Old Growth
In a cave beneath the Everfree Forest, for a length of time unknown, Wallflower Blush lay dreaming...
The last screams of the Great Enemy faded away as he was thrust into the Abyss. They were quickly replaced with a great quaking and cracking, the sound of a thousand boulders breaking at once. Trumpets blared, and all fell to the ground, clutching their ears against the divine sounds.
Then, swifter than a heartbeat, it stopped, and all fearfully rose back up. But, to their surprise, they looked out on crowds a good deal smaller than those that had stood before the awesome music began: all of them, as a matter of fact, only looked upon their own kind, or those similar. The rest of the world stood similarly reduced, and even the Everfree had been winnowed. What had happened? Where was everyone?
A radiance appeared among the remaining crowd, so bright that Wallflower couldn't bear to look at it. It spoke, but the words boomed, too loudly for her to decipher. She cried out and tried to run away, and to her shock ran out of the world entirely, emerging in a warm, dark void. Turning around, she gasped: there was a great tree behind her, gnarled branches spiraling out before ending in beautiful fruits. Swimming through the void, she went over to examine one of the fruits, and found that it wasn't a fruit at all; it was a small, crystal globe, its interior the world she'd just left.
She gasped and retreated a bit as light began to twinkle out of the globe. Soon, a trail of rainbow light extended from it to another globe, connecting the two of them. More trails began to appear, some a rainbow of colors, others only a few, some only one, until the whole tree stood wrapped in faint chains of light.
"So was the Sundering of the Worlds," Stumper said, appearing at her side. "After the War of Creation and the suspicions it roused between creatures, what was one world became many, the many fruits of the World Tree Yggradsil. But though they were sundered, the worlds were not completely separated; paths were made between them, and space left for more paths to be made in future."
"It's so beautiful," Wallflower murmured. "And so big. How many worlds are there?"
"Too many for simple folk like myself to know," Stumper bashfully admitted. "But those that concern us are much smaller in number, thankfully, only three; Alftria, Nilftria, and Homestria."
"Alftria?" Wallflower furrowed her brow. "What's there like?"
Alftria, home of the Fair-Folk, sun-dappled land of a thousand palaces. Grassy golden fields rolled beneath Wallflower, tall trees rising like waterspouts and marble keeps standing proud and defiant like islands in a golden sea. There was laughter and music all around her, and she couldn't help the smile that came to her face. A ray of sunlight pierced the canopy of leaves and clouds, and she sighed in relief as she bathed in its rays.
A cry came up from somewhere ahead of her, and she opened her eyes to an astounding sight. A host of Fair-Folk tramped through the grass towards her, bright blue banners fluttering from atop shining lances. Their armor gleamed like bronze and gold, though they seemed to wear it like silk, and their friendly, sun-baked faces peeked out from under high helms.
"Hail, woman!" one of them called. "Don't worry, we'll see our dark cousins off for you."
"Huh?" Wallflower frowned. "What cousins?"
They didn't reply, marching off to war while singing with high voices. She frowned as she watched them pass; they seemed to fade away as she watched, bronze and gold and blue dulling to grey before vanishing like smoke. Shivering at a sudden chill, she looked up to see the sun covered by a dark cloud. She looked around; the Fair-Folk's armor wasn't the only thing to fade, it seemed. The grass seemed more sand than gold, now, while the marble keeps she'd seen before had been abandoned or ruined, visions turning to rubble in the span of a march. She couldn't hear any song or laughter now, either, only the wind gently whistling through the trees.
"Ai!" a Fair-Folk voice pierced the silence. "How did you pass the Fence?"
She turned to look at them, and did a double-take; they seemed smaller than the soldiers she'd seen before, and less beautiful. They looked more like a leaf than a flower, so to speak, plainer, duller. The shining armor was gone, replaced with simple white cloth, while the face that she'd once seen as friendly was now nervous, if not angry.
"I asked you a question," they repeated while she stared. "How did you pass the Fence?"
"I don't know," she stammered. "I don't even know what the Fence is."
