Act II: Thrown to the Wolves
Redheart had me patched within the hour, or rather as “patched” as she could manage with such limited supplies. She wasn’t satisfied with her work; although for all intents and purposes, it would hold, if only until I returned and she could properly do her job. A warm, damp rag was draped over my shoulder and bound over the wound in gauze. My shoulder festered beneath it, but the medicine Redheart had found in the kit was slowly working its magic, blanketing the pain with a more welcome numbness.
My leg felt stiff. Every other step across the well-trodden dirt of the Ponyville streets was jarring. The nurse said it would probably need stitches. For now, a handful of paper napkins and a whole lot of tape would have to suffice. Again, Redheart was very unsatisfied.
“You better make it out of this wild scheme in one piece,” she had said before I left with the others. “And you better come back to me too, so I can properly treat these. My pride as a nurse is on the line here.”
For whatever it was worth, I hoped I made it out of this alive, too. I wanted to trust Princess Luna and her plan, but when we exited the town hall and two timberwolves were waiting for us on the other side of the barrier, I couldn’t help but have my doubts. After all, so few things had actually gone well tonight. What worried me most though was how silent my interloper was keeping. Normally it would have something to say by now. I couldn't help but think of what it had said earlier in the night. Was it simply staying quiet and letting me learn firsthand from my mistakes?
I tried to push the thought out of my head, but the tension in the air hung over us like a net, and such thoughts never strayed far.
I stayed close to Princess Luna as we walked down Ponyville’s streets. Twilight was on the other side of her, and Fluttershy and Applejack tailed closely behind us. In spite of my protests, Fluttershy was adamant in coming along, and her friends did little to stop her. She was convinced that we needed her if we were going into the forest, but a part of me worried that what I had said earlier was still in her mind and that this was just an attempt to prove a point to me. It was luck that Daisy could convince Noteworthy to stay behind, even though he was still disgruntled at the idea. Who could blame him? No one wanted to see their friend tossed to the wolves for a wild gamble. It was part of the reason I wanted him to stay.
Two timberwolves seemed to guide us to the forest, one on either side. Seemed, only because they didn’t attack the moment we stepped past the barrier; their eyes still dripped with murderous intent as they glared me down. Seven of Princess Luna’s guards made a protective circle around us, ensuring that the wolves didn’t come too close. Still, the thought of them being so near set me on edge, and any deviation or misstep on the way to the forest was met with a stereo of low growls. I had to get my mind off of them, one way or another.
“So, what’s the story between you and Thorn?” I asked the Princess in almost a whisper.
She didn’t respond immediately. “Why do you care to know?”
I shrugged, as nonchalantly as I could muster. “Well, whoever he is, he wants me dead,” I said, looking at her. “Kinda think that gives me the right to know about him. You seem to be the only one familiar with the creep, too.”
“He isn’t— He wasn’t always a ‘creep’, as you called it,” she frowned. As she spoke, her eyes seemed to focus on something far ahead. Perhaps it was the forest. Perhaps it was something further than that. “He… He was an old friend from a time long ago, back when the Everfree Forest was naught but a garden. Although, you would have hardly recognized him if you had ever known him before. It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized it was him, and even then, it had been so long; it felt like I was speaking to a ghost.”
Her voice trailed, and the silence that followed seemed to drag. As we passed the last of the buildings in Ponyville and entered the park, she broke it with an emotionless snort and a shake of her head.
“I wasn’t even certain if I wanted it to be him. He had disappeared two thousand years ago, when the forest sprang forth and claimed my family’s castle. I thought he had perished, consumed by the Everfree like many others… and a part of me wished he had.” She looked at me, and there was a sadness in her eyes, almost sympathy. “He is old, Hunter. The mortal mind was never meant to live as long as his. I am beginning to fear that all that is left of him is a hollow shell driven by a perverse sense of duty.”
“Wait, two thousand years ago?” I interjected. “How did you know him again?”
“He was a mentor of a sort,” she replied, missing the point of my question. “Back when magic was widely ‘unmapped’, for lack of better words. Many tribes and kingdoms were quickly learning how to tame the world around them through different forms of magic. Father summoned the brightest of minds to our keep to teach the arts of magic to me and my sister, and at the time, Thorn was a master of his trade.”
