling in the air as I fell.

I hadn’t made it two feet down before the newly freed spirit snatched me up and lifted me into the air, screaming its freedom and thanks. It resembled a horse, made of wind and fog, its grip cold and chilling. Comforting the burn I had just felt.

I trembled as the forest healed me, my physical body showing the extent of my spiritual injury. My coat was burned off, and I bled from deep cuts across my form. I smiled in triumph despite my injuries, noticing that the branch that had held the necklace had lost all luster and now appeared grey and lifeless.

As the spirit set me down and as my injuries faded and vanished due to the forest’s intervention I cackled at it. “See!? I told you! You are a blight that needs to be uprooted and I’m the hag for the job! Fight all you want, but you are going to die!”

I continued to cackle for a time, feeling greater than I had ever been, eventually calming down. I took in my form, now renewed and noticed two matching markings on my flanks. Six musical notes in a line, each one a different color: one pink, one blue, one red, one orange, one purple and the last a dark pink. Each one was fragmented into several pieces, the broken bits close enough together to tell how they would be restored.

I wondered why the thing had decided to tattoo me, and looked back at the broken necklace at my feet. The spirit didn’t like it, and told me as much. I picked up the pieces and suddenly grinned, a wicked idea coming to my mind.

It took some time, but I drew a matching figure of the tree in the dirt in front of it. With great care I placed the broken jewelry on the representation where it had rested on the tree.

I looked to it again, “I’m going to get the rest of them too! Every last bit of you, put right in front of your corpse! Because you think that you should control what should never be controlled!”

I felt tired once more, the internal fire from before fading and leaving me cold and lifeless. I gently laid on the ground. “If you could be so kind?” I asked the spirit hovering near me.

It scooped me up in its cold grip and swept me away, carrying me high above the woods. I saw their size and smiled. I saw its neighboring forest, right on top of the forest’s boundaries, the scattered Everfree still infesting it and frowned. I saw the colorful village not far from its borders and wondered who, or what, might live there.

The sprit gently laid me at my home and I struggled inside, giving it my thanks. It returned with an offer of undying gratitude; it had been trapped for much longer than I could comprehend, and at long last it was free. In thanks, it would always be ready to help me in any manner I saw fit. I told it that it didn’t need to be that subservient, and smiled as it insisted.

---

After my fight with the tree I was exhausted for two days. My form belied my age, but I was still old. I was… very old, far past the normal lifespan for my people. I was hearty and tough, but I did not have much time left in my life. Even less if I were to use my every effort to remove the invasive spirit from this land.

I wasn’t going to stop because of that. I would never stop protecting the natural way of things, be it from mortals or spirits. I passed the time during my infirmity by telling the forest, the Everfree, about my life elsewhere. It held an endless curiosity for new things, and always wanted what other forests had. Like a spoilt child really.

I couldn’t indulge its every whim, but I kept it happy with the thought that it too might one day be home to the creatures of my tales. Fey could go anywhere, and the geistermen as my people called them (dark wood sprits, nasty things) could easily make a home here.

Both entities were more than likely to harm or destroy neighboring settlements, but I had no connection to the people outside of my wood, the ones who lived in the colorful houses. Why protect that which I didn’t know about?

Why bother, when the only people I had cared for had been burned to the ground, slaughtered to the last? The wood would always be there for me, and I would always be there for it. It would stay that way until the day I pass, with the forest all around me. And I would be happy.

---

I had been collecting my dinner in the woods when I received my first visitor. The freed spirit had wandered off, and he had found it. He had followed it all the way back to me and my heart nearly failed when he sprang free of the bushes.

He is quite the sight for someone who doesn’t know him. He stands the height of a tree, towering over me. A pair of yellow eyes with red centers, a goat head with a black mane and mismatched horns, one an antler and the other an oddly bent blue goat horn. Feathers cover his long and thin torso, a lion’s paw and a griffon’s claw for hands.

He usually floats, but if he walked, he slouched, always looking down due to his height. His entire body is one long log shape; no points or bumps. Two bat wings are on his back, his tail and one leg that of a dragon, his other leg like a deer’s. He has a tiny white beard, white hair on the top of his head, one fang jutting from a smirk, and his tail ends in a fluffy white tuft.

He shocked me very badly. I hadn’t even sensed his approach and I had assumed that nothing like him was anywhere nearby. Despite my shock I recovered quickly and thought that he was a spirit, which helped explain his strange appearance to me. Since spirits tended to get mad when they weren’t greeted, I calmed and tried to ignore my racing heart.

