Pinocchio wasn't the only wooden puppet to become a real person.
Pinocchio wasn't the only wooden puppet to become a real person.
There are other puppets out there, animal-like beings controlled by quasi-intelligent trees. Ponies call them timberwolves and know them as nothing but beasts. But what happens if one of those beasts were to gain the intelligence and ambition of one of the most successful hunters in the universe, a human?
For as much as fire terrifies me, I think I was born aflame.
I awoke to the sensation of burning. Every last part of my body shuddered from the pure, unadulterated agony I felt in every fiber of my being. It was so all-consuming that I remember nothing about that time save for the pain. Did I scream? Did I panic? I don't remember.
But when the burning agony vanished, I felt a clarity that I had never before experienced. In the days that would follow, I would find that my memories were clear and sharp, that I could think faster than I had ever before, and that I understood everything. Puzzles that had stumped me before suddenly were non-issues. Traps, an idea that had never occurred to me before then — not that I could have understood the concept before that day — suddenly let me gather far more food than I had ever been able to before.
Days, weeks, months, years... the concept of time had been alien to me before the burning, and yet now it seemed so incomprehensible to me how I could have functioned without it before.
Animal. That word — what lovely things, words — popped into my mind. I suppose that must have been what I once was, although it doesn’t seem to quite fit. I’m something else now, something new.
Person.
Another word. This one, I feel, fits me better now than animal did back then. Yes, I am a person, I think.
I think, therefore I am.
Another set of words. I remember them occasionally. This one seems to describe me. Why I remember them, when I feel that they have never been spoken to me before, when I have never been spoken to at all, I do not know.
But they comfort me. Why? Because I exist.
I. Me. A person.
I have an identity.
I don’t have a name, though. My kind don’t need names. But I want a name. Can I name myself? Or is that something your parent needs to give you?
What’s a parent?
Oh. I remember. I don’t remember having one of those. I suppose that means that I can name myself.
Name. A collection of sounds and symbols that describes the who the name belongs to. I couldn’t think of a name at first, but I remembered one eventually.
Title. A thing that is like a name, but describes what a named thing is, instead of who it is.
Pun. A pun is an interesting thing. The existence of that idea meant that words could be played with. I’d never played with anything before and I didn’t have anything else to play with at the time, so I played with words.
And then it came to me. I knew what I was titled before. I know who I am now.
In the moments following my burning, I recalled my wolf puppets to me. I needed to see if I was actually aflame. So panicked was I that I hardly noticed my new mental faculties, or the enhancement that my puppets’ eyes had experienced.
My wolves greedily drank in the scents of the forest as they sprinted to where I grew. A hypnotic sweetness brushed against their snouts, carefully masking the stench of rot and death below. The acrid odor of burning wood was mercifully absent, but that did not exclude other forms of damage to my body.
From the underbrush they emerged into my clearing and ascended the mound of bones and rotting carcasses surrounding my roots. Through their eyes, I saw myself for what I consider the first time, and through my own senses, I saw my wolves.
My trunk was unharmed, though it was still caked in the dried blood of the countless woodland creatures my wolves brought me so to fertilize my soil. My branches stretched towards the sky, towering proudly over the surrounding trees. Each branch contained hundreds of new buds, every one of which would grow into another leaf for me to feed on the sun with.
My wolves smiled for the first time ever when they saw the new growth. Although I didn’t consciously know it at the time, the growth was in reaction to whatever had caused my burning.
As their eyes continued to look me over, I saw my lures dangling from my branches; long tendrils covered with extremely sweet-smelling flowers that promised a tasty treat to whatever smelled them, only for them to be snatched up by the pair of puppets that I control. I also saw my sensory bulbs, little round growths on every branch that let me see the world around myself whenever my wolves weren’t there.
But the thing I was the most shocked at were the ten little pods dangling from my longest branch. Each of those pods — transmitter seeds, I would later call them — was what I used to make and command my wolves. Through them, my magic flows out and gathers the dead wood and plant detritus to form a new wolf. I had only ever been able to grow two at a time, only growing another once the first was lost, and yet here I was with a total of twelve transmitter seeds.
Though I am a tree, my body is not entirely immobile. Gathering my strength first, I shook the seeds off and let them fall to the forest floor below. With a thought, one of my wolves disintegrated, sacrificing its wood for its brethren. The broken branches gathered around the pods, forming a self-propelled cocoon around the seeds.
The other wolf grinned, reacting to my delight. As it and the eleven seeds raced off to gather freshly fallen timber with which to build up my wolves, I was already planning without realizing that I had never had the ability of forethought before.
There were other timberwolf trees near me; I could hear their voices in the wind, and feel their thoughts where their roots brushed up against my own. They were my pack, and we hunted together for fresh meat. Yet never before had they seemed so quiet, or so simple. Even Pack Leader seemed tired and slow in comparison to my foggy pre-burn memories.
My elation remained. He, with his impressive five wolves, now was nothing compared to me, and I knew it.
Ambition. Another concept so alien to me and my kind, and yet I found myself embracing it fully. I was better than them now. Why shouldn’t I be Pack Leader now? After all, for us, might makes right.
One by one, my transmitter seeds awoke, sending a flood of information to me as they did. Nine... ten... eleven wolves stood proudly in the forest, all bearing my favorite expression, a grin.
The last seed was different. Larger than the others, it kept drawing in more and more of my magic, pulling from a reserve that I was sure would run dry, and yet always had just a bit more to give. More and more wood flew towards it, building it up and up, while the wood that was already there broke into smaller pieces and rearranged to fit even more compactly. Sap oozed out from the wood and rapidly dried into amber along where the bones of a real creature would be. I say creature, for the figure that was born from my seed was no wolf.
The others looked upon its massive form, bringing a single word to mind: lycanthrope. With front paws warped into hands, a body built for bipedal walking, and a form far more detailed and articulate that before, I recognized that it was potentially my most important puppet.
The clouds parted above, letting the moonlight fall through the forest canopy and spill across my Lycan’s face. Its chest started to convulse, and a strange sound emerged from its mouth. Though I had never heard it before, as far as I am aware, I knew at once what that sound — and the feeling that came with it — was: laughter.
I don’t even know why I was laughing, nor did I care. I felt amazing, that day was amazing, and I wanted to laugh.
The ideas that came with my awakening never came in a great flood. There was no great flash of inspiration, no sudden eruption of memory. In fact, save for the fact that I could quite clearly recall the number of days that it had been since my awakening, it was almost as if I had learned everything a long time ago. I had no idea what I knew, and yet the moment I encountered something that reminded me of it (including my own thoughts), I remembered whatever new bit of information as if it was always there.
Don’t get me wrong; I was and still am a timberwolf tree that possessed all its former instincts and intelligence. It’s just that now I am more than what I was.
For instance, the old me would have used one of my wolves to pursue a little chicken-lizards and push it towards the other. Now, I have my Lycan ready near a pit trap that I dug, armed with rocks and a stone-tipped wooden spear to kill it with. Using that setup, I’ve caught nine of them in the last week, more than I ever had before, plus several other small animals.
Having so many puppets has another benefit: I can leave some behind to defend myself with while the others bring me prey to eat. With my catch in tow, my puppets make the trek back to my clearing, where the rest of them have remained. There, they distribute the chicken-lizards and the rabbits among themselves. Roots extend from their transmitter seeds and pierce the hides of the animals, eagerly drinking a little of the blood to nourish themselves.
Once each has taken its fill, I command the wolves to tear into the fresh meat. As for my Lycan, I use him to bring a dead but otherwise unmarred lizard-chicken to the base of my trunk. With the flick of a stone blade, the now headless beast spills its still-warm blood onto my roots. The magic within the blood flows into me as I greedily drink it up.
I don’t know why these lizard-chickens have so much more magic than my usual prey, but I’m not complaining. Ever since I discovered that property of their blood, I’ve made sure to spill some on my roots at every meal, and my health has improved greatly for it. I’ve never flowered so bountifully or grown so fast before, and I am sure that I am now one of the tallest of my kind.
The first of the wolves is done with their meal. As it approaches me, my Lycan hears the wolf’s wood grinding away at the remains inside it. As they quiet down, a reddish-brown ooze seeps from between the logs and branches of its body, letting me know that what remains of the prey is ready for me. The wolf gags and then regurgitates the chewed and ground-up remains on my mound. The juices seep into the ground, causing my roots to squirm as they lap up every last drop.
Delicious.
The others repeat this process, leaving my branches sagging in contentment at the end. Never before have I eaten this well, never before have I been this satisfied, never before have I been this strong, and never before have I been this happy.
Yes, I was happy.
And now I was bored. Hunting had become easy, and with my sudden intelligence, I craved a stimulation that hunting could no longer provide. For a time, I merely thought; introspective and curious, I started listing out the things I knew. Eventually, that list grew so long that I started writing it in the dirt, starting with the fact that I could write as point number one.
That didn’t last too long, though, as I grew weary of thinking of myself. Then, I tried writing other things — descriptions of people and places that I had never seen, and yet somehow knew. Slowly, I came to the realization that whatever that burning was that had created me, it hadn’t created my mind from scratch. Someone, somewhere, had been the base from which I had been created.
Very shortly after that, I experienced my first — and last — existential crisis.
It was a thing that happened. I won’t bother going into details there; it's not something I'm particularly keen on mentioning. I would like to keep at least smidgen of my pride, after all.
It was very un-wolflike, to put it simply.
After coming to the very philosophical conclusion that I am a person, and I am me, I decided to name myself. A short time later, I settled on the name Jack.
No, I did not choose that name just because of the pun.
Ok, fine, maybe I did.
And maybe I went a little overboard with the puns when I first realized that I could make them. I’m sure you can forgive me; I was board.Board. Get it?
I’m not sorry.
But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, the monotony and isolation was starting to wear at the sanity I so treasured. But then, as I was considering lighting myself on fire just to see what color I burned (not really), she appeared.
The Other, as I’ve taken to calling the source of my strange memories, knew very little about magic. I believe the word that person would have used to describe magic was “superstition.” Obviously, my very existence as a sapient, moving tree that could animate dead wood relied on magic, which meant that the Other was not very reliable in that regard.
That the Other knew of magic at all was enough to give me some ideas and make me observe more carefully. Those observations were what made me start spilling blood on my roots rather than just composting the body whole. I don’t know why, but pouring out the blood first preserves some of the magic in the blood, magic that would otherwise be lost. And with every little animal I hunt and feed on, my range of control expands just a little more.
My Lycan was patrolling the edge of my range. Its movements were sluggish and my vision through it had deteriorated significantly. I wouldn't be able to hunt effectively out here for quite some time, but for getting the lay of the land, it was enough.
My nose was still rather sharp at this range, sharper still than the Other's, and I caught a whiff of a strange animal scent. Obviously, it had been rolling around in a variety of plants from the forest, but the base smell was something I was unfamiliar with. I decided to investigate, mostly out of boredom.
Lycan accelerated, swiftly following the animal's trail. But as the scent grew stronger, Lycan itself grew weaker. Eventually, I could push no further forward lest I risk losing that transmission seed. Stopping, I gazed out through Lycan's eyes and spotted a little flickering light in the distance.
A house? Why was there a house out here? Was the strange creature the owner of the house, or its owner's pet? I didn't know, but I wanted to find out.
Lycan coughed up a mixture of sap and old rabbit blood into its hand — a very distinctively smelling mixture — and pressed it against the bark of another tree. This way, I would be able to send my lycanthrope puppet back to this spot once my range extended a bit.
Two weeks had gone by. In that time, I had pushed steadily forwards, expanding my radius to nearly ten kilometers, up from nine and a half. I could almost make it to the front door of the hut without collapsing, which was more than enough for my observations.
The owner of the house was a strange creature that the Other's memories identified as a zebra. I stealthily observed her comings and goings. Every time she left, she bore the pungent odor of burning wood, and every time she returned, that smell had been replaced with that of various herbs and plants.
What intrigued me the most was her clothes and jewelry. I hadn't heard her speak, but I could only assume that if she was wearing clothes and such, then she must be civilized. As if she were an actual person.
My leaves rustled in delight.
But the clothes also pointed out something else: I have no clothes of my own. The Other's memories suggested that clothes were important. And while I am a tree, and trees don't need clothes, I am also a person. People wear clothes.
I am a person. Thus, I want clothes to show the world that I am one, even if my world is just her right now.
Returning my puppets to my clearing, I pondered my resources and options for acquiring clothes. Eventually, I settled on making clothes from animal hides. Though the Other apparently knew the theory behind tanning furs, they'd never had put it into practice. I figured that with the theory in mind, I could probably figure it out by myself.
I did get it, eventually, but it took some trial and error. I started with small game first, and it must have taken me a dozen or more rabbits to stop completely mangling the hides. As for the braining of the the hides, I would have never thought to do so had it not been for the Other. The furs came out better when I soaked them in a mixture of brain mush and water; it was such an odd step, but it helped in the end.
As an aside, I really wish I knew who the Other was. I would like to thank them for helping me. It would be the first time I give my thanks to anybody, ever.
Back to the skins I was working on, my next challenge was the one I feared the most: smoking the hides. Trees fear fire above almost all else. Our roots are all interconnected, and thoughts can spread far and wide throughout the forest. When a tree burns, we all know it.
But I needed a fire.
I carefully dug a pit and ringed it with stones, praying to the merciful sun that I would not set the forest ablaze. After piling the wood of other fallen trees into the pit, I brought forth my magic to levitate a stick towards the pile. It pressed against the kindling and then began spinning rapidly.
The moment a little tendril of smoke appeared, a set of large leaves — also levitated by my magic — fanned the minuscule embers until they had grown into a stable flame. Even though my roots were planted almost a kilometer away, I still tensed them in fright when my wolves spotted the first light of the orange flames.
I shuddered. The Other knew of something called “breathing exercises,” which could calm them down, but I had no lungs of my own. My flowers drooped as I forced my way through my anxiety, even as the flames burned brighter and hotter.
On the verge of panic, I levitated the skins — stretched across a wooden frame — high over the fire, where they could be treated by the smoke. My magic was shaky and sporadic; I nearly dropped the hides into the fire thrice before I decided they were done.
The moment I considered them done, Lycan threw a bunch of dirt on the fire, smothering it partially. Again and again, he threw more and more dirt onto the flames until at last, the fire was out. Then, for good measure, he threw even more dirt.
There was no such thing as too little fire, in my humble opinion.
Taking a look at my work, Lycan felt the pelts. The rabbit fur was soft to the touch while the hide was tough and strong. Overall, I would consider it a very successful first attempt. There was just one little problem: I only had two rabbit pelts. That was nowhere near enough!
I shed a few leaves in frustration, knowing that I’d have to do that all over again.
For my next pelt, I’d decided to go straight for a manticore. It fell easily enough to my pack of puppets, especially since my Lycan was ready with several spears to throw. I felt an immense amount of pride, having taken down a creature by myself that would have taken my entire old pack to subdue. With twelve puppets by my side and my vast intelligence controlling them, I assured myself that I was on my way to becoming the king of the forest.
Hmmm... I shall have to figure out how to kill a hydra soon. I would love to adorn my clearing with its carcass; a trophy like that would forever cement me as Pack Leader of all the timberwolf trees.
While Lycan worked the giant hide into something resembling clothes, I sent a single wolf to further observe the strange zebra. Around its neck, I had draped one of my flower tendrils; that would disguise the scent of rot that clung to its wooden form.
The addition of manticore blood to my roots had expanded my range more than any chicken-lizards had, meaning that her entire home was now well within my range of control. As my wolf crept closer to the hut, I realized that it was carved into a long-dead tree. Masks and ornamentation hung from the structure, dispelling any doubts that this was the home of a person, and not just a strange animal.
There was light pouring from the open window. Creeping closer, my wolf gazed inside. There she was, standing over a bubbling cauldron. Between stirs, she'd thrown a hoof full of ground-up herbs into the cauldron. The smell it gave off was similar to the smell that always clung to her.
A part of me saw her as nothing but prey. Knowing that she would see me as a predator, my new logic squashed down that instinct to hunt her. Instead, my puppet cantered over to the front door of her home. Clutching the flowers in its teeth, it placed them on the ground and then scratched lightly at the door.
The muttering of the zebra, as faint as it was, ceased immediately. Taking that as my cue, I withdrew my puppet to the underbrush a short distance away. It wouldn't completely hide me, I knew, but the distance and obstructions between us would put her at ease.
Watching silently, I saw her open the door. She looked around, though she didn't spot me immediately. Her eyes fell on the flowers, causing her to gasp. I don't know why she made that sound; all I know is that she scooped up the flowers very eagerly. Did she want to eat them?
I vaguely recalled that her kind liked eating plants, as I liked eating animals. I also vaguely recalled eating something similar to her before. If the price of potential companionship was letting her eat my flowers and never eating one of her kind again, well, that was a price I was more than willing to pay.
It seemed that I had been spotted, if her reaction was anything to go by. Her muscles tensed as she stared directly at my wolf's glowing emerald eyes. I made it nod at her, and then sent it away, purposefully making sure that I could be seen leaving.
I couldn't help but pause and look back at her. She was still there, standing in the doorway, still looking at me. In that instant, I regretted that I had not practiced my speech more. My Lycan could form simple words, but all my wolves could do was bark.
So it did.
With a playful wag of its tail, my wolf leaped away and into the dense forest and the ever-present mist. On my trunk, my flowers opened even wider and smelled even sweeter.
"I am Lumber Jack. Jack for short. I am a timberwolf tree. I am Lumber Jack, the magnificent, elegant, extraordinary tree. Why yes, my name is Lumber Jack; how did you know? I told you? Of course I did."
I'd been prattling on like that for quite some time now, never growing tired of the sound of my voice. It was a rough, grating sound, and yet I enjoyed it simply because it was my sound. And slowly but surely, it was morphing into a semblance of real language instead of mere growls.
"This?" Lycan held up the nearly complete cloak and shirt. Currently, I was decorating the leather and fur with berry juices for color and bones for decoration. "This is just something I've been working on. It's nothing special. You like it?"
The wolves gathered in my clearing all nodded and voiced their agreement. "Of course you do," my Lycan said. "You're me!"
It blinked. My cheerful mood had vanished quite suddenly. "You're me," I repeated, sans the self-important tone.
I looked around; there wasn't an animal in sight, and no plants near me had any real measure of intelligence. I was utterly alone, and had no one to talk to.
Talking to myself suddenly seemed quite pointless and not at all fun, so I stopped. My branches drooped, and the magic that coursed through my trunk and limbs stilled.
These emotions were strange. The Other was a mammal, meaning that their emotions and my own feel completely different, and yet there were some similarities. My magic felt like their lungs and stomach, my flowers were like their face, my leaves and branches were like their shoulders, and my roots were like their feet. It’s not a perfect analogy and it means that I have a hard time interpreting my own body’s reaction as an emotion.
But this, I know this one: shame and loneliness. I feel pathetic. I feel like asking the wind to come and blow me over. Who am I kidding? I’m just a beast playing at being a person.
No, I am a person.
My leaves perk back up and my flowers open wider.
“I AM A PERSON!” Lycan roars, the faintest hints of a smile forming on his face. So what if I was having trouble with all these emotions that I had been too stupid to understand before? I could understand them now; I could master them. I could do it!
I so couldn’t do it.
The flowers clutched in Lycan’s hand, despite having been cut from my body, still reacted to my magic. The smell they produced was nauseatingly powerful, and between that and my tense roots and branches, I knew the equivalent action from the Other: blushing.
I hadn’t been able to get the Zebra out of my head since I had spied her that first time, and my... infatuation — yes, that’s the word — had only grown when I heard that she spoke the same language as me. I still hadn’t talked with her yet, but I really wanted to.
And yet, at the same time, I really didn’t want to talk to her. What if she hated me? What if she rejected me for my beastly nature? I didn’t know if I could deal with rejection from the first sapient being I had encountered since my burning.
Worse, what if I made an idiot of myself and she laughed at me? Even if she didn’t reject me, she’d always know that I was a fool! What do I do?
No. Calm down, Jack. You can do this.
But what if I couldn’t?
YOU CAN DO THIS!
Lycan and the wolves accompanying him all gritted their teeth simultaneously. Lycan straightened up, adjusted its clothes, and tightened its grip on the flowers in its hand. Then, bracing itself, my puppet raised its other hand and knocked on the door.
The moment the door opened, Lycan thrust the sweet smelling blossoms into her face.
The zebra jumped back in surprise.
Perhaps that wasn't the best idea...
The zebra took a moment to compose herself after evaluating if I was a threat. Apparently judging me as a possible but not immediate danger, she stepped back and spoke, "Creature of the timberwolf tree, why do you offer your flowers to me?"
I highly doubt that she was expecting me to reply, seeing as she jumped when I answered, "I wanted to speak with you."
There was a calculating glint in her eye, though it seemed completely devoid of malice. "If conversation is what you desire, the do come in. Let's sit by the fire."
I flinched. There was no disguising it; it was a full-body flinch that each and every one of my puppets mimicked. "Fire?"
The zebra observed me with a calm demeanor. "If you are worried of fire burning your hide, then do not enter. We'll remain outside. Now, to what name should I call you? You are clearly intelligent and my respect you are due. Timberwolf, my name is Zecora."
"Lumber Jack," I replied. Still holding the flowers, I stretched Lycan's hand out a bit further towards her. "Umm... Do you want these?"
"Lumber Jack, did you grow these flora?" She asked, completing the rhyme her previous phrases had led me to expect was coming. I had very quickly picked up on the fact that Zecora was rhyming in couplets and found it quite fascinating. To rhyme in real time conversation — what a skill!
"I did. They were plucked fresh from my branches this morning. I've seen you gathering flowers and herbs in my territory and thought that you might like some. Other animals always want my flowers and my fruit, so I thought..."
"Thank you, Lumber Jack; this means a lot. Long have I wanted to brew with these in my pot," Zecora replied as she took them from Lycan's paw. She put them up to her nose and inhaled deeply. "These are of a quality rarely found; tell me, how did you ensure growth so sound?"
I quickly and happily explained how my blood drinking made me stronger, and that it let me expand my range until it included her house. That naturally turned the conversation to my control of my twelve puppets, and then to my pack. Of course, that led to the question I could tell that she was eager to know the answer to: my intelligence.
"No, I don't know how I became this way. It was near the time of fifth bloom when I suddenly felt like I was burning. Then the pain vanished and I was smarter, though I didn't realize immediately."
"And when exactly is 'fifth bloom'? I do not want to assume," Zecora asked.
"Fifth bloom is when my fifth set of flowers grow, during the part of the year with the longest days."
"Hmmm... Then the Tree of Harmony could be the cause of your transformation. Your intelligence might be its accidental creation." She went on to explain that four months ago — had it really been that long? — the Tree of Harmony had released a surge of magic to purge the forest of a parasitic vine. She didn't know how it would have created my mind, but it was the only significant event at the time and may have been a catalyst to whatever did.
With nothing else to go on, I accepted that at face value. I would definitely have to find this tree if I wanted to get more information.
Shortly after that, Zecora did manage to tempt me into her home with a promise that she would douse her fire and that she would tell me a little about herself. Inside, I was greeted to the same smell that always clung to her, only a thousand times stronger. It was almost overwhelming.
Zecora took the flowers to her counter and began to mash them together in a mortar and pestle. As she worked, she said, “You must have questions to ask me. I sense that you are an inquisitive tree. Feel free to ask while I work on this task.”
I opened Lycan’s mouth to ask, and then paused. What did I want to ask her? There were so many things I wanted to know about the zebra that lived in my territory, I hardly knew what to ask first. Eventually, I decided. “Why?”
“Hmm?”
“Why were you willing to talk to me?” I clarified. “I... I think I may have hunted some of your kind back then. I was expecting that you’d be scared of me...”
The motion of the zebra’s hooves stopped, bringing a soft silence to the room. “I am scared, that is true. I have every right to fear you. However, your words and action have given me clarity. A rational member of your kind is a rarity. If your actions are genuine, then in the end, I will be fine. Should you attack me as prey, then there’ll be hell to pay. Myself I can defend, and bring a fight to a swift end.”
“Oh, is that a challenge that I hear?” I inquired playfully. “Even manticores have easily fallen by my claws.” To emphasize my point, I turned slightly so that she could see the stinger and the wings of the manticore hanging from the back of my cape, as well as the bones that I had attached to it. I may be smart now, but I have my pride as a hunter.
“Dear Lumber Jack, you misheard; I did not speak a fighting word.” Chuckling, Zecora resumed her grinding of the flowers. More than a quarter of them had been reduced to a fine paste by this point. “But you have further proven your point. Between your cloak and your gifts, you do not disappoint. My perception of you as just an animal has been stomped, as you did this all without prompt.”
“Oh. I knew making clothes was the right thing to do. I saw you wearing your own cloak and and decided that I wanted one as well,” I replied, delighted with myself.
“If clothing and adornment is indeed your passion, then might I suggest consulting a purveyor of fashion? There is a seamstress by the name of Rarity. With her, I have great familiarity. If you would be willing to trade more of your flowers for me to use, then I will bring you a selection of clothes to choose.”
My puppet’s eyes widened. Trading flowers for clothes? I had lots of flowers. Did that mean I could get lots of clothes? I asked her, but was disappointed when she told me that she didn’t have a use for that many flowers just yet. Then I asked her if there were other things I could do to get more clothes — anything to avoid tanning fires, really — and I offered my fruit or the carcases of my hunts.
She said she would think about it, and that was better than a flat no.
“Hey, what are you using my flowers for anyway?”
Until that moment, I didn’t know that it was possible to see a blush through fur. Furthermore, it seemed that when Zecora became embarrassed, she focused too much on rhyming and too little on the actual meaning behind her words. In short, what I heard was a little hard to decipher. But, to translate into simple terms: apparently some ponies and zebras needed reproductive assistance and my flowers made them both more eager and able to reproduce.
Well that sounds nice. It doesn't explain all the blushing, but it does explain why I keep finding pairs of rabbits climbing on each other near my mound. Me personally, I like it when bees come to my flowers; they tickle.
I wonder if it tickles for ponies and zebras when they reproduce. I bet it-
Oh.
Ohhhh....
Nevermind. I just remembered how the Other did it.
That seems so much more involved. And messy. Very messy.
And Zecora wants my flowers to help with that? Suddenly, I feel that I’m going to need far more clothes than I originally thought.
When I’d first became sapient all those months ago, I had followed my prey as instinct had told me to, which meant that I spent much of my time hunting north east of me. Later, when I had become aware of Zecora, I had continued to send my puppets in that same direction
South west and due west were mostly marshes and bogs — poor soil and few animals. Because of that, I rarely traversed that way. Even with my expanded range, I gave little thought to an area that made up almost a quarter of my territory. So, imagine my surprise when, upon reaching the western edge of my territory, I found myself among row upon row of ally-trees and there were no timberwolf trees in sight.
Oh, I should probably explain. Ally-trees are a type of tree that is similar to my kind, but not, like a zebra and a pony. Unlike most of the other trees, the ally-trees have lots of magic, like us timberwolves. They always grew near us; our magic helps them bloom, and their magic helps us lure in more prey and defend us from lightning. Tending to the needs of the ally-trees is instinctive in us and deeply ingrained in our behavior. Even after my awakening, I’ve spread the seeds and tended to the saplings of my own allies.
The ones here looked tired and sickly, and every last one of them was hibernating. That was no good at all. Well, they were clearly in my territory, so it was my duty to help them. Striding up to them, I dug my wolf’s claws into the hard soil, and grimaced. Without my moving roots nearby, the soil for these trees was too densely packed and wouldn’t drain well enough. Maybe for another tree, this soil would have been fine, but ally trees were notoriously picky. And, to top it off, there was way too little organic matter in the soil. Seriously, they needed the same dense layer of rotting plants and animals that I did.
It would take time to fix this soil, and I didn’t know how much I could do from this distance. Hmmm... perhaps Zecora would know if there were any tools that I could use to help them. The Other vaguely remembered that farms had tools that could help, and Zecora did say that there was a village just beyond the northern border of my territory. I’ll have to see if she can enlist any help.
For now, all I can do is wake them up. I’ll come back later for their seeds. Even if I lose them, I will preserve their children.
I gather my magic, that inexplicable energy that wells up from the very core of your being and that flows in blood and in sap, and release it into the air. Each and every one of my puppets howled to the great light of the night. We sang.
Awaken,
Awaken,
Awake, our allies.
Bring forth your seeds.
The ally-trees stirred. They answered my call. Their magic was weak and feeble. It will take time for them to bloom, but already I could feel the energy building in the air. Dark clouds gather as the trees come alive, sparking and hissing as they awake.
I nod, satisfied that I have done my part. I’ve expended a lot of energy, and it is tiring having my puppet out this far, especially without the sun’s warmth. Knowing that there is little more I can do now, I have my wolves retreat to me for the remainder of the night.
As I retreat, I hear a loud, metallic clatter in the distance, a sound that I find excruciatingly unpleasant. Hastening my retreat, I barely hear a voice shout out, “The timberwolves are a howlin’! The zap apples are comin’!”
I let my puppet rest in the shade of some lesser tree. Without magic to bolster their minds, their thoughts — if you could ever call them that — revolved wholly around flowers and the sun. Thankfully, they were quiet as well, so my rest went undisturbed.
And yes, I do grow tired at times; I only have so much strength. I'm just a tree — a magnificent one, to be sure, but even I have my limits.
I was roused by the sound of voices approaching me. Sniffing, I recognized one of the three approaching me as Zecora, so I lowered my guard somewhat. As for the other two, I did not know them. However, one of them frequently traversed the rows of my ally-trees, so much so that her scent clung to practically everything in the area.
I sniffed again. This time, I could pick out more of the subtle differences between them and Zecora. Were they ponies? I think so.
Finally, they were close enough to Lycan for me to hear clearly. "Zecora, how much further is this fella? Ah can't go too far from the orchard; the zap apples are comin' in and Ah have to be ready."
"Yes, Zecora," the other voice said, "I'm curious as to how much further into the Everfree we need to walk to get to this pony. I'm also curious as to why he'd need to be all the way out here, in this icky, nasty, and damp forest."