"Okay," the Fair-Folk dragged her hands down her face. "Okay, you just-just stay here while I find one of the Sentinels, they'll send you home and-and we can both act as if this never happened."
Before Wallflower could ask what was going on, they vanished, and a starless night fell. "What," she slowly asked. "what happened?"
"The Fair-Folk are not as fair as they once were," Stumper replied. "They have retired from the world outside of their capitol, trusting in their Fence to keep interlopers out. They were once our greatest allies, but now they view us as they view mortals, with suspicion and distrust. No elven host will come to our aid this time, I fear."
Wallflower furrowed her brow. "Don't you mean, 'they view us like they view other mortals?'"
Stumper stiffened. "What?"
"The way you said it," she replied. "it almost sounds like you don't think we're mortal, but, at least according to Maristotle, all Men are mortal."
"I meant Everfree," Stumper corrected herself. "They view Everfree like they view mortals."
"Oh," Wallflower nodded in understanding; Gaea's immortality, and the history it had allowed her to witness, were one of the first things she'd told Wallflower about.
Stumper smiled back at her, then snapped her fingers.
Nilftria, home of the Night-Folk, quiet land of a thousand greys and greens, the night to Alftria's day. Bone-like beeches stretched up like pillars of marble, holding up a roof of onyx shingles and stars. Sandy trails cut through the short grass, leading deeper and deeper into the wood. No branch or leaf marred the ground, no breath of wind disturbed the silence, no evidence of life disturbed the stillness of the land.
Hesitantly, she began following one of the trails, hard-packed by endless feet. It felt like the forest was trying to make her the same, to quiet the interloper who dared to disturb its peace and silence. But it felt loose, in a way, or light, like the forest was trying to find her so that it could bring its full weight to bear. She sadly smiled; her ability to avoid notice seemed to extend even to here.
But evidently not to all here, as an arrow embedded itself in a tree a hairsbreadth ahead of her. "Halt," a low voice pierced the silence. "or the next shall not miss you."
Wallflower froze, holding up her hands in surrender, then turned to look at the speaker. She blinked in recognition; she'd seen them, or at least someone like them, before. They were one of the dark-clad scouts she'd seen in one of her first visions, a bow of bony white clutched in their grey hand while a black-headed arrow stood pulled back with the other. Glinting chocolate eyes glared out from under a hood.
"What brings you here?" he asked, not taking his eyes off her or his hands off the bow.
"I'm, uh," she nervously replied. "going through some training. Sorry, didn't mean to disturb you."
The arrow thudded in the tree, a hair behind her, and faster than she could blink another was loaded. "Who do you serve?" he asked.
"Gaea Everfree," she replied. Her mind had tried to tell her not to, but her instincts, recognizing the arrow pointed at her, overrode it. Instead, she tensed, preparing for whatever the... creature in front of her decided to do next.
That was look at her, or maybe Stumper appearing at her side, in surprise, the arrow slackening somewhat. "The Night-Folk have been the enemies of Everfree for centuries," Stumper warned her. "Speak that name to them and you'll be marked as an enemy."
"Why?" she asked.
"One of their lords proposed marriage to Gaea," Stumper replied. "Him being mortal and her immortal, though, she had to refuse. They've been at war with Everfree ever since."
"Wow," Wallflower snorted. "I'm a social sprout, and even I know that's not how you react to that."
"The sprouts know much that the flowers don't," Stumper nodded. "Lairds the two elven-kin call themselves, lords and ladies, but to me they've always seemed somewhat... well, foolish."
"You've said that word twice now," Wallflower asked. "What does 'elven' mean?"
The elves, one of the great sapient tribes of the World Tree branch around Homestria. Like and yet unlike Men, no mere sub-tribe are they, but a people as marvelous as those they are commonly mistaken for due to their physical similarities, though elves are typically taller, lighter, and distinctively eared. There are many other cases like this, of small but significant differences between elves and Men; elves do not die to age as quickly as Men, but they succumb to wounds easier; elves are artful, Men are practical; an elf might make one work of sublime beauty in a lifetime while their human counterpart makes a hundred things of much rougher quality. Elves, generally speaking, are a tribe focused on beauty, while Men focus on power, both focuses having good points and ill.