Twilight leaned in, taking an interest in our conversation. “But…. Wait, if this Thorn character was such a master of magic, why haven’t I heard anything about him? I’ve read almost every book of magic history and theory Canterlot Castle had to offer, and he never came up.”
“His art was from a different field of magic, Twilight. Most names you have heard of in your studies were unicorns like yourself. However, there are very few practitioners of alchemy in this kingdom. Perhaps your friend Zecora might have heard of him if she studied for her trade.”
“Wait, wait, no. Go back,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back where I wanted it. Princess Luna gave me a curious look as I studied her. “So you mean to tell me… You knew this guy who… You’re two thousand years old?!” I blinked, trying to connect more dots. “No, wait, older, right? How can you…? I mean, you look so—”
“You would do well to not press for a mare’s age, Hunter,” she said with a chuckle. Her smile faded as quickly as it came, though. “But… yes, I was alive then. Granted, I was just a filly, and a very naïve one at that. Most of my memories of that age have been obscured with time. However… there is one day I remember clearly as though it was yesterday.
“It must have been before noon; my sister’s and my studies hadn’t started yet, and they never would. Father had summoned Thorn and Starswirl for the lessons that day—”
“Starswirl?” Twilight cut in excitedly. “As in, the Starswirl the Bearded? The father of modern magic? The most important unicorn from the pre-classical era?” Her hooves moved giddily as we walked. “You never said you knew him personally! None of my books mentioned it, either. What was he like? Was he really as great as his books claimed?”
“Please, dear Twilight, one story at a time,” Princess Luna said. The unicorn calmed down, albeit slightly. With a cough into her hoof, she returned her attention to the forest we were quickly approaching, though her ear still flicked in our direction to listen.
“But yes, I did know him, for however short a time it was,” she continued. “Like Thorn, he was summoned by Father to teach me and my sister in the ways of magic. Though the two came from distant lands, they quickly grew together as colleagues of a sort, or perhaps academic rivals is a better way of putting it. Both were masters of their fields, each convinced that their paths would lay the foundation of future magical studies.
“It was a rather strange relationship those two shared because of it; not quite friends, but not quite enemies, either. Oftentimes our lessons were stalled as they argued with one another, challenging each other’s views.” A quick snort escaped her, and I thought I caught her rolling her eyes. “To this day, I still do not know if I would consider those moments a blessing or a curse. I am not proud to admit it, but their lessons hardly ever held my attention for long. As pleasant as it was to not slave away at my notes during their arguments, the next lessons always seemed to be fiercer, as if only to prove one another wrong.”
She paused for a moment. A strange half-smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she became lost in thought. I cleared my throat to grab her attention. On the other side of the guards, the timberwolf growled at me again, and I flinched, inching a little closer to the Princess. I jammed my hands into my pockets before they could betray my nervousness, hissing as the wounds on my fingers scraped against the denim linings.
“My apologies; I am digressing, aren’t I?” she asked with a shake of her head. “In spite of their relationship, they eventually came together to collaborate on a project, to push known magic to its limits in an attempt to learn more. Regrettably, I was too young to even care to remember what it could have possibly been about. One day, Father summoned them both for our lessons, but before they would ever start, they asked him to come with them to the garden.”
We had reached the tree line of the Everfree, and Princess Luna stopped just before entering. The rest of us came to a jarring halt around her, even the wolves, though they were none too pleased. The two wolves circled to the front, their muzzles twisted into mangled snarls. The guards came up from each side to form a barrier between us, but the Princess seemed none the wiser that any of it had happened. Her eyes were locked on something that hid far deeper in the trees.
“And that was the last time I saw any of them,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Father, Starswirl, Thorn… They never came back. This… thing took them, this forsaken forest. It consumed them and quickly grew, claiming all in its path. It swallowed our castle whole. Mother had barely enough time to escape with me and Celestia, and when she finally felt we were safe at the edge where its rampage finally came to an end, she left to find Father, only to disappear with him.
“And with our capitol lost, our dyarchy nowhere to be found to maintain order, our kingdom quickly crumbled, devolving into three tribes. The rest was history.”
One of the wolves lurched forward a step, stooping low and barking like a rabid dog. The Princess’s gaze was finally torn from the trees, and she focused on the beast. She frowned at it, but the look in her eyes didn’t show any anger or disapproval.
