The average Vorlanian is rude, iconoclastic, and has a low tolerance for horseapples. The average pony is polite, respectful, and has such a high horseapples tolerance, you'd think they were all mainlining the stuff. Unfortunately for all parties involved, a portal linking the two nations has opened in the Everfree Forest, necessitating the creation of a border guard to keep the monsters from beyond Vorlan from getting into Equestria and ruining everything.
Garf, an altogether average Vorlanian, has stumbled into the position of Border Sheriff. This is his life.
After the fourth alarm clock destroyed in a blind, sleep-addled rage, everyone pretty much stopped caring about when Garf woke up.
As it so happened, his sleep cycle had decided to be merciful today. At some point before noon, the taste of morning breath and the sensation of an empty stomach conspired to make sleep the less attractive option.
He slowly pulled himself out of bed. “Furrmurrmns,” he grumbled, trundling over to the windowblinds and fumbling for the drawstring. With a snap, the shades sprang open, giving Garf a face full of pure Celestia-made eleven-A.M. sunlight.
“Gnaaaagh,” he observed, noting the excessive brightness inherent in the Equestrian summer.
First things first: clothing. Nowhere near a requirement in a town where the vast majority of sentient beings went without, but he had neither fur nor inclination to take up streaking as a hobby. A simple, serviceable armored vest and trousers worked for this time of year.
Second on the list was the gear that went with the clothes. Heavy steel-toed stomping boots. A bandolier filled with small, cylindrical shells. The badge that marked him the Border Sheriff, even if some days the getup made him feel more like a gamekeeper.
Last was the centerpiece of the ensemble - the Tool of Sheriffic Authority, and currently the only working firearm in Equestria. It was a standard Tinker-schema scrapgun, break-action, mono barrel, wood stock. Mankind, separated from the Fae Races by exactly one-and-one-half meter of hand-assembled wood and iron. It was a constantly-maintained, well-oiled point of pride.
It had also not been fired in over three weeks, which was starting to make Garf a tad antsy. He enjoyed shooting his gun at things, preferably things that moved and/or were trying to kill him so he didn’t have to bother explaining himself to any other moving things nearby that might take offense to his itchy trigger finger. The last target that fit those parameters was a particularly overzealous gremlin, whose glorious charge of blood and destruction had lasted two seconds and seven feet before his torso had abruptly assumed the consistency of tapioca.
And for the delightful mental image of gremlin torso pudding, you are quite welcome.
Thus outfitted and armed, Garf was ready to assume his duties as Sheriff of the Vorlanian/Equestrian Border. Of course, “Ready” was easy. “Willing and Able” would take some work. Thankfully, the Age of Gunpowder had coincided nicely with the Age of Instant Coffee, both of which were useful things to have in a security force.
Clad in full border-protecting garb, Garf made his groggy way to the house’s pantry, positive that the powder of functional mornings was awaiting him within. It was there, surely. There was no reason for it not to be. The last time he’d checked, it was completely full... which was admittedly well over a month ago. Still, a month of even the heaviest use could never drain a tin that deep. There was at least one or two cups’ worth left. Surely.
Lo and behold, the coffee tin was empty.
“Son of a nag,” he spat, the local turn of phrase marking the most lucid speech he had emitted up to that point.
He was ready to face the Fae horrors that dwelt beyond the territories of the civilized races. With a gun in his hands, he felt like he could take on a catoblepas, or perhaps a orc or two, or possibly even a dragon. A very small, not-impervious-to-shot dragon. He did not, however, feel in any way ready to plumb the depths of the one place where coffee could be found at a time such as this. Sheriff or not, no man awake for less than five minutes could justifiably be asked to brave the myriad pastel horrors that lay within.
But Sugarcube Corner had the coffee.
And when the coffee called, Garf answered.
***
Carrot Cake froze behind the register. He had been penning the Bridlebrooks’ most recent order -- septuple-layer red velvet, great for anniversaries -- when he entered the shop.
Garf. The least Pinkie-like person on the face of the earth. Somehow, the two had hit it off, and more mornings than not, he wound up here for his early shot of carbohydrates. Or, in this case, his eleven o’clock shot of carbohydrates. Still sort of early for him, Carrot supposed.