Two main houses of elves are there, the Alfin and the Nilfin, or as they call themselves the high-lairds and the deep-lairds. The high-lairds are the elves of sunlight and trees, delighting in song and works of art that make use of the light they love. Once, they were mighty warriors and captains, Alfin hosts striking fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere, spears glinting like beams of the Sun which their magic could hide at need. But as the years passed, the glamor of war faded, and with it the Alfin appetite for it; the mighty Fyngulfyn fell, then Amruth his right hand, and then the Alfin withdrew from war entirely, entrusting the defense of their homeworld to the mages who maintained their Fence, a wall of magic that bewildered and lead astray any who attempted to pass it. Their love of beauty dwindled as well, becoming little more than a hunger for complexity, for ornamentation, for that which the wise saw could as easily mar beauty as enhance it.
As the Alfin have waned, the Nilfin, the elves of starlight and mosses, have waxed. Delighting in silence and art of twilights, shades, and greys, the stillness-loving deep-lairds are a dark mirror not only of their Alfin cousins but of all life. Lurkers in the shadows of the light cast by their brighter cousins, they've grown bold as the Alfin grew insular; their hunting parties, once infrequent and confined to the darkest of places, have become as commonplace as attacks by wild animals and as widespread as starlight, countless creatures feeling the chill of their silencing arrows and obsidian spears. Their love of beauty has twisted into a desire to see all the world become like their home: still, silent, and grey. And, thanks to the anger millennia of confinement to the shadows has imprinted on them, they aren't too particular about how they achieve that goal.
When dealing with either house, proper courtesy and etiquette is necessary; elven girls are always to be addressed as countesses, boys as counts, women as ladies, men as lords. All elves, even the lowest, believe that it is their right to be addressed in such a way, and take a refusal to do so as a slight on their honor, a slight which they will be quick to punish.
"So," Wallflower put a finger to her lip in thought. "the old Sunset Shimmer was kind of like an elf?"
"Arrogance isn't exclusive to elves, doe," Stumper chided. "They just have more that they can feel arrogant about."
Blushing, she sheepishly nodded, then furrowed her brow. "Have," she asked hesitantly. "have you ever met an elf?"
"They haven't been in Everfree for thousands of years," Stumper chuckled. "I'm not that old."
Wallflower frowned, then looked closely at her friend. She couldn't make out much under her gnarled armor, only her eyes, glinting like emeralds. "How old are you?" she wondered out loud.
That question gave Stumper pause. "Thirty-four," she gruffly replied. "Now, I think we should-"
"Thirty-four's not that old," Wallflower interrupted. "Why would you feel uncomfortable telling me that?" (It was clear, even to social-sprout Wallflower, that Stumper had felt uncomfortable answering the question; going from chuckling to almost growling like that wasn't something someone did when they were comfortable.)
"Wallflower, please," Stumper sighed. "This isn't important, your education is."
"And the welfare of my friend," she replied defiantly. "is just as important."
Silence, stiller than Nilftria, fell. Then, Stumper mumbled, "No, it's not," and snapped her fingers again.
She was looking down on a clearing in the forest, within which lay a circle of stones. An elf-ring, a construct which their magic could turn into a portal between their homeworld and the world where the circle itself stood. Due to the magic used to construct them, they were almost impossible to dismantle, at least without causing an explosion. Though both houses made them, only the Nilfin rings remained, the Alfin destroying their's when they erected the Fence.
A breeze whistled over the ring and light danced within it as a dark-clad creature, now known to her as a deep-laird, appeared, before quickly stalking away into the forest. It was a scout, probing their defenses and numbers before the main host arrived, before the Nilfin avenged the slight Everfree had inflicted on them so long ago.
"This is not merely an old hatred boiling over," Stumper warned her. "They're in league with the Windigos, planning to destroy Everfree as a display of loyalty."
"What?" Wallflower blinked in confusion. "How could they possibly trust the Windigos? They're literal demons."
"Honeyed words," Stumper shrugged. "or ones that inflamed their hatred of us. It doesn't matter: it's not our place to question their foolishness, only to respond to it. Our response is limited, though; while Gaea sleeps, it's just you, me, Willow, and Timber."