“Or so I thought,” she continued, pushing forward. The guards hesitantly let her pass, and the wolves backpedaled slowly, keeping their eyes on her until satisfied enough to turn and resume leading us. The rest of us jogged to meet up with her. “Now, one of the ghosts of my past has returned to haunt us all, speaking riddles of mortal crimes and ancient curses, and for some reason that I cannot fathom, he seems to hold you responsible, Hunter.”
My stomach flipped inside my gut, and I couldn’t help but wonder what I could have possibly done to deserve getting tangled into this mess. Maybe it was just my own rotten luck that a camping trip would result in me pissing off some ancient tree-wolf for existing.
“I do not know what role you play in all of this,” she said, turning to me. “Or if you even truly do at all. Perhaps we can be hopeful, and this is all just one horrid misunderstanding. But unfortunately, only one holds the answers to our questions, and I fear his mind is reaching its end, with naught but this twisted curse left to control him.” She paused, returning her focus forward as we marched through the Everfree, and I could see something weighing heavily on her chest.
“If at all possible, I would like this night to see a diplomatic end,” she finally said. “One without any more blood spilled or terror instilled in the minds of my subjects. Thorn has much to answer to, and I can assure you, Hunter, answer to it he will. But I can feel my old mentor still locked inside that ancient frame. If we can convince him to come with us, perhaps we can learn what this curse is that ails him and find some way to reverse it, for his sake… and these other pour souls it has affected.”
“Beg yer pardon, Your Highness, but what is that supposed to mean?” Applejack piped up behind us. Even though she trailed near the back, I was certain even she noticed that the Princess was looking at the wolves that led us when she added that last part. “Talkin’ ‘bout curses and timberwolves… You can’t be implyin’ that… There-There’s just no way that—”
“You think they’re ponies?!” Fluttershy squeaked incredulously.
“What? No, that isn’t… Princess, that can’t be possible,” Twilight sputtered. “Right?”
“It may seem strange to believe,” Luna said distantly. “But before my return, I had never heard of creatures like these ‘timberwolves’, as you called them. They seem so unnatural, and the fact that they have sprung up from the same forest that consumed my old home only makes them more peculiar in my eyes. The thought that they could have been anything else before hadn’t crossed my mind before, but… But you saw it, too, didn’t you, Hunter?”
I was shocked to be put on the spot. She never took her eyes off the wolves before us, but she did try to blink something out of her eyes. Perhaps it was the same memory I knew she was about to bring up.
“In that wolf that attacked you at Fluttershy’s cottage,” she continued. “That it was actually… That it was…” The words caught in her throat, and she coughed to clear it, her wing reaching up to wipe something from her eye. “That it was too late. My spell was already sent by the time I noticed, and there was nothing I could do to change his fate. Now I cannot help but wonder, if he was changed into one of them, how many others were, too? Were all of these timberwolves once ponies? Until the truth can be discerned, I do not want any more harm done to these creatures if it is avoidable. They could all be innocent, just driven by some primal curse that overwhelmed them.”
“That’s a nice thought, but I don’t think they’re going to share the same opinion of us,” I offered grimly.
She nodded. “Nevertheless, I have a duty to my subjects, even those afflicted by old curses. Do not be discouraged, though; your safety tonight is still paramount. If given the choice between you or the wolves, my decision will be the same as last, albeit with a heavier heart.” We walked in silence for a moment, no one wanting to add to the dismal subject until the Princess added one more afterthought. “It’s a shame though, truly. Thorn used to hate wolves.”
The deeper we moved into the forest, the more the canopy of branches up above strangled our only source of light. I had forgotten how difficult it was to tread through the Everfree at this hour without so much as a small fire to guide me. It wasn’t long until everyone’s forms devolved into moving shapes. Only the Princess’s mane kept its strange glint, like stars drifting in an ocean. It was the closest thing we had to a beacon. It offered a small comfort in the dark, but only barely so.
Each step further in was met with another crashing wave of unease. Something told me that we were far deeper in the Everfree Forest than the Princess had planned, and the way her mane shimmered as her head moved curiously from side to side only seemed to prove my concerns. My hand reached for the familiar weight of my hatchet swinging against my waist, and as my fingers brushed against the cool metal of its head, I released a pent-up sigh.