Oh Celestia, he’d gotten in line. He’d committed to the attack. Behind his impenetrable facade of the jovial confectioner, Mr. Carrot Cake was panicking. He had to once again suppress the innate urge to flee into the streets and beg mercy of whatever deity had cursed him with the burden of servicing the Vorlanian Bottomless Stomach. Garf was now three places from the front of the line. Now two. Now he was next. Carrot Cake fought to keep his composure. He’d done it before. He was not going to flip out now.
Garf was directly in front of the register now. Panic.
“Hello, Sheriff,” Carrot said, only the barest hint of bowel-voiding terror creeping into the edge of his voice. “The usual?” Oh please, dear Celestia, not the usual.
“Afraid not, Mister Cake,” Garf sighed, rubbing one eye with a glove. “Running late today. Just an espresso. Double, please.”
The pony let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. Garf made no outward reaction.
“Double espresso, coming right up!” Carrot hurried behind the counter to fill the blessedly small order. Garf merely watched, as amused at the thinly-veiled display of exceptional service as he had been at everything else that morning.
“Here you go, sir,” said Carrot, holding out a tall, steaming paper cup. “Two bits.” Garf laid two golden coins on the counter and took the cup, mumbling something before taking a deep swig. He sighed, looking around the shop with eyes open a few extra millimeters.
“Actually, now that I think about it, you wouldn’t happen to have any Swiss rolls, would you?”
There was a blur of motion in Garf’s peripheral vision. “Nope! Nope, we’re all out.”
Garf stared at the baker. It looked like a disbelieving glare, though in reality it was an only slightly caffeine-assisted brain attempting to process more than one datum of information at a time. Eventually said brain threw its metaphorical hands up and said “Forget it, plan B.”
“Phooey,” said Garf. “I’ll try tomorrow, then.” He turned and made for the store’s exit. “See you around, Mr. Cake.”
“So long, Sheriff! Come back soon!” Carrot called, waving a hoof and smiling a great big “please do not come back soon” smile.
Garf closed the door behind him, took his gun from its resting place against the nearby bike rack, and strolled off along the sidewalk, before turning on Main Street and disappearing from sight.
Carrot Cake lifted the box of Swiss rolls from behind the register and laid it back on the countertop.
“Ohhh, that was a close one.”
***
It signified something, in retrospect, that when a rumble and a cloud of smoke emanated from the other side of the Everfree Wall, the only reaction Garf could muster was a long-suffering sigh.
The massive timber bulwark circled the Everfree Forest, engineered to keep anything inside from escaping. The only way over was by ladder, which limited the prospects for guards to humans, pegasi, and Pinkie Pie, for whom physical obstacles were little more than a joke. Garf began scaling the one nearest to the site of the detonation, hoping with no great enthusiasm that the source wasn’t exactly what he assumed it was.
As he surmounted the outer edge and gazed in over one of the parapets, his already low hopes were thoroughly reduced to some small number infinitesimally close to zero. He had precisely ε hopes that his latest and largest creation had not just blown up in a spectacular fashion and he had missed the entire thing.
The Armory, a squat stone building erected just inside the Bulwark, was missing a corner. To be specific, it was missing the corner that pointed south by southwest, which was precisely where something large, metal, and potentially explosive had been kept under a tarp with “DO NOT BUGGER WITH” written on the front.
But someone had. A month of waiting for parts to arrive by fire-mail, wasted. Garf muttered something about a double-fortnight warranty and began descending the ladder on the forestward edge.
He had to stay positive. At least they hadn’t blown up the whole Armory, right?
He mentally slapped himself and resolved to not think anything like that ever again, because fate was a cruel and unforgiving bastard who loved nothing more than the merciless desecration of optimistic thought.
***
The inside of the Armory was filled with a greyish haze and the eye-watering stink of cordite, which slowly filtered out through all the little holes in the thatched roof and the one big hole in the back corner. Three quadrupedal, soot-covered shapes huddled underneath one of the many metal-laden tables ringing the single room of the building.
Garf’s eye twitched. It was the most emotion he’d shown all day.
“Rainbow Dash. Pinkie. Cloud Kicker. Please tell me why there’s a hole in my workshop where an unfinished anti-armor cannon used to be.”
The three ponies tried to make themselves smaller and less noticeable. The sextuple-colored mane of their most ostentatious member, regardless of its soot content at the time, rendered their efforts fruitless.
“I can see you.”
Slowly, guiltily, Rainbow Dash emerged, wearing a fakely innocent smile.