"So four people," Wallflower said. "against an army."
"Those four people," Stumper reassured her. "can each do the work of twenty, at least. Four wolves against an army of cats is more even than it sounds. But one of those wolves is young, and needs training; will she let one of her packmates help her?"
Wallflower nodded, then prepared to take Stumper's outstretched hand. Before she could, though, she remembered what they'd been arguing about, and furrowed her brow in thought. "What," she slowly asked. "does Wallflower Blush's packmate look like, under her armor?"
Stumper hesitated, then barked, "Does it matter? Wallflower Blush only needs to see her in her armor."
"She'd like to see her outside of it," she replied, though with less fire behind her words; she understood wanting to hide one's appearance.
Stumper hesitated again, then snorted. "It'll complicate things?" she muttered to herself. "Things are already complicated, Gaea." Then, to Wallflower's surprise, she took off her helmet, letting her hair free, her hair that was like silk.
To be precise, corn silk, sprouting out of a head of wood. Her eyes, still striking green, peered without pupils out of black sclera, emerald sparks floating in a void. Her wood-carved face looked not too much older than Gloriosa's, but something about it told Wallflower that looks were deceiving here.
"Wha?" she gasped. "What-what are you?"
"The Green-Warden," Stumper replied, shifting her helmet under an arm. "executor of Gaea Everfree's will within her realm, protector of all that is green and growing within the Everfree Forest. As for tribe, though, I am still a Man, as I was before I took on my mantle. A Man, and yet more."
Wallflower's eyes widened in realization. "You took on Gaea's favour, too," she asked. "didn't you? That's what-what made you like this."
"She didn't grant me her favour like she did you, no," Stumper shook her head. "But this," she tapped her head, producing a wooden clunk. "is her gift, yes."
Wallflower swallowed nervously. "Is," she asked hesitantly. "is she going to do-to give me that gift, too?"
"I don't know," Stumper admitted. "Her ladyship's mind is not mine to fathom. I'm a bud, not the flower she is."
Is she a flower? Wallflower found herself wondering as she looked over the form of her, hopefully, friend. You've been more helpful to me than she has, when she basically forced me to take her favour without letting me know what it actually means. She frowned. What other secrets is Gaea hiding? You, what me giving her my favour does, what her giving me her favour does; she's been keeping a lot of secrets, actually. How much has she actually told me?
A thought crossed her mind that made her blood chill; was it really Stumper that stood before her, or simply Gaea in disguise? Was her friend, the thing she'd thought of as her friend, really just Gaea's puppet, something she could use to spy on her?
And if so, was she going to be turned into a puppet, too? Would her head soon turn to wood like Stumper's, a wooden dummy head Gaea made seem to talk?
She shivered, then cast a wary glance at Stumper, at her eyes, searing emeralds. She needed answers, and she couldn't go to her usual source for them; until she knew otherwise, she'd have to treat Stumper as the spy she feared she was. No, if she wanted answers, she'd have to find them herself.
"Even if Gaea does give you my gift, though," Stumper cut through her thoughts, her voice reassuring. "it won't change the most important thing about you. You'll be a Man, and more besides, but most importantly," she gently tapped over Wallflower's heart. "you'll still be Wallflower Blush, and nothing can change that."
She smiled back at Stumper, weakly and falsely. I hope you're right, Stumper, she thought to herself. I really hope you are.
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(My own EqG AU has a Derpy with an unfortunate habit of stumbling out of the universe and into the space between.)
Ah. "-tria" as a suffix for worlds. I suppose Midtria would've been giving the game away too early.
The Elves have gone into the West and diminished. Well, there's one deus ex machina off the table. Also, Wallflower is not yet mentally prepared to hear about some of the effects of Gaea's blessing.
I was expecting Svartalftria to be the other side of the elven coin, but I suppose that would actually be home of the dwarves.
... Huh. Not sure if Wallflower just had no interest in fantasy or if the concept was forgotten entirely. I'd expect faint memories of the Fair Folk to hang preserved and distorted in the amber of pop culture.