It wasn’t long before there was a break in the canopy up ahead. Silver moonlight flooded into the narrow trail, revealing a lone, moss-covered timberwolf, sitting as still as a statue. As we approached him, the two timberwolves that led us growled at it, and Thorn opened his eyes. Even with the Princess’s story from before, it was hard to imagine this thing before us as anything more than a feral animal as he bared his gnarled fangs at me. I could see the earth tearing beneath his claws as he flexed. He didn’t even seem to notice the others.
“Heavens to Betsy,” Applejack breathed behind me as we came to a stop. “Ah’ve seen some big and mean-lookin’ timberwolves in my time, but that… What in tarnation is that, Princess?”
“Thorn.” It was loud enough to be an answer and a call, but the wolf didn’t acknowledge it. The Princess stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight; her voice sterner the second time. “Thorn!”
The wolf blinked, and his snarl melted into a sick, almost welcoming smile as he looked to her. “Ah, young Luna, it warms my heart to see you here, albeit with more company than I anticipated.” The two timberwolves that led us crawled to their leader, flanking Thorn on either side and staring at me hungrily. “But that doesn’t matter, since you brought with you the only one that mattered. I knew I could trust your word. Now, please…” There was a creaking sound as he lifted his paw and stretched it out expectantly. “Deliver it to me.”
My blood ran cold. It occurred to me just how much faith I had put into the Princess’s plan. My doubts were quickly dashed away though as she stood close by my side and held her wing out protectively against my chest. Thorn’s pleasant smile twitched for a moment, and his eyes narrowed on us.
“First, the hostages you stole,” Luna said sternly.
The timberwolf huffed. “Such harsh words you use lately,” he muttered with a growl. “But… as you wish.” A snarl rose from his gullet, and he released it with a sharp bark. There was a shifting in the foliage next to him, and two more wolves emerged into the moonlight, followed by a small crowd of eight frightened ponies. I scanned through the faces as they came into view, hoping to find that familiar mint-green coat, and I wasn’t sure whether or not to be comforted by the fact that Lyra wasn’t with them.
They were all shaking like leaves, though, especially the only foal, who stayed close to what I assumed could have only been one of her parents. When they saw us, they all gave excited squeaks, the only sounds they could manage with their currently muzzled faces. Vines wrapped tightly around their snouts, and they all seemed to be bound together by them like a chain of leashes. I could feel the muscles in Princess Luna’s wing tense as she kept it against me, and the corners of her frown tugged ever so slightly further down.
Thorn snapped his jaws at the newcomer wolves, and they dropped the vine that held the hostages together. The ponies didn’t waste a moment of their newfound freedom, and before the slack of the leash even hit the ground, they all stampeded to our side of the trail. Before they even made it halfway, the Princess’s horn ignited, and the vines severed themselves from her subjects’ faces.
“Oh, thank goodness, we’re saved!”
“Thank you, Princess!”
“I wanna go home!”
They rushed past me and the Princess, and all the while, Luna never took her glare off of Thorn. “Valiance, Bastion; take these ponies back to the village and await our return. We won’t be much longer.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“Wait, this can’t be right,” Twilight said before they left. Her eyes were scanning through each of them as well, and her heart seemed to drop as she searched through them a second time. “There are only eight ponies here… I thought there were supposed to be twenty.”
“Twi’s right,” Applejack chimed in anxiously. “And Ah ain’t seein’ Pinkie Pie in here anywhere.”
“Or Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy added.
“What have you done with our friends?” Twilight demanded, taking a step forward.
Thorn chuckled at her bravery, and as the new wolves retreated to his side, he rose to his full height and took a step closer. “Fret not, little one; your friends are safe, of that you have my word. Once your princess honors her end of the bargain, they will be released as well.”
Luna stiffened before me. “What?” She shook her head in disbelief. “No; I won’t allow it. Release your hostages now, all of them, so that I might have some piece of mind before we continue.”
“You must forgive me, Your Highness, but I am only being cautious,” he returned with a knowing grin. “After all, you brought so many ponies with you… I cannot help but question your true motives. You were so protective of the human when last we spoke.”
“This is absurd!” she shouted back. “To act so frightened of what is barely more than a child! The Thorn I remember would never have acted like this!”
“The Thorn you remember is dead,” he snarled. “He died long ago chasing fame with his colleague. I was given this second chance to right our mistakes, and I will not allow it to go wasted.”