“I did not see you! Forgive me, but you have caught an old lady during her dinner. I hold no gift or grudge toward you.” I said, trying to calm my heart as I spoke the proper greeting. I also wondered why I had never sensed him before now. He had a lot of power, and at the time, I just assumed that he was visiting, coming from a long way.

“Such an unusual phrase.” He said in that smooth tone of his, claws scratching his chin. “No gift or grudge? Whatever might you mean?”

I hesitated. “You are a spirit, correct? But then, you have a solid form… Ah! You are an avar then! But why do you look like that, and who are you? I do not recognize you or your shape.”

Avars are spirits with a mortal form, weaker than their purely spiritual brethren. They are known for wandering about and never having a home, and for their mismatched appearances. Not as mismatched as he was mind you, and he was quite powerful for an avar, stronger than most spirits I’d met before. Maybe even as strong as Uwe, the spirit that ruled the beyond and judged the dead.

I stopped him dead with my comment, a confused look appearing on his face. I think that that is what caused him to like me, because he smiled rather widely.

“You do not know me? Me?! Really!?” He roared with laughter, flipping onto his back and holding his stomach, floating in the air.
He stopped abruptly and looked to me again, “Never in all my years… You,” his claw detached from his arm and tapped at my forehead before reappearing on his arm, “and you alone are the very first! To NOT know who and what I am! Though I suppose I am a spirit of sorts.”

It was my turn to be befuddled. What did he mean? I should know him? Why? “You are… welcome?” I said, trying to guess at his meaning. “But what do you mean avar? Forgive me, but this old mind cannot understand you.”

“I am quite famous you know.” Odd statement, odder still that he got a pair of black glasses from nowhere and put them over his yellow eyes. They disappeared again as he stood tall, “My name… is Discord! The spirit of chaos and disharmony! And you are?”

“My name…”

I did not want to give him my name. Names have power, especially with spirits and fey.

His knowledge of my name would make me susceptible to his powers. As a hag I was resistant to spiritual effects, but with my name that resistance would be like a weak breeze. My deal with Uwe would also keep me safe, but I did not wish to test the strength of that.

“My name is Hag.”

He did it first, so I had decided to follow suit. His name made no sense. Spirits weren’t spirits of anything where I had come from and his name complimented his chosen attributes. So mine would too; hag was what I was, just as he was discord.

The rest of the conversation did not go better as he grew relaxed at my presence and loosened up. I swiftly found that telling him to stop something was a great way to make it worse. A tree was made of candy and the bush I wanted to eat was made of some sticky substance before I figured that out. He truly lived up to his name. I never saw anything use power for the things he did.

He failed to draw any more information out of me, and if he said anything meaningful it was drowned in the nonsense (or fish. Or fruits, or animals, it didn’t seem to matter to him) that he replied with. He left after telling me he had a date (some odd book with numbered squares was produced, a tiny discord pointing at one in particular) and that he had to go. A strange leather outfit with a hat appeared on him and he zoomed off astride nothing.

I only kind of missed him. He was far more animate than the Everfree and I couldn’t be bored with him around. One the other hand… or other hoof, I suspected, and rightly, that he had figured out that messing with the forest was a good way to get me mad. I did not want him injuring my new home with his twisted humor without good cause, and his leaving did guarantee that he wasn’t transforming any more plants.

Comments

[Wolfren]

This is a very interesting concept, one which leaves me on the edge of my seat for more.
But I must know, are these from a collection that you have built up or are you writing these now?

[Amaranthine Thought]

8163118

Both. They are old ideas given a new polish, and sometimes rebuilt. This one in particular is the oldest, and one of the harder ones to polish.

[Wolfren]

8163240 i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/009/993/tumblr_m0wb2xz9Yh1r08e3p.jpg That is... hang on, let me look up a word that best fits...

That is stupefying.

[SteampunkBrony]

This right here in a very interesting (and well written) concept. Please, do go on.

[Amaranthine Thought]

8163493

In a good way I hope.

[Wolfren]

8163857 Of course in a good way. The ability to write so much in such a short amount of time, despite already having the main idea, is utterly stupefying to me. Your skill is wonderous!

[Lancerlot]

This Hag seems somewhat like Zecora, had that zebra shaman been a newcomer to the Everfree, not understanding it or Equestria.
Will they meet?