The Pointed Woodsmaster

by The Real Darkness

His Age of War

That morning, Arctus' body entered a new state, that in which Aeternia sent him to preface a war that would be won with a single battle. Sleep was not expected so his body would not even bother him with it.

The minotaurs, the next day, fled back down and went to the foothills below their city named Canterlot. He gave a silent chase and before any officers left their tents that morning, they were assailed by questions and concerns and notes of the torturing that continued through the night and the corpses butchered around the city.

To them, someone was torturing and slaughtering them under their patrol's noses and forced them to hear and find the evidence later.

So the minotaur officers set off to go to the main encampment all on their own in complete disbelief while the main force stayed at the camps. Arctus followed these officers back up and when they entered the city, they split off in pairs and with his own force, each pair died swiftly from his spear alone. He took pikes from their encampment in the city and spiked all the officers up along the path to the city.

He had snuck into a decorated tent in the main camp and slew the final commanding rank in the encampment below, tossing his body out the front flaps and disappeared away, observing with an unwavering focus.

The minotaurs had packed up tents and left, they were goin and Arctus was following, as he did, he poisoned them anytime they would come to rest, killing a few hither and thither and leaving only a dozen or so to return to the island from which they first arrived.

They called it Minos, there was a great fortress sitting upon it that liekly contained more of a force than them and they might be back, or it might be someone completely new. Arctus hurried back to Canterlot, taking a total of two days to reach as opposed to the four days to track them across this continent and to the ocean.

He strolled into the city, ponies looking at him with inquisitive stares while the guards were terrified and shook in fear, purely on the rumors.

He strolled to the castle and the guards didn't even stop him, they knew him and led him to the throne room upon his verbal pressure.

"Arctus!" Celestia rushed down from the platform and hugged him tight, "you drove them away!"

"I see you cleaned up the mess I made that's...I was not done fighting this battle," he did not return the gesture, "now I need to go and seal their fate," he sighed.

"What...what do you mean? They're gone!"

"They left with no commanding officers, I bought you some time for another force to come and I would have just repeated until they gave up, but now...I'm doing the hardest assignment in destroying them."

When Aeternia was stretched thin, nobody knew except those doing the work because they still managed to get it done without any other power knowing if they were truly weak at that moment.

"What...what do you mean?" She let him go.

"I'm going to their fortress."

"To Minos?!" There were nobles in the throne room, likely complaining about the state of the city.

"To dismantle them. I can afford a single day of rest. Do not remove the corpses from their abandoned camp at the foothills or the killed officers that are impaled on the path up to Canterlot," the nobles were whispering and one even spoke aloud.

"Princess Celestia! You associate yourself with an...an animal that murders?!"

"He saved Canterlot! All on his own!" She defended him.

"After this, I'm returning to my woods."

He left the throne room and coerced a guard into finding an unclaimed sutie for him to sleep and so he slept, setting out that night.

Another day later, he arrived at a quiet dock that gave way to the fortress that was called Minos. Somehow the entire structure was built of iron. He stole a small rowboat and made his way around the island, approaching from a place unmarked and going as far as pulling the boat ashore and hiding it in a nearby grove. Arctus took his bow out.

Inhale

Exhale

"For the glory of the Scouts and of Aeternia," he whispered and began rubbed the wards on the inside of his boots, silently running up the fortress to find a completely unmanned section of the fortress' battlements. On the inside, there was a sprawling town made of mostly wood building, but an iron castle was against a mountain side far from him.

Arctus went about the battlements and began going across the town, keeping to any shadows as he kept through. Not a soul was outside for the most part, but there were taverns that minotaurs were being awfully rowdy in and around. The scout made it with little difficulties to the fortress, where the actual guard was.

He kept to a shadow, observing their patrol habit from below before rubbing that same symbol on his boots again and climbed up, sneaking past their lines and began entering buildings, first discovering an armament storage behind he snapped many arrows out of munitions barrels himself before putting them back and sealing it. Not a soul was bothering him, as if they believed themselves to be incredibly secure. The metallic nature of the walls, especially with their thickness, would serve to be a means of sound isolation. Arctus was taking larger weapons, poleaxes, spears, and more and snapping the handles or breaking the heads off with his hatchet. A true warrior would know they were still deadly weapons, but he was on an any amount of damage done is necessary mindset.

He even managed to bend the blades of a couple swords before he exited the armament shed and began invfestigating more buildings, ensuring he was never in a spot of compromisation. It wasn't long before he found the guard barracks where most were sleeping, he stayed close to a minotaur in one of the large bunks of the giant room, "kraujavimas kraugerys maras."