“What did I tell you about touching the Dragon Gun?”
“That it was extremely dangerous and nopony should do it if you weren’t here.”
Garf folded his arms. “Not quite. The precise wording I used was ‘Don’t.’”
As Rainbow wilted, Garf trudged past her to take stock of the wreckage. The barrel was annihilated, which was to be expected when one chambered and test fired a point-seven-hundred caliber cartridge in a weapon that, while meant to fire it, hadn’t been properly calibrated, sealed, or even completely finished yet.
“It’s honestly a miracle that neither of you were killed when this thing went off,” Garf said, bending over to check the firing mechanism.
Dash raised a hoof. “Actually, we were hiding behind a table and watching Pinkie shoot it.”
“Oh.” He stood back up. “Well, nice to see you’re taking reasonable precautions, at the very least.”
“So are we in less trouble?”
“What? No.” He chuckled and lifted the gun’s wreckage from its resting place atop a badly-singed phlogiston drum. “You were only in trouble for breaking the gun. Not turning yourselves into pastry topping in the process just means less paperwork for me.”
The other two ponies extricated themselves from beneath the table. “Touched to see you care so much, Sheriff,” said Cloud Kicker, stretching her wings out. Pinkie simply wandered, seemingly unfazed by her recent brush with fiery, stupid death.
“It’s what I do,” he said, laying the weapon on the long worktable in the center of the room. “So, thanks to you three, I need to requisition another iron 5-footer barrel, a new firing pin, and I think some elastic so I can cement what looks like a crack in the stock.” He looked back at them, shaking his head in disbelief. “How you managed to fracture a forged iron stock like it was balsa wood, I’ll never understand.”
Cloud Kicker shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to go all high-caliber on us, Sheriff.”
“You try to sneak a compensation joke in there, and you’re fired.”
She held her hooves up in faux shock. “Was I saying anything about compensation? You, sir, are projecting, and I don’t take kindly to being projected on.” She paused for a second, thoughtful. “Okay, sometimes. But you have to warn me first.”
Garf thumped her head with a knuckle as he walked past her on the way out. “You were thinking about it and ready to fire it off the second you got an opening, and don’t you dare lie. You’ve been working here for two months now, but I’ve picked up at least that much. Now come on,” he said, picking the scrapgun up from just outside the door. “We still have one gun that works.”
Pinkie giggled, bouncing out as Cloud Kicker rubbed the sore spot on top of her head. “Come on, Cloudy! We’re playing for only two bits buy-in today!”
Rainbow floated to the door, holding it open as Cloud Kicker grumpily trotted through. “You know, I stopped getting the dope thump after my first week.”
“I will not break first, Rainbow. I swear I will get that man to crack a smile. I know he can.”
***
Until more men arrived and Garf had to start keeping up appearances, he was oddly free to do whatever he wished, so long as whatever he wished was within or near the Everfree Wall.
Right now, what he wished was to get Pinkie to deal a card that would give him something better than two pair. Rainbow never smiled like that unless she thought she had a straight or better.
“So, Garf,” said Pinkie, adjusting her dealer’s cap as Cloud Kicker debated what to do with her cards, “have you tried the new Swiss rolls yet?””
“Haven’t had the pleasure,” the Sheriff replied, scowling invisibly at his measly six and seven. “Cake always says he’s out whenever I ask.”
“That’s weird. They’re always right there on the counter whenever I check.”
Garf levelled a stare in the direction he assumed Sugarcube Corner lay. “Are they, now.”
“Yep! And they’re super-delicious, too! You know, we put-”
Rustle.
All four players at the table quickly jerked their heads in the direction of the forest.
“Did you hear...?” asked Rainbow.
“Yeah,” said Garf. “It’s still a few hundred meters inside the boundary. Doesn’t sound too big in any case.” Everyone present turned back to their cards. “So what do you put in them?”
“Eh, I forgot what I was saying. Cloud Kicker, enough’s enough. Are you in or out?”
“Alright, fine,” groaned the mare in question. “I’m out.” She tossed her cards onto the table and stole another unsure glance at the forest.
“Call,” said Garf, shoving another two bits into the center of the table.
Pinkie laid another seven on the table. Garf made a mental backflip of joy, for the pot was now his.
“Raise you five,” said Rainbow, swelling the pot by nearly half again.
“And I raise you five,” said Garf, a little too quickly.