The Princess retracted her wing and took a deliberate step forward. “I remember all too well the stallion you were before,” she said coldly. “And it wounds me to see you like this. Once upon a time, you spoke of the value of all life in your teachings. Surely you must remember. Surely, you must realize that this curse has changed you for the worst.” She paused. Through the restraint in her voice, I knew she was trying desperately to remain cool and collected, but whether the cause was seeing her old mentor again or what he did to her subject was difficult to tell. “Come back with us, please,” she said, almost pleading. “Come to Canterlot with me, and we can remove this curse from you. My sister will be there.”
“Hand me the human,” Thorn said curtly. “Afterwards, we can go on whatever field trip you desire.”
“Forget the human!” she shouted. “What is he to you? Look at him, Thorn. Look at him! Magicless, helpless, harmless; what do you see in him worth causing such a catastrophe?”
There was a moment of silence where all Thorn did was stare at me, and I at him. Even though the Princess stood between us, I didn’t feel safe. His moss-covered lips slowly peeled back into a snarl as the seconds ticked by, like he was caught in a trance. I felt myself shaking, all the way into my core.
“I see the product of our failure,” he finally said in a low growl, never taking his eyes off of me. “A monument to our hubris. What fools we were for thinking there would be no consequence to bending the universe to our whim, to tearing the veil between realms. We never could have imagined they would be on the other side, though. Humans. Spellbreakers.” He released a slow, heavy breath that could have been a snarl. He took a step forward, then another, crouched low all the while like he was ready to pounce. “You ask me what I see in him? I see an infection, a rat with a plague that mustn't spread. I see the magic of our world fester around him like an open wound, never quite healing, even when he leaves. I see a toxin flowing through his veins, so potent that no potion I could create could ever remedy it.”
A barrier sprung between both parties as Thorn took another step, splitting the trail in half. The wolf paused, sliding his attention to the Princess and releasing a low growl.
“And I see a foolish young foal,” he spat. “Blind and naïve, believing an infection to be innocent.”
“If it is as you say, and I am a naïve fool, then does it not fall to you, my teacher, to educate me?” Princess Luna challenged. “What happened that day, Thorn? I deserve to know, after all this time.”
Thorn didn’t answer immediately. As time began to drag and the earth tore beneath his tensing claws, I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“I died in a garden,” he finally said, softly. “And I awoke in a forest, thinking it true. Your mother was there. She brought me back from the brink; ever the kind mare, she was.” Princess Luna took a step back. Thorn pressed forward in response. “And she asked me that same question. ‘What happened?’ It was then we found the reward for Starswirl’s curiosity, a tear in reality itself, with neither the mage nor the King to be found.”
“The portal,” I whispered aloud.
Thorn cast me a glare, and I hid a little more behind the Princess.
“Yes, a ‘portal’, some may call it,” he said. “What was meant to be a mere window, shattered and broken into a door. For just a moment, the natures of our worlds collided and mixed, and theirs was so much stronger, wilder, savage. The forest around us tonight is a parting gift from that contact, when their nature overwrote ours. The ecosystem grew on its own accord. Storms moved without intervention. Its very magic became tainted. And it was only going to spread.
“Your mother knew this to be true, and she took it upon herself to right our wrongs, for by an alicorn’s magic the rift was made, and only by an alicorn’s magic could it be sealed. She closed the door and camouflaged it, that no pony would stumble upon it, and with the last of her magic, she restrained the forest and suppressed its growth. Her sacrifice was meant to mark the end of the madness… until they began crawling out.”
He moved slowly to the Princess’s barrier, glaring daggers into me. “Wretched things, capable of breaking the Queen’s magic with little effort, without thinking of the consequences. They carried that same scent from that day, of their nature’s hungry chaos. At first, they could be sent back, but then they returned, bringing more, wanting more, taking more.”
He stopped, reaching up with a claw and scraping it down on the barrier. His face was all but pressed against it, and I realized that he wasn’t the one stuck in a cage like a zoo; it was us.
“I soon found that the only way to stop their insatiable hunger was to end it. Your mother might not have known what could have been on the other side, but there is nary a doubt in my mind that her final instruction would be any different. Keep the door closed. Don’t let her subjects know. Cleanse the impurities of the other world.” His voice lowered; his eyes pinned on the Princess. “And if you will not honor your mother’s last wishes, then I shall take it upon myself to uphold them, as I have for the last two thousand years.”