"Do not worry, Rarity; this shall provide some clarity." She paused and sniffed the air. "Lumber Jack, I know that you're here; the scent of blossoms tells me you're near."
I chuckled; it was a deep, gravelly sound that Zecora's throat couldn't replicate. Then I stood Lycan up to its full height. My wolves were already twice the size of Zecora, and Lycan towered over even them. Lycan could probably eat both ponies without getting too full.
Stepping out from behind the tree, spear in hand, I enjoyed the look on their terrified faces as they gazed upon me.
The feeling of holding power over others is something I could grow to enjoy, it seems.
"Zecora, are these them?" I asked as my baleful, luminous green eyes examined them. The orange one had dense, strong muscles all over her body, all of which were tensed and ready to run. In contrast, the white one was visibly weaker and possessed more body fat. To me, the latter looked both tastier and easier to catch.
Of course, I pushed those thoughts aside as quickly as they came, though it didn't completely remove my first impression of them.
"Yes, Jack, these are the ones for which you ask. Applejack and Rarity are up for the task," Zecora replied.
"Good." To each of them, I handed a small strand of my flowers. "I'm Lumber Jack, pack leader of the southern Everfree timberwolves, but you can just call me Jack. I would like your help, if you're willing to give it. My friend Zecora said that both of you could help me."
"A talkin' timberwolf. Now Ah've seen it all," the one Zecora identified as Applejack said.
Rarity was still staring at me, so Zecora nudged Rarity and told her in a whisper — one that I could still overhear — to accept my gift. She nodded, composed herself, and then levitated my flowers towards herself, and in the process caught my full attention; Zecora never mentioned that ponies could levitate plants like I could.
"Thank you, darling. These flowers are really quite beautiful, and they smell simply divine," Rarity said. In response to the praise, the flowers perked up just a bit more.
"I'm glad you like then; I grew them myself."
I would later realize that Rarity was a pony who loved bringing beauty into the world, and anyone who shares that passion is almost immediately granted respect in her eyes. But in that moment, all I knew from her face was that I had just opened the door to friendship with her.
Applejack also seemed somewhat placated by the fact that I grew flowers. I don't think she was picturing the right meaning behind my words, though, but either way, both ponies looked and smelled more at ease.
"What did ya need from us?" Applejack asked.
“Zecora said that you take care of trees, correct?” She nodded, so I continued. “There is a type of tree we timberwolves care for in exchange for protection and food. Recently, I acquired some more territory and I came upon a massive grove of these trees, far more than even my whole pack could care for, all without timberwolves of their own. Their soil was so hard and poor, it’s a miracle that they even survived this long. They tell me that they only ever have enough strength for a single crop of fruit all year - just one! They should be bountiful all year, with ten harvests that last more than a single day each! They’re desperate, and I don’t have the strength or time to care for them all. You have to help me save them! I’m sure they would love for you to have their fruit if you help them.”
“Aww shucks, of course I’ll help you save them. These trees, they wouldn’t happen to be zap apple trees, would they?” Applejack asked.
“I wouldn’t know what you ponies call them, but I can see that being a fitting description. They bear a rainbow-fruit that-”
“Yep, those are zap apples,” Applejack declared, cutting me off. “Mah family grows many of them, and we have been growing them for years; ah think ah can help ya real easily!”
I couldn’t help it; I scooped her up into a tight hug. “Oh, thank you, Applejack! Thank you!”
“ACK! Put me down!” the orange pony cried out. Sheepishly, I obliged. She stepped back and then rubbed her neck, where some of my Lycan’s sap had spilled on her. “Bleh. This stuff stinks.”
“Sorry,” I said.
From the brush, I sent out one of my wolves. The two ponies jumped back, while Zecora barely spared it a glance. “Here,” I said, this time through the wolf instead of through Lycan. “Follow me; I’ll show you the trees and what’s wrong.”
“Wait, there’s another one of ya talking wolves?”
Both puppets cocked their heads. “No,” they said. “Just me.”
“But yer there.” She pointed at Lycan. “Ya can’t be him,” she said, referring to the wolf.
“One mind, many puppets,” Lycan and the wolf spoke together. “I have twelve puppets: eleven wolves and one lycanthrope. They are all controlled by me.”
“Puppets? Huh, that actually makes a good lick of sense. That explains why you get back up if you're smashed."
Her words triggered a memory within me, from the time before I burned, and before the Other's memories became my own. Ah, so that's why she smelled familiar. "It was you that kept hitting me in the face with rocks!"
She paused, trying to recall what I was talking about. "Wait, you were the wolves chasin' Spike! You were gonna eat him."
"Meh, I was an idiotic beast back then, and the lizard did trip over the old pack leader's claws. What creature is dumb enough to trip over a timberwolf's leg?"
"Hey, don't insult Spikey-Wikey like that!" Rarity exclaimed.
"He was in my pack's territory; he should have known better," I replied, shrugging. Really, I had no idea why they were so upset for the sake of a lizard, nor did I care. "Anyway, Applejack, can we get moving? I need you to look at these trees."
"Zecora, are ya sure that he's safe?" the orange pony asked, looking over to the silently waiting zebra.
Zecora nodded. "Although I wouldn't trust him with my life, I am sure that Jack intends no strife."
"Zecoraaaa... I thought we were better friends than that."
She snorted dismissively. "He's turned over a new leaf, it seems. He now has his own hopes and dreams. There is no need for a heart of ice; I find that he can be quite nice."
Applejack looked at Zecora critically. "Fine. If ya think he can be good, I'll give him a shot." She turned to my wolf and waved to it. "Come on, you. Let's go take a look at your trees."
I smiled. Don't you worry, my allies; help is coming.
Now all that was left was getting clothes from Rarity. Granted, it was a much less important issue than the health of my allies, but it still mattered to me. "Rarity, Zecora told me that you're a seamstress, yet I find her claim suspect. If you can make great clothes, why are you not wearing any?"
"Excuse me?" she asked. Her tone was level and inquisitive, rather than defensive as I had expected.
"It's just that both Applejack and Zecora are wearing some adornment, and I have never seen Zecora without her jewelry, and rarely without her cloak. The wilted hunter is a poor partner; I see no proof of your supposed skill."
Rarity scoffed, "The forest is hardly the place for my creations. Why don't you come back to my boutique with me and we can make something for your... unique stature?"
How rude... "No."
"No?" Rarity echoed. "Why ever not?"
"My puppets cannot go beyond the forest's edge, and as for the real me, I am very much a part of the forest. If you think that your creations are too good for a forest dweller, then I should take my business elsewhere," I answered.
The seamstress's eyes went wide. I thought she was aware that she had offended me, and I had my suspicions confirmed a second later when she said, "No no no! I didn't mean it like that. The garments that I create are all very delicate. To wear them in a forest with unpredictable weather and all that mud and filth would destroy them."
"Then your products are inferior to my needs," I replied. "I guess I'll have to go back to making my own clothes." But ugh... tanning. Why does it have to involve fire?
"No!" Rarity shouted pleadingly. "Let it never be said that Rarity failed a customer's request! I accept your challenge of making extremely durable clothes fit for a forest king! Let's talk details."
We started out at a brisk canter, Applejack and my wolf. Soon, however, we had slowed to a trot, and then a walk, and then to a slow, methodical trudging. From the corner of my eye, I could see Applejack trying to bore a hole through my wolf's head with her eyes.
I think the worst of us came out when we were alone. For Applejack, the absence of Rarity seemed to disinhibit her emotions, as she glared at me with a mix of emotions that I couldn't comprehend.
The Other's memories supplied me with the concept of grudges, and I scoffed. What a horrible waste of time and energy. And yet, it shed light onto what I was observing from the Apple farmer. Did she hate me for trying to eat the lizard? Did I cross uninvited into her territory? Did I kill her family?
Actually, now that I think about it, none of those sound like reasons for protracted anger. If a wolf angered me, I would destroy some of their branches and be done with it. Simple, easy, quick, and clean. All would be forgiven that day, and we'd get over it.
My wolf's ears splayed back and a soft growl escaped its lips when I caught Applejack staring at me again. We hadn't even walked that far, and yet I was finding her company less and less tolerable as time went on.
I did say that being alone brought out the worst in us. Zecora, it seemed, had given me something solid to lean on, something to make me feel like a person. Whatever that something was, I couldn't find it here with Applejack. The beast at the core of my being was screaming at me to kill her.
"We're here," I growled.
"These are mah zap apple trees," Applejack declared.
"Then you are doing a terrible job of caring for them. They are sickly; one bad flood or one dry year could kill them," I retorted.
"Are ya saying that Ah don't know how to care for mah own trees?" Applejack yelled. Her voice had subtly changed; it was harder and more clipped sounding.
She really has no idea, does she? Pathetic. I scoffed, "Obviously. You are deaf to their cries, you choke them in packed soil, and you haven't fed them — not once, I see."
"Now yer just makin' stuff up. Trees don't need to eat food; sun, rain, wind, and soil are all they need," the orchard's caretaker said. "Mah family's been takin' care of trees for generations. There ain't nopony in Equestria that's better at growin' apples than Apple kin, and we'd all attest to that fact of life."
If I had had real eyes instead of these glowing green lights, I would have rolled them. I stepped up closer to her and put my wolf's muzzle right in her face. "You forget that you are talking to a carnivorous tree, and unless you feel like getting a personal demonstration of how I feed myself and my allies, you will. Listen. To. Me." I growled at her, letting the putrid, rotting breath of my wolf spill onto Applejack's snout.
She nodded.
"First, timberwolves have no stomach. Our puppets don't need to eat. Instead, we bring our kills back and grind them up for composted fertilizer, a fertilizer that we share with our allies, the zap apples. You have been neglecting to restore the nutrients to the soil," I told her.
She huffed, blowing her warm breath into my wolf's eyes. "Ah ain't killin little critters to feed some trees. If they want compost, they're getting the pony made kind."
"As long as they get the rotten compost, where it came from doesn't matter," I stated. "But that doesn't matter if the soil below is too hard. Normally, my roots' movement can break up the soil for them, but they don't have that here."
"We've got a plow, but that might cut into the roots," Applejack replied.
"Hmmm... That might work for the soil that's further away, but it won't help the nearby soil. You could add worms, but that might not be enough," I said. Hmmm... What to do? I know that Applejack wouldn't like it, but frankly, I care more about my allies than her.
My leaves rustled despite the lack of wind. I decided to go ahead with it. From within the hollow cavity in my wolf, it withdrew one of my fruit — an apple with a polished metal-like appearance — and quickly buried it in a hole I dug with my puppet's claws.
The orange farmer asked, "What are you doing?"
"Planting my seeds; these trees need an ally of their own and a dedicated caretaker nearby," I replied matter-of-factly.
"You're plantin' a timberwolf? Are ya tryin' to kill everypony on this farm?" she shouted, her voice as close to a roar as a pony could make.
"No." I turned to the zap apple trees, which were already sprouting their leaves again. "My allies, I ask of you, give a gift of magic to my offspring. Help him grow so that he may protect you."
I howled. As my voice spread across the orchard, I also poured my magic into the seed to both encourage it to grow and to direct the power of the zap apples, a power that I could feel rapidly building. All around us, the trees started sparking and popping as they built up their power. Then, with a mighty boom, hundreds of bolts of magical lightning struck the spot I had planted my fruit all at once. The power was so great that I could feel some of the energy be absorbed by my transmission seed and forced up the link and into my real body; it was an exhilarating feeling.
When the light died down and my wolf's eyes could see again, it spotted a little tree about the size of a small shrubbery, with a single transmission seed dangling from its lowest branch. I plucked the transmitter from its branches and then immediately cut the magic holding my wolf together.
It collapsed, leaving my seed unable to move, but it also provided my offspring with a supply of wood from which to built its own wolf. And build it did; the smallest sticks and twigs floated up and joined together to form a little pup small enough to fit in the surprised Applejack's hat.
My pup looked up at Applejack. Its eyes, formerly a pale green, turned vibrant the moment it spotted her. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but knew that it was the right thing. If it imprinted on her as Pack Leader instead of me, then I knew that it would not harm her.
It yipped and nuzzled up next to her, already trying to worm its way into her good graces. She stepped back, but it just moved along with her. Meanwhile, I worked on pulling wolf back together.
"My pup has imprinted on you," I told her as soon as my puppet was whole enough to speak. "You are its Pack Leader, not me. It will follow you and it will protect your trees with its life."
"Ah wish ya'd have asked me before ya went and planted one of yer kin right in the middle of mah orchard!" Applejack yelled. "What am Ah gonna do with a bloodthirsty timberwolf on mah farm?"
"Tame it," I answered. "It is the duty of the Pack Leader to enforce the rules of the pack. Give it food when it is good, and attack its tree when it is bad. That is what my former pack leader did to me, and what I do to my own pack."
Applejack snorted. "Ya better hope that this helps mah orchard and that you pup doesn't hurt anypony, because if it hurts me or mine, Ah won't hesitate to chop him down."
"That is entirely up to you, Pack Leader. Train it well, and it will reward you." I looked down at the little pup that was weaving its way through Applejack's legs. I barked, "Pup, protect Pack Leader and Allies." Then, I turned my attention once more to Applejack. "Come; we have zap apple trees to care for."
It occurred to me just after my wolf had gone off with Applejack that I had never attempted to split my intelligence like this.
The reason there is a limit to the number of wolves we could control at any given time is that there was a limit to our magic and our ability to control multiple puppets at once. I could produce as many transmission seeds as I wanted, but I could only control twelve at a time, and each feels like a limb that I’ve always had. Similarly, I can flail them around from the get-go, but I can only dance with practice.
But language felt different. As much as I could practice moving, thinking of strategies, and coordinating my puppets, I couldn't practice holding two conversations at once.
But it would be interesting to try.
"Well, I should show you what you'll be designing for, if you feel up to the challenge?"
Rarity nodded. "I am. I assume then that you don't want clothes for this... puppet, then?"
"Yes and no," I replied. Then, I bent my Lycan down until its back was lower than Rarity's. "Here, climb on. We have some distance to cover, and I think neither of us want this to take all day. Zecora, do you want to come too?"
The zebra shook her head. "No, I have potions that I must brew; go on without me, you two."
I nodded. After a quick exchange of farewells, I allowed Rarity to climb up on my Lycan's back. The moment she was secure, my puppet burst into motion and sprinted through the forest at an amazing speed.
The novelty of carrying a pony wore off soon enough, so I decided to ask her a few questions. "How did you levitate my flowers?"
"With my magic, darling," she replied. "All unicorns can do basic levitation once they mature enough. Some of them, like my good friend Twilight Sparkle, can do all sorts of impressive spells."
"Spells?" I asked. I envisioned her chanting and dancing around a circle, making my puppet's tail wag a little more from silent laughter. "How does one cast a spell?"
"Hmmm... You know, it's hard to put into words exactly what I feel for someone who isn't born already knowing the feeling. Let's see, I gather up my magic and squish it together in my core, then I form it into the right pattern and fill it with my desires, and then I push it out of my horn and into the very fabric of the world."
Well, that's nothing like how I would describe my own magic, which was more like a bendy branch that reached out and gripped whatever I wanted to hold. While it didn't vanish completely, the budding dream of me being a spellcaster died back down.
I ducked under a low-hanging branch and dashed between two trees. "What kind of things do you use your magic for?" I asked her. Even if I couldn't use the same magic as her — really, why had I even thought I could in the first place? — I could get some ideas anyway.
"I have a couple of cleaning and drying spells, a gem finding spell, and a..." She went on like that for a while, describing the magic she knew and answering my questions to the best of her abilities. Frequently, Rarity said that I would need to ask a pony name Twilight Sparkle for more information on the intricacies of magic that she herself didn't know.
The more I listened, the more disheartened I become. Her magic sounded so utterly unlike my own that I feared that I would never be able to learn it. Up until then, I had never considered using magic like that, and now I knew that her way of doing it was out of my reach. Well, at least now I'll have something to research regarding my own ability.
I suddenly halted my Lycan, eliciting a yelp from Rarity. We weren't quite in my clearing yet, but we were in my grove of ally-trees. The scent of my lure flowers was strong here, and against my puppet's back, I could feel her pulse quickening and her breathing deepening.
"Oh my... what a lovely place."
It didn't look like anything special to me, but I didn't know how ponies perceived the world. Maybe they could sense something that I couldn't. And, as if answering my unvoiced inquiry, Rarity said, "The zap apple trees are so gorgeous, with their rainbow fruit shining in the light! And the magic in the air — it's so much calmer than the wild magic of the Everfree. You live here?"
Setting her down, I said, "Yes, just up this way."
She followed me through the grove. We stepped out into the sun, a stark contrast to the dim light of the Everfree, and I heard a gasp.
Actually, it was two gasps: hers and mine. She was looking right at me with an expression of pure wonder on her face. Yet, at the same time, I could see her with my own senses, instead of my puppet's.
Unlike them, I did not see the world with visible light. Instead, my senses seemed to track some sort of weird light-and-smell hybrid that only appears in living things. It was a sense that the Other did not have. Perhaps it was some sort of magic sense, and I had simply not recognized it for what it was until now.
Whatever the case may have been, Rarity was brilliantly enticing to my body's senses. I would even go so far as to say that it was a million times more enticing than the manticore that I had killed.
With great deliberation, I forced Lycan to grab Rarity and drag her back into the grove of my ally-trees. "Stop! Unhand me!" She yelled, and I was sorely tempted to let her go, to let her move closer to my sweet blossoms, to rip out her throat and bleed her dry...
But I didn't.
I realized, as soon as she was out of my sight and I had my wits about me again, that I had never brought an intelligent being to myself. If magic had anything to do with intelligence — and my growth suggested that it did — then this painful thirst for blood might come back the moment anybody came near me.
The spike of loneliness sobered me up very quickly, and reminded me that I still had a squirming pony in my puppet's arms. "Rarity, calm down."
She huffed and went still. "How rude. What was that all about, anyway? I just wanted to take a closer look at that gorgeous tree. Was that you?"
"Yes, and while I thank you for the compliment, I must admit that I had a significantly less pleasant reaction to seeing you with my own... eyes, no offense," I replied.
"And by that, you mean?"
"An almost overwhelming desire to eat you," I bluntly replied. The bluntness stemmed from the fact that I was struggling to deal with what had just gone through my head, rather than a disinterest in tact. Upon seeing her face, which appeared just as shocked as I felt, I added, "I'm just as horrified as you are. No one has ever seen the real me before, not even Zecora. How was I supposed to know that you're look amazingly delicious to my real body's senses?"
With a shudder, my support of the puppet collapsed, dropping it in an undignified heap. In a worried voice, the seamstress asked, "Jack, what's going on?"
I didn't answer at first. Instead, I picked up the puppet, balled its fist, and then punched the nearest tree as hard as I could. The softer wood of my puppet shattered against the zap apple tree without harming it. Then, the splinters reassemble into my Lycan's fist and a I punched again. "Damnit!"
"Jack, stop!"
I whirled around and bared my fangs, and yet Rarity stood her ground.
"What has gotten into you?"
I forced myself to calm down from the sudden frustration. "I wanted this to be special. I wanted you to come and see me, to see what I've been making. I wanted you to see me, so that you could design something for a tree and its puppets to wear, and yet I freak out once you get here."
Thoughts and anxieties started whirling around in my mind, faster and faster. Fear bubbled up until my mind could focus on nothing else. What if she hated me? What if she told others, and I lost Zecora and any future companions that I might have? What if-
"Lumber Jack, calm down; you're panicking," Rarity's soft voice said. And just like that, I had an anchor in the maelstrom of thoughts.
"Do you hate me?"
"Why would I hate you, darling?"
"Because I want to eat you," I replied.
"That's not what your actions are telling me, Jack," Rarity said. "What I see is a scared pony — I mean, wolf — who just dragged me away from a potentially dangerous situation. If you had really wanted to eat me, don't you think you would have attacked by now? Instead, you're crying."
I was crying? Strange, I didn't even know that my puppets could cry.
"But I do want to kill and eat you really badly..." I paused. "I'm just more afraid of being alone."
Rarity put on a smile. "See, you're smart enough to squash those instincts. I think that says a lot about you."
"Thanks."
At that moment, something occurred to me.
The pup following Applejack and nipping at her ankles suddenly let out a strangled yelp and collapsed to the ground, unable to hold itself together.
A loud crack drew Applejack's attention to the spot further east in the orchard, where the pup's tree was growing. Or rather, had formerly been growing. Instead, the young tree was uprooted and clutched in my wolf's jaw.
It spat out the writhing sapling. "That was a bad idea."
Applejack's eyes went wide. "Ya... Ya killed it. Yer own flesh and blood..."
"It was for the best. I can always plant another elsewhere, where it isn't liable to go on a pony-killing rampage."
“What!”
“Later.” With that conversation forcefully ended, my wolf went back to digging through the dirt around the base of each of the trees. At the moment, I didn't really think about how my actions reflected back on me.
After calming down a bit, I apologized to Rarity. “I didn't mean to break down on you,” I added. Damn these emotions; they were so hard to control, and they kept changing on me. I felt like my mind was swaying in the wind of a storm, just hoping to survive without being knocked over or struck by lightning.
“Jack, it’s fine. If you don’t feel comfortable with me here, I can leave... provided that you show me the way back, of course,” Rarity replied. “Now, I know that you said you can’t go out of the forest, and you obviously wouldn’t want me nearby to take measurements, so... I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Do you know what a photograph camera is?”
I nodded.
“Good. Tomorrow, I’ll meet your puppet somewhere near where we met today, and I’ll loan you my camera and a measuring stick. Take a photo of yourself with the measuring stick against your trunk, and I’ll use that to figure out your proportions. Bring it back, and we’ll design you something quite elegant. And when it’s done, I want photographs of you wearing it! Ohhh, this is going to be such a fun challenge.”
I smiled at her. “You think so?”
“I do, dear. I’ve never made clothes for a tree before. Although, I do have a question: are you a mare or a stallion?”
Wait, what kind of a question was that? That made no sense. “I do not understand; I am not a pony.”
“No, no, what I meant was are you a male or a female?” She asked again. “I have specific designs for each gender.
“Again, I don’t understand. My flowers contain both male and female parts. All timberwolf trees are identical in this,” I replied.
Ok, I admit that I knew what she was talking about once she rephrased her question, but since I really had no preference or emotion regarding the Other’s idea of gender roles and I had no idea where I stood in regard to her people’s ideas of gender, it didn’t really matter what I dressed as.
“Hmmm, tricky,” Rarity replied. “Well, I suppose something more feminine would definitely fit better with those gorgeous flowers of yours. But then there’s your very predatory nature... oh, IDEAAAA~!”
I think that the first time that I honestly, truly started to see the full picture of who I was as a person was the day Rarity lent me her camera. Ironically, that development had absolutely nothing to do with the camera itself; I only made this revelation while I was holding it.
On a completely unrelated note, the first thing I noticed with Rarity’s camera was that it looked positively ancient. Not in the sense that it was damaged and worn out — no, it was actually fairly new looking in terms of wear and tear — but it looked like a camera from almost a hundred years before the Other was born. It had film but no built-in flash, and there was a crank to advance the film.
And with the minor revelation that I had absolutely no idea what sort of technology was available, I graciously accepted the Camera from Rarity’s magical grasp. "You just need a few shots?"
"Yes, one from each side. Make sure you hold up that measuring stick so that I can gauge your size correctly," She explained.
"This would be much easier if you could do it yourself," I commented.
"But I can't. I would have taken your measurements yesterday, had it all worked out." She paused, giving me a scrutinizing look. "Jack, about yesterday... Applejack told me something rather troubling about your behavior. About you uprooting your own child?"
"Pragmatism," I answered honestly, recalling the times before my burning where I had killed other pups, and once when I was a pup and nearly executed for almost ruining a hunt. "Cull the problem individuals at the root before they can harm the pack. Preserving the pack exceeds the value of any one person."
Apparently, I did nothing to assuage her worries; if anything, judging by her troubled expression, I only made her fears worse. "Is it not the same with ponies?"
"Of course it isn't! That's barbaric!" Rarity shouted back, quite aghast from my insinuation.
"Then would you prefer the death of one, or the death of many?"
"I would prefer to find a way end it with no deaths at all!" Rarity yelled.
"And if there really was no other option?" I counter.
Rarity gritted her teeth, her expression one of great frustration. "Then make one."
My puppet sighs while my leaves rustle in a nonexistent breeze. "Then, I shall try... I make no promises."
That seemed to placate her enough for now. A breath, far deeper than usual, passed through her lips as the rest of her face resumed a more "ladylike" expression. The seed of distrust was still there, but I could see in her eyes that she was giving me the benefit of the doubt and trying to bury her feelings.
Or at least, that's what I think. I'm still new to this whole "facial expressions" thing, and I based all the knowledge I have on an entirely separate species, so I could be wildly inaccurate. Only time will tell.
"I suppose that is all I can ask for. And, I'm sorry if I offended you; I should not be so short-tempered with a client, after all."
"It's not a problem," I replied.
The trees of the Everfree raced past my puppet as it ran. I found that by focusing all of my magic and attention on a single puppet, its speed and agility increased dramatically. The boost was never enough to fully compensate for the temporary loss of my other puppets in tactical terms, but when I needed to get one somewhere fast, there was no better option.
But, in cutting off all but one of my puppets, I found myself lacking mental stimulation, and so my thoughts began to wander. Thoughts about the conversation I had just had with Rarity were nowhere to be found in my mind; instead, I fixated on my plan to upgrade my Lycan into a mechanical construct.
I would need woodcarving tools and metal joints. A bit of paint wouldn't hurt either. And with an artificially crafted puppet, I could hide tools and weapons in it. Perhaps I could even add poisons, if Zecora was willing to teach me.
A name drifted up from the Other's memory: Sasori. I had no idea what it means, or how it related to my current train of thought. I filed it away for later pondering.
The Other's memories were extremely sparse on personal details. While I knew how to do a lot of things because of the Other, I barely knew who they were. I had no name, no gender, and no physical description. How old were they? What happened to them? Did they have family?
I don't know. It would be interesting to learn, but I'm in no rush at all to find out. If I never do, then there is nothing lost.
But I do have clues. The Other knew how to make moving mechanisms and they had a good understanding of motion and physics — it's where I cobbled together my trap-making skills from. And, when I cut open my prey, I seemed to know generally what every organ was. I suspected that they were something of an intellectual.
My musing was quite suddenly interrupted as I sense something pony-sized approaching my grove; the network of our roots below the ground detected its weight. My Lycan was approaching from the opposite direction, so I slowed it down and instead awakened the wolves nearer to my tree.
The entity is moving slowly between my ally trees. I feel the vibrations in my roots, but I cannot yet sense him directly with that strange hybrid-magical sense. Magiception?
I hated not having a word for something.
Regardless of what word I used, I couldn't yet "see" whatever it is in my grove, so I did the logical thing and sent a wolf to spy on it.
I quickly noticed the scent of fresh blood. The second thing I observed was that there was only one "set" of scents on the creature, which informed me that the blood was its own. Instantly, my blood lust spiked.
What a poor place for a weak and injured creature to wind up.
My whole grove was a trap. The scent of my lure flowers and the promise of food both from my branches and from the branches of the zap apple trees was too tempting for the woodland creatures to ignore. And since I rarely sprung my trap on the smaller creatures, they felt comfortable coming in. The larger creatures — the predators — were doubly lured in by both the plants and the smaller animals.
Occasionally, I'd get something as big as the injured animal, and I would spring the trap. An impulse passed down my roots and into the ring of trees around me. The wind picked up, guided by their magic to carry the scent of my flowers directly towards the spot where we felt our prey's weight on our roots.
The wind blew, and the creature stopped a second later. Inward it turned, heading deeper into my grove.
I finally caught sight of it, and what I saw further confirmed that this world was definitely not the Other's world. Walking through the trees of my grove was a creature that could only be described as a centaur, save for the fact that its face was more ape-like than the Other's depictions.
Quickly, my predatory instincts highlighted three key details: the large gash on its side and many smaller cuts across its body; the frail, malnourished form of its body; and the haggard, aged look in its face. Wounded, starving, and old: it was the hunter's trifecta. I grinned like a piranha.
And then the centaur finally came into range of my magiception, and its appearance to my senses blew me away. If Rarity made me hungry, this creature made me absolutely ravenous.
And yet I didn't strike at once. The idea that intelligence and power went together gave me pause.
Why hesitate? My allies asked. Kill it. Feed us. It took our fruit. Kill it. Feed us.
Yes, I had told them to activate the first stage of the trap; my allies were now just as ravenous now as I was. Lovable parasites, the lot of them. But it didn't matter if they egged me on or not; it entered my grove uninvited, I was already hungry from dealing with Rarity, and it was different enough from the people I knew and interacted with that I didn't have as much interest in preserving it. I was planning on eating it anyway.
Still, my curiosity made me continue to pause. If it really was intelligent, why did it not seek out a town to get aid and food? Why did it not graze in the forest? I'd seen Zecora eat plants she found, so why didn't it?
Maybe it wasn't as intelligent as I first thought. A pity...
An idea popped into my mind. With just a little magic, I plucked a zap apple from an ally and tossed it next to where the centaur had sat down. It rolled a bit and bumped into my trunk. The centaur looked down at the polychromatic fruit, and then at its point of origin. Not spotting me, it — or should I say he — shouted, "Who's there?"
"A denizen of the forest, and an inhabitant of this particular grove," I answered. "I don't particularly like you eating this fruit, but you look hungry. Eat, relax, and rest."
He relaxed a bit. "Thank you."
"I'm curious," I asked, "why did you not seek the forest's edge? A pony village lies not far beyond; they would have tended to your wounds and filled your stomach with more than just wild fruits and dank grass."
"Ponies are my enemies." He scowled. "I seek my vengeance against them for imprisoning me."
Well, that just sealed the deal, didn't it? I said I had learned something about myself that day, and it was at this moment that I did. In that moment, all my qualms about killing a sapient person vanished. Instead, I felt the protective instincts of a Pack Leader willingly give way to the murderous instincts of the beast that I am; in that moment, the Pack Leader in me agreed with the beast: he would be food.
