Destiny's Calling

by Crimson_Moon

Contract: Devil of the Everfree

Whether it be a harmless Godling or even a mighty Djinn, one thing a Witcher knows is the job needs done, and he better be compensated for it...

---

"Not even a Hello, after all these years?!" Fluttershy scoffed. "Just 'we need your help', like some friendship problem that needs done?"

"Look, I didn't mean it that way!" Starlight exclaimed. "This magic, i-it defies all logic! It's constantly changing, causing problems all over the place!" She sighed. "I'm just... Scared. We all are! More and more of these incidents are popping up all over Equestria and nopony knows why."

"And what do you expect me to do about it, huh?" The mare leered at Starlight. "I'm a Witcher, not that same goody two-shoes you all knew!" She looked away in shame. "I'm not... Kind. Not anymore..."

Starlight went to comfort her, but was stopped by Geralt, shaking his head. It was his responsibility to bear, after all. "Fluttershy, do you remember what I said the first year at Kaer Blathan?"

"..." She remained silent.

The Witcher sighed, putting a hand on one of her shoulders. "Witchers will always be shunned... Save for those who need their help. To me, it sounds like there's a contract to be had. Are you gonna pass the opportunity to someone else?"

"I...No, of course not." She sighed. "I apologize, Starlight. I'm... Not who I used to be. I hope you understand."

"...Of course, Fluttershy." Starlight said. " We were all told what happened that day. Yes, it was tough for some of us to face the truth, but for others?" She stepped closer, grabbing the mare's hoof in her own. "Take it from somepony who's been there." She smiled. "They'll stop seeing you as something you're not."

Fluttershy gripped her hoof back. "I... Thank you, Starlight." She cleared her throat. "So, this monster, do you have anything to go by? Anything peculiar, like maybe something out of place?"

"Oh, now that we had a moment of bonding you want to hear about my problems?" The older mare giggled, then continued. "It began a few weeks ago when a strange horn appeared in Town Square."

"This horn, what did it look like?" Geralt questioned.

"Like a goat horn, but more... Swirly? I can't really remember, I couldn't get a good look at it." She explained.

"Why? Did it disappear?"

"More like disintegrate!" Starlight exclaimed. "One touch from my hoof and poof! Exploded in a fiery orange."

"Hmm." Geralt grunted. "Curse, maybe? What do you think?" He turned to Fluttershy.

"Is... This a test?" She asked cautiously. Once the Witcher nodded, she became a bit nervous. Almost always was she being tested, but this one seemed more important than most. "W-well, from what I know about curses, or at least from what you taught me, it would affect an individual, and not the entire town." She explained. "And if you take into account our earlier incident, it doesn't really describe the symptoms of a curse."

"If it isn't a curse, then what is it?" Starlight asked worriedly.

"Curses can be fickle, and normally have an effigy or talisman in place to continue the effect." Geralt replied. "What happened earlier is more along the lines of magic tied to the Earth. Shaking buildings, drastic change in scenery, that sort of thing. In conclusion, Fluttershy?"

"Hmm..." She thought for a moment. "Goat's horn that disappeared on first contact, tremors and latent magic..." Suddenly, Fluttershy gasped. "Oh my, it's a Sylvan!"

"A...what?" Starlight looked confused.

"Sylvans are trickster demons. Normally they're pretty harmless, unless somebody really got on their bad side!" Fluttershy giggled. "Basically think of them as miniature versions of Discord, minus the randomness."

"A mini... Discord?" The mare facehoofed. "Out of all the creatures you could possibly name, it just had to be something like that!"

"It could be worse." The Witcher replied.

"How in all of Equestria, could it be worse than the literal avatar of Chaos?!"

"Could be one of your past villains. From what I've read, any one of them could be devastating." He blankly stared at her.

"...Good point." She turned to Fluttershy. "So? Will you help me out, as a friend?"

"Of course." The Pegasus smiled. "I'd still do anything for my friends, save for Her Royal Majesty."

"Excellent!" Starlight beamed, ignoring that final comment. "When can you-" Suddenly, Fluttershy's hoof stopped her mid sentence.

"Though I'd like to say it'll be for free, we need... Supplies."

The older mare paused, slightly taken aback. "Oh! Um, of course! How much would you need?"

Geralt sighed, doing a rough bit of math in his head. "Sylvans are Relicts- demons that use the magic of the Earth, so we will need to find a fair few ingredients. Dog Tallow, Sewant Mushrooms to name a few."

"How much does that cost?" Starlight questioned.

"Hmm..." He thought for a moment. "Dog Tallow is rare, especially in rural areas like this. If your local Witch Doctor was still around, I could have haggled with her and obtained some. Now, however, it's going to be hard to come by. 300 bits, plus the fee for anything else we'd need while on the contract."

"More than likely, 500 bits." Fluttershy continued. "You know I wouldn't ask for this much unless it were necessary, Starlight."

The mare's jaw dropped. "500? Fluttershy, that's too much... I'm sorry but even with all the money pooled together, the most we could do is get you the bits for your ingredients. Most ponies left town because of this, so there's not much in the way of funding."

