Chapter 17: A dryad's hate
"I want you."
As soon as the dryad said those words I tried to lunge at her, seeing fighting as my only option. Emphasis on tried, as I didn't make it even a step, before vines and roots curled around my legs, making me trip and then pinned me to the ground.
"Now, now, there's no need for violence, although it probably would have helped if I didn't word things weirdly." The dryad said at first with a smile of amusement and then a contemplative gaze.
She continued, her eyes once more focusing on me: "Well, no matter. You are here now and I will only allow you to live under one condition."
I was afraid of what was coming, but just to be sure I asked: "And what might that condition be?"
She smiled brightly, like I had made her day and with a happy go lucky attitude answered: "Why, to show those damn ponies that nature is not to be fucked with, of course."
It took me a while to comprehend what she had just said and after I sorted through the information, I couldn't help but yell at her: "Well, couldn't you have just said that in the first place!? I would have easily agreed and that would be it!"
She looked at me in surprise and then just started laughing.
"Well, of course I could have, silly, but where would be the fun in that? I found this way much more amusing." Somehow her laughter was still echoing through the forest as she spoke. This being was powerful enough to make an entire forest echo on a whim. And it terrified me, so I decided that it would be a good idea to shut up and just let her speak.
"Anyhow, now that I know that you are on board, I first have to tell you my story." And tell me she did. The story itself wasn't long, what was long was how she cursed the ponies in more and more innovative ways, every time she could.
It went something like this, without the unnecessary stops to curse of course:
The dryad was born when the forest consisted of only about 30 trees. She didn't yet understand her existence but other dryads from other forests helped her. She learnt a lot from them, how to talk, attract animals to her forest and prevent tree diseases from spreading. It was a wonderful time, when the dryads could walk outside their forests by spreading the roots of their trees along a set path.
And then, a few millennia later, the ponies came. With them they brought a horrible winter, that killed a lot of animals and even more trees, that weren't prepared for the sudden snow and thus broke under the weight. And all the dryad could do was watch as her forest slowly started dying, the frozen ground preventing the growth of any plants. All sources of water froze over and thus the number of animals plummeted. The trees that didn't die from the initial snow were frozen under a deep layer of ice and some of the animals that had burrowed under the ground for shelter were now starving to death as they couldn't get through the frozen soil and the mass of snow on top. For 4 days the forest was in disarray and on the fifth day, the dryad wept. The whole forest was completely silent as their protector cried and wailed, unable to do anything to save what she spent thousands of years creating.
But then, when almost all hope was lost, the sun's rays tore through the thick clouds and started melting the snow. The dryad was overjoyed and helped thaw the snow with her magic, something that had previously failed. With the dryads magic it took no more than a day to melt all of the snow in the forest allowing the animals to drink again and a day after that she used her magic to speed up the growth of the plants, so the next day the animals could eat. In a week the damage, while still visible, was mostly nullified. The dryad was happy to see her forest prospering again and was thankful to whomever it was, that stopped the sudden winter.
After a few months she got bored of just overseeing her forest day and night and started making a root path to get to one of her friends. But the roots would stop at one point and no matter how much she asked them, they wouldn't move. When she asked the trees they told her, that the magic there is forbidding them from going through. The dryad was reasonably confused, as there shouldn't be anything between hers and her friend's forest. So she went to see, what was preventing her from making a root path. And what she found made her even more confused.
Multiple houses stood there, right in the middle of the clearing between their forests. And a bit away form the houses stood multiple apple trees in neat rows. She tried asking them if they could extend their roots to her, but they ignored her, so she had to leave. Back in her forest she made a pond and cast a spell that would allow her to see anywhere she had already been. Looking through her friends forest it was in a similar condition to her forest and she could see her friend helping animals and talking to trees. Everything was fine.
And in that way a hundred years passed. The houses evolved into a proper village and the amount of apple trees increased exponentially. The dryads forest too had gotten bigger, but was still smaller than most of the others. She tried to get to other forests too, but every time the roots tried going more than 100 meters out of the forest they would stop and wouldn't go forward even if there was no village in the way. It baffled the dryad, but she was patient. Sooner or latter things would return to how they always were.
Then her forest got visitors. A pair of ponies, bigger than what she had seen before, entered the dryads forest and started to look around. When they came to her favorite lunging spot, with a ravine on one side and a river on the other they stopped and used their wings to fly down into the ravine and into the cave the dryad had made for one of her boredom projects. How they knew it was even there she didn't know, but what they did there scared her. They took the fruits of a tree she made, that would allow her, to store power and then pull on it when she needed to. The idea came to her soon after the surprise winter. The problem was that the stored power was in the fruits and since the two ponies just took them, she wouldn't be able to draw on their power.