I'll kill anything that threatens what's mine; that was a fact.
"What's your name, my guest?" I asked coyly.
"I am Lord Tirek."
"Lord Tirek... Interesting." It was then that I stepped out of the shadows with all twelve of my bodies, each speaking in unison. In Lycan's grip was his spear, the camera having been set down elsewhere. "I am Pack Leader Lumber Jack."
I readied my spear.
"Get Tirecked."
Perhaps that wasn't my best pun, but the sound the spear made a solid thump as it impacted my hard bark, easily satisfied me more. To clarify a little, the spear made that sound after having passed straight through the centaur's chest and the apple he was holding.
What a shot, I thought proudly. For it to have gone completely through, it must have just missed the centaur’s rib cage, where instead it cut through only soft tissue.
I walked my puppet up to the dying centaur and finished the deed. Blood pooled on the ground as I let it run from the corpse, but as it did, I noticed something very peculiar. The pierced zap apple, having been discarded, was touching the puddle of muddy blood and sparking significantly — I had never seen one of my allies’ picked fruit do that before. With every spark, more and more of the blood took on a mesmerizing rainbow coloration.
The rainbow blood trickled down to my largest root, which greedily drank the delicious treat. Like with the chicken-lizard and the manticore, I could feel magic in its blood seeping into my body, bolstering my magic. It was like liquid fire in my trunk, save for the fact that it was a pleasurable burn instead of agony, a sensation like what the Other felt after vigorous exercise.
And then it hit me quite like a blast of lightning. Actually, scratch that; it was lightning. A massive bolt of electrical magic shot out from my allies and struck the exposed knot of my root that was gorging itself on the rainbow blood.
And for the first time ever, in all of my memory, I fell unconscious.
Timberwolves don't sleep, period. We slow down at night to conserve energy, but we never really stop. That made the experience of waking up something rather unusual.
I didn't ache, as I had half-expected. Instead, I just gradually "rebooted" until I was fully aware again.
That's odd... As I took stock of my surroundings, I noticed that my entire grove seemed smaller. It took me a few seconds to realize that my grove hadn't grown smaller; I had grown bigger.
Again.
Seriously, I now towered over my fellow trees, where I knew for a fact that we were all about the same height before my burning. But even so, this level of growth was ridiculous. I'd just been growing faster than normal after my burning, not instantaneously like this.
I shoved the thoughts aside for now. With barely any effort, I cast out my magic to my thirteen transmission seeds and commanded them to hoist their bodies together. I needed their eyes to really see what's happened here.
They all come together, except for one, which was apparently gathering more wood from the surrounding area.
My mind freezes. "...ten, eleven, twelve... thirteen. I have thirteen transmission seeds now," I mutter through Lycan's mouth. So distracted was I by my extra seed that I almost didn’t notice that I was vocalizing my thoughts.
Thirteen finished gathering its wood and constructing itself, leaving me impressed with what I saw. Its form was that of Tirek's body hybridized with my wolves', but its size was that of both Lycan and a wolf joined together. The limbs were also burlier looking than any of my other puppets' or Tirek's own limbs. Composed of many branches and twigs, the limbs of my puppet gave the impression of dense, toned musculature, rather than that of a body slowly wasting away.
Speaking of Tirek, one of my puppets spotted a black pile of ash where Tirek once was. Quite suddenly, my whole mood plummeted. I can't say why, exactly, but the whole situation left a bitter taste on my roots.
And yet, I wasn't all that concerned over the fact that I had essentially just committed my first murder. Every part of me that was the Other screamed at me, saying I should feel guilty, disgusted, or something, but I don't.
During our design talk, Rarity kindly showed me the developed photos. I must say, in the light of the sunset, as fast as it always was, I had managed to take some excellent pictures, a fact with which Rarity seemed to agree. The fact that she wanted to make a whole line of clothes based upon my "wild beauty," as she put it, only served to inflate my ego.
I carefully omitted that I had hastily covered Tirek's scorch mark with dirt, and that I had hidden the bones of my prey.
"Rarity, something has come up," I said. "I know that Zecora gave you an idea of my budget, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to reduce that. I need to get some hardware tools — a saw, a hammer, nails, some sand paper, and the like. If you know anyone who would be willing to sell me some, that would be great."
"Perish the thought, dear. I'll loan you mine. I hardly ever use them, so it is no trouble for me," Rarity said.
My Lycan smiled. "Really? Thank you, Rarity. I'd love to get my own set, but this will do for now."
"You're welcome," she replied. "Now, if that's everything, I believe I'll be on my way."
"Rarity!"
We both turned to look at the source of the new voice. My Lycan's "ear" branches splayed back and it bared its teeth, but, upon noticing that there was no threat, I made it relax.
I'm actually ashamed that I didn't notice the pony until she was close enough to yell. I should have smelled her or heard her walking far sooner; she has no grace, as her hooves plod loudly on the ground.
Unlike the ponies or zebra I've seen, she has a pair of wings folded by her side, as well as a horn like Rarity's. I ponder how many varieties of pony there are, especially since this one is purple, like fruit.
I've never seen a purple animal, save for those stupid little ball-bugs.
I doubt that she'd like that I just compared her to a stupid little ball-bug.
Mercifully ignorant of my inner musing, the new pony cantered up to Rarity, who seems to recognize the newcomer. "Twilight, darling, how good to see you. What brings you out here?"
"Well, Applejack told me that you were meeting with an intelligent timberwolf, and I decided that I wanted-" Her gaze shifted to me. "-to meet him. You're Lumber Jack, right?"
Why do they always think of me as male? I would have thought that with no physical gender, they would have disagreed on which pronouns to use, but I'm always he.
Strange.
"Yes, I am," I said while shoving linguistic mysteries aside. "And you are?"
"Twilight Sparkle," she introduced.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," Rarity correct. "Twilight, you're royalty now. You should at least acknowledge it."
A princess? So she was the heir to the throne? "So you're the Beta to your Pack Leader?"
She hesitated a second, apparently processing my question. "Sort of. Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Princess Cadance would be the Alphas, and though I'm technically the same rank, I don't have the same authority," Twilight Sparkle explained.
"A Beta among Alphas. Interesting," I replied. "I do hope you can forgive my lack of tribute, though. I was not expecting to meet a Pack Leader today, so I carried no offering with me." I ripped one of my Lycan’s ear branches off and handed it to her. "Please, take this as my token of peace."
She took the stick in her magic. It seemed to instantly dry up a bit, wilting the leaves, as it left the control of my magic. "Umm... thank you?"
She set it on the ground next to her hooves. I’d half expected her to attach it to herself, like any other Pack Leader would have done, but then I remembered that she was a pony and not a timberwolf.
It was at this point that Rarity excused herself, citing that she needed to get back to her own work. Naturally, since that work involved the clothing I had requested from her, I let her go without complaint, and the princess did the same.
"Well then, if you wanted to meet me after just hearing about me, you must want something from me," I observed aloud.
"I have so many questions!" she exclaimed.
"And I have answers," I replied, "but they aren't free. For every question you ask me, you’ll have to answer a question I consider of equal value, and if I run out of questions, you’ll run out of answers, unless you pay some other way. Deal?"
"That sounds reasonable," the princess replied. "Here’s my first question: when and how did you become sapient, unless you were born that way?"
"How I became this way is as much a mystery to me as it is to you, though Zecora, a friend of mine, theorizes that it had something to do with the pulse of harmony magic that happened several months ago. The timing fits." After a second to phrase my question, I asked in return, "How much do you know about magic in general, not just pony magic?"
She smiled. "Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I know a good bit. My special talent is magic after all. Why do you ask?"
"With my intelligence boost came the understanding of just how little I know about how my body works; I want to find out more," I answered. "Now, to return the question, why do you ask? To clarify, what do you hope to gain from me?"
Her smile didn’t waver; if anything, it only grew wider. "It’s simple: I want to know why you are the way you are. An intelligent timberwolf is completely unprecedented! If we can find out how we came to be, we could learn so much about the nature of life, magic, and the soul!"
"Fascinating." A harmless lie, really. All I cared about was understand how my magic worked, and how I could exploit it to my benefit. If this princess wanted to try to unravel the mysteries of the universe while studying me, well, more power to her.
I doubt that she would get much. I wouldn't be letting her close to my real body anytime soon. And yet, by the same token, I knew that I wouldn't get much either.
What was that phrase? Ah, yes: c'est la vie.
Taur, as I had taken to calling my latest puppet, galloped through the forest as fast as I could make it go. Despite its size and strange center of gravity, it was surprisingly agile.
The sheer size would make hunting with it a challenge, if not a downright impossibility, but as a last-defense puppet to guard me, it would be fine.
There was something else that I noticed as I made it run. Normally, there was a measurable strain that comes with distance. My Lycan was near the edge of my range right now with Twilight Sparkle, and I could feel it. Yet, at the same time, Taur had run for a while now and yet I only felt a fraction of the strain I should have been at this distance.
I pushed forwards. If this puppet had a longer range than my other puppets, I needed to know that. Why it would be that way eluded me, but I suspected that it had something to do with what my allies and that centaur's blood did to me.
That too was a mystery. What exactly had that done to me? I got a new puppet, but I lost consciousness. As much as the prospect of gaining power thrilled me, the risk to my mind was something I wasn't willing to gamble on. Maybe Twilight Sparkle or someone she knew could help me figure it out.
The first time I encountered the Everfree’s most unnatural feature, I almost went insane trying to figure it out. And don’t even get me started on how aggravated it made my companion.
That is an exaggeration, but also an apt description.
Wait... Let me back up. A lot. It's actually a rather interesting tale, the one about how we got there, so I suppose I'll save the Everfree's fuck you to all reason, common sense, and sanity for later.
Rarity had just given me my clothes — It was a suit-like getup for my Lycan and some red, dress-like drapes for my branches; both were enchanted by her to help withstand the elements. They were gorgeous. — and, in the process, completely used up the bits I had budgeted for them. I was left with a half-dozen bits to my name and the knowledge that I would need more soon enough.
Princess Twilight Sparkle came to my aid when I told her of my financial status and how Zecora had no need for more of my flowers at the time. Said aid came in the form of Compass Rose, Ponyville’s local cartographer and surveyor.
"Ponies occasionally have to go into the Everfree Forest," Twilight explained to me. "Compass Rose wants to map the forest out so that we don’t get lost, and so that we can avoid some of the dangers of the forest."
Which meant... "You want me to guard her and guide her?"
"Exactly," the princess replied. She grinned in a way that reminded me of a lesser version of my own gotcha grin. "And the crown is willing to pay for your services."
"How much are we talking, and how many puppets would you need? The more puppets you ask for, the safer she’s going to be, but the fewer I have defending and serving me and my allies."
"You have twelve puppets, right?" Thirteen, actually, but I didn’t correct her. I had told nobody about Taur yet, nor had I told them about my project that I was working on through Taur, at the moment. "Then, how about four puppets, at one hundred bits each per day?"
"And how long would you need them?" I asked in return. Four hundred bits a day was excellent money, especially for someone with no living expenses. Granted, escort duty meant working non-stop, so the actual hourly wage seemed rather low. Of course, I had no idea what a livable salary was here, so my opinion may have been completely off-base. And yet — hook, line, and sinker — I was caught. There was no way I was backing down from that offer.
"That depends on how long it takes you to map out the forest in detail. We’ll nebulously say two weeks, although I expect to revise that estimate as time goes on."
We hashed out the finer details of payment and such. Three days later, I met Compass Rose at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. The zap-apple harvest had come and gone, still having lasted only a single day despite my efforts. However, the zap apple trees did look and feel healthier, and their good mood spread to me as I waited for my client.
An unfamiliar pony scent tickled my four wolves' noses. Looking upwind, I spotted the princess and an earth pony mare, burdened with a massive backpack, walking towards the spot where my puppets were waiting. I called out to them.
"Lumber Jack!" Twilight replied, picking up the pace. Her companion, on the other hand, stopped in her tracks.
"T-t-timberwolves!" she stammered.
Twilight looking back at her and sheepishly admitted, "Did I forget to mention that? Whoops."
"You must be Compass Rose; Princess Twilight Sparkle told me about you," I said as I stood my wolf up to meet her. "I am Lumber Jack, and I will be your guide and guard." I extended out a curled-up paw so as to mimic a hoof for a hoof shake.
She didn’t grasp it; in fact, she remained rooted in place, eyes as wide a saucers. No, that last part wasn’t an exaggeration; ponies eyes can, if they feel so inclined, widen enough to match small saucers. "What, wolf got your tongue?" I asked.
"You can talk!"
"And with great skill, I might add. I practice daily. Now, if you’ll put aside your surprise, I’ll explain what to expect."
She nodded. "Sure, but... this is going to take some getting used to."
"Obviously; I wouldn't expect otherwise." I quickly outlined some of the major hazards and challenges that we’d face. I also listed some of the major landmarks that she might want to see. Compass Rose, in turn, explained some of the things that she needed to make her maps, such as high vantage points and the location of the major geographical features — especially bodies of water — she needed for her maps.
As soon as the two of us were ready to depart, I hoisted up her bags and set them on my one of my wolves’ back. "Oh, uh... Thanks," she replied awkwardly.
"Don't mention it. Now come; we have well over three hundred and fifty square kilometers of forest to survey, and I’d rather get started with this sooner than later." Actually, Taur could go much further than that, but I wasn’t too inclined to show it off just yet. The two of us — five if you count each wolf independently — set off for the depths of the Everfree.
"Kilometers?" Compass asked, trotting alongside the wolf carrying her belongings. "I’m not familiar with that unit of measure."
"Oh. What system do you use for distances?"
"Hoof lengths and strides. My hoof is oh-point-nine-five hoof lengths long, and one stride is four hoof lengths long - about the length of an average pony’s body," she explained.
I guestimated in my head. "Which makes a stride about a meter long, and a kilometer just under a thousand strides long, which gives me territory about... 150 square kilo-strides. Give or take a little."
She gave me a curious look. "Wait... three questions: How accurate are those numbers, what shape is your territory, and does your ‘territory’ extend to the other side of the forest?"
"I’m guesstimating on those numbers a good bit, and simplifying for speech, but I’m fairly sure that they’re reasonably accurate. My territory is a circle around my tree, and no, I can’t get to the eastern edge. North, south, and west, yes, but not the eastern edge. Why?"
"Motherbucking exclusion zone," she swore under her breath.
Now what did she mean by "exclusion zone"? After swerving around a tree, I asked her.
"The everfree exclusion zone is, if my sources are correct, an area of the forest where wild magic surges up from the ground. If you didn’t know this already, magic in large amounts distorts space - it makes things bigger on the inside. And, apparently, forests. Worse, the effect gets stronger the closer we get."
"So the forest is bigger than you anticipated?" I supplied, though I figured from Compass Rose’s expression alone that I was spot-on.
"Yeah, and we’re going to have to at least find the upwelling so I can draw my map appropriately." She grumbled, "I wish I’d known; I’d have gotten a unicorn to come with us so I could more accurately measure the local spatial curvature."
Hmm... well, that explained some of the oddities that I encountered on my daily hunts, things such as routes that would logically be shortcuts actually taking longer, and other things of the like. "You know, I think I just might know where to start looking."
She looked up at me, eyes brighter than before. "Really? That’s great!"
"No, that’s what I’m being paid for."
We fell into silence for a while. My four wolves fell into a diamond formation, with Compass Rose at the center. As we walked, Rose would occasionally pause to take a compass reading, look at her various doohickies that were obviously magic but completely alien to me, or jot down some notes.
At one point, she stopped us and stated that she needed a better vantage point. I offered to lead her up a nearby hill, but she just shook her head. Then, without fanfare, she walked up a tree.
Let me repeat: SHE WALKED UP A TREE.
It was as if gravity had made a quarter turn just for her, save for the fact that her mane and tail cascaded down appropriately.
How?!
No... wait... "You’re psychokinetic, aren’t you? You stuck yourself to the trunk with magic."
"Bingo," her voice answered from inside the canopy.
"Is that normal for you earth ponies?"
"Not really," she called back. "Everypony can stick things to their hooves to some degree, but only earth ponies are strong enough to lift more than one eighth of their body weight per hoof. It takes a lot of practice to get strong enough to do this, though."
"Impressive. I wonder-"
*Snap*
My ear branches swiveled towards the source of the sound. It originated from somewhere opposite the tree, so I wasn't worried about Compass, but a snap that loud doesn't come without some weight behind the breakage. I sniffed the air.
The only large animal nearby was Compass herself, but the scent of rotten flesh and sap tickled my nose. Slowly, drifting at a quarter of the speed of the scent, came a familiar tingling sensation. I relaxed.
I barked a friendly hello. Slowly, three timberwolves emerged from the underbrush. North, the former Alpha and current Beta of my pack, controlled the two larger wolves, while Northeast, an Omega, puppeted the third.
I called them North and Northeast because that was how they were oriented relative to the real me. To them, I was South and Southwest, respectively. We didn't have names; we had directions.
North whacked the excitable omega with its paw. Silence, North growled. Respect betters, West.
Northeast whimpered and submitted to the beta.
Presence, why? I growled inquisitively.
Smell food, North replied, join hunt. Its head turned towards the tree that Compass Rose was in.
I could hear her breathing heavily, even from here, never mind the strong stench of her nerves. If I had had real eyes, I would have rolled them. Instead, I settled for temporarily dimming the glow of my wolves’ eye sockets. Not food. Is ally.
They gave me a weird look. I suppose that would be understandable, as I had used growl-yip — "ally" in the same sense as the zap apple trees — instead of growl-yip-yip — "ally" in the sense of a pack that works alongside your own.
"Umm... Lumber Jack?" the tree-bound earth pony called out.
Every wolf immediately looked her way, though I quickly forced my attention back on the two trees’ puppets.
Food! Northeast barked.
No! Is ally! I commanded, growling deeply as I dropped into a defensive stance.
"Lumber Jack, what’s going on?"
"Nothing, Rose," I replied. "These two idiots are from my pack, and they seem to think you’re food. All they need is a hint of light persuasion to the contrary."
Give food. Hungry, the beta snapped at me.
No food. I shook my four wolves’ heads.
GIVE FOOD, North repeated with emphasis.
Is not food! I barked back, but I don’t think North was listening to me anymore. North had been the previous alpha, before I took over. Though North wasn’t the best pack leader we’d had, it was a strong enough timberwolf that its reign was uncontested. But when I’d taken over, I think I might have left it with some resentment for me.
North, ignoring my command, sprung towards Rose’s tree in an attempt to scale it and bite her. Its wolves never made it. Outnumbering North four to two, my wolves quickly pinned the beta’s puppets to the ground.
With one of my wolves, I bent its head down and pressed its muzzle against the muzzle of North’s own. Ponies, zebras, and Other’s kind alike would call it a kiss, but there was nothing romantic about it. A tendril of my magic pushed its way deep into North’s construct and towards the other’s transmission seed. The moment it touched, we were connected in the most visceral, dangerous way that timberwolves ever could be.
I yanked. North’s branches — its real branches on its real body — groaned from the stress. I could feel North pulling back, but its attack was surprisingly weak.
No... I hesitated, and re-evaluated. No, North was not weak; I was strong.
I pulled harder.
*CRACK!*
North screamed in agony, and with good reason. I’d just snapped a second-tier branch clean off its true body. The beta would live, and the branch would grow back so long as the trunk and the roots remained unharmed, but the scar and the humiliation would leave a lasting memory.
OBEY ME! I snarled.
The puppets beneath my own nodded, and then fell to pieces as North relinquished control.
AND YOU! I turned to bark at the omega, but Northeast was already belly-up for me. Good wolf. Go to self.
With a small, frightened yip, the single puppet of the omega flipped over and retreated with haste. I nodded, satisfied. "You can come down now."
The leaves above rustled. Rose landed with four soft thuds on the spongy dirt below. "What was that all about."
"Politics," I answered simply, all the while trying not to show the pain I was in. I may have snapped some of North's second-tier branches, but the beta managed to snap a few of my third-tier branches in return. The difference was, if the Other's memories serve me right, equivalent to North having a shattered jaw, while I had a broken finger or two.
"Were they really going to eat me?"
"North — those two on the ground — was. Northeast, on the other hand, was just a pup who would do anything his betters tell it to do."
"It? Why it? Doesn’t that sound a little... degrading? Actually, are they smart, like you?" Rose asked. "Sorry, that just caught me a little off guard."
I waved a paw dismissively. "People are he, she, and they. Wolves are it, unless they are smart, like me, but I’m the only intelligent timberwolf." As an afterthought, I added, "Or at least, as far as I know."
"You don't know if there are others?" Rose asked me.
I shrugged. "Mmmm hmmm. One day, I felt like I was burning, and then Pop! There I was." I paused, struck by a thought. "Wait, how did I just do that?"
"Do what?"
"Say 'pop'. I don't have lips; there's no way I could even make that sound," I answered. Months of sapience and I only now questioned my ability to speak. Even when I had been practicing, I hadn't questioned it. "Bah, just another mystery. I'll deal with it later."
Compass Rose wrote something down in her notes. It probably had nothing to do with me. "If you say so," she replied. "Come on; let's get going before Chompy there wakes up."
"Chompy?" Whatever. I surrounded her and grabbed her bag, slinging it onto my wolf's back. "Ready."
"Without you, these herbs would be difficult to find. Your help has been so very kind."
My Lycan smiled back at her. "You're my oldest friend and an honorary pack member, Zecora; of course I'd help you."
The shamanistic alchemist emptied the satchel of herbs onto her workbench and sorted through them with a critical eye. Some she pulled out for immediate use, while she separated out the useful parts of the rest to store for later, discarding the useless parts.
As she worked, I picked up the discarded stems and leaves and began to weave them into my puppet's body. With little conscious effort on my part, they wove themselves in such a way that gave the appearance of tendons and muscles over my wooden "bones." Inspired by that, I grabbed some of her expired herbal powders and threw them in as well. To my amusement, the dust stuck, forming a skin-like layer.
"Hey, Zecora?"
"Yes, my guest?"
I asked her the question that was on my mind, thanks to my other puppets interacting with Compass Rose, "How much do you know about the magical upwelling in the forest?"
"In truth, I do not know much," Zecora answered, momentarily pausing her ingredient preparation. A brief silence fell as she searched her memories, with only the bubble of a cauldron and the crackle of a fire providing ambiance. "What I do know is such: there is a fountain of magic that surges up from the ground, capable of twisting all the life around. That is why the Everfree is so wild; the effects of such turbulent magic is not mild. In fact, I believe it to be part how you came to be; only near an upwelling could there exist a magical tree."
Interesting. It sounded like something worth investigating in more detail, if this upwelling was as powerful as Zecora and Compass Rose implied it to be. Whether it was something to covet or something to avoid, I knew not.
"Do you know where it is, then?" I asked. "My other puppets are escorting a cartographer as we speak; finding it is important to her maps."
"Sadly, I do not know where it could be; its location is something of a mystery," she replied.
Baffled, I asked, "But how is that possible? Surely something powerful enough to warp space and mutate the local flora and fauna would leave trackable traces."
"The upwelling is southeast of here; its direction is quite clear. And yet there is nothing more that I can say, for it seems to try and keep ponies away."
I cocked my head in confusion. "Hmm?"
"I mean that the upwelling does not want to be found. Any who walk near get turned around."
"How?"
She didn’t know. And so, with curiosity teased but ultimately unsatisfied, I made myself busy helping Zecora with her work. And while it turned out that I wasn’t very good at potion making, Zecora appreciated my help with her more menial tasks. And if sweeping, cleaning, and preparing ingredients let me spend more time with my best friend, well, who was I to complain?
Three days went by. Each day, there seemed to be twice as much conversation between Compass and I as the day before. That still wasn’t much, but it was nice to be on friendly, conversational terms with the mare, whom I was starting to consider a true friend instead of just an objective for money.
Don’t get me wrong, I was still protecting her primarily for the money. However, I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason now.
As for Compass, she seemed to be in an irritable mood. She loved camping, and she loved surveying the land, but she was always glaring at her map sketches now, as if attempting to burn them with her mind. Her instruments — and even the stars — were similarly scowled at.
Finally, I could take no more of it, and gave into my curiosity. "What’s with the angry looks?"
"This doesn’t make any sense!" She wailed. "All my measurements are wrong!" Unfurling her prototype map, which was nearly indecipherable thanks to the sheer amount of writing on it, she jabbed at a spot that was even messier than the rest. "That is where we should be, and there—" she jabbed at another, equally messy spot, "—is where we are. My compass and beacons in Ponyville say we are in one spot, and yet our actual, physical path couldn’t possibly take us to this spot."
"Is teleportation a thing?" I asked.
Her death glare focused on me. "Yes, but we didn’t teleport. I’d have vomited if we did." She shuddered visibly.
."Ok... Not that I don’t trust your skill, but did you account for curved space?"
"I did, but that still doesn’t match up with how we moved."
I puzzled over the map for a bit. Eventually, I asked, "Where was our last correct measurement, and which way were we going?"
Compass Rose tilted the map so that she could read it better. "Here, and 125° from north, a little bit more east than due southeast."
I compared that point to our expected and actual location. "We turned almost 90° clockwise, didn’t we? That’s one hell of a turn not to notice." My puppets frowned as an idea came to me, only to be reinforced as I remembered Zecora’s words. "What about mental suggestion? Or illusions? Could the forest literally be messing with our minds, in order to keep us away?"
"That—" She cut herself off, squashing down what I guessed was disagreement, based on her tone. "You might actually be onto something with that."
"Thanks!" I cheerfully replied.
"Come on, let’s get back there," she said as she started folding up her maps and stowing them away. "I want to see how this exclusion zone works — and now I see why they call it that."
Thus, Compass and my four puppets retraced our steps, and while I led, she kept a close eye on her namesake tool. Progress was slow, as we moved at a steady walk instead of a brisk canter, but eventually my companion called out to halt. "We just turned again."
Turning completely around, I examined the path we had just come through. And despite recognizing the plants that we had just passed, I could see no traces of our actual passage; there were no prints in the soft soil, no displaced branches or leaves, no snapped branches, and no scent. Our path simply didn't exist. In fact, no path existed — the area looked as if no animal had ever set foot in it. "Ok, that's not possible."
"What isn't possible?" Compass Rose asked, so I explained my observations. "Freaky. Hey, send only one of your wolves through so we can see what happens."
Agreeing with her plan, I sent off my weakest wolf puppet with the goal of walking in a straight line. It failed almost instantly. From its perspective, I was moving it in a straight line, but that was not at all what I was seeing from my other, stationary puppets.
Around the walker, the forest twisted in time with its movements, bending in such a way that my wolf could not visibly see the motion, as it was perfectly canceled out by its own movement. Whatever was making my wolf turn, it did a really good job of hiding itself behind the illusion.
"Why did you veer?"
"Didn't you see the forest bending?" I countered.
"What? No, all I saw was you suddenly turn."
Oh. She didn't see the same thing as me. That complicated things. I needed more information.
Frowning, I pulled my wolf back, and then tried again. This time, however, I walked my puppet with its eyes deactivated and black. Using only my observing puppets for navigation, I made the explorer trudge forwards, one step at a time, and carefully readjusted its position after each.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I made forwards, linear progress. Each step was harder than the last, for as I went on, I felt as if I had to keep spinning more and more in the wrong direction just to keep moving.
And then it vanished. Compass gasped. One moment, it was there, and then it wasn't.
Except, it was.
Let me explain: whatever defining line this effect was trying to prevent us from crossing, my wolf had just crossed it. The forest magic, giving up trying to ward us off and maintain the illusions, simply obscured my wolf from view.
My wolf, however, was still very much in the same place, and very much still under my control. So, I opened my wolf’s eyes. As their green light returned, I gazed upon what the forest never wanted found.
Along the highway leading out of the otherworldly city of Las Vegas, there are solar power plants. To picture them, imagine a lighthouse on a tiny island in a still sea. Imagine now that the water is now mirrors, and that the lighthouse was so bright that its beacon was, to the naked eye, indistinguishable from the sun. Now, imagine the warmth of the sun, that incredibly unique warmth, coming from two different directions at once.
That was what standing near this fence felt like. And although it was nowhere near as bright as the sun and the heat was nowhere near as strong, the only light it could possibly be radiating, judging by the color and warmth, was sunlight.
And yet, it was clear that unlike those otherworldly power plants, this four meter tall fence was not merely reflecting the sun, but actively imbued with its power. There was no logical way that such a radiant glow could pierce the veil of the tremendously thick canopy above, and so the only possible conclusion was that the fence itself was emitting the light.
"Sweet Celestia!" I didn't bother turning around to face Compass Rose, whom I had just led in using my other puppets. "What is this place?"
"The outside edge of the exclusion zone, if I had to guess," I replied, still in awe.
"I got that," Rose snarked, "but what's inside?"
"Dunno." I shrugged. "How about we look to see if there's a gate. Fences are meant to regulate movement, not completely restrict it. You could map the perimeter while we're at it, now that we can easily circumnavigate the zone."
A flurry of paper, writing utensils, and surveying equipment erupted behind me. Hurriedly, Compass Rose started noting down whatever was going through her head at the time. "Hes ho houh," she mumbled, a pencil between her teeth.
"What?"
Compass rolled her eyes. Spitting out the pencil, she repeated, "Let's go south — counterclockwise."
I nodded and walked in the direction she indicated. Two of my wolves took the lead, one walked with her, and the last surreptitiously fell behind. Stopping it, I made it look at the fence in more detail while the rest continued ahead.
The fence was old and worn, despite the glowing power it radiated. Vines twisted around each four meter tall iron beam, feeding on the delicious solar light that shone forth. At the ground, the soil showed signs of having been burrowed through by rodents of an unusual size.
The three puppets near Compass redoubled their guard upon this observation. They couldn't see anything yet, but that wasn't reason to be lax about safety. Being assaulted by a giant rodent would be significantly less funny in real life that it would be in the movies.
Still, in regards to the fence, I could easily say that it looked downright ancient, and yet, for it to be radiating so much energy, whatever was powering it must have been immeasurably strong.