He started to growl and soon released a piercing howl that echoed throughout the forest. It echoed for barely a second when a chorus of wolves cried out to answer it all around us. I froze stiff, even as the bushes around us began to shake and the air was filled with panting, even as everything inside me screamed to run.
“P-P-Princess?!” Fluttershy squealed.
She snapped her head back to see us, focusing mainly on Twilight. “I fear it is no longer safe here for Hunter,” she said urgently. “Take him back to Ponyville with your friends.”
“What? But, Princess, what about—”
“Now, Twilight Sparkle. We haven’t time to delay,” she said sternly. “Guards, on me! Detain these wolves, so this night might finally end.”
The five guards left took to her sides. Something tugged at my arm. I turned to find Fluttershy, trying to pull me away with equally frightened eyes. Over the mad barking that filled the air around us, she called out my name.
“Hunter, come on!”
Figures the world is starting to end the moment I'm close to finishing this rewrite. Just my kinda luck, huh? It better hold off until I at least finish this Act, or I'm gonna be pretty pissed 
Next chapter is already finished and will be released next week on the dot. Try not to go Mad Max until then.
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Glad to see you ok during these troubling times.
I feel like Thorn's solution is short-sighted. The problem with the portal doesn't seem to be going away, so the only proper solutions are to either go on the other side and kill off humans (which seems like an impossible task) or to learn to live with them. Sooner or later his defenses will fail, this problem with Hunter is an example of one human capable of breaking their rule, and sooner or later another will too even if they succeed here. Perhaps 2000 years of unwavering duty in a decaying husk of wood would make anyone into a zealot, so I can understand why Thorn's really thick-headed about this.
Do we ever get an explanation as to why the ponies are so hostile for no reason?
It still doesn't explain why Thorn is killing and transforming ponies. Or why he didn't contact Celestia or Luna. Ir he refused to kill Hunter even though he was stumbling around the forest for god knows how long.
And all this is on Celestia and Luna's heads as well as Thorn's, they decided he would stay in a tiwn that hated him and ordered him back inti the forest. I doubt any of this was ever meant to be of benefit to him at all.
Niiiiice.
8 years? Shit, man.
Honestly? If I were Hunter? I would be planning a big escape or a way to take as many of these damn ponies with me as I could manage should I be on deaths door.
They have treated him like shit and No Doubt when this is all over they will call for his banishment or worse his head!
I would honestly break this shield and make a deal with Thorn, you can have me so long as you kill as many of these back stabbing, Xenophobic, hatful ponies as you can before you take to many loses!
Sadistic and pointless? Yes. Do they deserve it? FUCK YES!!
10143032
Not all of them did. It'd be like God going through with wiping out a town if He didn't talk with Abraham.
10143070
Yeah what? Less than Dozen? If that?
Be honest, is the town even slightly redeemable? Other then maybe Five or so ponies and the foals?
I don’t think they are, they are gonna want him banished at best rather than admit it’s their fault this is happening.
Guess we will have to find out.
The world is ending aye?
Skip to 1:58
When toilet paper is no longer on shelves.
10143032
This would only prove that Thorn's concerns are founded; some of his concerns are honestly right. Many humans are all the wrong things in the world and usually cause more harm than good, BUT, like any coin, there are two sides, and many humans also have all the right traits in the world.
The same should be said for the ponies, and they generally are shown not to go towards violence if they can help it. Ponies also have a dark side, but not overly so. Are the ponies of Ponyville in the wrong for acting that way towards Hunter? Yes. Do they deserve the death sentence...no
Death is death, and there is no life if there is death. There is also no gain in death, only loss.
10143089
That and putting an entire town to the sword is, without question, completely and objectively evil as all hell. There is not a circumstance where a village of common, normal people deserves to be torched. Hell, I don't even think the death penalty is a morally sound action to take in the vast majority of circumstances.
If the ponies wronged him so badly, the best thing he can do is be better than them. And that means being better to them then they ever were to him.
10143032
i disagree. not everypony has been a bastard to hunter. you are falling in line with thorn's philosophy about killing someone just because someone else did a wrong thing. hunter himself is innocent of any crimes thorn could ever try to lay down on him.
10143193
true humanity is being worse then demons and kinder then angels.
10143285
Read my other post in response to a response.
Okay let me ask you this then, what would you do in response to being hated for no reason other than What amounts to “because”?