And that is when things started going wrong. The first thing that happened was, that black pellet like seeds rained down from the sky all around her forest and she had to use a considerable amount of magic to prevent them from sprouting right away, like some kind of parasite. Then, because she used so much magic she wasn't able to prevent the two bigger ponies from building a castle on her favorite spot. After them came other ponies and suddenly there was a town in her forest and she couldn't do anything about it, as she had to keep using a lot of magic to stop the black seeds.
Then years later the two ponies fought and the white one banished the black one to the moon. That gave the dryad the opportunity to take back some of the energy from the fruits of her tree, with which she then tried to destroy the town and castle in her forest, since at that point she had enough of them. She created wooden wolves and dangerous, but beautiful flowers, that would harass the ponies. The now lone bigger pony and the other normal sized ones escaped from the forest, but left the fruits there. But the fruits were locked in some kind of shell that the dryad didn't have the energy to break.
And so passed 1000 years in which the dryad had to use up more and more energy to prevent the black seeds from sprouting. She almost didn't notice when the black bigger pony came back, the only reason she did, was because she got a temporary magic boost when her fruits were used. then another two years went by and she lost control. The black seeds sprouted and took over her forest and there was nothing she could do. Then the ponies came again and returned the fruits to the tree. With the boost in power she destroyed the black seeds, but some of the power of her fruits had rubbed of on the ponies since they were able to use the same connection to them as her. She has been trying to remove the connection, but has been unsuccessful.
Anyway, as soon as she could she checked on her friends and what she found is the main reason for her hate of the ponies. Apparently the ponies lacked a resource called wood and decided to use the many forests around as sources of said resource. After a few hundred years of doing so most of the dryads couldn't handle the stress of parts of their forest being slowly cut of and decided to fuse with the tree, that they had been born from, effectively abandoning the forest to the ponies and killing themselves.
The dryad was enraged, but couldn't do anything. So she waited for her opportunity.
It was a sad story, that made me hate the ponies even more. I understood it was unreasonable to hate the ponies for cutting down trees that they needed, but it certainly wasn't unreasonable to hate them for meddling in things they obviously didn't understand, like those fruits. Even worse was the fact that a lot of the animals from the dryads forest had been influenced by the ponies magic, while she was occupied, and can't live by themselves.
I was positively fuming. I wanted to punch someone so badly, but I was still pinned to the ground. The dryad smiled at me, like she had been doing the whole time while telling me her story.
"Now then, dear, I have a question for you." She said.
I looked at her, still trying to calm myself down, and asked: "What?!"
"Are you willing to learn from me, and exact my revenge on the ponies? I can help you get your magic under better control. I can teach you other kinds of magic, with my help you could bring the sun down if you wanted! So, what do you say?"
It was a temping offer. She would be able to tell me a lot of things that Zero couldn't. Yet I wasn't sure if I was prepared to trust something powerful enough to promise me what she did. Then again, our goals were pretty close together, I just had an additional one, that I could do after I exacted our revenge.
"Well, it's a tempting offer, I'm going to have to say -"
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Yes! Maybe night fairy can learn how to become one with nature? Maybe fusing her magic to the magic of the world? So she can use all the magic in the world but only when she is in harmony with nature!
And thus, nature showed the ponies of Equestria the biggest finger in history. It would be hilarious if she could create golems or treants or something like that.
I'd have to say no. Its not like we have any proof she didn't just bring him there for her own revenge. Plus, we already know she isn't friendly or benevolent at all, because she outright said that doing what she wanted is the only wanted is the only way the dryad will allow him ti live. In short, be a slave or die.
At first I thought "I hope she doesn't pull an orochimaru" but now she's only doing half an orochimaru by training night (and not taking her body as a vessel for herself) yay!
the ponies live in a magical world where mythical creatures exists, they either played ignorant of dryads existing or put all non-ponies out of their minds like usual until they were needed.
When the entire forest tried to evict them, they should've known something was up. Majority of her story is about ponies being ignorant of everyone besides and maybe including themselves is a pretty good moral.
Also damn those apple trees thinking they're better than her, on another note going to keep the fact she made the elements of harmony in mind for later.
Just feel like I have to try:
She's tired of these motherfucking ponies in her motherfucking forest.
Do it, do it, do it!
say yes, please!
This will also give you the chance to save those humans. So accept her offer.