Rainbow narrowed her eyes at him and snorted. She officially had the worst poker face in this realm or any other.
Pinkie put down an eight.
“Raise ten!”
“Call.”
An ace.
“Raise fifteen!”
“Raise twenty.”
Rainbow attempted to mask her surprise at the Sheriff’s sudden boldness. This consisted mostly of hiding her face behind her two cards, which did little more than announce to the world that she knew she’d already lost.
Rustle.
Rustle-rustle-rustle.
The last card was a nine.
“HAH!” she cried, slapping her cards on the table -- a five and a six. “Nine straight!”
“Full house,” said Garf, showing his own hand. “Be right back.”
As Dash rapidly cycled through the five stages of Dash grief (disbelief, crushing sense of failure, anger, incoherence, more anger, acceptance), Garf stood, rescuing his gun from table-leaning idleness as he did so.
“Sheriff,” called Cloud Kicker, “you need any help?”
“Nnnnope,” he said, loading a shell into the breech and snapping the chamber shut with a crisp click. “Pretty sure I don’t.” With that, he began walking in the direction of the ever-intrusive rustling.
The constant din of the quite unstealthy creature within began to include a constant, bass-heavy hissing sound. Garf stopped, then turned around.
“Actually Cloud Kicker if you could back me up here I would really appreciate it thank you.”
“What’s with the change of heart?” she asked, floating over the table and the still-mourning form of Rainbow Dash.
“Only one thing makes that noise, and that’s an ankheg. If I miss, I won’t get a second shot.”
The two walked (and flew) past the treeline, scrapgun firmly pointed forward.
“So, uh... what’s an ankheg?”
“Think of it like a cross between an antlion, a cockroach, and a beetle, only it’s ten feet long and can spit acid. Probably out here looking for a good burrowing spot once autumn rolls around.”
“Sounds nasty,” she noted, peering over the ground-level shrubs and other plant life to try and spot the insect in question.
“It is,” said Garf, peering around a tree trunk. “But that’s only if you’re going after it with a weapon without any reach. Once the spear was invented, they stopped giving us any trouble.”
“So... I shouldn’t try to beat it up.”
“Not right away, no.” He shoved a rather large fern to the side with a boot. “I’m taking point here. If it doesn’t go down right away, just try to crush whatever looks squishiest.”
“You know, normally you’re not the first one to volunteer for going out and fighting dangerous monsters.”
He looked back at her with an even expression.
“It’s been three weeks since the gremlins, Cloud Kicker. I need this.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. You’ve got the gun.”
“That I do.”
And with that, they continued on in silence. After another minute or so of searching, Garf put one hand up in a “full stop” signal. Cloud Kicker hovered uncertainly, trying to spot what he had.
“Here he is.”
The sheriff crept forward, scrapgun at the ready. The hissing still hadn’t died down.
“Peek a boo, ya ugly git,” he called, sweeping the gun’s barrel across a wide swath of clearing. “The neighbors called to complain about the noise. I’m afraid you have to leave.”
Cloud Kicker continued to hover behind him, still glancing about worriedly. “It can’t understand us, can it?”
“No, but I’m having fun. Shut up.”
He let out a loud, shrill whistle, which hushed the hissing and made the rustling quite loud. One of the nearby bushes shook rather violently, just before the ankheg emerged.
It was just as Garf described it: long, ugly, and built like a horrendous mishmash of all the most disturbing denizens of the insect kingdom. Its antennae twitched, sensing the heat of the two living bodies in front of it. Its bladed mandibles, nearly two feet long on their own, widened as it let out a quite loud, quite disturbing screech.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Garf, taking aim with the scrapgun. “Say your piece and let’s get it over with already.”
The monstrous bug crouched low to the ground before springing forward, rushing along the forest floor at a freakishly speedy pace.
Garf pulled the trigger.
There was a noise like a lightning strike.
The bug’s screeching, hissing, rustling, and all other assorted sounds ceased. Its legs gave out from under it, and it slid the final ten feet to the sheriff, who sidestepped it and the yellow, ichorous trail it left behind.
Garf unlatched the gun’s breech and popped the spent shell out. He made an expanding gesture with his free hand.
“Pchhh. I just love that sound.” He snapped the chamber shut again.
“It is nice,” Cloud Kicker agreed.
“Sends shivers down my spine.” He turned back toward the direction of the poker table. “Think Rainbow’s gotten over it yet?”