For a moment, I contemplated squeezing through the bars, one piece at a time, but I decided to remain on this side, if only for a single nagging question: was this fence made to keep ponies out, or something else in?
That moment of stillness and indecision was broken by a flicker of movement from the other side of the fence. Instinct flared within me, and before I knew it, my puppets were sprinting away.
Only after we had halfway circumnavigated the exclusion zone did we discover a subtle but serious danger: the light of the fence really was sunlight. Compass Rose had been walking oddly, and it wasn’t until she swayed into me and hissed in pain did the both of us realize that she was developing a severe sunburn on the left side of her body, even through her fur.
Turning away from the fence, I quickly carried her into the shade of the forest. I made a point of searching for the coolest, darkest point, and, finding it in the shade of a large oak, I deposited her on the ground. Fishing out her blanket, I draped it over some nearby branches so that it would provide some extra shade.
Then, I took one of her canteens and emptied the water over her burned side to help relieve the heat. I knew that she would be in no condition to move anytime soon — in fact, I could already see the blisters forming. How long had she been in pain, to get burned that badly? Regardless, my next priority was getting her more water. Her current supply, minus what I had used on her hide, wouldn’t last her more than a day or two at the rate she needed to be drinking it.
“You should have said something!” I scolded.
“Heh, sorry, Jack.”
“Idiot,” I replied. “Listen, my other puppets are already going for help. Zecora might have something for those burns.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
Literally at that same moment, Lycan was sprinting through the forest towards Zecora’s hut. It wasn’t too far off from where it was currently, but it would still take me time to get it there.
Eventually, though, I did make it to her homestead. Pounding on the door, I shouted, “Zecora, it’s Lumber Jack! Are you in there?”
“Yes, yes, you lupine tree.” She opened the door. “Whatever could your troubles be?”
“Is there anything that grows in this forest that’s good for burns?” I asked. My nerves were clearly affecting my voice, and from her reaction, I guess Zecora in turn picked up on my frantic state.
“Yes. I might have some samples for you to see,” she answered as she turned towards her shelves. “Tell me, how did this problem come to be?”
“We found the exclusion zone. Turns out, there’s illusions that keep people away, but if you get past them, there’s a giant, glowing fence that gives sunburns. We were stupid and stayed too close to it for too long, and now Rose has a nasty, blistering sunburn on the side of her body.”
Zecora hummed in acknowledgement, as her attention was primarily affixed to the shelf. “Ah! While I know of nothing here that will heal burns specifically, I know of a plant that helps heal general wounds magically. While there is poison in all but the leaf, sunset blossom will provide relief.”
Pulling out a jar, she showed me some of the leaves and gave me a description of the plant as whole, as well as how to administer it. I then quickly committed it to memory. Immediately, I sent one of the wolves back with Compass to search for some.
“Thank you, Zecora.”
“You are most welcome, Lumber Jack. But please don’t knock so hard — you almost gave me a heart-attack.
“Sorry.”
My ear twigs twitched just then. There was a faint sound on the wind, carried into Zecora's hut through the open window. It wasn't distinct enough for me to identify just yet, but it was enough to catch my attention anyway.
I listened. "...but Twilight, what if ... to eat me? I mean, it is a ... you know. You said it yourself."
"It sounds like you have guests," I announced to Zecora, who hadn't reacted as if she had heard them approaching — not even with an ear flick. "If you don't mind, I'll take my leave."
“Now, now, don’t leave so soon; hearing them out may be a boon, although I didn’t expect them until late afternoon,” Zecora replied.
The approaching pair finally arrived at the door, announcing their presence with a simple three-beat knock.
It wasn’t Princess Twilight Sparkle who surprised me when Zecora opened the door; rather, it was her companion. I vaguely recognized him as the lizard boy that I’d chased once before Applejack smashed my puppet. There was a glint of fear in his eyes, and he stepped closer to the princess.
I bowed my head respectfully. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, how wonderful to see you again.” I plucked one of my flowers that I had taken to carrying with me, and gave it to her. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced, lizard boy.”
Said boy scowled. “My name is Spike, and I’m a dragon, not a lizard.” A puff of magical flame — horrifyingly familiar — escaped his lips. “See?”
A DRAGON?! A fire-breathing, living weapon of mass destruction against a forest? Terror crashed down upon me like a tsunami from my own, internal fears, memories I'd long repressed, and from the sudden screams of terror from the local plant life.
Fuck no!
Snarling, I lunged, grabbed the tiny dragon, flung it to the ground, and then landed on top of it. Using my weight, I forced its face into the dirt floor. I opened my jaw wide to bite its neck. Against my will, my puppet suddenly ceased moving. Bound by a magenta aura, I was helpless as my puppet was lifted off the damn firebreather.
“What the buck are you doing?!” Twilight yelled. “That’s my SON you’re trying to kill!”
The aura around my head faded, allowing me to speak. Yet I did not. Instead, I cut the magic flowing to every other puppet I had, save for the one tending to Compass, and pushed it all into Lycan. With that surge of power, I telekinetically hurled my lower jaw at the dragon as fast as physically possible. It struck with the force of a cannon blast, throwing the beast against the wall.
The magic around me vanished in an instant as Twilight teleported to her assistant, and then teleported the both of them away. In the last instant before she vanished, I saw her make a strange expression, a mixture of rage and worry. I was left to collapse in a heap while I reigned in my magic enough to control my puppet again.
As soon as I could move, I stood and called back the shattered remains of my lower jaw. There were some teeth missing, and I could only assume that they were now buried in the dragon’s body. Hopefully, he’d die — if not by the blood loss, then by the septic effects of my rotten bite.
Mind, this whole exchange could be measured in seconds — probably no more than fifteen. Thus, only now did Zecora react as her mind apparently caught up to the situation. She shouted something in another language that definitely sounded angry and insulting, even if I had no idea what it meant.
Then the rant started. Zecora was pissed at me, so much so that she completely abandoned rhyming. And while I felt ashamed for having done something to offend her, the content of her ranting — and the reason behind it — were effectively lost on me. Blah blah, don’t kill, blah blah, good dragon, blah-
I cut her off by grabbing her muzzle. “Let me just stop you right there. Good dragon, bad dragon, whatever — I don’t care. Neither does the rest of the forest. That thing is the manifestation of the forest’s collective fear of fire. The one dragon we can’t get rid of is bad enough; there is no way I’m letting another one anywhere near my home. I want him gone. Dead or just elsewhere, I don’t care; either would make us happy. And as much as I would loathe to lose you as a friend, I hate dying even more.”
“Understood,” Zecora growled once I released her muzzle. “However, there were better options. Twilight Sparkle is a reasonable mare; had you explained, she would have sent Spike away. She came here with information you might have found useful, helping you out of the goodness of her heart. Instead, you assaulted her kin.”
Oh.
Oh.
Shit.
I fucked up, didn’t I? My branches drooped dangerously low. I just assaulted a beta-alpha’s pup, meaning that there was an alpha-alpha above her that could come to her aid. And if Twilight Sparkle could render my puppet useless with just a thought...
My ears splayed back on all of my puppets, and my flowers all wilted. Fucking hell. I don’t think any gift I could possibly acquire would be enough to settle this.
“I’m screwed. I’m so very, very screwed.”
Compass perked up at my muttering. She swallowed the Sunset blossom leaves that I had gotten for her, and then hummed inquisitively. “What’s up?”
“Eheheh... nothing you need to worry about.” I paused. “Wait, no, perhaps we should start heading back to Ponyville. We should really get those burns looked at.”
She looked down at her burned side. The blisters were already starting to shrink thanks to the magical effects of the leaves she’d eaten. If progress continued like this, she might be fine within a few hours. Apparently, she had come to the same conclusion. “Why? I’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”
“Well, better safe than sorry, right?”
“Yeah... but I get the feeling that that’s not why you want me to go back.”
I gave her a pleading look. “Don’t. Just... don’t ask. Everything will be fine.”
Compass didn't believe me, I could tell. She sighed and let her head fall back down onto her pack, which she was using as a pillow. Her right hoof started digging through the pack until it fished out a small, round object attached to a wooden stake. “Before we go, can you go plant this near the fence? It’s a beacon, so I can find my way back here when we come back.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
I grabbed the beacon in one of my wolves mouth. It and one other wolf sprinted to the fence, taking care not to be sidetracked by the strange illusions. Breaking through the barrier, I strode up to the fence and, with a swift motion, I stabbed its stake into the ground. I would have turned back just then, but, with my puppet’s face as close to the bars of the fence as it was, and with the bars further apart here than they’d previously been, I had a nearly unobstructed view of the other side.
At the same time, the armored, deer-like creature on the other side had an equally good view of me.
We stared at each other, or at least, I think it was staring at me. I couldn’t see its face. No, I could see the front of its head just fine, but its face was mysteriously absent. The antler-like structures on its head flexed and stretched in very un-antler like ways. From its tail, longer than a deer’s tail should have been, a thick, green ooze welled up into a giant drop before hitting the ground with a splat.
“Nope.” With that one little word, I turned tail and ran.
It called out an instant later. The voice was loud and strong — a warrior’s voice. Like with Zecora’s rant, it was in a language that I did not know. Yet, it was enough to get me to stop and look back.
It now pressed itself against the fence. The bars were far enough apart that it could possibly squeeze through if it tried hard enough. But that wasn’t the most concerning thing about the situation; no, that honor went to the flesh around where the deer-creature’s face should have been. Said flesh was flowing outwards, swiftly growing into a lupine snout. In less than five seconds, its face mimicked my wolf’s, save for it being made of flesh and not wood.
I backed my puppet up a step. This was officially now the second most terrifying thing I knew of, just under fire.
It called out again. The armored being’s voice was thankfully normal-sounding. One would expect a strange voice to go with a strange being, but that wasn’t the case here.
“I... I don’t understand.”
An expression of recognition appeared on its copy of my face. Slowly, as if the words were very unfamiliar to it, it said, “Whhhaaat aaarrreee yooouuu?” The words were slow, and the accent was extremely thick, but I understood.
“I am a timberwolf,” I replied, enunciating carefully. “My name is Lumber Jack.”
“Nnnaaammmeee... Luuummmbeeerrr Jaaack.” Then again, faster this time, “Lumber Jack.”
“Who and what are you?” I asked back.
He — I called it a he only because its voice sounded masculine — was silent for a very short moment, as if translating what I said. Then, he replied, “Muzen. I aaammm flooowwwiiinnng stooonnne deer.”
And with that short exchange, some of my fear was already fading. I was still disturbed, mind you, but that feeling was steadily being replaced with curiosity. And with the realization that I might not have much longer to satiate my curiosity, I made a decision.
“Compass, we’re leaving right now. Can you move on your own?”
“Yeah, maybe. Why?”
“There’s an armored being on the other side of the fence. I don’t want to hang around any longer than necessary,”
“Wait, somepony’s in there?” She asked, voice tinged with surprise.
“It’s definitely not a pony.”
Compass frowned, but hoisted herself up with some effort. “Urgh. What about — *hssss* — your other puppet?”
“It’ll keep Mr. Armor otherwise occupied while we head back. Another of my wolf puppets will meet up with us on the way to Ponyville.”
“Good idea.” She took an awkward step, and hissed in pain. “Heh. That wasn’t as bad as a little while ago. Ah! Those leaves really are helping.”
Compassion got the better of me. I draped her blanket over my puppet’s back and told her to climb on. As soon as she was secure, I took off at as fast a pace as she could comfortably manage.
Without a doubt, I was feeling frazzled. I had long since stowed Taur and my other wolves away, while the two wolves escorting Compass and her mount were now practically on autopilot. With thirteen puppets worth of control now focused on just six, I was feeling a little better, but even that wasn’t enough.
Lycan came to a stop at the edge of the orchard, and the edge of my range. The addition of Tirek’s blood had expanded my territory slightly, enough that I could actually see the southeastern corner of Ponyville with my own eyes. It wasn’t enough.
Because of the teleportations and her wings, Twilight and the firebreather had a significant advantage in speed and avoidability. With their return trail cold, I followed their original walking path backwards to the town, hoping that I would run into them, but to no avail.
Increasingly frantic, I raced towards Applejack’s barn. Although I couldn’t leave my territory, she could. Hopefully, she was there and willing to convey a message for me. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully...
“Applejack!” I called out, having spotted her in the distance. “Applejack!”
“Lumber Jack? What’s wrong?” she asked civilly once I was close enough to converse without shouting.
“I messed up. I need to apologize to Twilight Sparkle, but she’s probably outside of my territory by now. Could you go and find her. You are her friend, right? You might know where she is?”
“That depends, why do ya need to apologize so badly?” Applejack asked pointedly.
“I acted rashly and accidentally offended her. Come on, please! I need to apologize before she decides to come and uproot me!”
“Fine. I’ll go find her,” Applejack answered. “But I think you’re overreacting.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but didn’t elaborate. What would have been the point? It wouldn’t make things better.
As Applejack departed for Ponyville, I knew that there was nothing more I could do here. A few steps to the side put Lycan in the shade of an apple tree, where I set it down and relaxed my control over it. It collapsed into a heap of wood.
The joy of dividing myself up into thirteen independent bodies was that you could have multiple opinions on things and try out multiple courses of action at the same time. While my Lycan confronted the looming threat of death-by-magical-pony-princess, my escort wolves were able to rationalize it as just another job constraint, and my wolf by the fence was able to ignore the problem completely. Not literally, in regards to that last one — there was only one me — but I could act as if there really was no problem at all.
Case in point: I wanted to see what was on Muzen’s side of the sunshine fence. Since Muzen was not immediately hostile and was clearly willing to converse, I inferred that he — now confirmed as a he by the visible presence of his, *ahem*, fruiting bodies — wasn’t currently a threat. Feeling safe enough, I slipped through the fence, one piece at a time.
Such an act seemed to amuse the “flowing stone” deer, for he smiled curiously. Or, more accurately, the copy of my puppet’s face on his head smiled in a way that should have been impossible, if it were actually made of wood.
Muzen set off at a brisk pace once my wolf was fully reassembled on the other side. I, having nothing better to do and nowhere more important to be at the moment, followed behind. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but honestly, at that moment, I didn't care.
I was probably going to die anyway if Twilight couldn't be placated.
The sun was swiftly descending, making its nightly voyage across the horizon, by the time Applejack finally returned with a very angry Twilight Sparkle. She stomped up to where I waited, but before she could shout, I collapsed into the deepest bow physically possible, then rolled over and opened up to expose my Lycan's transmission seed.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle, I beg of you, please forgive my insult against you. I had no idea that you cared for the firebreather so much."
I was being completely genuine. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have put my puppet at her mercy. Unfortunately, I don't think she took it the way I intended; if anything, I somehow pissed her off even more.
Oh dear.
"You're apologizing... to ME, for insulting ME? Why the buck are you not apologizing to Spike?! You almost killed him!"
I picked my next words carefully. I know tact would have been the best option, but I couldn't bring myself to lie to an alpha. Years of living as a beta taught me that lies only make things worse. "I do not regret attempting to take that thing's life. In the end, it is no longer in my forest, which is all I wanted. What I regret was that I was foolish and acted without knowing that you cared for it. I regret not knowing that you could have made it leave if I had only asked. For that, I am sorry."
The princess spluttered with rage. Magic erupted around her, creating a crushing presence. "You vile beast! Spike is a sapient being. He is not an it. You cannot hurt him!" She stopped, took a deep breath, and then, significantly more calmly, asked, "Would you have killed him if I wasn't there to stop you?"
"From the moment he announced that he was a vile firebreather, the whole forest wanted him dead. They scream and howl for his death. Even this orchard thirsts for his blood. I'm surprised that his apples haven't turned to poison in his mouth," I replied. "That dragon is the embodiment of the worst fear of the forest. We still remember the last dragon started fire. I still have the scars on my trunk from those cursed flames, and I likely wouldn't survive another dragon fire."
The farm mare, previously silent, turned towards her leader. I could see the realization dawn in her eyes. "Twi, let it go."
I didn't know a pony's head could move so fast. "Applejack?! Are you seriously agreeing with him?"
"No. But Ah'm not disagreeing with him either. What he did was very wrong, but why he did it was right."
"Why? Why? What could possibly justify cold-blooded murder?" Twilight shrieked.
"Trees can't run away." And with that one statement, Applejack summed up the entire mindset of the forest. I knew she meant it very literally, but there was a deeper meaning to that statement for me.
I could see the gears ticking in the princess’s head, and I saw the exact moment logic overwrote emotion. Her eyes went wide and her legs buckled. "Oh."
It didn’t stop there. Thoughts are funny things. One can trigger another, which triggers another, which triggers another in an ever expanding cascade of thoughts. Such an avalanche of epiphanies was happening with Twilight, I assumed, for her eyes kept getting wider and wider, and even through her coat, I could see her blanch.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” she said. Her voice was oddly mechanical. “I will be sure to keep Spike out of the Everfree forest from now on.”
I sighed in relief. “Pardon me, but what about, well, me?”
The lavender alicorn took another deep breath. “You assaulted with intent to kill someone who is effectively an Equestrian Prince. There may have been mitigating circumstances, but there is also your poor judgement. As I am too emotionally invested to uphold the law myself, Princess Celestia will be the one to decide your punishment. I have already contacted her; she will be here tomorrow. Return here, or we will be forced to come to your tree.”
And with that she turned and walked away without another word.
Applejack spared me a glance — a confused one, one that didn’t seem good or bad — before she too turned and followed her friend.
I slowly pulled my Lycan together and rolled it back onto its stomach before clambering up to a standing position.
“RAAGH!”
The receding pony scream of frustration sent the tree-bound birds flying. I silently decided that having someone that angry as my judge, jury, and executioner was probably really bad, and I thanked my lucky stars that I would at least be getting a calm trial.
While my primary focus was on Princess Twilight Sparkle at that moment, my lone wolf puppet was following the strange being known as Muzen. As we walked, my puppet’s ear twitched, focusing on a distant but approaching noise. Eventually, I realized that it was a combination of voices, hoofsteps on packed dirt, and might be wheeled vehicles rolling along. It wasn’t a sound I was intimately familiar with, and in fact had only been heard by my other.
However, I proved to be correct in my assumptions when the trees parted before us, revealing a busy dirt road. Deer like Muzen walked in both directions. Some were clothed, some were armored, but the vast majority were buck naked. Some were pulling carts, while others were walking with friends and holding conversations.
And every single one of them was missing a face.
If that wasn't odd enough, some of them were translucent, or outright transparent. Sure, Muzen’s short tail dripped slime and his body warped like it was clay, but seeing straight through them, some with only the faintest traces of internal organs visible, made me reevaluate them. Maybe the name “flowing stone deer” was more literal than I thought. All evidence pointed to them being a liquid species.
I really shouldn't have been so surprised. Between me being me and the different sapient individuals I’d already met, the logic of the Other’s world had already taken it up the butt and been made this world's little bitch.
Idly, I wondered if I could even make them bleed, and what would happen if I tried to drink one of them with my roots. I wondered other things too, such as how they lifted heavy objects without squishing, but that first thought stuck out to me the most.
Across the road, Muzen led me. I got many odd stares from the locals; even without eyes, I could tell they were watching me because of how their heads turned. They made absolutely no effort to be discreet about it. And, if being stared at by a faceless mass wasn’t disturbing enough, my instincts were suddenly screaming at me, telling me that there was something very, very wrong with this situation.
My wolf puppet, despite having no lungs, inhaled, pulling on the very air itself. The scent of the forest sharpened as I focused more of my attention to it. Something comparable to adrenaline filled my being. I sniffed once, twice, and then I knew what had scared me so badly.
They had no scent.
I could smell their cloth, and I could smell their metals, woods, and leathers, but I could not smell them.
I sniffed again.
Scratch that. I could; they just smelled exactly like the ground they were walking on. It was an earthy, rich smell, similar to fertile topsoil, but stronger than soil’s aroma should have been.
With that in mind, I relaxed somewhat. The lack of an immediately obvious scent still had me on edge. It was like seeing something without a shadow, when it clearly should have had one.
I realized with a start that I’d paused in the middle of the road, and the deer were impatiently moving their way around me. Muzen was staring back at me, his tentacle-like antlers beckoning me forward.
“Sorry,” I muttered quietly as I resumed moving. Once I got a little closer to him, I asked, “Where are you leading me?”
Muzen, with his face still mimicking mine, replied slowly, “I aaammm taaakiinng yyyooouuu tooo hhoommee. Grrraaannndfaaathheerr wwwoooouuuld wwwaaaannnt tooo seeee yyyooouuu.”
“Your grandfather? Why?” I asked, quite curious.
“Heee schoolllaaarrr? Teeeaachheeerrr? I doonn’t knooowww thee bessst woorrd. Graanndfaatheerr knowws common tongue beetteer thann meee.” He weaved to the left to avoid a tree. I did too, and was rewarded with the first hints of a village peeking through the gaps in the trees.
It was much like a medieval town, save for being made completely of wood rather than stone. More flowing stone deer walked up and down the narrow streets, chatting in their strange language and generally minding their own business. They still stared at me, but none of them were openly hostile.
As we walked, I spotted various businesses. Smiths forging metals, crasftsmen working on their various crafts, bakers making delicious-smelling bread. We were in the market district, apparently. I started cataloguing what was here. If I knew what they had, I could use that to make money (assuming the Princesses didn’t decide to kill first me for my mistake with the firebreather). Perhaps I could be a merchant for them, since I could navigate that barrier.
On the streets of the village, there were numerous blobs of green goo, none larger than a small cat, sliding about on their own. Many of them even looked like they were smiling with silly little mouths. On closer inspection, I noticed that each one was following a particular deer. “Are the little blobs pets?” I asked.
Muzen nodded.
I stopped near a blob and gave it a sniff. It had the same earthy scent as everyone else in this little town in the Exclusion Zone. The blob’s owner drew closer, as if readying herself to protect it from me. The blob itself, however, simply extended a curious tendril up to touch me. The moment it touched my puppet’s wood, numbness spread out from the point of contact. The branch dropped off of my body, no longer under my control. The green light of my magic no longer seeped from the cracks in the wood; it was totally inert.
I recoiled with a yelp, backed up, lowered down, and growled threateningly at the blob. Whatever it had done had cut my connection with that branch.
The blob backed up. Muzen said something to the blob’s owner, who scooped it up with her antler tentacles and carried it away. “Whhaat Haappeenned?” My companion asked.
“It blocked my magic from working on that branch,” I replied. Glancing about, I spotted a few broken pieces of wood propped up against a nearby wall. A quick thought summoned them towards me, where I affixed them to my face. From within their cracks, green light spilled forth. Cut as straight as they were, I knew that they looked awkward there, but I had no choice at the moment. “Why though?”
Gelal? He must mean the little slimes. “Then let’s get to your grandfather before I touch any more of those things,” I replied.
“I’m really sorry that we had to cut this short,” I told Compass Rose as the two of us traveled back to Ponyville.
“You keep saying that,” she replied. “And I keep saying that I’ll be fine. Those leaves you found for me are doing their job. I’ll be good to go soon.”
“Yes, well, I still think you should see a doctor,” I quipped.
“And I’m starting to think that there's some other reason you want us to get back so quickly,” she retorted. “Was it that armored thing you saw?”
“Muzen? No. He actually turned out to be harmless... Or at least not aggressive.”
“Then why?”
I sheepishly looked away. “Because I mistakenly attacked and broke something of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s and then offended her badly. Now she's called Princess Celestia to give me a trial tomorrow, but it's going to be a farce because you all think wolves are monsters, and she's gonna side with the purple one and they're gonna come and chop me down and I don't wanna die!”
“Jack!” she hollered. “Calm down! You're not going to die.”
“Yes I am!” I whined.
“No, she's not,” Compass assured me. “Princess Celestia doesn't execute ponies. The worst she’s ever done is banishing her sister-”
“She's gonna uproot me?!” I exclaimed, aghast. “Ahhh!”
“WILL YOU QUIT IT?! Princess Celestia is not going to uproot you either!”
I shut up, only slightly less panicked.
“Good. Now listen here: Princess Celestia is a kind, wise, and fair ruler. She does not banish, execute, torture, or imprison anything that does not deserve it, and she is known the world over for giving the benefit of the doubt. You broke something; they can fix it or get a new one — that’s no big deal. You said it was an accident, and Celestia will take that into consideration. I can’t imagine you getting anything more than a fine or a few hours of community service. It’s a slap on the fetlock.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I was calmer, though.
She sighed. “Look, if it’s any consolation, I’ll vouch for you. I don’t know you that well, but you’re making sure I get looked after and you’re bringing me out of one of Equestria’s most dangerous forests alive and uninjured by anything we reasonably could have expected. That says good things about you, and I want Celestia to know that.”
I cracked a smile. I wasn’t happy, but I was better. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
I just hoped she didn’t hate me after Princess Celestia called it attempted murder.
I was calmer the next morning, and not just because I had started bottling everything up again. My imagination was still tormenting me with visions of my own demise, but I was now at least dealing with it and not mindlessly panicking or slipping into denial.
The sun on my leaves was especially pleasant that morning, as was the mist that curled playfully around my branches. For a day that could be my last day as a free (or living) tree, It sure was a beautiful one.
Or maybe that was just me trying to distract myself.
I’m so screwed.
Nine of my thirteen puppets wait at Applejack’s orchard, tending to the ally trees to pass the time. Three of them — Lycan, Taur, and the largest of my wolf puppets — waited by my trunk as my last line of defense. All three of them were armed with spears and surrounded by the traps and wooden stakes I spent the whole night building. Call me paranoid, but I really didn’t want anybody coming near me today. As for the final puppet, it was still in Muzen’s town in the Exclusion Zone.
And then there was a flash in the distance in the orchard, calling my focus to the nine wolf puppets. They turned, and were greeted with the sight of a large, white mare with a rippling mane, a horn like a spear, and massive wings. Her scent was sweet and perfumed, like overly fancy cake.
Behind her, a dozen guards, some from each of the three pony tribes, march in sync. They smelled of sweat and tears, but surprisingly little blood. Still, each one of them was armed and armored.
But all that paled in comparison to the sense of raw power that I could feel radiating off of the Princess. It’s palpable. Constructed from magic themselves, my wolves trembled as her power interfered slightly with my transmission seeds. Worse, I knew the feeling of that power. Every plant did. It was the power of the sun itself.
It wasn't panic that wells up in me, but shame. One who was apparently the avatar of the life-giving sun has come to judge me. I couldn’t make my puppets meet her eyes. In fact, I immediately set them belly-up.
“You must be the puppets of Alpha Lumber Jack,” Princess Celestia said once she was within the range ponies considered earshot. I told her that I was. “Good. Please rise, Alpha Lumber Jack. There’s no need to roll around in the dirt.”
Hastily, I returned them all upright. “Apologies.”
“Do not fret about it,” she replied. “I do wish we could have met under different circumstances, however. Up until yesterday, Twilight had been sending me everything she had learned about you. Lumber Jack, you are quite fascinating.”
“Thank you,” I said. What else could I have said?
She motioned with a hoof. One of the guards presented her with a small box, which she in turn levitated towards me. She opened it and angled it such that one of my puppets could see inside. The box contained several strands of blue, green, purple, and pink hair — strands of her mane, I realized. “I recalled Twilight mentioning the exchange of gifts between leaders, and that you had offered Twilight a bit of yourself when you first met as a token of peace. I figured that it would be best to start off on the right hoof, so to speak. I present to you a few strands of my mane.”
I plucked the mane from the box. As far as neutrality gifts went, it was perfectly acceptable. I looped the strands around a wolf’s paw’s toe and rolled it such that it would knot onto that toe.
Having come prepared this time, I pulled out my own gift: a strand of lure-flowers and one of my metallic apples. “For you, my lures and my fruit — my pride.”
She took them and examined them closely. She took a deep whiff of my flowers — possibly unaware of the aphrodisiac component — and pulled them away with a noticeable blush on her face. As for the apple, she examined it once and then left it floating in her sunshine colored aura.
“Are you not going to eat it?” I asked. And though I would never admit it to her, I was slightly insulted that she didn’t immediately partake of my fruit.
“Ah, no. I was planning to save it for later and to share it with my sister,” the princess replied. “Thank you, though.”
“You are welcome,” I said with a nod.
“Now, since these are not the ideal circumstances that I had wished to meet you in, we have to deal with the real reason why I’m here: your attack on Spike.”
I shamefully hung my head, but said nothing.
“I have heard from Twilight Sparkle and Spike already. However, before I make any judgment on the matter, I felt it was only fair to hear your side of the story. Walk me through the incident. I understand you were at Zecora’s hut when Twilight and Spike arrived; you may start there.”
I made my puppets nod. I still couldn’t seem to meet her gaze, however. “Yes. I was at Zecora’s hut. I had been escorting Compass Rose with my other puppets. We were mapping out the forest, and we came to the Exclusion Zone.” Her eye twitched in time with a subtle fluctuation of her radiated power. “We noticed that we kept getting pushed off track, so I used my multiple perspectives to get us through the illusion that surrounded the area. We found a glowing fence.
“Compass and I started walking parallel to the fence in order to map it out, but soon we discovered that the fence was glowing like the sun, and that it had given Compass a nasty sunburn.” Here, Celestia’s neutral expression turned into a faint frown. I continued uninterrupted, “We decided to retreat for the time being. I sent another puppet to Zecora’s home, the one that Twilight saw, to learn if there were any plants that could heal Compass Rose. When I was finished, I heard Princess Twilight Sparkle and the fi- the dragon approaching. Zecora told me to stay, for she knew that they had something to say to me.
“Zecora opened the door, escorting them inside. I saw the dragon but did not immediately attack him. My only knowledge of dragons was the larger, winged variety, like the green one who lives in a cave deep in the forest. The dragon in Zecora’s hut looked nothing like that. In fact, I recalled him from before, from the days before I was sapient, when my former pack leader ordered us to hunt him. At the time, he displayed no fire, so I assumed he was just a lizard person. I stated as much.
“He took offense to that and blew dragonfire in my face. My wooden face. While in the middle of a wooden hut in the middle of a forest. He risked setting my puppet on fire, or worse, the whole damn forest. And in that one last instant, I recalled the pain of the last dragon-started forest fire, one I barely survived.