"Okay, then how about this-" she continued, staring at Geralt's sword for a moment. "Let us have the blacksmith forge Geralt a new sword on our return. You don't need to pay the extra bits." Fluttershy turned to Geralt. "Does that sound reasonable to you?"

"Hmm... I do need a silver sword, and a touch of leather reworked on my armor." He nodded his head. "I accept. The contract is valid."

---

The Everfree.

Before, Fluttershy might have avoided it altogether aside from dire emergencies for animals that lived there and the occasional friendship problem or two. Now, however?

Now, it just seemed... Tame compared to the tales Geralt shared with her. "What about this Sylvan requires Starlight?" She asked. "To me it seems the whole town is cursed, not just her."

"It's the horn." The Witcher grunted, slicing through another pair of vines within the forest. "Most times Sylvans are peaceful beings, granting boons to local villages as a token of thanks to some deed they had committed or other, but like most intelligent and magically gifted creatures, they are very prideful."

"What does the horn have to do with it?" She asked, burning another set in their path with Igni.

He stopped walking, and turned to face the Pegasus. "Let me ask you this: Take a Unicorn's horn away from them and how would they react? Or the wings of a Pegasus? The very thing that separates something from something else?"

Fluttershy thought on it for a moment. "Well, I suppose they'd be upset, if not devastated."

"Correct." He continued through the forest once more, talking as he sliced through more of the foliage. "Pride is in a creature's nature most times. Break the natural appearance of them, and they would not be okay with it." He sighed. "Us Witchers are more than enough examples of that."

For several minutes, neither of them talked about it anymore, until their cutting came across a clearing in the woods. "This'll do." Geralt spoke. "Now, let's lay the groundwork for the summoning." He turned to Fluttershy. "I need you to fetch Starlight and have her teleport here-" he pointed to a particular spot in the grass where he cast an Yrden sigil. Nodding, she flew off to Ponyville.

"Now that she's away," the Witcher spoke, drawing his sword. "Do you mind explaining who you are, and why you're following us?" He turned around.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew him back several feet and a shadowy figure flickered wildly into being. "So, you have finally sensed me!" The Shadow chuckled in a distorted voice.

"Medallion's been humming since we entered, I just figured it was the Everfree's latent magic." He got into a battle stance, circling the creature. "Guess I was wrong."

The Shadow cackled. "Well now, I wouldn't say that." It raised one of the gangly arms it possessed and turned it towards the left, causing the whole of the forest that direction to bend and twist. "I'm part of this forest now, no more than you are part of this world now!" The Witcher in response tossed a pillar of flame in the Shadow's direction, only for it to have teleported to the right.

"What do you want?!" Geralt spat.

"What I want..." He pointed to the sigil on the ground- the return point for Starlight and Fluttershy. "Is a body. I can't fully manifest until I have a host." It smiled sadistically. "And what better way than to trick a Witcher into bringing one here?" It cackled.

Geralt thrusted his sword at the shadowy being this time, only to have it pass right through with ease. "Steel doesn't work, I'm afraid." The Shadow explained.

"Fuck!" He grunted, dodging a wave of upturned roots the Shadow summoned from the ground.

"Oh, and it looks like they're coming back!" It pointed to the sigil, now glowing with arcane power. It got closer, waiting for the ponies to come back.

"No!" He pushed the Shadow back from the glyph, rushing in front to cut it off from advancing further. Screaming in rage, the Shadow threw a flurry of vines from a tree at the Witcher's sword, tangling it in the foliage above. Acting quickly, he burned the vines with Igni and tagged his body with Quen. Rushing forward, Geralt once again sliced at the shadowy figure, but failed at doing damage once more.

It cackled madly. "What, no oil to give you that extra push you need? Tsk tsk tsk..." A massive branch came and knocked him back several yards, landing into a small tree and slightly cracking it on impact.

The Witcher spat out a puddle of blood, his internal organs now in critical condition. Heaving, he opened a small pouch on his vest and took out a red vial. Downing it, he got back up, eyes changing to a pitch black and veins visibly darkening across his body. Quickly, his wounds began to heal and Geralt rushed back to fight the creature, using magic mostly and a fair bit of diversion.

After what felt like hours, the Shadow had finally taken quite a bit of damage from various Samum and Devil's Puffball bombs. "ENOUGH!" It shouted, plunging it's arms into the ground and forming a cage of shadow and wood around the Witcher. He tried to escape, but was pierced several times by magical thorns.

The glyph finished charging, Starlight appearing with Fluttershy. "Geralt!" The Pegasus flew above, preparing her Claws to free him, but failed to pay attention to the vines wrapping around her wings.

"Two Witchers, caught in a tree..." It sang. "Killing them both, oh how it brings me Glee!" Throwing Fluttershy to the cage Geralt was in, the Shadow imprisoned them both and continued to stab them over and over with it's shadowy vines.

"Stop it!" Starlight pleaded. "Stop it, please!"