“I’d give her three more minutes.”
“I’d much prefer to rub it in her face.”
Cloud Kicker rolled her eyes. “You’re the boss.”
“And don’t you forget it.” He grinned, starting off for the wall. “Come on, buy-in’s only a bit this time.”
“I swear,” said the pegasus, floating after him, “I’m going to clean you out one of these days.”
“We’ll see.”
And so passed another perfectly normal morning at the Everfree Wall. One day, there would have to be a much more professional way of going about monster repulsion, but that day was neither soon nor much desired.
And for some reason, the poker table would be there forever.
The Everfree forest had taken a turn for the dark and monster-infested since the gate to worlds beyond had opened in its heart. After a few months, the general assumption among the wildlife was that anything that surprised you was going to eat you and/or your offspring, and you should maul the hell out of it. Creatures who had no intention of eating any baby animals nor of being mauled had hit on making as much noise as possible to announce their passage.
Adventurers who also had no designs on dying or baby-eating had long ago figured on doing the same.
At some point past Serpent River but not quite near the Umbral Ruins, east of Hydrabog but not so far east that it brushed against any Harpy nests, there was a chanting. It had a swinging cadence to it. Whoever was marching along to it was singing with an oddly low voice. A rhythmic chunk noise sounded on the downbeat, and every time it rang out, a tree shook or a particularly tall fern shuddered.
A particularly thick bush lost two or three branches as something shiny and sharp whisked through it. Out of the gap formed and into a clearing stepped Garf, face covered in camouflage grease paint, machete in one hand... and singing.
He continued to stroll forward, repeating the wordless refrain as Pinkie Pie followed him, carting rations in a pair of saddlebags and continuing to belt out the weem-a-wehs.
Reports had come in of one of more inhuman somethings present within the forest that weren’t there last week. Unbeknownst to anyone else involved, said inhuman somethings were performing their own rendition of Garf and Pinkie’s “Musical Jungle Trek” routine. It’s a commonly known fact that weem-a-wehs are a universal constant.
As per the treaty between Vorlan and Equestria, someone had to go into the forest and shoo these interlopers out, or preferably shoot them bang dead. And as has already been established with the weem-a-wehs and the not eating babies, Garf and Pinkie were here to shoo(t) whoever and whatever was violating allied landspace.
They hadn’t been told to weem-a-weh on their way there, it just sort of happened.
***
Garf stopped. “Pinkie.”
“a-weem-a-weh, a-weem-a-weh, a-”
“Pinkie, stop singing!”
“-weem-a-weh, a-weem-a-what is it?” she asked, continuing to trot past him to the tune.
“Looks like we’ve found the first sign of our quarry.”
The clearing wasn’t much more than a twenty yards across, which made it all but impossible to notice the shallow grave that had been dug in the exact center. The odd ivory-colored sapling planted on top of the pile of disturbed earth was probably meant to disguise it, but failed so utterly at that task it might as well have been a sign hand-painted in neon green, reading “LOOK OUT, THERE’S A DEAD BODY UNDER THIS THING.”
Garf knelt down by the sapling, plucking one of its leaves and watching another, slightly different-colored leaf immediately sprout in its place. He drew his mouth into a grim line, nodding to himself as he stood up.
“Right, then. This has to come out.”
Pinkie gave the tiny tree a quizzical glance, her head tilted at an odd angle. “Why’s that?”
“I’m pretty sure our guests stuck something under here and thought speed-growing a completely out-of-season tree on top of it was a good way to hide it.”
“What?” She looked at the tree, then down at the grassless earth it was planted in. “I’m no Applejack, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to dig up the ground where you plant these sorts of things.”
“Right,” said Garf, wrapping his hands around the thin trunk and bracing his legs. “And do you know of any gardeners who live in the Everfree Forest?”
“Hmm...” she made a show of scratching her chin with a hoof. “Does Zecora count?”
“Nope.” And with that, Garf gave a yank, dislodging the sapling’s roots and tearing it out of the ground. “Alright, now hand me the shovel.”
Pinkie glanced to either side of her. “But you didn’t bring a shovel!”
Garf simply held a hand out.
Pinkie gave an indulging sigh, rolling her eyes as she plunged a hoof into the mass of pink pillow stuffing that was ostensibly her mane, but everyone this side of Canterlot assumed was a fancy wig. It’s a mystery to this day as to which.