“The dragon had just declared himself a threat, one I couldn’t flee from. I had to fight... or so I thought. Zecora chastised me afterwards, saying I should have just talked to Princess Twilight Sparkle. At the risk of losing my friendship with her, I realized that I shouldn’t have struck the dragon, and went to go apologize to her.”
Celestia took a second to mull over my story. “I see. And am I correct in my understanding that when you apologized to Twilight, you apologized for offending her?”
“Yes, your highness.”
“And not for assaulting Spike, who I note you have yet to speak the name of?”
“He threatened my life, and the lives of my allies and my pack. He threatened the entire forest. And, though I didn’t know it until shortly afterwards, he threatened the city in the Exclusion Zone, too.”
Celestia blinked. For the first time since this interrogation began, her poker face had a significant crack in it. “City? What city? As far as I’m aware, nopony lives in the Exclusion Zone. Nopony can; the upwelling of magic distorts the flora and fauna into deadly monsters. That’s why I erected the fence and Luna erected the barrier illusion in the first place.”
“They aren’t exactly ponies,” I replied.
“Muzen, what’s the name of this village?” my distant puppet asked.
A second later, the flowing stone deer replied, “Eezdraug.”
With the name in mind, I continued telling Celestia, “Eezdraug’s full of the flowing stone deer. Nice people as far as I can tell, but they aren’t afraid of staring at oddities.”
“But... No, I’ll investigate that later,” Celestia says. “Regardless of the existence or lack thereof of this Eezdraug and these deer, you claim to have discovered it some time between this incident and now.”
“Minutes after my last encounter with Princess Twilight Sparkle, to be exact, your highness.”
“Which means that their safety was not on your mind at the time. Instead, it was your pack and your ‘allies’ that were on your mind. Are any of them as intelligent as you?”
“No, they aren’t,” I replied dourly. “I don’t see why that matters, though. I depend on them; they depend on me. If the dragon had his way, we’d all be ash.”
Celestia’s smile returned. “Thankfully, I have to disagree. Spike is only a young child, both in pony and dragon terms. He is too young to truly understand the repercussions of his actions, true, but he also holds no malicious intent. He suffered a few lacerations and a few lightly cracked bones, but nothing that he won’t recover from within the month. He also holds no ill-will towards you, as your friend Zecora spoke to him and made him aware of the foolishness of his actions. And yes, from now on he is barred from the forest; you may rest easy knowing that he will not be burning it down.
“However, that doesn’t excuse you. You attacked him with the intent to kill when a peaceful solution was not only available, but arguably more practical. This is not something that I can just ignore. But, this brings us the issue of how exactly to punish you. Imprisonment and house arrest are impossible, given your nature, as is the temporary sealing of your magic. Thus, I think an appropriate punishment would be eight hours of community service a week for a minimum of one month, to continue indefinitely until you genuinely apologize to both Spike and Twilight Sparkle and they accept said apology.”
My branches rustled and my flowers twitched. All of the wolves present cocked their heads to the side.
That was it? That was my entire punishment? Work and an apology? Hell, I was getting so bored lately that I was looking for work anyway. At least now I’d have something to fill my days with. “Yes, Princess Celestia. I’ll apologize to Princess Twilight Sparkle and... Spike.”
“Very good! Now, I’ll arrange something with Applejack, seeing as your range extends at least this far. If your range can extend into town, you may discuss with her about getting work there as well.”
“I understand,” I replied. Maybe it was time to publicly unveil Taur, given that its range was further than any of my other puppets.
Whatever Celestia was about to say next was interrupted by a flash of white light, in contrast to the golden light that heralded Celestia’s arrival. “Oh ho! What do we have here?” a new voice inquired. The owner of the voice was like nothing I had ever seen before, and that was saying something considering Muzen and the other deer. He was comparable to a chimera, true, but he was composed of far more component creatures. He also had a strange, cartoonish look to his body, which made him look rather comical.
“Hello, Discord,” Celestia said. Her tone wasn’t as cheerful as one would be if a friend popped in to say hello. It put me somewhat on guard.
“Celly, dear, who’s this little fella?” Discord asked, circling around my puppets, floating despite not flapping his mismatched wings.
“I’m Lumber Jack,” I said, using all of my puppets at once.
Discord blinked once. In the span of that blink, a miniscule fraction of a second, his asymmetrical face warped from a “curious gaze” to a “shit-eating grin.” I felt like his crimson eyes were piercing right through me and staring into my soul.
As I realized a moment later, that was exactly what he was doing.
“So that’s where you ended up.”
What did he mean? I voiced my confusion, and noted that Celestia also seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Have you ever wondered how you came to be?” Discord asked, drifting up close to my face. The cartoonish effect was gone; the creature before me instead looked very old, very powerful, and very dangerous, without having changed much at all.
“I’ll admit, I am curious.”
“And I’m curious about how much you remember of your old home,” he countered.
Well, if he wanted information for information, I’d play at that game. “Truthfully, not much. Some skills, some general knowledge, what I was, but nothing on who the Other was or what the Other did in life.”
“The Other. Fitting,” Discord replied, still smiling. He contorted around the puppet I was tending to favor in conversation. “The Other, as you put it, was a human from another world.” He popped his head up and looked at Princess Celestia. “No, Tia, not that human world; a different world. A darker world.”
He looked back at me. “A dying world. It ran afoul with my... estranged son. Neither ‘estranged’ nor ‘son’ is entirely accurate, but it fits for now. Anyway, little Oblivion decided to start snacking on your Other’s world — tore a great, big hole in it, he did — and your Other fell out of that hole and into the incomprehensible void between world. The local version of me, being the swell guy he was, tossed your Other my way to spare them an eternity of the madness of unreality. I shoved them into this world just to see what would happen.”
“And what did happen?” I asked.
“Well, only most of them made it. A few little bits and pieces of their soul got smeared across the multiverse. But, even if their soul imploded in here from the lack of structural integrity, it would have been better than unreality for them. Surprise, surprise, their partial soul latched onto a proto-soul, yours. Pretty sweet deal, if you asked me. One of you got their soul stabilized, the other got super intelligence, among other things, and to top it off, the Tree of Harmony even helped you close the wounds, so to speak.”
He vanished in a flash of light, reappearing above Celestia. “Oh, I certainly didn’t expect them to survive that well! I really should go check on the other souls I brought here. Maybe some of them survived as well! Oh, this is so exciting!”
With a flash, he was suddenly wearing a uniform that I recognized from Star Trek and was standing in front of a blue box that most certainly hadn’t been there before, but was definitely the TARDIS from Doctor Who. I didn’t even think those shows would exist in this world, but apparently he knew about them. Or if he was truthful about having a “local version,” as he put it, then maybe that one somehow passed along the knowledge. Either way, the sudden pop culture reference caught me off guard.
Discord stepped into the TARDIS, and, with a *gurgle gurgle gurgle* — definitely not a TARDIS noise — the time machine vanished.
And then a DeLorean appeared with a *glub glub.* Sticking his head out, a lab coat-wearing Discord addressed the princess. “Tia, despite what you’re thinking, and despite Jack technically being a demon by your overly broad definition, he is definitely probably not going to never potentially cause no problems never. Ok, for real this time, ta ta!”
He was gone again. Unlike me, however, Celestia and her guards were not looking at the spot where Discord had been, but at my puppets. Worry creased her face.
“Um... do you mind explaining?” I asked.
She sighed. Even her magical presence wilted a bit. “That was Discord, the reformed Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. He is a very powerful reality warper, but sometimes I question just how powerful he is.”
“And that bit about me being a demon and the Other’s homeworld being eaten?” I asked, very worried. Worry was becoming a prominent emotional state for me, it seemed.
“Discord was telling the truth, or at least some trimmed version of it,” Celestia replied. “If your soul is from another universe, then you do indeed fall into the very broad category of “demon.” A demon’s soul obeys different physical laws than a native soul, and can potentially be highly destructive because of that.
“As for that talk of that ‘Other’ you kept mentioning, while I can’t pretend to know the context of it, I can safely assume that he was telling the truth.” She shook her head a little; her mane stayed wavy, in defiance of her head’s motion. “Anyway, Lumber Jack, I appear to have more things to investigate than I previously thought. I will have to bid you farewell for now. Applejack should be in contact with you as soon as I get your punishment fully arranged. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet over more friendly terms. Perhaps once things have settled down, we should meet again for a more recreational get together. I’ll be in touch.”
I nodded.
She turned back towards her guards and started walking. In a low, soft voice, she whispered to her guards, “Contact the Paladin Order; add Lumber Jack to the watch list.”
I really don’t think she intended for me to hear that. She misjudged how sensitive my ears were.
On the evening before my trial with Celestia, I walked my wolf into the wooden house that Muzen pointed out. Compared to all the other homes here, it was rather unremarkable, bearing the same one-story design. Inside, it bore the same earthy scent that the deer and everything else bore. The deer that was leading me about said that this was his grandfather’s home.
For some reason, it didn’t smell like what I expected a grandfather’s home to smell like. Sure, that was a remnant of the Other’s memories, but I unconsciously expected it to stay true. And while unimportant in the long run, it was something that surprised me anyway.
“Sit.” Muzen motioned to a spot on the dirt floor. If I’d had a tongue, I’d have stuck it out at him; I am not some common dog.
The deer walked through a curtained doorway, leaving me alone for a minute, though I could hear him address someone in his own language, something that vaguely reminded me of a Scandinavian language, though I couldn’t be sure. The Other was an English native with a smidgen of French, and not even enough to be considered fluent; even if I could identify the language, I wouldn’t be able to tell what they were saying.
Looking around, I got the impression that I was in a very primitive place. Everything, and I do mean everything, looked hand-crafted and made on a budget. There were no luxuries, only a few furniture pieces and a set of cooking tools and plates. But, when you considered the fact that they lived inside a magical barrier, likely with no contact with the outside world, such a scarcity of luxury items made sense.
I grinned. If everyone around here was like this, I knew how to make money here. I could penetrate the barrier; I could facilitate trade between the two towns. If the town of Ponyville had a library, I’d look up some books on trade. I’d also need to speak with government officials about securing trade deals, find merchants and craftsmen willing to trade with me, establish a navigable path between the two towns, and figure out how to transport those goods.
The rustle of the patchwork curtain interrupted my musings. Muzen stepped out, followed by a shorter, portlier, and much more transparent deer. His antlers drooped, wrapping around his head instead of protruding up from it. “Greetings, my name is Juzu. I am the chief’s personal scribe and the village’s historian. My grandson seemed very excited to meet someone from beyond the great barrier, and I must say that I share that enthusiasm.”
His accent was incredibly thick, almost unintelligible, but he spoke at an easy pace that suggested he was far more familiar with the language than Muzen was.
“And I am Lumber Jack. My companion and I sought out this barrier so that we could map its location. We had to retreat when her health started failing, but Muzen here captured my curiosity here enough that I left a puppet behind so that I might continue investigating.”
Both Muzen and Juzu cocked their heads to the side. “Pardon,” Juzu asked, “but a puppet a child's toy manipulated with strings, is it not? I do not understand the context here.”
“Have you never seen a timberwolf before?” I countered. They shook their heads. “It is a puppet, controlled with strings of magic, and used as a tool and a weapon, not as a toy.” I proceeded to disassemble and reassemble my wolf to show them.
“Whhheeerrreee isss the puuuppeteeer?” Muzen drawled.
“Far away from here,” I replied. They didn't need to know more than that. “Do you not have timberwolves here?”
“No, we do not, though I vaguely recall stories of beasts similar to you, but they were just that: beasts,” Juzu answered. He sat down on the floor, and then motioned with his hoof. “Anyway, please sit. Make yourself comfortable. As unexpected as your company is, it is not at all unwelcome. Would you like something to eat? To drink?”
“No, thank you. My puppet doesn't eat, and I have food aplenty where I am. The evening sun shines warmly on my branches, and a cool breeze wafts across my grove. I am quite comfortable where I am, and comfort matters little to my wolf,” I replied.
“Branches? You are a tree?” Juzu asked. I replied affirmatively. “Fascinating. Tell me, what is the outside world like? We have often wondered what the world is like outside the great barrier.”
“I am not the best person to ask,” I replied. “I am a tree, the forest is my home. My puppets cannot go much beyond the forest’s edge. There is a village nearby, filled with colorful ponies that are a little smaller than this wolf in size.” Which also made them a tad shorter than these flowing stone deer as well. I could look Muzen right in the... well, eyes if he currently had them. How did they see, anyway? “What about you? What are flowing stone deer? I’ve never seen anything like you.”
Juzu tapped his hoof against his chin. His leg bent and twisted in order to get his hoof there, but the motion seemed to cause him no pain. “Hmm... Well over a thousand years ago, we were not one, but two races: The whitetail deer, and the geluv.”
“Geluv? Aren’t those the blobs I saw outside?”
“No,” Juzu corrected, “those are the gelal, a species related to the geluv. They are smaller and dumber than the geluv, mere animals. The geluv, in contrast, were smarter. Though they could not speak, they could understand the tone and intent of those around them, and could respond in kind. There were not many of them, less than a dozen at most, and they lived where we are now. Once, long before the barrier existed, and some time before the deer arrived, a strange phenomenon overtook the geluv. All but one of them found themselves drawn to a single location. There, their cores fused together into a massive, singular entity, far stronger and far smarter than any of the geluv that he was made of, and fully capable of speech. That was the birth of Hiram, our chief.
“Hiram, and the sole remaining original geluv, Smooze, lived together for a time before Smooze eventually vanished. Depressed, Hiram fell into a deep sleep. Many years later, a group of deer tried to make their home here in the forest, where they encountered Hiram. Thinking him to be a lake, a small group of does dove in, and awoke him. But, instead of devouring them, Hiram befriended the does. No one, not even Hiram himself, is sure of how it happened, but the does eventually bore his children. At first, they looked like deer, but they grew more and more like their father as they aged. They were the first flowing stone deer.
“Now, any doe that bathes in Hiram, or any doe born of Hiram’s bloodline, will give birth to a flowing stone deer.”
Fascinating, I thought. Hiram sounded like a living lake of slime, and yet he was their chief? Their alpha? “You’re hybrids,” I noted. Juzu nodded. “Wow. And is alpha Hiram still here? Can I meet him?”
“Not now,” the elder deer replied. “Juzu is with the exploring party. They are venturing deeper into the infinite interior to gather resources for the village. He should be back within the week.”
“Ah,” I replied, having little else to say.
A sudden wave of fatigue crashed over me, for the shadows around us had jumped as the sun began its nightly descent. With the shadows of my allies now spreading across my lower branches, my nightly drowsiness was upon me. I could stay active if I wished, but I had no real motivation. “The night’s come. I am feeling quite tired; do you mind if I place my puppet near the walls of your home, or should I take it elsewhere for the night?”
Muzen motioned with his hoof to one of the corners of the room. “Yooouuu cooould plaaace it theeere; weee dooo nooot mmmiiinnnd.”
“Thank you.” I made my wolf nod and then trotted it over to the corner. As I disassembled it for sleep, I said. “When the sun goes down, I lose my motivation to do anything besides conserve my strength.”
“I see,” Juzu said.
Now only a head sitting on a pile of lumber, I said through my wolf, “Thank you for inviting me into your home. Your hospitality is quite nice.”
“You are welcome.”
For the duration of my trial, I kept the puppet at Muzen and Juzu’s house almost completely inert. I’d made it climb up to their roof, where it perched, gazing lazily down at the comings and goings of the village.
Muzen had climbed up there too, and had brought his breakfast with him. I used the term “breakfast” lightly, as it was a weird mixture of leaves and shiny rocks that he was eating, not exactly what either I or the Other would consider a good breakfast.
As for conversation, I said hello, and then later asked for the village’s name, but other than that, I did not speak for the whole time that my trial with alpha-alpha Celestia was occurring.
Finally, though, my trial was over. But that came with the revelation that I was a demon in the eyes of the ponies. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, but the fact that Discord’s declaration had set Celestia on edge was in and of itself enough to make me wary in turn.
But I could always ponder that later. The danger of Celestia uprooting me had passed, and I felt good. I was here in a village that hadn’t had contact with the outside world in ages, one that had been unknown to the outside world as well. I could navigate between the two with ease. My thoughts from the previous night about becoming a merchant returned full force.
Now seriously considering making a career out of trading, I pulled my wolf puppet up and leapt off the short building’s roof. Turning its head, I looked back up at Muzen. “Sorry about that. I had other things to take care of. If it’s alright with you, I’m going to go exploring around town.”
Muzen stood up and then leapt down as well. He hissed when his hooves touched the ground, and then rubbed his side.
“You alright?” I asked.
He explained to me that he’d been injured on guard duty a few days ago, and was on leave until it healed. And while the wound had been mostly healed by the time he’d met me, it was still causing him a little pain.
“I hope you feel better,” I replied.
“I aamm nooot sooo innjuured thaaat grraaanndfaatheer and I caannot guuide yoouu,” Muzen replied. It might have been my imagination, but Muzen sounded like he was struggling less with his words than he was yesterday. Perhaps he just had to get back in the groove?
“You sure? I wouldn’t want to impose. You and your grandfather have been kind enough to me already,” I replied.
He nodded, saying that it wouldn’t be a problem for him or his grandfather at all; he was off duty, and with alpha Hiram gone, Juzu had no obligations to attend to.
A two or three minutes later, and with Juzu now joining us, I found myself walking along the gently curving road that surrounded the entire village. It occurred to me that for a road that went around an isolated village instead through it, the road was incredibly busy. I asked why.
“Eezdraug means ‘Ring Village’ in the common tongue,” Juzu explained. “Space grows as one moves to the center. While it is only a half day’s walk to the other side of the village by the outer road, one could walk forever in a straight line towards the center and not even make it half way. There are many towns deeper inside, and it is often faster to come to Eezdraug and then elsewhere than it is to go directly.”
Juzu later showed me a map of the known areas of the Exclusion Zone; the map was shaped like a cone. Eezdraug was wrapped around the cone near the point, while other towns that should have been logically closer to the “center” were actually much further apart; that made Eezdraug the literal center of their world.
I would hate to study geometry or topology here; that would be a nightmare. But, for someone aspiring to be a merchant — namely me — I couldn’t have asked for a better location to start my business. It was in the literal middle of everywhere, the perfect trade city. All of the carts being pulled on this road suddenly made much more sense. They were merchants and long-distance travelers.
“Juzu, you seem like a smart deer. Would you happen to know what sort of resources this village lacks? What it has in excess? There’s a village nearby that could be a potential trade partner, and I happen to be able to get across the barrier separating the two towns.”
Within two hours, I’d met a deer willing to loan me one of his older carts with the potential to buy, provided that I could secure some base monetary capital. There was the added benefit that the cart in question, despite its age, was made of wood; by placing my wolf’s transmission seed on the cart, I could puppet it as if it was one of my wolves, or, with a wolf nearby, I could levitate it.
I filed the sudden idea for a flying puppet away for later.
Over the next few hours, I met several other merchants, and got the same reaction from each. First came the shock of seeing a talking, wooden wolf; then came curiosity as I told them my proposition; and then came the response, which was invariably the same basic idea: I’ll trade with you only when you have money, goods, or a secure trade route.
The only money I had access to right now was Zecora through ingredient sales and Princess Twilight Sparkle, when I collected on what I’d earned so far escorting Compass Rose (and what I’d earn by the time we finished making the map); neither of those were tokens — the flat, carved disks of stone that the deer used. And the only route I had was an almost non-existent forest trail that couldn’t possibly be wide or flat enough to put a cart on.
Long story short, without that path, and without some tangible goods, I was dead in the water for Eezdraug.
The evening was drawing close as my Lycan approached Zecora’s hut. The satchel it carried bulged with the herbs and flowers I’d gathered for her.
I knocked on her door. “Come in, come in!” the voice of my zebra friend called out.
Pushing open the door, I smiled and waved at her in greeting. “Ah, Jack,” she replied. “How have you been?”
“Today went better than expected. I found something quite interesting deeper in the woods — a whole village, hidden away behind a magic barrier.” I set the satchel down on her workbench. “Here are your herbs for the week. I added a few extra of my flowers, too.”
“Thank you, Lumber Jack. For finding the freshest herbs, you have the knack.” Zecora smiled and peaked inside the bag. “Everything is here, I see. Here, let me jot down your fee.”
Zecora moved to write down how much she owed me for her finances. Normally, I let her manage my money since, with the exception of Taur, I could not send a puppet into Ponyville proper. However, tomorrow I was going to send Taur into Ponyville, and I wanted to have bits on hand. “About that. Could I have the bits myself?”
She asked me why, and I told her. She ended up liking my idea, and even gave me an advance on my payment. It meant not getting paid for the next month of herb gathering, but I ended up walking out of her home with nearly a thousand bits in cash right then. I balked a little at the amount she had sitting around — I had no idea that potion making was lucrative enough for her to have that much coin on hand.
I had capital now. That was the first step done.
On the morning after my trial with Celestia, Taur and Lycan strolled up to Applejack's orchard. Both of them were dressed in tanned manticore furs. Taur, unlike Lycan, also had sculpted logs serving as its body parts. They were crudely crafted, but still gave Taur a more animal-like appearance than the rough collection of branches it had been before. On its face, I’d placed a smooth wooden mask with only two eye holes, not for any practical purpose, but because I thought it would look cool.
I stopped them suddenly, barely three rows into the orchard. An unfamiliar pony’s scent, mixed with metal, polish, and burnt toast, drifted from up wind. It was strong; the pony was likely nearby, hidden behind the recovering ally trees. My Taur’s tail flicked, drawing attention to the manticore tail barb attached to it. Sure, it was the hollow shell sans the poison sacs, but the pony — whose gaze I could feel on me — didn’t know that it was harmless.
From a slightly different angle, Applejack’s scent approached. The thuds of her hooves on the packed dirt were completely graceless and carelessly loud, and yet so distinct to her that even without her scent, I was sure that I would recognize her by sound alone.
“Applejack!” I bellowed.
The hoofsteps accelerated as orange mare emerged from the trees, a smile on her face. “Howdy, Lumber Jack. Is that a new puppet?”
Shaking my head, I responded through said puppet. “Nope, I still have just twelve” I lied, “It’s a new design for an old wolf. This is Taur. I was planning on sending it into town to apologize to Princess Twilight Sparkle and... Spike.”
She whistled. “Twelve puppets. How do ya control that many limbs at one time? Ah’ve played with a puppet once, and Ah could barely keep it straight.”
My Lycan’s ears perked up, as did my branches. “I don’t. Each puppet can control itself to some degree. I think ‘do this’ and it does; I don’t have to consciously micromanage every piece of wood.” Turning their heads, my Lycan and Taur both looked towards the source of the other pony’s scent. There was “nothing” there. Well, nothing visible at least. Those four patches of grass near the base of the apple tree were obviously being pressed down by something. “So, who’s the invisible pony?”
There was a slight gasp from where the hidden pony stood. The grass beneath their hooves rustled.
“Oh come on!” I yelled. I moved my puppets to the side, putting them between the invisible pony and Applejack. “You’re worse at hiding than a jumping chameleon tarantula! And I eat those things for breakfast!”
The invisible pony grumbled; their voice was deeper than any pony I’d encountered so far. Swiftly, they faded back into visibility, revealing a lightly armored, blue light blue, male unicorn. “How did you find me?”
“Who are you and why are you here? Answers for answers,” I snapped, still not moving my puppets from their defensive position. Taur’s fingers twitched, anxious to draw the crudely made short bow and arrows that were currently serving as part of its forearms.
“Sir Clear Glass, Paladin third class of the White Order, here on the orders or Princess Celestia to observe you,” he answered stiffly. “Now, how did you find me?”
Both puppets tapped their noses, grinning as well as their wooden faces would allow. “Equines: a plains-dwelling genus with side-mounted eyes for spotting predators. Your primary defense: flight and magic. Your primary food: plants, especially grasses and grains. Your minds and bodies are built to flee from danger, not hide, and not fight. And you are definitely not built to hunt. Leave that to a predator. And definitely don’t try to fight your nature and hide up wind and in windblown grass from a natural tracker.”
Clear Glass growled at me — actually growled. “Do not growl at me, pup!” Taur aimed the short bow and nocked an arrow faster than the paladin could react. Sure, I’d probably miss and/or break my bow if I actually used it, but again, he didn’t know that.
I glanced at her with my Lycan’s eyes; Taur never averted his gaze from the unicorn, but he did lower the bow somewhat. Through Taur, I said, “Prey should learn not to growl at predators, unless they want to get bitten.”
“I am nopony’s prey!” Clear Glass shouted.
I snorted. “Applejack, I owe you a little extra time to pay for this.” And then, before she had time to respond, I phytokinetically ripped some of her apple crop off the tree above Glass and hurled them at his head. The impact against his metal helmet dazed him, but didn’t knock him out. My branches shook with laughter, as I’d managed to impale an apple on his horn. “Now you smell like the orchard. Stand on packed dirt next time, and maybe you’ll be able to hide from me.”
Turning back to my orange friend, I said, “Could you tell me where Princess Twilight lives? I need to get that out of the way.”
“Jack! Ah think you need to apologize to Clear Glass here first,” she demanded.
Oh, how I wish I had eyes to roll. Lycan spoke, “Lycan is staying here. Rant to it instead. I need to send Taur to Princess Twilight’s home.”
Applejack’s eyes narrowed, not that I cared what she was feeling at that moment. “Look for the large oak tree in the middle of town. She lives in the Golden Oaks Library.”
My centaur puppet’s head nodded. I sent it trotting off towards town. With my lycanthropic puppet, I called out teasingly to the fuming Clear Glass. “Oops. I’m splitting up. Which one of me do you follow, little predator? Which one do you leave alone to do nefarious, naughty things? Why, I might just convince Applejack to let me pollinate her orchard.”
The farmer grit her teeth. “Go. Ah’ll deal with this idiot here.”
The paladin nodded and chased after Taur. Applejack glared at Lycan.
“In my defense, A: I was joking; B: I don’t have any interest in mammalian sex, period; and C: I don’t have any ‘nads for you to buck me in, or for me to buck you with.”
Sadly enough, a buck to my Lycan’s groin does, in fact, hurt like hell.
As my second time entering a populated settlement, a glaring similarity to Eezdraug surprised me; namely, one of my senses regarding the population was missing. This time, I could smell them, but I couldn’t see them. This mystery was a little more easily solved, however, as a door slam nearby told me everything I needed to know.
That seemed odd, however. Every pony and zebra I had met so far wasn’t that terribly skittish. Had I really just met the bravest 1% of the population? Or was herd mentality here so much stronger than even mob mentality with the humans, or pack mentality with the wolves?
Whatever. Princess Twilight Sparkle apparently lived in a library near a large oak tree. If she was there, I’d find her. If she wasn’t there, she’d come home eventually and I’d see her then.
After few minutes of being stalked by Clear Glass as I wandered the strangely barren streets of Ponyville, I finally found the oak tree and the library. To clarify, the oak wasn’t near the library, it was the library.
All thirteen of my puppets and my real body shuddered in unison. I shed several leaves.
The oak was an insane, gibbering, howling wreck. Having your insides hollowed out to have a pony and a firebreather live inside of you would drive any tree mad with agony and fear.
At least Zecora had had the decency to kill her tree before living in its hollowed out remains. That didn’t bother me in the slightest, and I’d be a hypocrite if it did. This, though, this was inhumane... not that I was going to call her out on it directly. I’d probably want to put the tree down, though. How to get enough herbicide to kill it without alerting its inhabitants, though?
My ideas unvoiced, I knocked on the short door. Eyeing it, I realized that if I wanted to get into that horrid library, I’d have to duck so low that Taur’s hands would drag on the ground.
The door opened, revealing the wretched firebreather with bandages around his abdomen and rib cage. Any respect for him that I’d felt for agreeing to stay out of my forest was now gone. But, as much as I wanted to growl at him, to devour him and rid myself of the injured beast once and for all, I held my tongue and stayed my body. “Spike.” I hoped that my venomous emotions weren’t bleeding into my voice. “I have come to apologize.”
His eyes took me in from the bottom up. My wolf-pony hybrid lower half was larger than any pony save for Celestia, and my burly, lycanthropic upper half only added to my massive presence. The manticore fur cloak, the mane-turned-collar, and the teeth suspended on a dried entrail necklace only added to effect. The glowing eyes and featureless mask underneath the hood of my cloak sealed the deal. He gulped. “L-l-lumb-ber J-jack?
Good, the whelp should be terrified.
I nodded. My voice, likely magical in nature, rumbled more than it should have given my size and its volume. “Is Princess Twilight Sparkle here as well?”
“Y-yeah. C-come in.”
I bowed my head and stepped inside the mad tree. I wish I hadn’t; the tree’s screaming was louder inside, bordering on painful. Why oh why can’t the animals hear the trees?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clear Glass take a seat near the door, having not been invited in. Not that I cared what he was up to. So long as he didn’t follow me back into the forest, I didn’t really care what he did.
The firebreather called out, and the princess responded from the loft above. Meanwhile, I looked about. Books, thousands of them, lined the shelves carved into the very walls. A table sat in the center, atop which sat a carving of a horse’s head; both of which were carved out of the tree’s wood. Above me, the ceiling was painted with the sun mark of Celestia. Several candles dotted the room, and I could see a stove in a back room. The whole scene felt horribly morbid, like a shrine dedicated to the torment of an enemy, made out of said enemy’s still living body. The Other wouldn’t have been bothered in the slightest, but I found it all rather disturbing.
Twilight Sparkle trotted down the stairs, though her cadence was momentarily broken when she saw my unfamiliar form. “Lumber Jack? I didn’t expect you to come by this soon.” Her voice was flat and measured. I supposed that she was still mad at me for attacking the firebreather.
A scraping sound filled my ear, and it took me a second to realize that my puppet’s wood was grinding together. I unclenched my grip.
“I came to apologize.” Even with as much control as I could muster, my voice refused to come without the venom in my heart.
When I spoke no further, Twilight cleared her throat, as if prompting me.