Now add to the fact that the same town that hated you is being attacked by a enemy force BECAUSE of you, what do you expect them to do once said threat is gone? Forgive and forget or blame the one being that brought it down on your town?
At best he is looking at formal banishment from Ponyville and at worst he is looking a a petition for banishment from Equestria as a whole.
When you have nothing left other than the Nuclear option, would you click the Detonator switch?
10143293
if he was at fault for any of these things you would have a point. but since he has been show to: try help the ponies when asked, avoid fighting them unless forced against a wall, been the subject of indiscriminate campaign of terror and murder orchestrated by a corrupted forest spirit that holds no restraint on who he kills and will probably not hold up his end of the bargain if he feels hunter's time in town has influenced the town-ponies in someway and didn't choose to come here at all. the fact that you forget that luna knows whats going on and would vouch for him if it comes to it means that he can afford to not be a compete bastard. in fact even if every one in ponyville dies celestia will launch an investigation personalty and after finding out that alot of blood leads to the old castle will find out about thorn and kill him.
pretty sure the alicorn mom wouldn't want her alicorn children to be sacrificed for the sake of the world, so somewhere along the line the wolf had fucked up.
Wait, what?
10143032
So the ponies are all xenophobic for fearing Hunter even thou most ponies only feared him because of the misunderstandings in the beginning, but Hunter would be okay in hating all ponies, even the though several ponies have either helped him or apologized for their earlier actions. If the ponies where as irredeemable as you are making them out to be then they would not apologize to Hunter and help him out as they have. Hunter is right to be mad for what has happened, but he obviously also has shown to be capable of forgiving them and moving on, though still feeling justifiably uneasy around Twilight. All Hunter wants now is to go home, not to keep on hating and continuing the conflict which so recently has been ended.
I make no promises.
10144428
I never said all ponies, besides that are they really sorry or are they just saying it because they fear the wrath of the Princess.
Not only that but only SOME have said sorry and considering what Hunter has gone though, I don’t think sorry really cute it.
Besides that, I was merely saying what I WOULD do in his place. I am not very forgiving to those who attack me in any way and even if I was I wouldn’t Trust those that I DID forgive for a very long time if ever.
OK... Thorn is a great villain. You love to hate him. He may have been good way back when he was still a pony, but since then he's gone to such murderous lengths to cover up his mistake that he's pretty much irredeemable at this point.
Thorn, Starswirl, and the King wanted to open a transdimensional viewing window but got a rift instead. Starswirl and the King disappeared and the mingling of Equestrian magic with Earth magic(or non-magic?) resulted in chaotic wild magic that caused the explosive growth of the Everfree Forest. The Queen stopped the growth of the forest and sealed and camouflaged the rift on the Equestrian side. Humans come though from time to time and are imbued with the magic(non-magic?) from Earth which causes "problems" of some sort in Equestria. Thorn's solution is to murder everyone that come through the portal.
This is equivalent to breaking a hole in a big wall and instead of fixing it, filling the hole with a perfectly disguised secret door that only opens from the outside... and then murdering anyone who happens to lean against that section of wall and falls through to your side.
Thorn was one of three ponies to create a wound in the universe and his "solution" is to murder the blood(humans) that leaks out. That's not fixing a problem, that's drawing it out and making it worse. This doesn't even count murdering ponies and apparently cursing them into bestial timberwolves. He's not someone to be redeemed, he's a murderous zealot that needs to be put down like the dog he is.
Crazy how this story has been going on for 8-9 years. Imma finish college by the time this finishes
10144573
I wouldn't have put it as you did for your last sentence, but I basically agree. Thorn had good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Thorn is set in his ways and I don't see him changing just because his "student" said so.
10144439
What the hell many of the ponies have done evil actions to hunter yes and they deserve all the contempt they get but punishing all of the ponies is wrong fluttershy noteworthy daisy and Lyra saved hunter were completely loyal to him and tried there hardest to prove his innocence when an entire town was against him witch was manipulated by pinkie pie and twilight sparkle after they got to know hunter they warmed up to him. There is also children there witch are completely innocent what you are proposing is spiting in the face of truly good ponies after they gave everything to someone a race view as the devil himself because they knew he was innocent. Then there’s the fact you would be proving thorn right and possibly causing ponies to hate humans even more then they Originally witch could cause to many problems to list.
10142857
Agreed also since he has been doing this for years how come the united sates government haven’t launched an investigation and found the portal?