After much rummaging and the sound of tin cans clanking together, she did indeed pull out a shovel -- three feet longer than her mane was across, with a quarter of a strawberry-frosted doughnut stuck on the spade. She bit the doughnut off and handed the rest to Garf.
As he dug, she continued to paw at her chin, deep in thought.
“So,” she began, “what do you think’s buried here?”
“Not what,” said Garf, shimmying the shovel under a particularly solid clump of dirt, “but who. If we’re chasing who I think we are, we’ve likely got a case of a speedy conviction and execution.”
“For what? And who’s doing all this conviction-ing and executing?”
The last scoop of dirt exposed a bit of golden metal, shimmering as the speckles of tree-filtered sunlight played across it. Garf stuck his gloves into the yielding soil and heaved that that metal the last few inches into daylight.
“These guys.”
The body was relatively humanoid. It had pure white hair that was cut off at the neck, out of which sprang two thin, pointed ears. It was clad head to toe in form-fitting body armor of a metal with brilliant yellow luster, engraved with designs hearkening to leaves and roots and other plant parts. Its skin had no pigmentation anywhere, making it even more pallid than the average corpse was to start with. Garf pried open one of the thin almond-shaped eyes to inspect it, revealing a pupilless, bright seafoam-green iris.
“What is he?” asked Pinkie, curiosity far outweighing revulsion at the moment.
“He’s an elf,” Garf said, prying the body’s other eye open. “A very, very naughty elf, by the looks of things.” He chuckled, slapping the corpse on the shoulder. “Get caught with your head priest’s lady friend, did you, mate? Or maybe you forgot to file a form? Pinkie, help me pull up his arms.”
With the aid of shovel and Earth Pony hoof, the body’s lower torso was gradually revealed, a deep wound under the sternum appearing with it. In its crossed arms, it held a thick sheaf of legal-looking paper documents bound by a fancy-looking clip woven from what looked like gold filigree.
“And here,” Garf said, pulling the bundle of vellum out of the dead elf’s grasp, “is where we’ll find our story.”
He mumbled as he scanned the papers, occasionally raising an eyebrow at places.
“Executed for littering? I wasn’t aware elves had anything to litter with... Oh, here we are. ‘Violation of Silence Order considered Auditory Littering.’ Bloke got shanked for saying something he ought not to have said. Probably criticising his superior, the poor sod.”
“Wait...” Pinkie looked at Garf, then at the dead elf, then back. “Littering?”
“Eh, the Elves are crazy.” Garf continued flipping through the document, every page drifting further and further from normal unpretzel logic until eventually one started gaining less useable information from the paper itself than one would gain by consulting the nearest sweetroll for advice. He tossed it to the side. “They’ve got a system of laws so intricate as to be impenetrable. And just to spite us, it’s ‘illegal’ to ask what the laws are, ‘illegal’ to look them up, and ‘illegal’ to call bee-ess on them or claim ignorance of them.”
“Wait. Doesn’t that mean everyone’s guilty, then?”
He shrugged. “It would explain why they’re constantly at war with everybody.”
Pinkie gave an uncertain glance at the dead elf, who was enduring the disturbance of his eternal rest with a surprising lack of complaint. “Oookey dokey. What now?”
“Well, judging from our friend’s eyes, he’s not been dead more than a couple hours. And knowing the Elves, they probably gave him a ‘proper’ burial, opinions or not. And then they had to plant the tree on him, which all in all likely took them an hour, hour and a half. They’re close by. Very close by....”
He suddenly tensed, pulling his scrapgun from its holster on his back and aiming it into the trees behind him. After several suspenseful if uneventful seconds, he slowly lowered it.
“Okay, so they’re not that close by. But knowing my luck, if they had been, they would have taken that as a dramatic cue to jump us.”
“Sooo.... do we jump them now?”
“Precisely.”
“What about this guy?” Pinkie asked, looking back at the body half-in, half-out of its hole.
“Leave him,” said Garf, trudging out of the clearing and into the underbrush. “This is as hot as the trail’s going to get.”
“Roger dodger,” said Pinkie, pulling out an oversized fur hat from precisely nowhere and slapping it on her head before following him. “Be veeewwy quiet, we’re hunting ewlves...”
“Shh!”
“Sorry.”
***
Khaydin considered himself a rather clever specimen of Elf.