“I came to apologize,” I repeated. “But I came in vain. There is no possible way for me to utter those words in this horrid place. This tree’s screams of pain are too loud for me to even think straight.”
And with that, I could stand it no further. The swish of my leather cloak and the tap of wooden claws on a wooden floor announced my departure better than any words could have.
I’d barely stomped a half dozen meters out of that mad house before a violet flash in front of me made me pause. That pony and her firebreather stood before me, having teleported directly onto my path. Glass, having obviously seen us, started trotting towards us.
“Lumber Jack, wait. What do you mean, ‘screams of pain?’”
I snorted. As if she didn’t know. Forcefully, I shoved her aside and continued walking.
She flashed her horn and appeared before me again. “Lumber Jack!”
“Out of my way, you fucking bitch.” I shoved her again, this time with enough force to send her slightly airborne.
For a third and final time, the alicorn princess teleported into my path. This time, however, she restrained me with her magic. “LUMBER JACK, STOP!”
Though my puppet’s jaw was restrained, I’d found that I didn’t really need it to speak. My magic alone was enough. “If you do not let me go this instant, I will burn my real self to the ground. Anything is better than that! I will not be gutted alive and be forced to house a fucking dragon and a fire loving pony!”
With a heave, I broke out of her spell like one would shatter glass manacles. In full gallop, my Taur stormed back to the Everfree Forest. How I wished that that name would hold true.
With a furious command, I ordered every last one of my puppets to retreat to my grove. I never looked back, so sure that I would see a face that I was growing to hate.
I worked tirelessly throughout the day, well into the night, and straight through to the next day. With a little coaxing, I’d managed to convince my allies to help me grow a patch of transplanted poison joke to extend all the way around our grove. The blue flower didn’t affect me, so it made for an excellent natural barrier to larger animals, including ponies. I’d also commanded my ally trees to strike airborne creatures; so far, I had four owls and six hawks all lightning-fried.
They were delicious.
I had some sharpened stakes that I’d made to be a barrier when I was afraid of Celestia coming and uprooting me. I looked at them now and realized how useless they would have been. Upon making that conclusion, I promptly began breaking them down to make spears. While clunkier than arrows for a bow, between my spear-thrower and my own phytokinesis I could chuck them with significant force and accuracy, to the point where I could fell a manticore in a single throw or spear a rabbit at ten meters most of the time.
With the puppets that I hadn’t dedicated to those two tasks, I furiously practiced two different techniques. The first one was instinctive, something that I had done with the other trees of my pack: wolf fusion. By synchronizing our magic and intent, we timberwolves could create a bigger, stronger wolf. I’d called North, Northeast, South, and West, my other packmates, to my side. Fused with them, I realized just how simpleminded they were in comparison to me, but I also realized that I could easily train them in tactics and such.
The other technique was one that I had just had the idea for the other day: flying puppets. My puppets worked on the principle that every piece moved relative to the transmission seed, but the seed itself couldn’t levitate without pressing one part of the puppet against the ground. But, I’d found that one seed could grip another. So, I reduced one puppet (the pilot) to a smaller form that looked like a spiny ball, and made it levitate the other puppet (the flyer).
First point of note: wooden wolves look really dumb while floating. Second point of note: I really needed to practice that before it would be effective, and I would likely have to construct a more radically designed puppet to make it effective in the air and in a forest environment.
Thus, I added another few things to my “to do/get if I survive” list: woodcarving tools, metal joints, paint (for awesomeness), blades, and projectiles.
And yet even as I was training myself down to the sapwood, and barricading myself into my grove, I worried for one simple reason: nobody was coming. Sure, only Rarity had ever lived after seeing my grove, but I’d imagine that they’d be looking for me by now. I mean, I was listening closely to the voice of the forest; if ponies set foot in here, I would think it would notice.
The Everfree didn’t particularly like ponies.
But no ponies were coming. I had gotten wind of a few poking around on the edge, but nothing that indicated that they were actually going more than a couple dozen yards in.
It. Didn’t. Make. Sense! I attack the dragon in self-defense, and they get all pissy and give me a whole trial. I attack an alpha and insult her, and I get nothing? What the hell is going on? What are they waiting for?
“They’re waiting for you to come out on your own, you know.”
Every single one of my puppets whirled around to face the source of the voice... and every single one of them ended up facing in a different direction. Still, even if I could not pinpoint its source, I knew immediately who was speaking. But how did he know what I was thinking? Is he a mind reader?
“Nope!” came the cheerful reply. “You’ve just been muttering to yourself for the past few minutes. Some would say that’s the sign of madness. I say that you’re just having a healthy internal monologue... or external triskaidecalogue, as the case may be.”
A flash of white light shone from my branches. When the light cleared, a colorful, mismatched bird sat preening itself, where no bird had been sitting an instant before. “Good morning, Mr. My-bark-is-worse-than-my-bite!” The chaotic being cheered.
I had no idea if that was an insult or not, and I couldn’t tell from his tone.
“Hello, Discord,” I replied courteously. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
The bird vanished. Next to one of my wolves, the familiar, cartoonish, serpentine spirit appeared. Grinning, he said, “Funnily enough, your neck is why I’m here. Specifically, why you keep sticking it out and expecting the ponies’ axe to fall. That attitude is going to get you killed far faster than anything the ponies would do to you.”
“And how would you know?”
The chaos spirit snickered. “Weren’t you listening?” With a flash, he and one of my puppets vanished from the sight of the others. The two of them appeared in an off-color version of Sweet Apple Acres. Celestia stood before us, as did... me?
Did we go back in time?
“Um... do you mind explaining?” the past me asked. At that moment, I couldn’t have agreed more.
She sighed, just as I had remembered. “That was Discord, the reformed Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. He is a very powerful reality warper, but sometimes I question just how powerful he is.”
Discord returned us to the present. “I’m reformed. Obviously, that means that I was something else before what I am now! Any guesses?”
Before I had a chance to reply, he said, “Nope! I was a Tyrant. I ruled Equestria and the whole rest of the world. I shattered ponies minds and filled the world with chaotic nonsense. Celestia and her sister defeated me, and when I broke free, the next bearers of the Elements sealed me away again. And then they freed me and managed to reform me. Now I have friends, and I don’t think I’d trade that for anything.” His eyes lingered on Taur for a long moment. “Anyway, if they can peacefully deal with someone like me, I think they can get along with you. Oh, and you’ve got mail.”
Another flash of light drew my attention. But instead of Discord’s white light, this flash was green. A solid, but muffled thump followed a split second after.
There, on the ground by my roots, was a scroll wrapped around a metal rod. One of my wolves moved closer and sniffed it. It smelled like sulfur, ink, and the firebreather.
I glanced back at Discord, who was happily munching from a box of McNuggets. He motioned “go on” with his claw, and then continued eating the bright pink candies he was pulling from the fast food box.
I picked up and unfurled the scroll using Taur. The metal rod fell out, but so did a small ceramic plate engraved with a set of strange symbols. My Lycan scooped the items up as Taur read the letter.
Dear Lumber Jack,
Hey, it’s Spike. I hope you get this. I can usually send letters to anyone I’ve met before, and I hope I remembered the feel of your magic correctly. Well, if you’re reading this, that means I got it right.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I was sorry for scaring you. I know you were supposed to say that you were sorry for attacking me, but don’t worry about that. I already forgive you. Dragons can be mean and scary — I should know, I’ve been picked on by bigger dragons. I should have realized that I was also included in that group of scary dragons. And you were just defending yourself and your ally trees(?), right?
I know I’d burn anypony that tried to hurt Rarity, Twilight, or any of my other friends. We’re not so different, you know.
But yeah... I forgive you, and I hope you forgive me.
Twilight’s sorry too. The library was like that when we moved in, so we didn’t even think about how the tree had gotten that way. If we’d known...
Well, we’re not living in the tree any more. Twilight cast a translation spell on it to see what would happen. I’ve never heard anything cry like that before, and neither had Twilight. As of today, we’re completely moved out. We couldn’t get out fast enough. You know Rarity, right? She’s letting us stay at her place for now.
Twilight wants to meet you to see if you have any advice regarding the Golden Oak. You are the tree expert here. If you’ve got any advice on how to best heal the tree, we’d love to know.
Ok, so Twilight just told me that you like making trades, and that you probably wouldn’t want to come out unless you got something in return. So we’re going to send some things with this scroll. The first is a magical lightning rod. Place it on the highest branch of the tallest tree near you (or you if you’re the tallest), let the spooled wire drop to the ground, and it will catch any lightning that might strike you. We’re also going to send a fire-protection charm that you can attach to yourself. It won’t protect against dragonfire (sorry!), but it will make you harder to burn with regular fire.
Twilight says to get a box and fill it with some of your allies’ seeds and put it next to you. If there is a fire, you can replant their children.
Lastly, Twilight and I decided that if you can help us save the Oak, we’d call the punishment Celestia gave you finished right then and there. This whole mess is, well, a mess. I mean, we were coming out into the forest that day to see if we could befriend you (and Twilight wanted to study you a bit and ask some questions). And instead... yeah.
Look, can we start over?
Hi, I’m the Great and Honorable Spike the Brave and Glorious. Yes, that’s my real, full title; the story behind it is really cool. You can call me Spike. I can’t wait to meet you. I’ve never met a talking tree before.
Until then, Spike the Dragon
I looked up from the letter, not sure what to think about it. On one hand, it was the firebreather. On the other hand though, Spike seemed genuine in his efforts to reconcile with me. Though I felt in my sap that I shouldn't go back, I knew that not finding out the truth was just as dangerous.
I looked over at Discord, who was limply draped over my branches and snoring softly. Despite his appearance, he was actually rather lightweight. “Discord.”
The chaos spirit awoke instantly, so fast that he couldn't have been asleep at all. “You finished? Good.” He stretched his back and snapped his eagle claws. Every one of my flowers exploded into confetti before regrowing almost instantly. It didn't hurt, surprisingly.
“Now, I confess to knowing exactly what's in that letter, and I think that it's great that they are inviting you back. I also do know that Spike is telling the truth. So if you want to go back and talk, feel secure in the fact that it's definitely not a trap.”
That wasn't reassuring at all.
“Of course, that brings me to the real reason I’m here. The real reason you're here. Tell me, what do you know about entropy?” the chaos spirit asked. The grin he’d been wearing throughout most of the conversation was still there, but it had changed. Maybe it was the way his eyes creased, or maybe it was the way his lips stretched just a tad too far upwards, but whatever the cause was, that smile was no longer jovial, no longer cartoonish. It was ravenous.
Still, I answered. “Entropy is disorder, and entropy always increases in a closed system. Perfect harmony is perfectly predictable, but utterly meaningless for the very same reason. Entropy, chaos, adds information that increases the base complexity of the system. In fact, you could say that entropy is information.”
A slow clap filled the air. Discord’s ravenous grin was even wider. “Congratulations,” he drawled, “you are the first in this world to ever understand that. Ponies, they look at me and fail to grasp the very core of my being. I. Generate. Chaos. Even their own bodies are chaotic waves on the sea of spacetime, disturbances in the aether.
“But they don't understand. They hate me for my chaotic ways, when chaos to me is like sunshine to you. Imagine having to live in eternal twilight for the sake of your friend. I do it because she's worth it, but now I’m very hungry.
“And then you came along, Lumber Jack. Dear Celly currently thinks you're only a lesser demon, constrained by the rules of this world. And so long as you don't dissuade her of that notion, she won't hurt you at all.”
“But I’m not,” I realized.
He motioned with his lion’s paw, a clear invitation to go on.
“Whatever I am, whatever happened to me and to the Other, we together are somehow dangerous. And we're an unknown.”
He repeated the gesture. The wicked smile adorning his face was slowly growing wider the more I spoke. I was on the right track, then.
“You said you were the one that brought me here. I’m a new variable, a new point from which chaos can spring forth from.” I paused. “You can't make chaos the way you used to be able to, so you brought the Other to make it for you.”
His slow clap filled the air again. “You really are a clever tree... when your fear isn't making you stupid and blind.” With a snap, he made a vial, a cork, and a zap apple appear in the air in front of him. “In fact, for being so clever, how about I cook you a little treat? You’ve already had a similar recipe before, I can tell.” Again, his eyes lingered on Taur; now, I’m certain that he knows how that puppet came to be.
With his eagle talon, he stabbed his lion wrist. Molasses colored blood poured out of the wound, which was deftly caught by the floating vial. He rubbed his wounded wrist, and when the claw pulled away, the hole and bloodstains were gone.
Twirling the zap apple next, he peeled the skin off it and let it fall to the ground, where it turned into lovely little worms. Grasping the fruit’s meat, Discord squeezed. Zap apple juice flowed out like water from a sponge, and again, the vial caught the fluid.
He swirled the contents of the vial and held it aloft. “Would you kindly zap this for me?” he asked aloud. The nearest one of my allies fired a bolt of lightning at the vial.
When my vision had cleared, I saw that the vial’s contents glowed with a rainbow of colors. It was mesmerizing to watch.
With a quickly uttered thanks, Discord corked the vial. “Tada! Draconequus-type timberwolf growth formula, just for you. It's far more potent than that centaur-type you drank earlier.”
Yep, he knew, I thought.
“I wouldn't drink it until I’d unlocked my full potential, if I were you. Most can't handle pure essence of me without bleeding out of every orifice and going stark raving mad.”
I raised a wooden eyebrow, and all my branches swayed closer. “What potential is that; how would I unlock it; and why would it make me go mad to drink before I’m ready, but not afterward?”
He merely grinned — jovially this time — and floated up next to my trunk. “Spoilers.” With a talon, he traced a short line down my bark. My sapwood parted like split fabric. It didn’t hurt, but damn if it didn’t feel weird. Then he clawed out a thin chunk of my dead heartwood and replaced it with the vial. Finally, he sealed my sapwood mostly back together. I could still see the light of the vial through the slit, but without hurting myself, there was no way to get at it yet.
His claw traced out the words ‘When the time is right’ on my bark. The bark blackened to permanently stain the words onto me.
I growled softly. “You know I’m not killing anyone for you, right? It’s obvious you want me as a pawn, and I don’t mind so long as I’m getting something worth my time, but I’m no assassin. Nor am I a terrorist.”
“Spoilsport,” he said, rolling his eyes. And by that, I mean that his eyes completely spun in their sockets. “You had to go an ruin the mood. No, I’m not going to ask you to kill anyone. The last time I tried that, it backfired spectacularly. Trust me when I say that a double rainbow friendship laser to the face hurts like nothing else. No, I’ve washed my hands of murder, assassination, and all that nastiness. And yes, you are a pawn to me, one that is far more valuable to me alive and healthy. I’ve already invested time and effort into you, and I don’t want my investment ruined. It’s just — title drop —economichaotic.
“But I should point something out. I know of this one mare, a necromancer with the innate ability to raise the dead and devour souls. The ponies hated her for her abilities, and made her hate herself despite her attempts to use her powers for good. Only a few old laws kept her out of jail, and she was only a pony. Imagine what would they would do to someone who is, in the eyes of the law, nothing more than a beast, if you acted on your particular cravings?”
My branches and flowers drooped, the equivalent to blanching for humans.
“Now, I think I’m finished here. Stay calm, stay useful, and stay safe. I’ll see you ‘round.” With those parting words, he flashed away, leaving me without the chance to say anything else. But damn if I didn’t have questions that I still wanted answered.
In the silent seconds that followed, I was suddenly aware of just how strong of a presence he’d had. If Celestia had felt powerful, then I have no doubt that Discord was in a league of his own. For the first time in my life, I looked up at myself and shuddered at just how small I felt. For all my years, both as an animal and a person, I’d felt that I was the top of the food chain. Here, that wasn’t the case. But, if Discord was right, then maybe I could move up a few positions. I’d have to be careful, though.
My attention was drawn back to Spike’s letter and gifts. Enchanted items, supposedly. If they were real, and they really did offer some protection, I’d have to look into getting some more of those for myself. Hmm... well, if video games taught the Other anything, it was that you had to perfect the three S’s to survive: Skills, Stats, and Shields. Power and skill meant nothing if you can’t take a hit.
With a little effort, I had the lightning rod mounted on my highest branch, and using the attached string, I hung the charm from my lowest branch. It actually looked nice next to the cloth drapes I’d commissioned from Rarity.
The wind shifted. The new breeze came from the west, not the south, and was slower than it had been a moment before. And with the wind slower, I heard something that I couldn’t have heard before: voices.
I tensed, and every single one of my allies, both zap apple and pack, tensed as well. And when a significant grove of trees in the Everfree all go on the defensive at once, the forest takes notice.
The wind stopped blowing. The animal noises went silent. The forest held its breath and readied itself to face the danger.
“That isn’t normal, is it?” a scratchy pony’s voice said.
I cussed silently. Taur and Lycan readied their spears. Maybe I wasn’t so well off. Maybe they were actually coming aft-
A voice interrupted my thoughts. “Nah, it ain’t.” Wait, that was Applejack’s voice. My spear points dropped slightly. “Ah don’t like it.”
“The Everfree feels scared,” another unfamiliar voice said, this one shriller than the AJ and the other mare. They were getting closer, too.
I sent my puppets forwards with great attention to stealth. It wouldn’t do for them to give up the element of surprise.
“But what could scare a forest? Especially a scary one like the Everfree?” That was the third unfamiliar voice I’d heard. Now they were close enough that I could make out their individual hoofsteps. Three... four... five... six. Six ponies, and one of them was wearing armor, judging by the noise he made. That must have been Clear Glass.
One of my wolves spotted them first. Six ponies were trotting through the forest, as I expected. The armored male was at the front of the group, followed by a rainbow-maned pegasus, Rarity, a pink earth pony, a yellow pegasus, and Applejack at the rear. Something about the smaller pegasus seemed familiar, but I couldn’t recognize her scent.
“Ugh, all this poison joke wasn’t here when he brought me this way the last time,” Rarity complained.
“How do you know we aren’t lost?” the rainbow one asked.
Rarity pointed back over her shoulder. “I remember that tree. It was very distinctive looking. But there wasn’t any poison joke here. Why don’t we go back?” She looked at the yellow pegasus. “Fluttershy, darling, do you want to go back, because I really don’t want to be here.”
The pegasus — apparently named “Fluttershy” — didn’t get to reply; the other pegasus beat her to the punch. “Come on, Rarity. You said it yourself; he only got upset when you went in his grove. As long as we stay outside, we’re fine.”
The white unicorn rocked her head side to side. “Well, yes... but we are a little too close for comfort, Rainbow Dash. I don’t know how far is “far enough,” and I can already smell his flowers in the wind,” she replied.
My puppets stepped out from between the trees. “You’ve come far enough as is. I hate to be rude, but you should leave; you are trespassing on my home,” all thirteen of my puppets said in unison, from every angle. The ponies were completely surrounded and outnumbered over two-to-one, and I wanted them to know it.
“Lumber Jack! How good to see you!” Rarity exclaimed, though I could tell she was putting on a brave face. “Though, you’re standing in poison joke, you know.”
“I know,” I replied. “I planted it.”
“And might I inquire as to why you planted so much of such a dreadful flower around here?” Rarity asked. Her eyes, and the eyes of every single one of the ponies I’d surrounded, were affixed to the spears I was brandishing and the wolves crouched around them.
I jabbed towards Clear Glass. “To keep out pesky ponies that might have more unsavory intentions towards me.”
“I assure you, we’re here to do nothing of the sort. My friends here just wanted to get to know you and to see if you were alright.” Rarity paused momentarily. “Truthfully, I didn’t want to come here, but we had nowhere else to start looking for you.”
I lowered the spears and barked the “stand down” order at my pack and my allies. “Rarity, thank you for your concern. If you must know, I am only now really getting to know myself, and I’ve found that I’m a rather panicky person.” Motioning to the poison joke, I said, “Panic, pragmatism, and paranoia don’t make for a very inviting combination, I’d assume.”
“We’re really sorry that we scared you,” the one they’d called Fluttershy said. “We didn’t mean to make you upset. Nopony had any idea that the library tree was like that.”
“It’s fine. Really. I was thinking about going back to town soon anyway. I guess it’ll be sooner rather than later.” I looked from Fluttershy to the other unknown ponies. “So, care to introduce me?”
The rainbow one flared her wings and donned a cocky grin. “Ha! I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer in all of Equestria.”
Fitting name.
The one with the shrill voice went next, dashing up, grabbing, and shaking my Lycan’s paw. “I’m Pinkie Pie! Nice to meet you! What flavor of cake do you like?”
Non-sequitur much? Whatever. “I can’t taste sweet at all. Cake is pointless.”
Her mane deflated with an audible raspberry noise. In about a second and a half, the now straight mane had lost all its poof.
“Now you’ve done it...” Rainbow Dash groaned.
“Cake is pointless?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Pointless?” Her mane suddenly re-inflated itself. “Cake is never pointless! If you can’t eat sweet cake, I’ll make you the world’s first savory cake!”
Rainbow Dash grunted in surprise; apparently, that wasn’t what she was expecting. I made a mental note to ask later about what Pinkie’s deal was with cake. Then, putting that aside, I faced the last mare, the one I thought seemed familiar for some odd reason. “And you must be Fluttershy, right?”
Fluttershy nodded.
“Well then, it’s a pleasure to meet you all. But, um, why did you come looking for me in the first place? And why so many of you?”
Rarity stepped forwards and turned so that she could see all of her group as well as Lycan and Taur. “Well, Fluttershy here noticed that Twilight was really upset, and managed to find out what happened. She felt that she had to come and see you. As I was the only one who’d ever been here, I had to be the one to navigate for us. Fluttershy and I are not the strongest of individuals, so Rainbow Dash and Applejack volunteered to come along and protect us from the forest. Pinkie tagged along because she wanted too. As for Mr. Clear Glass, I’m not sure.”
“He’s probably here to observe me and protect you all. Celestia’s orders,” I said, to which he simply nodded. “Anyway, do you want me to walk you back to town? I needed to do some things there anyway, things that I’m upset my panicking made me put off for so long.”
They all agreed, and so we set off for Ponyville. Rainbow Dash trotted up to one of my wolves as we walked. “So,” she began, “why’d Princess Celestia want a paladin of all ponies watching you? It seems a little suspicious if you ask me.”
“Oh, some offhand comment Discord made spooked her. According to him, she thinks I might be some sort of demonic creature from beyond the void here to suck out your brains or something. It’s utter nonsense, but she believes it enough to send the predator wannabe here to watch me,” I flippantly replied.
Rarity shuddered. “Dear, don’t even joke about demons. Princess Luna was possessed by the Nightmare once, and every unicorn grows up hearing all the horrible things that can happen if you try to summon a demon of any sort!”
“Hey, Glass, what is a demon, anyway? I get the feeling that what you’re all describing isn’t what I’m picturing,” I inquired.
The paladin glanced over at me. “A demon is any soul that doesn’t obey this world’s rules, and are exempt from the standard life and death cycle. Some have bodies. Some don’t. Some are created inside this universe, and some come from the void. Most are harmless, but a few others can break the fabric of reality without even trying.”
“Then something like Discord?”
He nodded. “Discord is the strongest demon to ever manifest in Equestria, and the only one to endure every weapon ever thrown at him unscathed, save for the Elements of Harmony.”
For of the other five ponies, sans Fluttershy, smiled at that. “We got him good,” Rainbow Dash said.
I raised a leafy eyebrow on one of my nearby wolves.
Rarity answered my unvoiced question. “We, as in everypony present excluding Clear Glass, but including Twilight Sparkle, were the most recent bearers of the Elements of Harmony, a set of magical jewels that could purify, seal away, or destroy threats. Though, we had to return them to the tree of Harmony to purge away the plundervines that attacked recently.”
Tree of Harmony? Now that sounded interesting. Dangerous to me, possibly, given what I knew about myself now, but interesting regardless. I recall both Zecora and Discord mentioning it briefly, but I hadn't given it serious thought until now. “Anyway, Discord said he was reformed?”
Fluttershy spoke up. “Yes. Discord and I are very good friends now. We meet for tea every week.”
So she was the friend Discord was restraining himself for, which was odd considering that she sounded like she’d been involved in defeating him before. Obviously, these Elements of Harmony were a weapon, but a now defunct one. But if they really were defunct, then why was Discord so restrained? Did her friendship really mean that much to him?
Possibly.
Timberwolves have no concept of music, but humans do. Humans cannot split their focus, but timberwolves can maintain one distinct train of thought per puppet. Mash those abilities together and throw in some idle humming as we walked through the forest, and you have a one-man improvisational a cappella group. Well, if you can call synchronized noise music, that is. Still, my caterwauling seemed to impress the ponies enough that they walked out of my forest with smiles on their faces.
I cut off the pseudo-tune when the majority of my puppets could walk no further, much to the others’ collective disappointment. “That was fun. You should practice and get better at it, Jackie. I’m sure ponies would love to hear you sing for them,” the pink pony told me after I’d sent most of my puppets back.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied. “Hmph. Jackie. That’s kinda cute.”
Pinkie beamed.
I turned and addressed Rarity. “Could you come with me? I need to patch things up with Twilight and Spike, see what I can do about their tree,” — in that I’d try to convince them to put it down — “and then I want to talk to you about something I found that could make us both a good bit of money. Applejack, you too, now that I think about it.”
“Oh, do tell,” Rarity said. “I’ve been looking to open a shop in Canterlot, and a little extra capital certainly wouldn’t hurt.”
Taur crossed its thick arms over its bulky chest. “Tell me, have you heard of Eezdraug, the village hidden in the leaves of the Everfree?”
Of all the Everfree’s species I’d been considering cultivating to defend myself, poison joke hadn’t been my first choice. I’d been planning defenses from the first day, but only recently had Zecora imparted enough knowledge of the Everfree’s organisms for me to make a choice. In the end, it was the easiest to care for and one of the few that wouldn’t hurt me or my allies as well.
Originally, I’d planned to use thundercap or wondercap, two closely related species of magical mushroom. Both grew in rings, and both were extremely lethal to those that foolishly stepped into said ring. I’d lost, and subsequently been forced to regrow, the transmission seeds of wolves that accidentally wandered inside.
Subsequent investigation told that they only activated when something living was inside their circle and above the level of the caps. I’d rolled a seed in each without problems, but the moment I lifted it to take it out, the traps spring. Thundercap, as the name implies, fires bolts of lightning at the intruder, a purely defensive mechanism.
Wondercap, however, is downright malicious. According to Zecora, wondercap rings create illusions that lure mammalian creatures in (I don’t see them), and the moment that they cross the border, they get whisked away to somewhere else, never to return. Where? I’m not even sure it’s a real place. Mix Alice in Wonderland with a great acid trip; that’s basically what my wolf saw before the connection was forcefully cut a few seconds later when the transmission seed simply stopped working.
But, while I may not use them for defense, I know how to make and use a substance I call “fairy dust” out of wondercap. It’s useful for getting rid of particularly stubborn problems that a spear or claw alone can’t fix, and it’s something I have started cultivating for myself.
The mare that I was looking at now barely resembled the mare I had seen the other day. Her mane and coat were disheveled, and her eyes had shopping-spree sized bags under them, which only further accentuated their bloodshot appearance. Even her posture seemed disheveled. It was hard to imagine that it had been only a single day and night since our encounter — just over twenty four hours. For a human to get that messed up by comparison, it would have taken three days of substituting coffee for sleep.
Well, humans are endurance predators. That’s not really a fair comparison to make, now that I think about it.
Regardless of what my logic told me, her appearance still surprised me when she emerged from Rarity’s home. To my severe disappointment, the dragon didn’t look nearly as weary. Taur’s purposefully carved, featureless mask helped hide my mixed emotions. “Princess Twilight Sparkle. Spike the Dragon. Good afternoon.”
“Hello, Lumber Jack.” Twilight nodded. A few strands of her mane magically floated to me, and I accepted them. She remembered the exchange. Happily, I pulled out one of my apples from a little pouch I’d made on the inside of my cloak and tossed it to her. She gave it a sleepy glance. “Mind if I eat this? Or is that not what I do.”
“Go ahead.” I waved a hand dismissively.
“Sorry, I haven’t eaten yet today.” She bit into the metallic fruit, and then hummed, apparently pleased.
“Heh, you know, that’s a really cool looking body,” Spike remarked. “Didn’t know that timberwolves could come in a centaur shape, or get that big. And what kind of fur is that?”
I cocked my puppet’s head to the side. He was... complimenting me? “Um... thanks. But it’s not finished yet. And it’s manticore.”
“Manticore!” He, along with Rarity, who had led me here, exclaimed. I nodded.
“Wow. I wish I was strong enough to fight a manticore,” Spike said dreamily. Well, if I was correct, he’d be big enough to squash a manticore soon enough. The Everfree's own resident, fire-breathing menace sure was.
“Anyway, I got your letter.” Twilight perked up. “Let’s go see that tree. I’ll try not to freak out so badly this time.” Her head and ears all drooped back down.
Her eyes darted away from me. “I’m sorry. If I’d known-”
“Save it. Let’s just get this over with.”
We soon made it to her former home. I glanced through the darkened window and found that she had indeed cleared it all out. Considering all the books she’d had, she must have worked really fast. Kneeling down at the base of the trunk, I placed my Taur’s wooden hand on a root, the part of the tree where the mind was held.
Hello, I greeted it in the language of the trees.
It sobbed, unaware of me. Though I must admit, sobbing was much better than the mad howling I’d heard the last time.
Sighing, I tried again, a bit more forcefully. Hello. I am here to help. Please, let me ease your suffering.
Now, I should note that I didn’t actually say any of that. Trees have no words, nothing that could be translated in a literal sense. However, we can communicate emotions, ideas, and intent directly. The simple minds of most trees can’t handle very complex ideas, or more than one emotion at a time, but we can communicate well enough.
This time the tree acknowledged me, in a way that was akin to making eye contact with a helpful stranger, but at the same time, I got the feeling of a great emptiness. The sobbing continued unabated, and the oak made no effort to return any communication. So, I lay down next to the trunk and let tendrils of my magic gently caress its roots. Shhhh... I’m here. I won’t let the firebreather and the fire pony burn things near you ever again. Rest. Relax. You are safe.