He kept his hand close to the minotaurs stomach, inflicting disease through magic, a contagious one to spread throughout them while he whispered the dark words.

He left them, two stops done, but he still ahd the main task of killing those in charge around here and he got to work, approaching the giant iron structure built into the mountain he went on a hunt, quietly dispatching sentires and patrols, ensuring something was still in place so nobody would notice something out of the oridinary. It was quiet and he was making it quieter.

It wasn't long before he was certain he slashed all the necks of important persons here, his internal timer was telling him he still have four or five hours until daylight and he took to the town, scoping out homes, looking for where the valuables were and murdering more.

Every merchant. Every noble. Every minotaur with money. Every family member present of those people. Every heir to a rich estate. It was a clean sweep and when the sky began to light up, that's when he made his exit, going back over the battlements and leaving with his boat, sunrise coming as he paddled over the water and back to land.

"For the glory of me," he smiled at the city as he heard shrieks of surprise faintly on the wind.

---

And he was back in Canterlot, seeing rebuilding efforts well under way and a lot of temporary structures up. The ponies were now in visible fear of him, he did come back with a little blood still on.

The moment he walked into the throne room, Celestia sent ponies out, "a detachment came and they left...what did you do on the footpath?"

"Nothing you want to see. In Aeternia, we Scouts are taught that we're sinners, we're all tainted black form the day we were chosen and agreed to continue to train as a Scout."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"I agreed to being a sinner for the wellbeing of my nation, my family, my citizens. I had a place of command above all other officers and politicians. We had to make use of people and their connections to make our missions successful. This is a role I am happy playing, my sole purpose is to kill those who would rise and threatne my nation."

"Arctus...you are aware your nation does not exist here, right?"

He nodded, "and it doesn't seem like my body normally ages here in this world. Aeternia might be across worlds, but I'll return to it someday. I'll take the minotaurs off your footpath and dismantle their camp myself. That detachment that left was killed on their way back to Minos, wasn't even me, some markings of a beast did it all."

Arctus was staring at her and she smiled, "thank you, on behalf of all my little ponies, thank you for protecting Equestria," she bowed to him.

"I didn't do it for you," he took a river stone he had, flattest he could find along the way, already with a good bit of roughness to it and began sharpening his knives and hatchet right there, "I did it for me, for my sake."

"Wh-what?" She was confused, nopony would throw themself before harm's way that readily for another to serve their own ambitions.

"Taking down a kingdom, that's our sole purpose as Scouts. We get a generous compensation while we're not in the field, but we don't really live until we're in the field because of the years in oru youth we spend in the wilds, learning and training away."

Celestia's jaw was slightly parted, "I did it so I could live again and feel my heart beat the entire time I sowed havoc in their little city."

"And they'll be gone soon, completely dissolved. There's not a merchant alive, not a rich or person of office left to rise to leadership. There's also a plague and a lack of weapons to see revenge with," he was still sharpening away, finishing his knives and working on his hatchet, "Minos will crumble like many have before the unseen might of Aeternia, before the might of Scout Arctus."

"But...don't you miss...friends?"

"We only had each other as friends as we gathered nightly and told tales of how we ended sprawling townships and rising fiefdoms."

"But...did you do anything together?"

"No, we're loners. We like it that way."

"Then you've never had a real friend," he stopped sharpening his hatchet, stowing it away along with the river stone.

He looked to her pink eyes, "and what of it?"

She was quiet for a while before she spoke, "it's a happiness you've been missing out on."

And he didn't have a response.

"Would you...like to try to be friends?" She posed.

"Look at your subjects, they do not approve of your interactions with me, they consider me unsavoury."

"Which is honestly insulting, incredibly so given the black I paint upon myself for their sake," he mentioned with some venom.

"Give them some time, I'll explain who you are."

He paused, recognition was something that was also a piece of the cake, a slice from home, "I can allow that, it might make it easier for me to acquire supplies rather than making new materials day in and day out."

She smiled, "I can have them deliver to the forest for you."

"Not to my home."

"We'll make it a drop off box at the edge of the woods, the Everfree Forest is too dangerous for my subjects to be entering. You do a good job at keeping it somewhat tame."

He smiled, gratitude was refreshing and a cornerstone of his identity, "well...I would be fine with that arrangement."

"So, friends?"

"I suppose, Celestia," he addressed her very informally, a notion she found refreshing, "but I have a question."

"Yes?"

"What happened to Luna? Why did you leave the castle in the forest, was it me?"

And Celestia began to cry quietly, those wounds were not healed yet after all.

Comments

[GeneraLeeDiscord]

Odd story about a scary dude that lives for the kill. Guess I'll keep reading for now