Hmmm...
And yeah, finding out that you've been speaking to something that seems more and less than human will lead to some uncomfortable questions. I hope this doesn't lead to any unwise decisions on Wallflower's part.
I do love seeing the wider, multiplanar context for this sort of thing. This also provides a nice chance to breathe amidst the rising (and, in some cases, exploding) tension. Eagerly looking forward to more.
10871325
Technically speaking, Wallflower didn't stumble out of the universe so much as into the part of it where she can see all the different worlds (what some might think of as the different universes, like Equestria and Homestria).
Technically, "-tria" translates more directly to "land" (thus, Equus-tria = pony + land = land of the ponies), but you're right, at this scale it refers to worlds rather than mere kingdoms or continents. Also, Svartalftria isn't the other side of the elven coin because I thought Niflheim was the home of the dark elves, and for some reason didn't think of actually doing my research to make sure I was correct.
I think I'll keep it, though, keep the clearer link between high-elves (Alfin) and deep-elves (Nilfin).
You know, that's something really strange; going through LotR and especially the Silmarillion, the elves' reputation as "Perfect-Good" really doesn't hold up. Gildor Inglorian and his company tell Frodo, when he first asks if he and his friends can come with them, that they're not interested in the hobbits, so why should they stop for them? And Feanor just seems like a jerk. Elves are usually stronger than Men in capabilities, yes, but ethically they seem just as shaky as them, even the ones who should know better. (Feanor, pro-tip: back-talking to the people who helped create the world is generally seen as a bad idea.)
Lack of interest in fantasy, and narrative convenience on the author's part.
Glad to hear it! Yeah, currently Wallflower's arc is different than the other's; while Sunset, Rarity, and Platinum are in the thick of things, Wallflower's on the outside looking in, giving us a cosmic-eye view of things. Of course, once that view starts seeing the war, things are going to change.
Not just wondering who you're working with but what they even are is definitely going to shake people, just when trust is most crucial.
Now, where would be the fun in that?
10871325
The elves may have diminished, but they’re far from the only deus-ex-machina still on the table. Unless I’m misreading things, Luna still has the option of writing to Princess Twilight et al. if things get too far out of hand. Between Discord, the Bearers, and two basically-goddesses, to say nothing of Harmony, Starlight would piss herself if they showed up in her world with a half-decent plan of attack.
Wait what?
Are those worlds or countries?
Wait, is she basically looking at elves going to war?
They can see her?
Isn’t that what she said?
So elves had magic?
If she said that to sunset’s face, then she probably would have been my favorite character.
They’re friends?
Why not?
How does she know that?
Who’s willow? And does she know timber is involved in this?
I highly doubt that.
Why is she calling her gaea?
A man?
That just gave me genji vibes.
10888938
Part of the history of this world, somewhat like J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion.
Worlds.
She did, yes.
Yes, but "they" aren't actually an elf; most of what Wallflower's seeing this chapter is simulations generated by Gaea/Stumper, like entires in a magic-VR encyclopedia.
She said that "they view us as they view mortals, with suspicion and distrust." A fine difference, yes, but an important one; according to what Stumper said, the elves view Everfree as they view mortals, which logically implies that Everfree (or its representatives Gaea and Stumper, as the case may be) is not mortal (if they were, Stumper would say "they view us like they view other mortals," like Wallflower thought she meant).
All tribes/races in this continuity have some form of magic, yes.
Lol.
Yep.
We shall have to see.
Off-screen infodump.
Willow was encountered way back in Up Through the Roots in one of Wallflower's dreams, meeting with Stumper. He's another one of Gaea's servants, working as a go-between for her and Camp Everfree. He was also mentioned in The Gifts of Gaea, saving Principal Celestia's life when she was younger. Though he hasn't had much screentime yet, he still has his part to play in the wars to come.
We haven't seen any of the four mentioned in combat yet, keep in mind.
She isn't calling Wallflower Gaea, she's talking to herself and referring to something Gaea told her.
If Man is written with a capitol M, I mean it as a reference to the human race, not only the male members of it.
In what way?