A few leaves fell from above, each still very green. It curled my branches to see it in such a state.
I... I... I.... The oak finally replied, if you could call repeatedly sending the feeling of self to me as communication. Still, it was something.
I stroked its roots again. You can tell me. I want to help you.
The branches above me shuddered, an act that drew the ponies’ and dragon’s attention upwards.
Pain. That was what it showed me. It wasn’t the pain of having sapwood damaged, although elements of that were in there; no, it was the pain of being used while gaining nothing. It was the pain of watching your seeds be destroyed and swept away right in front of you, knowing that they would never sprout. It was the pain of being subjected to your most primal fear day in and day out, without respite, and knowing that it was inside of your very being.
It was the pain of a shattered soul.
I... want... Nothing...
Nothing. That word has a very different meaning to the forest. There is nothing that stops living in the forest; the trees, even when dead, support a plethora of life. Animals that die support decomposers that then feed the trees. There is nothing that stops living, but anything that lives knows of the Nothing, the silence that comes at the end, the irreversible quiet, the hole in the forest that had once been filled.
Taur stood once more, and I briefly noticed that the shadows had moved a good bit since I’d laid Taur down. Very well, I shall give you Nothing.
“Well?” Twilight asked, hopping towards me even as I moved outwards towards the tree’s drip line. “What happened? Is there anything you can do?”
“It is as I suspected. I have spoken with the oak, and I confirmed what my intuition had told me,” I replied cryptically. “I have a medicine here that can help it as it wishes to be helped.”
“Trees have medicine?” Twilight Sparkle asked, her voice thickly tinged with surprise.
I paused, my Taur’s arm frozen momentarily as it reached for a certain pouch of manticore leather hidden in my robes. “Of sorts.” I finished retrieving it and opened it up. Dipping two fingers inside, I withdrew a pinch of the white powder, a powder that my wolves now all carried for emergencies. Rubbing them together, I let the powder fall back into the pouch.
“What’s that? The medicine?” Twilight Sparkle’s gaze was locked on the powder.
I nodded. “Part of it. The tree needs love, mercy, and fairy dust.”
Spike, nearby, rolled his eyes. “Good luck with that. Everypony knows that fairies aren’t real.”
I chuckled, despite the morbid atmosphere. “Wrong kind of fairy dust, Spike.” Turning to the princess, I spoke, “Trees do not have a concept of death like you ponies do; instead, we have the Nothing. A tree that becomes Nothing will never answer again — they will not even produce new shoots. Your tree asked to be Nothing. Will you let me make its pain Nothing?”
The princess and all those around her all folded their ears back, or, in the case of Spike, drooped his spines and fins. Some of the reactions were more subtle than others, but I could tell that all of them disliked the news. “I wanted you to help me heal the oak tree, not kill it!”
“I don’t kill for the fun of it,” I lied. “If there was anything I could do to help this tree without killing it, without doing what it asked, I would.” That, however, was the truth. “You told me to end its suffering. This is what I can do. This is what it wants me to do. Will you let me grant it euthanasia?”
She frowned and looked away. Forming them with a tight jaw, she uttered the words, “Do what you must.”
“Very well. I will do my best to end this tree’s suffering. Now, I don’t wish to seem callous,” — who am I kidding, I didn’t care about that at all — “but you said that we’d consider my punishment finished if I helped end the tree’s suffering for you in your letter, right?” That wasn’t exactly what was in the letter; the exact wording was “save the tree.” This probably wasn’t in the spirit of the letter, but I was saving it from its misery. Plus, if I got her to agree to my wording, she couldn't rightly call me out on it, especially since Applejack and Rarity were quietly watching from a little distance away.
“We did say we would,” Twilight affirmed begrudgingly.
“And have you retrieved everything from within the tree that belongs to you and Spike?”
She replied affirmatively.
“Then stay back; this medicine is somewhat dangerous to ponies should they get too close. Go join your friends back there.” As they turned and left, I drew out a pinch of the powder and threw it on the ground. Then, moving around the tree’s drip line, I repeated that several more times.
After the final pinch, I folded the pouch back up and tucked it away again. Then, I clasped my Taur’s hands together. Deep in the Everfree, I raised my branches up and focused on the wild magic of the Everfree Forest. Zecora said that controlling that magic was impossible, but I knew otherwise. It was something you asked, and guided when it answered, something that I found that I was functionally skilled with.
I asked the wild magic of the Everfree, the power that surged forth from the earth and inundated the forest with power, for help. And the Everfree, feeling my intent, answered. And yet, It was a struggle to get it to move beyond the borders; some parasitic, antagonistic force wanted the forest’s magic to stay in the forest. Behind the mask, Taur frowned.
Eventually, however, I got the magic to flow where I needed it. Directing it to where I had spilled the spores of the wondercap spores, I gave the magic one single command, one that it could easily understand and would readily obey: grow.
The power surged through me, now beyond my control, and forced the spores to sprout and link their mycelium together into one big, artificial fairy ring. The magic, now answering to the wondercap ring instead of me, did what the fungus wanted.
The crack of imploding air deafened me, and the shockwave left me struggling to regain my balance. Without any physical ears, however, my centaur puppet recovered far more swiftly than the others.
“What in tarnation was that?!” Applejack asked as she helped the others off the ground.
I didn’t answer immediately, as I was surveying the crater that had been left when the wondercap forcefully removed the offending oak tree from the soil. Gazing upon the wondercap mushrooms that were left, I cut the magic of the Everfree supporting them, and watched as they withered away. Such a fungus could not survive without the turbulent, wild magic of the forest supporting it. If this had been in the Everfree, the wondercap left would have made a very dangerous trap that would have needed to be dug out; that wasn’t a problem here.
I finally answered. Briefly, I described wondercap to them, and what I had done to the tree. Uprooted and unsupported, the tree would not survive for very long at all wherever it landed.
They seemed bothered by my explanation and my actions, though they didn't push me on my choice. However, I had a hard time understanding why they were so upset. It was almost as if they didn't understand that there were benefits to death that could outweigh the costs.
How naive a way of thinking.
True to her word, the Princess did consider my punishment finished, even though she was obviously irritated by how it came about. Personally, I think she might unconsciously blame me a little for the loss of her home, though I have yet to hear her remark as such.
I also did discuss expanding business to Eezdraug with Rarity and Applejack; they seemed to like the idea, and were willing to do business. However, they, like the deer merchants, wanted knowledge of what the other town had to offer, assurance that they wouldn't be losing money on a failed investment, and a guarantee that the goods I carried would get there. Rarity suggested that I make a catalog of goods to cover the knowledge portion, but ultimately, I needed a fixed, safe route.
Enter Compass Rose. By now, a combination of time and potions had healed her burns completely, leaving her ready to resume her map-making of the Everfree. I sent the cartographer off with a pair of my wolves, with the hopes of finding a fairly easy route for a cart to traverse.
It was a shame that there were no motor vehicles in this world, aside from trains; that would have been much better than hauling a cart around. And the thought of a wolf driving a car? That elicited a chuckle from me. I could theoretically use a zeppelin, but that was a little outside of my price range, and the Others memories of the Hindenburg accident made me wary.
But of all the things that happened in the days following the removal of the oak, nothing stood out in my memory quite like this. Most of what I had been doing was as mundane as you could get in what the Other would consider a fantasy world — trade negotiations, map making, market investigations, etc. — but there was no doubt that this was magical.
It was a box, an opaque crystal, fourteen-sided box, with six keyholes, and it was sitting on a table in Rarity’s home. And, for reasons I could not comprehend, I couldn't bring myself to look away from it once it caught my Taur’s eyes. It also made me cease speaking, a fact that Rarity immediately noticed.
“Lumber Jack? What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
I didn't answer the white unicorn; instead, I tried to comprehend the bizarre and not entirely pleasant feelings that the box elicited within me. “That.” I gestured to it. “What is it?”
Rarity’s azure eyes followed my clawed finger’s indication. Falling on the box, her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Oh, that’s the chest that the Tree of Harmony gave us when we returned the Elements of Harmony to it.”
I remembered her telling me about the Elements earlier, but this was new. And the longer I looked at the box, the less I liked. Why? I have no idea. I could clearly tell that it wasn’t a rational dislike, but at the same time that understanding did nothing to clear up the strange emotions.
I trotted my Taur up to it, to take a closer look. “What’s inside?”
Rarity shrugged; as a pony, her shoulders went forwards instead of up, but the meaning behind the motion was clear regardless. “We’re not sure. It just grew out of a flower connected to the tree’s roots. We don’t even know where the keys to it are. Twilight’s been studying it for months now, but we’re no closer to unlocking it.”
I reached out towards the strange chest, only to stop and jerk when I was assaulted by a sudden, sharp pain, like a punch to my non-existent gut. It had nothing to do with the box, I do not believe; it merely happened coincidentally at that moment.
Rarity had seen my puppet jerk. “Jack?”
Waving dismissively, I replied, “No, I’m fine. I think a rodent just bit one of my roots.” Said root was currently flailing about underground, trying to dislodge the stubborn source of the annoyance. For it was just an annoyance now; the pain had already subsided dramatically.
With no further need to discuss the box, and my mood soured just enough for me to no longer be interested in it, I turned back to the seamstress. Yet the box found its way back into my mind repeatedly throughout our conversation. Shoving the thought aside repeatedly failed to keep it buried in the back of my mind.
Finally, I could take the pestering thought no more. “Rarity, where is the Tree of Harmony?”
“Hm? It’s in a cavern under the castle of the Two Sisters.” Seeing my lack of reaction to the name, she elaborated. “It’s a ruined castle in the Everfree.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. I knew where that was. The hunting was rather poor over there, so I never had any real reason to go that way, but I had seen the castle way back before I’d even met Zecora. In retrospect, I probably should have investigated further.
“Why do you ask?” the white mare inquired.
“I have a wolf in that area,” I lied. “It felt a similar feeling as what was coming from the Harmony Tree’s box.” There, I’ll let her draw her own conclusions.
In reality, I had no wolf over there, nor had I sensed anything of the sort. But I knew four things:
~ One: The Tree of Harmony and its Elements were very powerful. More importantly, they were weaponizable. ~ Two: The tree had apparently played a role in me becoming what I am now, if Zecora and Discord’s implications were correct. ~ Three: The power in that box was eliciting a general feeling of paranoia in me. I would rather sacrifice a wolf and know than risk death by ignorance. ~ Four: Weapons are meant to be used. Weapons are frequently protected from being seized or destroyed by enemies.
Thus, I’d quickly decided that any and all of my more detailed investigations into the Tree needed to be done swiftly so that I could ascertain if it was a threat to me. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t; the wolf puppet sprinting at breakneck speeds towards it would find out soon enough.
“The tree must be really powerful,” I remarked. Deliberately, I shifted into a more relaxed, friendly stance. “You should tell me about it some time soon. After all, it is my neighbor.”
Rarity chuckled. “You’d have to ask Twilight or the other Princesses; I know only a tad more than you.”
I probed further. “And what’s that?”
“Its magic helps stabilize the Everfree, and keeps it confined.”
It clicked. Harmony was order; the Everfree growing unchecked would destabilize that artificially imposed order. I was a chaos demon, so it stood to reason that I would be opposed to it. Were those instinctive emotions Discord’s doing, or something else?
But then again, the tree had apparently helped me stabilize and heal, according to Discord. That was the same tree that was apparently connected to the Elements that had sealed him away. Thinking about that only served to confuse me; was it a threat, an ally, or something neutral?
My branches shook as a wave of anger crashed down on me. ‘I hate being dependent on the word of others, without the whole picture’ I mentally growled. To Rarity, however, Taur maintained a calm exterior.
I just hoped that the Tree of Harmony would be willing to talk.
My meeting with Rarity ended shortly before my nearest wolf made it to the castle. In the time between Taur departing from the pony’s home and my wolf arriving at the tree, a strange, hollow feeling had descended upon me. It was strangely alien to me, the source and reason unknown to my conscious mind.
Wooden paws pounded on the ground, letting my puppet zip through the dense forest at speeds that would be dangerous for flesh-and-blood creatures. The relatively bright light of a clearing filtered through the trunks of the trees ahead of me, and I put on another burst of speed.
The trees parted, and very suddenly, I realized why the forest stopped so suddenly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make such a sudden stop myself, and ended up tumbling down into a ravine.
With a sickening crunch, one that would have signaled the death of an animal, my puppet hit the bottom with enough force to shatter. The first thing that I realized was that my transmission seed was cracked — not enough to render it unuseable, but enough to weaken the signal and cause me some pain. I knew that it wouldn’t last much longer.
That in mind, I set about making it gather the wooden shrapnel back up. With more pieces to move, it took more power to coordinate them, and the influx of power upped the dull ache’s intensity. I forced it anyway, and stood the wolf back up. Half of its face was numb, and the front, left leg was destroyed beyond my ability to fix it, but my wolf could still move.
Slowly, barely faster than a fat man’s stroll, my wolf made its way along the length of the ravine, searching for a way up. Instead, it came upon a cave. I spared a glance in, and was amazed by what I saw. There, nestled in the dark, was a radiantly glowing crystal in the shape of a tree.
I knew at once that this was the entity I sought, for it radiated with the same presence as the box, but a hundred million times stronger. And the slight, nagging feeling that had left me unsure in the presence of the box had returned full force, and now it came with a reason. The tree’s magic was reaching out to mine, enveloping it and doing... something to it.
The best way I could describe it was a metronome reaching out, reaching into the fleshy heart of the Other, and forcing the Other’s heart to beat at its rhythm. Maybe to another timberwolf tree, or to a pony, that would have been a good, calming feeling, but the distinctly human parts of me lashed out. Do not touch me! I barked.
To my satisfaction, the magical energy retreated. And yet, in the moment that followed, I yearned for its touch again. But then in the moment after that, my human parts squashed those feelings down, burying them with a simple thought: was the tree’s magic affecting our mind?
“Greetings, little one,” the tree spoke directly into my mind. “I am sorry for scaring you. That was not my intent.”
What are you? I barked. And what were you trying to do to me?
“The Caretaker,” it replied, mental voice oddly dry and passionless, despite its soothing not-sound. “Though the people of this world know me as the Tree of Harmony. I was simply trying to heal your wounds.”
My wolf puppet shuddered involuntarily as the magic supporting it flickered. I am fine, I replied. My seed will fail, and I will grow another.
The crystal tree laughed; it was a soothing, yet contradictingly eerie not-sound. “I am aware. No, I refer to the hole in your heart.”
The momentary, slight lapse in concentration its statement caused within me was enough for a few wood fragments to drop from my puppet.
Pardon?
“Your heart, your being, it is wounded. I wish to fix that.”
My soul. As in, the embodiment of my being. It has a hole.
“Correct.”
And you want to “fix” it.
“Again, correct. Now, if you’ll-”
Fuck off.
The tree was silent for a moment. Then it echoed my earlier confusion. “Pardon?”
You heard me, I replied, growling threateningly. Fuck. Off. I feel fine, I don’t know you, and I don’t want anything touching my soul.
“You are making a mistake,” it warned menacingly.
My wolf shuddered again. At the same time, I could feel my magic itself shaking, rolling, and twisting in a way that felt like a good stretch. Taking a ready stance, I spoke through my wolf, Enlighten me, then.
“Of course,” the tree-like crystal replied. “You have a chaotic void in the core of your soul that seeks to consume all that it can, and it will only grow. I wish to plug this hole in your soul to protect Harmony.”
And the shoe drops... Harmony. Not me, harmony.
You know, at first that sounded like some sort of cancer or wound, I answered flatly. But now I see that you want to "protect" the world from me. Strange; I heard that you were involved in me being what I am today. Am I correct?
“I only stopped an innocent soul from being devoured by the human’s soul. It was a kindness.”
And yet you created me, I countered smugly. Knowing that, perhaps that “chaotic void” is merely human ambition and determination. Why, I’d expect nothing less than that from a persistence predator.
The tree was strangely silent.
Hm... but when you put it like that, letting you touch my soul seems like an even worse idea. And then when I remember that Discord is actually rooting for me to live as I am, well, it’s not too hard to make a decision.
If trees could glare, the vibe I was getting from the tree would have gone hand in hand with a murderous glare. Realizing that I might have made a mistake in mentioning Discord to the Harmony Tree, I turned to make a tactical retreat. But, before I could make it even a quarter of a turn, it spoke four words.
“This is a kindness.”
The five gems on the branches lit up with a mysterious light, and the star on the middle opened to reveal another, similarly glowing gem. The magic in the room suddenly quadrupled, I knew something bad was going to happen.
Instinctively and near instantly, I flared my magic in a very specific way. Transmission seeds could only hold so much magic; overload it, and it would explode like a firecracker. It’s great for protecting myself from magical threats like this, as it severs the channel that the hostile magic would trace back to me. But instead of the seed shattering like I expected it to, something else happened.
At that exact moment, something jolted my roots. A wave of pure power shot up my trunk, up my branches, and out to my threatened seed. But rather than shattering like it had hoped, it sprouted. Thick, black, thorny vines grew from seemingly thin air, erupting out of my wolf’s mouth. Moving faster than my magical eyes could follow, they surged through the incoming blast, diverting it around me, before entangling the tree.
I had no idea what they were, where had come from, or why I could somehow feel with them. All I knew was that the vines had deflected the blast. And the vines kept coming. More and more, in a seemingly infinite stream, they poured out of my wolf’s mouth. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t control them. I-
My attention was suddenly and forcefully returned to my real body. The wolf puppet’s senses had suddenly gone dark, providing me only with the sensation of the magic around it. And to add to that, I could no longer control it.
But that was the least of my worries. The same vines were surging up from the ground around me, entwining themselves around my trunk and the trunks of every ally in my grove. I panicked.
One of my wolves bit into a vine, attempting to remove it. I was only rewarded with pain. Not from the wolf itself — rather, the pain came from the vine itself, as if it was my own branch. In that momentary, surprise-created pause, I realized that I could feel all of the vines.
And, to top it off, they had no voice. All plants, even the grasses, had a voice. The only logical explanation for why they wouldn’t, why I could feel with them, was if they were part of me. Experimentally, I willed one to flex like I did with my roots and branches; lo and behold, it moved. Not only that, but it moved easily. Compared to my roots, this was practically an octopus tentacle.
With no pain and no immediate threat, I wasn’t panicking, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but become contemplative. Where had these vines come from? What were they? They sure as hell didn’t look like a part of me, nor did they look even remotely similar to anything I’d ever seen on any timberwolf before. And what had happened with my wolf?
Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t feel it at all any more. The puppet’s connection had been completely severed. Thankfully, the Tree of Harmony hadn’t hurt me, but after whatever the hell happened there, I certainly wasn't going back for more.
A small thud drew the attention of one of my wolf puppets. It spotted my next transmission seed pod rolling on the ground. Scooping it up in its mouth, my wolf trotted away with it to gather some wood for the replacement transmitter. My branches drooped a bit, relaxing; at least that was one less thing to worry about.
Sheesh. I knew I’d been bored lately, but this was something else. Just half an hour ago, I’d been discussing trade deals and business contacts with Rarity, and now all this had happened. May I live in interesting times, indeed.
My lycanthropic puppet pounded its fist on the door of the hut. “Zecora! Are you in there?”
“Yes, yes, I am coming,” the zebra called from within. “Please stop your loud drumming!” The door was then yanked open with slightly more force than strictly necessary, but the zebra behind it was smiling politely. “Hello, Lumber Jack. What has you coming back?”
“What is this?” I demanded, practically shoving a sample of the vines in her face. She recoiled slightly at the sudden intrusion into her personal space, blinked, and then took a look at the proffered clippings.
“This, Jack, is a creation of Discord, a plunder vine,” she replied. “That you have a fresh clipping is a bad sign.”
“Plunder vines? You mean those plants that attacked shortly before I arrived? I thought you said that they were all destroyed.”
“Indeed, I thought that they were. It seems that their destruction did not entirely occur,” Zecora said. “We must alert the Princess and her friends, so that this threat they may cleanse.”
“Wait.” Zecora’s eyes jumped from the vine up to my puppet’s glowing eye holes. “They’re growing out of me.” I quickly explained what had happened, willfully neglecting the fact that I had been visiting the Tree of Harmony.
It left Zecora with a curious expression. “Hmmm... I suspect that I know what has transpired, and how these vines you have acquired. The seeds of the plunder vines were here before the Everfree. Above the unsprouted seeds grew your tree. Around the seeds, your roots did entwine. It is possible you have been grafted to the vine.”
Root grafting? The Other had heard of that, but had only thought it was between plants of the same species. And while they knew it was possible to graft on clippings of one plant onto another, they didn’t think it happened naturally. I voiced as much to Zecora.
“Ah, but even among your own kind, you are a highly magical tree,” she replied sagely. “It is possible that your power harmonized you and the vines to a degree.”
“And do you think this could hurt me?”
Zecora frowned. “In truth, I do not know. But in my gut, I do not think so. If you have truly fused, then we should leave it be. All we can do now is wait and see.”
I hoped she was right, but that didn’t mean I was going to just sit around and do nothing. The vines were Discord’s creation; I figured it was about time I paid him a visit on my own terms.
My centaur-like puppet raced across the forest floor, weaving between the trees. Having just finished speaking with Zecora through Lycan, I’d sent Taur back towards Ponyville. I needed to find Discord, and I had a clue as to how to find him: Fluttershy. The mare herself mentioned that she was friends with Discord, and so she was my best chance of tracking down the chaotic chimera.
Emerging at the southern edge of the village, Taur almost immediately caught her scent — a mix of pony, animal feces, Discord, and flowers, all occurring together. There weren’t many pony smells this close to the edge of the Everfree, and Fluttershy’s distinct smell was unusually strong in comparison to the others. After a little sniffing around, I knew which direction she came from more often, so I set off that way.
One short, easy walk later and Taur was standing in sight of a cottage with a living grass roof. Unlike the princess’s home, none of the plants here were screaming, and a plethora of happy animal noises filled the air.
Actually, it was a bit too cheerful — prey were usually much quieter in the presence of a predator, and I smelled several. And now that I think about it, having so many predators so close together also felt weird. The whole scene before me gave off a distinctly artificial, house-of-cards vibe. If Fluttershy left — and I assumed that she was responsible — then this whole mini-ecosystem would collapse back into a natural state.
Taur strolled across the little bridge, and a silence fell upon the critters that I could sense. They knew I was here, and that I was an unknown predator. Animals were rather smart when they thought that their lives were on the line.
But I commanded Taur to ignore the animals and move straight towards the door. With a quick movement, wooden knuckles rapped on the wooden door.
“Coming!” was the faint reply.
Fluttershy opened the door, only to squeak and jump back in fright when she saw my Taur and his imposing size. I remained neutral and unthreatening, allowing her to calm down and come to me on her own terms. That happened quickly enough.
“Oh, Lumber Jack, you startled me.”
“Hello, Fluttershy,” I said through Taur’s deep, rough voice. “I need a little favor, if you would be so kind.”
A smile spread across her face like hot butter on toast. “Of course I’ll help you! What’s wrong?”
“I need to contact Discord, and you said he was your friend. I was hoping you had a way of contacting him.”
Fluttershy nodded. “I do. Come inside; I’ll call him here and you can make yourself comfortable while we wait.”
After awkwardly squeezing Taur inside — it was quite large compared to my wolves, which were in turn larger than ponies — and seating myself on the floor, the yellow pegasus opened a drawer and pulled out a strange looking coin that shimmered with a dazzling, shifting array of colors. She then tilted her head to the side and stuck the coin in her ear, where it rattled around as if her skull was empty, before falling out the other ear.
“Uhhh....”
Fluttershy picked the coin back up off the floor. How she did that with hooves, I don’t know.
“Um... what?”
She looked at my puppet. “Oh, that’s a token Discord gave me. I have to do something ‘random’ with it to call him, and usually, strange things happen when I try.”
“Ah...” It still seemed really weird, but I decided to accept it at face value. “And... how long does it take him to get the message?”
“Well, he already knows. He just likes showing up whenever he wishes. Sometimes, he even goes back in time and arrives before I even could touch the coin.”
“On average?”
She shrugged. “An hour, tops?”
I shifted Taur’s middle limbs impatiently as an awkward silence fell between us. I sniffed the air; the scent of animal feces filled my puppet’s nostrils. While the scent was exactly the same as my human half remembered, my plant half actually enjoyed the smell. In fact, the natural fertilizer was so wonderfully fragrant that if someone told me to “eat shit,” I would probably agree.
And yet, despite the animal scents and animal noises, there was not a single animal in the room besides Fluttershy herself. “Your animals seem scared of me,” I remarked.
Fluttershy looked around, as if just noticing that fact herself. “Oh. I'm so sorry. You're just very big and a little bit intimidating; I’m sure they'll warm up to you soon enough.”
“I rather suspect they won't,” I countered. “Animals are clever. They know that they're still on the menu, to put it bluntly.” Upon seeing her reaction, I added, “I won't hurt them here. This town is not part of my hunting grounds. But the forest is.”
Fluttershy nodded. She picked up a half-empty teacup from a nearby table a took a sip. She looked at it, and then asked, “Would you like some tea? I can put on a fresh pot.”
I declined.
“If you're sure. Well, I’m glad that you're not going to hurt my animal friends. It's hard enough keeping the other predators from eating the other animals I’m caring for,” Fluttershy replied, following up with another sip of her tea. It had the same scent as her body, which led me to believe that she drank it very frequently.
“Are those animals pets?” I asked.
“Some,” she replied, “and some who aren’t pets yet. But I also care for and feed any forest critters that come to me.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were in your place,” I mused. “When people get involved with things, equilibriums get disturbed and whole ecosystems can suffer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take those rabbits I smell. The rabbits eat the grasses, and we predators eat the rabbits. Grass only gets so much sunlight, so there can only be so much grass, which means there can only be so many rabbits, and only so many predators. If too many rabbits are born, the grasses will be devoured too fast and the predators will feast and have more offspring. Then the rabbit population will drop, the grasses will recover, and the predators go hungry. Eventually, everything cycles back to normal, to equilibrium. But say you protected and fed a lot of rabbits. They’d eat too much and grow too numerous. The grass could be decimated, and then they and their predators would each go hungry in turn. Worse case, all three vanish from the ecosystem. And then other creatures suffer in turn.”
“Interesting,” Fluttershy replied genuinely. She was leaning in close to me. “I’d never thought of it like that before. I try to help both predators and prey equally, so I hope I’m not doing anything hurtful like that.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be able to do much, anyway, even if you were,” I assured her.
Just then, a flash of light announced the arrival of the one I sought. The spirit was wearing a suit and tie, the latter of which was also a living fish. “Discord,” I greeted.
“Oh, I didn't expect to see you here,” the chaos spirit said with a grin. “So, what's up with you two?”
“Discord,” Fluttershy said, “Lumber Jack wanted to talk to you.”
“Well then...” There was a flash of light. Suddenly, Taur was sitting on... a therapist’s couch? And Discord was sitting on a plush, neon pink chair and wearing the most stereotypical doctor’s getup possible. “What can Dr. Discord do for you?”
“I have a weed problem.”
Suddenly, he was scribbling something on a pad of sticky notes that he pulled from somewhere. Ripping the top one off the stack, he slapped it onto Taur’s mask.
I peeled it off and read it.
All the dank brownies.
I looked back up. Discord was no longer in his doctor’s outfit; no, he was in skinny jeans, a white tank-top, and wearing a baseball cap embroidered with a marijuana leaf. And, if his eyes and expression were anything to go by, he was suddenly very, very stoned.
“Duuuuude... Ya want a brownie?” My nose was suddenly assaulted by the revolting scent of chocolate as he shoved a tray of brownies - obviously laced with pot - in my puppet’s face.
“No. And not that kind of weed problem, either.” I shoved the brownies away from my puppet’s face with no small amount of disgust. “I mean actual weeds, of the chaotic persuasion.”
Discord sobered up instantly. All his props and paraphernalia popped back to wherever they came from. Then he vanished, only to reappear a second later. “Interesting. I didn’t expect that to happen. Scratch that, I didn’t believe that could happen at all.” He smiled; his grin literally became sharklike, teeth and all. “I knew it was a smart idea to bring you.”
“So should I be worried about that?” I asked. “Because that doesn’t look normal at all.”
In reply, Discord ripped off his eagle's claw using his lion’s paw. It parted with the sound of ripping velcro, and sure enough, there was velcro fabric in the joint, instead of blood and gore. He then stuck the arm on my puppet’s back.
Sensation surged into my puppet from the limb. I could feel it, and feel with it. In fact... A little bit of experimentation revealed that, as I suspected, I had somehow gained control of the stray bird limb.
“Tell me, what do you get when you mix symbiosis and chimerism?”
I looked away from the arm and back at the amputee spirit. Inquisitively, I asked, “Is that what’s happened to me?”
He shrugged. “Meh. It’s close enough. Don’t worry about it. You’re fine.” Sometime while he was talking, the arm on my puppet’s back vanished, and a new eagle’s claw regrew on his body.
I nodded. “Thank you, Discord.”
“No problem!” Then, he vanished.
“So, um, are you alright?”
I suddenly realized that I had forgotten about the shy pegasus when Discord had arrived. Looking over at her slightly sheepishly, I replied, “Yes. I am.”
“Oh, that’s good!” She replied, relieved.
Picking my puppet up from where it was seated, I bowed its head at Fluttershy. “Thank you. You’ve been a big help.”
“You’re welcome.” A blush spread across her cheeks. I turned to squeeze once more through her door, but she stopped me. “Um, Lumber Jack?”
I stalled and turned. “Yes?”
“I was, um, wondering if you wanted togo, um, see the breezies next week? If that’s alright with you.”
“What are breezies?” I asked.
“Oh! They’re a subspecies of pony, and they’re really tiny. They migrate every year, gathering pollen from all over Equestria before taking it back to their homeland,” Fluttershy exclaimed, her previous timidness gone in a heartbeat. “They’re so adorable, and they’ll be migrating right through Ponyville!”
I considered it for a moment. It could be fun, and it would give me a chance to get to know the other ponies. I agreed. “Just let me know when and where. I’ll be in town.”