The Shadow just laughed louder at those words. "You want me to stop, knowing what they did to save the mare? Isn't that what you are afraid of the most, Starlight?" It smiled sadistically. "Aren't you afraid... That what Twilight said all those years were true?" It fell silent for a moment, contemplating. "Hmm, I might stop, but you have to do me a favor in return."

"Yes, anything! Please..."

"Just step out of that barrier and come a bit closer." It motioned with one of its twisted fingers.

She sighed. "Okay, but only if you let them go!"

"Done." It waved its shadowy hand and removed the cage, freeing the two Witchers. "Now come closer..." It leered.

Doing as promised, the mare exited the sigil and approached slowly. It didn't matter however, as she was immediately possessed once she was completely out of it. Choking on shadow, Starlight cried and cried, gazing down at her friends one last time before being fully taken over. She collapsed.

"Nngh..." Fluttershy was the first to get up. Gasping, she approached the unconscious mare only to be suspended midair by an invisible force.

"Heh heh heh..." The unicorn smiled, her limp body floating up and her eyes becoming pitch black. "It'll be so much fun to play here!" Cracking the mare's limbs to impossible angles, the Shadow cackled madly. "I even got myself a new toy!"

"That's... Where you're wrong..." Geralt heaved, leaning on the hilt of his sword. "It's not a vessel, let alone... A toy." He chuckled, coughing out blood. "It's a prison."

"No, i-impossible!" The Shadow convulsed, separating from the mare. It couldn't, and only snapped right back in.

"You didn't think we knew?" Fluttershy chuckled. "Sylvans are harmless, as long as you treat them in kind. We knew that much going in." She stepped closer, unsheathing her claws once more. "What we didn't know was why it was plaguing the town. So, we did some digging, and what did we find?"

"You bitch!" The Shadow lunged at her, only to snap back to the suspended pony once more.

"A trail." She smiled. "You weren't only looking for a vessel..."

"...But the Perfect vessel." Geralt continued, his wounds mostly healed now. "Some unicorns died, most the assumption of a small accident, but they all had the same thing happen to them weeks prior: a random object appeared one day and disintegrated on touch. We knew it was going to Target someone..." He got back into stance, approaching alongside the Pegasus.

"...But not who, or when. Geralt had gotten a letter from Starlight, that much is true, but it wasn't just that one. We got multiple, all about mysterious deaths in Ponyville."

It didn't even try to break out this time, the Shadow only screamed. "RID ME OF THIS CONFINING CURSE!" It wailed to no avail.

"So we hatched a plan." He pointed the tip of his sword to the possessed mare. "By we, I mean Fluttershy."

The Pegasus grinned. "Once we figured what you were, Nightmare, we knew what we could do to stop it!"

The Shadow grew silent, it's host ceasing the unnatural twitching it had endured this past hour. "...So you figured it out." It chuckled dryly. "Doesn't matter though. I'm bound to this mare."

Geralt smirked, holding his medallion up to the sword currently pointed at the Nightmare. Suddenly, the weapon flashed in a bright light, blinding everyone for a moment. When it cleared, in place of the dull grey steel sword was a brilliant silver one: it had a flat guard- perfect for heaving it from even the most deepest of wounds, it's grips inlaid with the finest of leather. The pommel curved into a crescent, balancing the blade perfectly. The most important, and most noticable feature however, were the three sets of runes carved into the blade itself.

"I named it Lupus Alba, or more commonly known as-"

"White Wolf." Fluttershy finished. "And he's been using it to bind you, not to the host, but to the sword." She smirked. "How's that for a bitch?"

"Noooooo!" It wailed, as Geralt pulled his sword upright and peeled away the spirit and imprisoned it within...

---

Starlight Glimmer awoke a few days later in Ponyville General. After most of her friends came and visited, she was discharged and went to running the library for the school of Friendship until she fully recovered. The first thing she noticed upon arrival to the Cutie Map room, currently only available to those with the right key, was an open book and a particular highlighted passage within:

Upon Observations of Nightmares Within the Dream Realm

by Princess Luna, residing within the Castle of the Two Sisters.

... What I have noticed most of the Nightmares of my subjects is the afflicted almost always interacts with an object of great pain to them. For most, it might be as simple as a teddy bear they lost as a young fully or foal. It could even be a loved one, or a pet. Once they interact with said catalyst, only then can the Nightmare begin...

...However, there is another symptom that worries me greatly everytime I witness it. Catalysts at the more severe Nightmares have a tendency to disguise themselves as almost anything else! Most times it is a perceived threat; a mismatched sock all the way to a knife or crossbow have been observed to be hidden catalysts. Nightmares are evolving and changing at a phenomenal rate, and I fear one day, one of them will become powerful enough to break the barrier between dream and reality...

Author's Note:

I probably did a horrible job at describing the sword, but it's the one on cover art.

And thus, a new weapon was born! Anyways, hope you liked this chapter!

EDIT 6/8/20: Not many edits, but added a few lines for additional information