For the love of God please do not in this story it is really good it's going to be a shame if it just gets a big fat x on it
Cliffhangers suck
Oh and if you leave it on that last sentence you're a douchebag 💢💢💢💢💢
Ya
I see no reason to say no. But we are faceed with the big Question here. On the how...
fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax fax
grand canyon grand canyon grand canyon grand canyon grand canyon grand canyon
10175785
I’m going to agree with this guy. I hate when stories just stop before they’re finished. As for the wait thing, if it takes you a month it takes you a month. I like quality work not rushed crap.
10176925
Just because you need to take a little time doesn't mean you need to stop.
Any fool you says writing is easy is a fool who ether never tired or never bothered punting real heart in it.
Hear Hear!!!
Given the Authors Note, I figure now would be a fine time to put in my two cents in a hopefully constructive way.
The story as a whole seems very unfocused, like there's no particular end goal in mind. You have an interesting premise, but haven't really done much with it. It's a grimdark world where ponies are the ultimate evil... for reasons. Whivh is a viable approach, if an odd one. You also suffer from the terrible beginners illness of "show, don't tell". In this chapter, you start with the Dryad telling a story then cut to Night recounting the story to us as the narrator. Since the same information is being conveyed, having the Dryad tell us in her own words would have been a great time to grow and establish her character.
And then there's Night Fairy. Her character is, in a word, inconsistent. You've given her lots of interesting circumstances (the only magic human, gender swap, ghost friend, panther friend, fragmented memories) but haven't really done much with any of them. You could remove any of these and the story would barely change. You could swap the little girl body for a middle aged lumberjack body and only difference would be how many branches she hits her head on.
Here's a test: right now, off the top of your head, what are some adjectives to describe Night? Not her appearance, not her circumstances, but her character and personality. Now how many of those have we seen via her actions, and how many have we heard the narrator describe her as? Theres a spark of personality there, but no time is given to ever really dive into it.
In addition, her choices and decisions seem to make sudden swerves whenever it reaches a part where the author has decided on something in advance, even if there is nothing prior in the story to support it. For instance:
>Call me Night Fairy. Only don't call me Fairy cause that will confuse people.
>Then why did you name yourself that? Also, what people? Why that name?
>Dunno. Just thought of it.
That's the most recent and obvious, but there are similar choices abound.
You can continue, you can stop, you can go back and rewrite: that's up to you. My advice? Take a little break, step back, and spend a good while considering exactly what you want to get out of this story. What is your goal in writing, and what do you need to do to get there.
10179152
Well if I think about it that way, I have already reached my goal. To make a story, that is longer than 2 pages is already a huge accomplishment for me, because of different things, that don't allow me to focus for long on one thing.
I honestly have already stepped back and reviewed the story as a whole up to this point and I have to say I made most of the characters way too shallow. I utterly failed at projecting their personalities, maybe excluding Twilight and even with her, it could have gone better.
I had thought of an ending, several in fact, all in the same direction, but haven't really given much though to the actual story until that point, that is probably why some things feel spontaneous, because they are.
Like I mentioned, I have problems, and because of them I am afraid of trying to rewrite the story. I feel like I will either make it feel even more rushed or just abandon it altogether. That's why I'm going to try continuing the current plot and get it out of the pit of shallowness it has fallen into.
If that fails, welp, the story will stay unfinished or just be bad.
This story was ok in concept but I feel suffers from lack of world building, and predictable trope "spam". I would recommend watching or listening to 'Trope Talks' by overly sarcastic productions on YouTube as that would likely help a lot. I also say dont kill the story, put it on hiatus and rewrite it after watching trope talks and fleshing out your world. How are human slaves treated normally what's the main six think about humans are their human care laws, these things were bugging me the whole time I read the story.
10216615
Thank thee good pony of the unknow cape
Thee actions today shall be remembered
10217111
Source? Cause I know my Tanya and that looks nothing like her beyond the fact thet it's a young girl. Not to mention that a reverse image search for it yields nothing but this story.
10216837
Thou needn't thank myself. T'was nothing.
10217433
Forgive me it's a sketch of a character from the series. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Tanya_the_Evil
10218117
Oh, it's a fan made sketch.
Which it says in the long description. Which I missed somehow. My bad.
I still don't see how people saw that sketch and immediately got Tanya from it, but alright. That clears some things up at least. Thanks.
10218283
It was her originally, and I did use her as reference.
10217111
Hah! Didn’t know I was that good.
You going to stop writing?
Well, I enjoy this fic, even if it is somewhat slow burn.
So, please don't abandon it. Last week at least 2 fics that i enjoy got updates after 2 and 2.5 years of limbo. It will be sad to lose this one.
It is nice, would hate to see it go.
If the story going to stop, why not end it with a bang? Instead of it being canceled. But I would like to see this story continue