Despite the assurances to the contrary, I was still worried about the vines. It felt like they were spreading inside of me. My bark was swiftly turning pitch black from the roots up, and spikes were growing out of my trunk. My most recently bloomed flowers were turning a purplish hue as well, rather than their former pink. Several times I had to readjust the drape-like clothing Rarity had made for me so that my new spikes wouldn’t damage it.
But, even as my body was becoming more like the vines, the vines were becoming more like me. That was more of a magical effect than a physical one, for though there was no outward change, my magic was flowing through them more easily than before, and the sensations I felt from them and degree of control I had over them was increasing. It was almost like reverse-paralysis, where I was slowly regaining control over a limb that had been numb.
But, the most interesting development from the vines was the two seeds that had grown on them; they looked almost exactly like my transmission seeds. That boggled my mind a bit. Would I grow puppets from my vines?
A few days passed before I found out the answer. In the interim days, Taur finished producing a catalogue of possible goods to bring from Ponyville, while Lycan had started on something similar in Eezdraug, with the help of Muzen and Juzu as translators. Meanwhile, Compass Rose had returned to the forest in the company of a few of my ordinary wolves. With her aid, I was quickly plotting out a path between the two villages, though she demanded to be the one to actually name it. I argued with her first suggestions, but in the end, we settled on The Sap Road.
Finally, after nearly a week since I’d gone to talk to Discord, the two seeds dropped off the vines. They, along with the replacement seed that had formed on my branches after the Tree of Harmony incident, rolled off to gather stray wood. It didn’t take long, as I’d taken to gathering spare wood in order to fix my puppets and carve them new pieces.
The wolf formed easily enough, and ran off to rejoin my personal collection. The other two took longer; apparently, those seeds were more picky about which pieces of wood they wanted to use. Eventually, however, their bodies formed.
They looked the most human of any of my puppets, but that was a relative statement. The shorter, more densely built one had triangular eyes, a hole where its nose should be, and a very jagged mouth filled with dagger-like teeth. But for reasons unknown, it wasn’t only its eyes that glowed with green light. Instead, every orifice on its head shone with the same phantasmal glow.
The taller one, in stark contrast, was thin and spindly. Its face was a decent approximation of a human’s, but that only served to make it very creepy looking. The other major deviation was its hands, which were extremely long and clawlike. Replace the twigs there with blades, and put it in a red and green-striped sweater, and I’d have a horror movie villain lookalike.
The perfect names for them popped into my mind. The shorter one would be O’Lantern and the taller one would be The Ripper. And as I made them look at each other, I couldn’t help but wonder and hope that they had the same extended range that Taur did. It would be really fun to show them off on that Nightmare Night Zecora told me about. But I also wondered exactly how many seeds and puppets I’d be able to control at once. With O’Lantern and the Ripper now added to my collection, I now had fifteen. Even thirteen was more than any other timberwolf tree.
Huh... Now that I think about it, I’m not wholly a timberwolf tree anymore. I’m a tree with vines, and I control puppets, not just puppet wolves. I guess I’m a puppetree. I’m thankful that my Other wasn’t interested in psychology, or I’d be a psychiatree, and then ponies would come to complain about their problems and their feelings.
Ugh...
Anyway, one long run later, and I found that they had the same range as my other puppets, excluding Taur. I theorized that it was the centaur's... Oh, what's his name? Anyway, it was likely his blood and the zap apples that gave Taur his extended range. And, if that was the case, then how far would Discord’s blood let that puppet travel? Meh. It's not like I can test that at the moment.
But with O’Lantern and the Ripper confined to the forest and Sweet Apple Acres, I set them to work on building some of the things I needed. Paperwork, money, and goods were all things I’d need to store, and the open forest was not good for that. So, in order to kill two birds with one stone, I started building a log cabin out of the trees I cut down to build the Sap Road.
And while that was going on, Taur was busy dealing with something else that had popped up. And while it was annoying, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.
Of all the ponies I’d ever met, the one before me now had to have been the most “normal” looking one, by my Other’s standards. With a gray mane, a gray-tinged amber coat, and a lack of a horn or wings, she really did look like she would fit right in on the Other’s Earth.
Having singled me out as I was touring the market street, she’d approached and introduced herself as Mayor Mare, a name that instantly endeared her to me, if for no other reason than the wordplay. And then she opened her mouth and began hacking away at that little bit of positivity.
Ugh... Bureaucrats.
“It has come to my attention that you wish to establish a business here in Ponyville,” she stated, her tone calm and even like any good politician. Unlike a majority of the ponies I interacted with on occasion, she showed no signs of the hesitance that came from my imposing nature.
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Then am I correct in believing that you do not have the requisite paperwork?”
I shook my head. “Mayor Mare, I have next to nothing to my name. Of course I have no paperwork.”
“I am afraid that you will not be allowed to sell your wares without a merchant’s license and the approval of the Ponyville Merchant’s guild. However, both of these are easily acquired at the Town Hall,” she explained.
“I see. Then, would you point out the Town Hall to me?” I asked.
Smiling, she replied, “I can do you one better; I was heading back there myself, so why don’t you walk with me?”
It wasn’t long before we’d ended up at the town hall — the market streets circled the building, meaning that we were only about three blocks away. We entered the building, and for once, Taur didn’t need to squeeze in or duck as the door and ceiling were both sufficiently tall. The Mayor led me back into an office where I did have to squeeze somewhat to get my puppet in.
The office was a small one, decorated with warm, earthy colors. A simple wooden desk stood in the center of the room, with chairs on either side. In between immaculately stacked piles of papers stood a little plaque that read “Mayor Mare.”
“This is your office?” I asked upon reading the plaque.
“Yes. Have a seat, and I’ll go fetch the paperwork we need.”
“We?” But she was already out the door. I looked at the visitor’s side of the room, and at the chairs therein. There was no way I could fit my puppet’s rear in those, so I sat it down on the floor. Since my puppet’s lower half was wolflike instead of horselike, it sat like a wolf, leaving the forelegs extended and my head at exactly the same height as it had been before I sat.
Some time later, the mayor returned to her office with a stack of papers clutched against her chest. Had it been for anyone else, I would have described the stack as “comically” large; for me, however, “painfully” seemed the better word.
“You can’t seriously be suggesting that I have to do all that paperwork!” I exclaimed.
She giggled softly. “No, Lumber Jack, I do not. Most of this is for me, and is completely unrelated to you.”
I sighed in relief. “Thank god.”
“Yes, well, we still have a lot to go through.”
“Again, what do you mean by we?” I asked.
The mare across from me blushed, though she tried to maintain a neutral face. “Yes, well, um... I was given your basic history by Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I, well...”
“You what?”
She looked away from me. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but... I wasn’t sure if you knew how to read.”
Wait, that was what this was about? She didn’t know if I could read? But that meant... “You were planning on giving up part of your busy schedule to help me if I couldn’t read?” I saw her nod. “That’s really kind of you. Thank you, but no. I can read.”
She looked relieved. “Ah. That makes things much easier. Now, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you learn to read, anyway?”
“Discord.”
Mayor Mare nodded, accepting that at face value. “Well then, let’s get started. First off, identification...”
And so began the long and arduous task of filling in the paperwork. Before I knew it, I was officially a citizen of Equestria, though not Ponyville since the Everfree was legally “uninhabitable.” I was also given a P.O. box, my merchant's license, and a form to take to the merchant’s guild office nearby. “After you get that last one stamped,” the mayor told me, “You’ll be good to go!”
I stood, stretching even though I had no muscles to stretch. “Ah, thank you for your help, Mayor Mare. I really didn’t mean to impose on your time.”
“No, no, it is no problem at all. This is my job, you know.” She nodded once, as if agreeing with herself. “Now, I would suggest you also go to either of the two banks in town and set yourself up a savings account or a merchant's account, and get a safe-deposit box while you’re at it. You don’t need them, per se, but they would make things much easier on you.”
“Great idea,” I replied. Then we said farewell and I left the room. One quick stop to the correct office later, and I was all set. As of that moment, I was legally allowed to run a business and sell in the market stalls. All that’s left was a matching set of permissions from Eezdraug, and I would be in business!
A week after I’d gotten everything set up in Ponyville, I was making my first sales run to Eezdraug. I didn't have a cart yet; however, I’d decided to make my own instead of pay for the one in Eezdraug, but it wasn't finished yet. On the other hand, I didn't have much yet to sell, either. What I did have were mostly sample goods to probe the market with. From Rarity and her contacts, I’d gotten gems and bolts of cloth. From some of the farmers, I’d gotten some herbs and spices that I hadn't seen on the other side of the fence, such as garlic and cinnamon. I was also carrying a couple boxes of tea bags, as well as the leaves in raw form.
These, plus a few other things I suspected might sell, were all securely fastened into borrowed crates that I’d strapped to my puppets’ backs. All but one of my puppets sprinted through the woods, towards the hidden city along the Sap Road, while the one remaining wolf stayed in my grove.
Even at a hard run, the journey along the path still took a good two hours. It was a good thing I’d set out early, otherwise, I wouldn’t have enough time to do anything once I got to the hidden village. But that still left me alone with my thoughts, as was common for me. To pass the time, I started singing with myself, something that was quickly becoming a favorite hobby of mine. It was a shame that I really had trouble remembering most of the human songs I knew, because I only could sing butchered fragments of those songs. Yet my singing faded away shortly thereafter as my memory of the song failed me, only to resume as a new song took its place in my mind.
When I finally arrived at and subsequently pierced the redirection barrier, I launched my puppets over the fence, one at a time, and yet swiftly enough that I barely broke stride. Less than a dozen meters separated my selves from Eezraun, the ring road encircling Eezdraug.
Even from here, the voices of travelers were clear, clearer than they had been just on the other side of the fence. I suspected that whatever mysterious power was imbued in that glowing fence somehow muted sounds to some degree, beyond what logic would have suggested. As for the voices themselves, I couldn’t understand them. Juzu and Muzen, who were quickly becoming good friends of mine, had very generously offered some of their time to help me start learning their language.
I couldn’t understand much of it, and I still had to mentally translate everything instead of understanding the words directly, but I was making progress. That said, the travelers on the road that I had just arrived at were still unintelligible to me, and I to the majority of them.
Having come this way before, I easily navigated to Juzu and Muzen’s home - well, their family’s home, but I had yet to meet any of their other relations. When I arrived, Muzen was there waiting for me. “Good afternoon, my friend,” he greeted to the lead wolf. Unlike me, Muzen had a prodigious talent for language; the slow, unsure drawl he’d had when we’d first met had now definitely faded. His accent was thick, sure, but he no longer struggled to find the right words.
“Afternoon,” I said back, nodding my wolf’s head. “How are you? Are your injuries healing well?”
“Yes,” he replied, nodding as well. “The healer has said that I am well enough to begin light sparring once more. I look forward to rejoining my brothers on the expeditions.” From conversations before, I knew that he was referring to his literal siblings, though they also counted as brothers in arms.
“Excellent.”
His faceless head moved, and if the direction was any indication, he was looking over my other puppets. I got the feeling his gaze was lingering on Taur, Lycan, O’Lantern, and the Ripper. “And who are your friends?”
“Me as well,” every puppet said in unison. “I am a puppeteer, and these are all my puppets.”
The fluid-like flesh where his face should have been rippled, while the flexible antlers on his head perked up, a pair of actions I’d come to associate with surprise from the flowing stone deer. “Truely? You would be a great ally on our expeditions if you can fight with every one of those puppets.”
My real body’s flowers perked up at that. “I would love to come on one, to see what they are like.”
“That could be arranged,” Muzen replied. “Come, let’s go.” He started walking south.
I hesitated for a moment, and then sent my puppets after him. “Wait, where are we going? The market’s north of us!”
“It is,” Muzen remarked, “but we are not going that way.”
“But I need to try and sell this stuff,” I protested, motioning to the crates supported by each and every one of my puppets.
The flesh of muzen’s head warped, forming a smiling mouth where previously there’d been no mouth at all. “Grandfather mentioned you to Chief Hiram. The Chief is interested in meeting you, and seeing what you have to offer.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Nothing has ever crossed the barrier before. You are something of a... celebrity? Is that the word? Yes. A celebrity.”
Back in my grove, the little bit of ego stroking made me hold my branches up just a bit more proudly. Though Muzen couldn’t see that, I was sure he saw the sudden, extra spring in the step of all of my puppets.
We didn’t have far to go - really not even a half-dozen blocks. Juzu worked for the Chief, so it made sense then that they would live close together. But when I got there, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Eezdraug gave off a feel similar to a medieval European village, and so I, for some reason, kept imagining Chief Hiram’s place of governing being a large building in the center of town. I intellectually knew that to not be the case, but I couldn’t shake the image. So when Muzen announced that we were here, I still found myself surprised.
We were at the shore of a lake, and a good sized one at that, as it was likely a couple of acres in area. But that was the least surprising thing about it. For one, it was green and sparkled, as if filled with glitter. For another, swirls of other colors occasionally drifted through the liquid, which was far too viscous to be water. And finally, it moved.
Two swirls of red, which looked suspiciously like eyes, drifted past us as we walked along the shore, only for the slime to begin to stir. From the surface, and made of the slime itself, a figure rose up. And in that moment, I realized two thing.: First, that this must be Chief Hiram himself.
However, the second thing was a little harder to explain. To use an analogy, imagine growing up in a world inundated with the scent of vanilla. Vanilla in every meal; vanilla scented candles, soaps, perfumes, air-fresheners; vanilla in everything and on everything. In fact, there’d be so much vanilla, that everybody would become scent-blind to the smell and not even realize that the scent was there. Then imagine waking up somewhere where vanilla didn’t exist, and they’d never even heard of vanilla. And then, after spending a while in the vanilla-less place, imagine running into someone who smells of vanilla, after having not smelled it for a long time.
That was what I was feeling from Hiram. It wasn’t a scent, but at the same time, the sensation was as emotionally invoking as one, and it seemed terribly familiar. And the emotion it filled me with? Homesickness, of all things, which made no sense seeing as I was literally rooted at my home.
In the fraction of a second it took for me to be nearly overwhelmed by these emotions, the slime figure emerging from Hiram’s body had coalesced into a humanoid figure. Well, it was more of a minotaur in shape than a human on second look, but close enough.
And then Hiram spoke. <<??? Why ??? Me ???????.>> His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if he was using his entire body to project the sound. He spoke in that other language, so while I was in awe of the strange acoustic properties of his voice, I could not understand most of it. What I could understand was the body language of Hiram’s slime minotaur. It crossed its arms, as if hugging itself, and frowned deeply. Its eyes, tinted a pale red, looked down towards the “ground,” refusing to meet my puppets eyes.
And then Muzen whispered into a puppet’s ear, “He asked, ‘Why do you all fill me with such a strange emptiness?’”
That wolf whispered back, “Tell him I don’t know, but that he’s not alone in having strange feelings.”
Muzen’s antlers drooped slightly at my comment, but he turned and relayed the message anyway. After Chief Hiram heard that, he said something back to Muzen, who in turn pointed to my puppets with his antlers and said something in return. I heard my name, so I assume he was introducing me.
The slime minotaur slid forwards across the surface of the massive, sapient geluv’s surface. When it reached the edge, the slime under it surged forwards, creating a path for it to continue on. Finally, as it approached my Ripper, it looked it in the eye. The feeling of homesickness increased, and yet at the same time, it was no longer as unpleasant as it had been. There was something in the slime minotaur’s eye that was eerily familiar, and yet reassuring at the same time. The sudden but faint smile on its lips suggested to me that I wasn’t alone in that feeling.
Hiram’s construct stuck out its hand in greeting. Without thinking about it, I shook it back. Unlike when the pet gelal touched me the other day, the wood of my puppet’s hand did not go numb, nor did the magic fail. It only tingled slightly, but pleasantly as well. When I pulled my Ripper’s hand back, it came away coated in the translucent green slime. Instead of wiping it or trying to clean it off, I just curled that hand into a fist.
With Muzen translating, Chief Hiram said, “It’s good to meet you, Lumber Jack the Outsider. Juzu has spoken much about you.”
“Likewise, alpha Hiram,” I replied.
“I hear you have some goods to sell my people?” Hiram said through Muzen.
“Yes.” I started setting down the crates of goods. “I have-”
<<Wait.>> I didn’t need Muzen to translate that one for me. “There are other, more interested individuals at the dock.” As Muzen translated that, he added in a motion with his head to indicate the place in question. Sure enough, there was a dock, with a pier jutting out into the lake of slime that was Hiram’s own body. There were even small boats sailing atop Hiram himself.
Muzen, unprompted by his Chief, added, “I should have thought of that.”
“Thank you,” I said. I scooped up my crates again, but before I could start walking, the chief’s slime surged forward across the ground and under the feet and paws of all of my puppets, plus Muzen.
Suddenly, we were lifted off the ground. My bipedal puppets nearly fell, but Hiram moved to perfectly counter the motion, leaving them all dry and upright. The surface surged, sending us swiftly racing towards the pier, faster than I could have run.
The slime minotaur protruding from the main body moved alongside us, keeping pace, though it did lose much of its detail as we moved. By the time we’d gotten to the pier, a few seconds after we’d started moving, it was an only vaguely humanoid blob. But it started reforming as we slowed down. Hiram gently set us on the dock while the minotaur stepped up beside us. For a second, I thought it had detached from the slime, but then I spotted a little tendril threaded through the spaces between the wooden planks of the dock, connecting it to Hiram’s main mass.
The slime minotaur motioned for us to follow it. He led us through the crowd to a spot that, other than having a few deer milling about at, was empty. Muzen translated, “Here. Unpack your goods. Show us what you have to offer.” As he spoke, other deer wandered over to us, likely drawn by my novel appearance.
I set my crates down and opened them up. From within, I withdrew the various goods I’d brought, as well as a picture-filled catalogue of various goods from Ponyville and the surrounding Equestrian towns. Two of the products I’d gotten from Rarity were a woolen jacket and a cotton dress, both of which were embroidered with her mark, and which she’d insisted I dress my wolves in. I donned the dress swiftly — and it looked good on me — but for the jacket, I had to stifle a laugh, and then failed to hold it in when I remembered the look on Rarity’s face when I told her that she was literally asking me to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Muzen gave me a confused look, but I only answered with a dismissive chuckle and shake of the head. As soon as I was ready, I pulled out a sheet of paper with a little speech written on it, which also happened to be one of my practice translations. I started to read off of it, or at least I tried. My voice caught as my other puppets gazed upon the growing crowd. Wordlessly, I handed the scripted speech to Muzen. One pitying look later — holy fuck, I’m glad my wolves can’t blush — Muzen took the script and read it off to the crowd.
I looked back at my stand, only to realized that in my moment of distraction, Hiram had had replaced the small pile of gemstones on the table with the stone tokens the deer used, and was happily eating them. Later, when I counted up the tokens, I’d realize that he’d paid me more than I would have asked for them anyway, but for now, I was just gawking at the size of the token pile. I wondered where had he gotten the tokens from anyway. I bet he probably kept them inside his own body like I did with valuables inside my wolves.
With Muzen’s help, I drew in a crowd to show my goods. They seemed utterly disinterested in the cloth, but my supply of cinnamon, garlic and tea leaves were bought up almost instantly. I’d also thrown in a few of my allies’ zap apples, though I was more stingy with them. When I asked about the deer’s excitement towards my edible goods, Muzen told me that their food options here were limited due to poor soil conditions, and exotic flavors usually had to be imported into the city from further in the exclusion zone, usually at high cost and high risk. From what I gathered, I could probably double my asking price for the food products.
An hour later, and I was nearly out of the sample goods to sell, and I’d made quite the sum. If I had to guess, the six hundred tokens I’d earned translated to roughly two thousand bits, give or take a few hundred. The only problem was that I couldn’t exchange it for bits directly. I had to buy goods here, and sell them back in Ponyville — not that that was actually an issue.
I’d sent O’Lantern and a wolf off to browse the pier and the main marketplace for goods to sell in Ponyville. I already knew they had cheap, abundant leather here, as well as a variety of animal products. I figured those, along with the few special requests I’d gotten from Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends would be good enough to get me started.
When I’d sold everything save for the cloth, and in only an hour, I packed my crates and my money up and hoisted them onto my puppet’s backs. “That went well.”
“It did,” Muzen said, though he sounded somewhat disappointed.
“Hm? You sound bothered.”
“No,” he replied. “I just wish I’d tried that strange fruit of yours. It looked... good.”
Taur reached up his sleeve and pulled out an apple, though it was one of my silver apples instead of the rainbow fruit. “You should have told me.” I buffed the apple on the manticore fur of my robes. “Here, try this one. I’d been saving it for when I met the Chief, but you can have it instead.”
“It looks... metal,” Muzen remarked hesitantly.
I held it out to him. “It’s not. And it's just as sweet as the zap apples. I grew it myself.”
One of his tentacle-like antlers stretched out and wrapped itself around the fruit, lifting it up to his newly reformed mouth. He took a bite.
I swear I could see his whole body stiffen. Suddenly, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, he devoured my apple, stem, seeds, and all. A green, slimy tongue emerged and licked his lips, searching for every last trace of the fruit. When he was satisfied that every last morsel was devoured, he turned to me.
“You like that?”
He nodded. “Very much. It's so sweet and juicy!”
My various puppets smiled. “I’m flattered you think so.”
He cocked his head to the side, and then his antlers twitched. “Wait, you grew this? As in, on your own branches?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, no! Of course not!” he insisted, though there was a slight twinge to his voice. “But those other apples, did they come from someone, too?”
“Hahaha, no,” I replied cheerily. I then quickly explained to him the nature of most apple trees and of my allies. He looked relieved when I told him that no, the people who bought the apples at my little makeshift stand weren’t eating the parts of intelligent creatures. “Anyway, thanks for your help, Muzen. Here, I promised-”
I’d been reaching for some of the tokens I’d earn to compensate Muzen for his time, but his hoof stopped Lycan’s paw. “No,” he declared, “I want to go outside.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, beyond the barrier. I want to see the world you come from. We have as much trouble crossing it as you said the outsiders did. But you can cross it. Take me with you. That will be my payment.”
Well, that worked for me. Every token I kept was a little more I could invest later. “When do you want to leave?”
“Really?” I nodded. “Thank you! Tomorrow, then, at sunrise.”
“Sure thing.” I forgot what I was going to say next, as a loud commotion nearby caught my attention. Many deer were all headed one way, excitedly chatting among themselves. “What’s going on?”
Muzen stretched his neck, extending it well beyond what the underlying bones should have been able to do, and surveyed the growing crowd. “There’s a hunting party coming in. I think they caught something big.”
My interest piqued, I started in that direction while asking my friend what he meant by “hunting party.” I’d been under the impression that they, like the deer from Earth and the ponies from Ponyville, were herbivores.
“There are monsters further in, and the further you go, the bigger they get,” was all I got in the ways of an answer. Muzen picked up the pace, and I couldn’t help but notice the excited bounce in her step. The way his hooves seemed to pop off the ground reminded me of Rarity whenever she started to talk about something she was passionate about.
We came upon the crowd, and noticed that they were gathering around one particular pier, where a tarp-covered barge was docked. I saw the tarp ruffled as a deer came out from under it, and in that instant, the air was saturated with the scent of blood, and not deer’s blood. The deer themselves smelled like nothing, blending into the environment around them, so it left me curious as to what creature had spilled that delicious-smelling blood.
And when they finally pulled the tarp back, I, along with the crowd around us, gasped. I’d seen hydras before, as they often wandered out of the swamps, but this behemoth put them to shame. And it wasn’t quite a hydra either; the best description I had of it was the Japanese Yamata no Orochi, the eight-forked serpent. And it was massive: one of its sixteen eyes was big enough that two of my wolves could fit inside the socket with room to spare.
Just how they managed to slay that thing, I couldn’t fathom. From what I’d gathered so far, this world had not yet developed weaponized firearms, and the people of Eezdraug were even further behind technologically than those of Equestria.
But for how surprised I was by the slain beast, Muzen was showing an equal, if not greater, measure of excited joy. He shouted something in his native tongue, repeated it, and then grabbed the closest of my puppets and dragged it to the barge.
“Muzen!” I shouted when he dislocated Lycan’s arm. He stopped, realizing that the limb he’d been pulling was now a pile of wood scrap on the ground. I quickly closed the distance and levitated the wood back into place. “What the hell, Muzen? Got ants in your pants?”
He looked at me blankly for a second... or I think it was blankly. It’s hard to tell when my friend is currently lacking a face with which to emote. “That’s my brother up there!” He then motioned to the deer on the barge.
“Oh, cool.”
“Come!” Again, he dragged me forwards, though this time I was prepared for it. Moments later, he was hauling my puppet onto the barge. He let go of me and embraced his brother. “Tavu!”
<<Muzen! ????????>> Everything he said after Muzen’s name was lost to me, but I could follow the tone of the conversation. Muzen was excited, while Tavu (if I'd heard his name correctly) was happy to see Muzen.
Muzen pointed at my puppet and introduced me to him. I greeted him, but unlike Muzen, he couldn’t speak the same language as me, so we were stuck with Muzen translating. From what they told me, Tavu and his group were hunters that sought out the giga-fauna of the exclusion zone. The orochi — for lack of a direct translation — was prized for its leather, bones, and fatty oils. The rest of the body was usually either dried and smoked to be used as an emergency food supply, or was dumped into Hiram for for the massive slime creature to eat.
After learning that, I sought out and easily acquired a good twenty pounds of orochi meat, as well as a flask full of its blood, both of which tasted amazing to my wolves. As soon as I had those things, I recalled Taur, along with the meat and blood, back to my grove. I couldn’t wait to sink my roots into that succulent flesh and drink up its blood. And If I could make the blood into growth solution, I’d be really happy.
Taur leaped through the opening in my web of vines that encircled my grove. As he trotted towards me, he snagged a zap apple off the branches of one of my allies. Pulling out the flask of blood, I crushed the zap apple and let the juice drip into it. Then, holding it aloft, I commanded, Zap this, please.
As they had done with Discord, when he showed me this before, they zapped the blood with several bolts of magical lightning. When my vision cleared, I found Taur holding a vial of rainbow-glowing liquid. It wasn’t as bright or vibrant as the one made from Discord’s blood, but it still was beautiful.
Walking over to my trunk, Taur held out the vial. “Bottoms up.”
Now, unlike when I’d accidentally done this with Tirek’s blood to create Taur, I didn’t instantly blackout. Instead, I felt as if I was a human that had just been shocked in the hands. My whole body, plus the plundervines around me, shuddered at the sharp, unexpected pain. When it passed, I realized that I’d accidentally dropped all of my puppets.
“Lumber Jack! Are you alright?” Muzen anxiously asked me as my puppets pulled together again.
I groaned. “Yes. I just did something stupid and rash. I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.”
Despite the sun having gone down a long time ago, I still wasn’t tired. The lethargy that came with the night sky... didn’t. I was still full of restless energy, even after the moon had reached its peak. My whole body was tingly, from leaves to root-tips. Even my new vines were antsy, perpetually snaking around each other into an ever more tangled web.
Only once the sun had risen again did I start returning to a semblance of normalcy. I say semblance because, over the course of the night, I had grown again. The magic detecting, eye-like nodules on my branches were now well above the forest canopy, and for once, I could see further than my own grove. To the north, Ponyville glowed like a warm flame in the distance. Beyond that, Canterlot shone like a star on the mountain. Around me, the Everfree’s green glow swirled around and into me, while to the east, magic surged out of the ground like a geyser of green water, miles high. I knew that fountain of magic to be the exclusion zone, where Eezdraug stood hidden, and was the reason Eezdraug could exist in the first place. But seeing it like this was simply stunning.
To my disappointment, my branches bore no new transmission seed. However, the little crack in my wood where Discord had planted the vial of his modified blood was open slightly wider. It wasn’t wide enough for me to retrieve the vial, but now I realized what Discord meant by my “full potential.” Simply, the bigger and stronger I got, the more the seam would open. I’d be willing to bet that the moment it’s wide enough for me to get it out would be the moment I’m strong enough to handle it.
And with that goal in mind, a plan started forming in my mind. I needed blood, and I needed lots of it. Zecora had told me that magic came from the soul, and that the stronger your soul was, the smarter and more magically powerful you could be, to an extent. Thus, the blood of intelligent creatures would be more potent than the blood of mere beasts, and I wanted the blood of the most powerful creatures of all.
Still, Discord’s warning about his blood echoed in my mind. If beings that were powerful like him could hurt me if I drank their blood too soon, then it would be wise to start with lesser creatures and work my way up. And considering the difference between the effects orochi’s blood and Tirek’s on me, I decided that that would be the course of action I would take.
“Are you ready to go?” one of my wolves asked Muzen, who was wearing a leather vest and a pack full of supplies. He told me he was. “Great. Follow me, then.”
Muzen trotted behind my pair of wolves. When we reached the fence, I stopped and looked back at him with both puppets. “You know, I’m curious. Why have none of you ever gone out before?”
“The barrier spins us around. We always wind up back at the fence,” the flowing stone deer replied.
Strange. That meant that the barrier acted in reverse for things born inside of it. Whereas I had trouble getting in but not out, it sounded like they had trouble getting out but not in. I suspected that meant that a pony-deer pair could navigate with no issues at all. “No worries, then. Just follow me. Ignore everything else your senses tell you and follow my steps exactly.”
Quickly, we had scaled the fence and were starting to make our way outwards. Almost instantly, Muzen veered off to the side under the influence of the glowing fence’s magic. I quickly stopped and adjusted his path. Thrice more I had to correct Muzen before he wandered too far, but in the end, we made it through.
It took us a good few hours to navigate the trail I’d made towards Ponyville. We couldn’t exactly go very fast, as Muzen’s injuries, while mostly healed, were giving him trouble any time he tried to hit a gallop. But, we managed to reach the edge of town a little before noon. “Just a word of warning, the ponies here tend to be scared of strangers. They’ve gotten better about it, but don’t be too surprised if you get stared at or somepony runs away, ok?”
“I understand,” Muzen replied.
“Good. I think there’s a festival going on today, so let’s try and have some fun.”