But then again, so did every Elf ever to exist in the elfy history of Elvendom.
Being ranked Noxa Secundum, First Degree, Third Subdegree in the Corps of the Dryadalum put him in the optimal position to lead this incursion. He had specifically timed his promotions so he would gain his current position at this specific moment. If he executed his duty to a satisfactory extent (which he knew he would, having no reason to doubt himself), he’d likely be promoted again, to Noxa Primum or even Grand Noxum of his regiment. With a salary like that lining his purse, he could retire within the century -- within the decade, even!
Some of his peers considered him shortsighted in these matters. Those peers were currently considering him from either their menial temple maintenance jobs or their graves.
It was with a considerable amount of smugness that Noxa Khaydin considered these facts, as he led the Diplomatic Invasion Platoon on its quiet, flowing march through the forest. The formation was four elves by ten and never broke cohesion. Not for trees, not for rivers, and definitely not for a certain uppity Manticore that got spooked by the platoon’s silent motion and thought they were here to eat its babies.
Khaydin realized he had forgotten where they were going. He called a full stop to the Platoon and noted, with some amusement, Ira Toto taking a half step more than formation called for. As he unrolled the Platoon’s map, he made a mental note to dock a few drachmae from the Ira’s severance package.
After a moment’s consultation, he motioned his soldiers to adjust course a few degrees north. No words were spoken, of course. Ira Jormung had been a delightful object lesson on what happened to those guilty of sound pollution.
***
Pinkie had a ripsaw in her teeth and a song in her brain. She couldn’t be happier.
While Garf kept a lookout, she hummed and sawed at her assigned tree trunk every other beat. The vibrations of the saw biting at wood rattled up her jaw and started to make her head go numb.
“Do you think you could speed that up a little? We don’t have all day.”
“Oh,” she said, giggling nervously. “Sorry. Got kinda caught up in it. Right, faster. I can do faster.”
After speedily weemawehaweemawehing through the remainder of the tree, Pinkie took her position behind it, putting the trunk between herself and another tree a few yards away. Beyond that, Garf was cleverly disguising himself as a very oddly shaped rock. He did this by crouching behind a nearby pile of other, real, much more rock-looking rocks.
The now-fully-sawed tree sat at one corner of the mouth to a rather steep dry gully. The ground had been cut quite deep by the now-absent running water, and the mouth was the only way in or out. They had seriously lucked out with the tree growing in the spot it did.
They waited maybe two minutes. The sound of muffled footfalls announced the arrival of their target. Garf peered out from his hidey hole behind his boulder and saw the first Elf of the day: a pissy-looking ginger fellow, slowly striding forward with his nose buried in a map. His platoon was not far behind, but far enough that this particular dirty trick was going to work brilliantly.
The map-bearing Elf entered the gully, stumbling a bit as the slope of the ground made a severe dip. He looked down, curled his lip in a sneer, and said something grumpily in Elvish. He turned around-
“Hit it!”
The Elf gave a dreadful start at Garf’s shouting, then another at the sound of Pinkie bucking the sawn-through tree over. The tree landed with a thud, blocking off the entrance and separating him from the rest of his men. He gaped for a minute as Garf shed his ingenious weird-rock disguise and strode out into the open.
“Welcome to Equestria,” he said. “You’re trespassing.”
***
The rock transformed into a very ugly, un-elven thing and told Khaydin he was stepping on someone’s hairbraids. At least, that’s what most of the platoon agreed happened. It was odd, because there weren’t any tresses being worn by anyone except Ira Gianshi, and Noxa Khaydin definitely wasn’t passing over those.
“I beg your pardon,” said Khaydin, still shocked at the young oak tree’s recent passing.
“I said,” said the ex-rock, “you are marching through land that does not belong to you. You are to immediately order your troops to turn and leave the way they came.”
Khaydin gathered up all his aplomb (and some of his vitriol) and responded with a resolute “No.” He thought for a second, then added, “Also, you smell funny. You should really bathe before you try to order around people you don’t know.”
“Funny,” said the not-a-rock. “I was about to tell you something similar. What, did you soak an hour in a tub of perfume this morning?”
“I will have you know, sir,” said Khaydin, now quite offended, “that it was only half an hour, and that in the finest oils and scents the city of Cilmar can produce. We all did!” He turned to his platoon, who were peering over (but definitely not touching) the fallen tree trunk. “Back me up here, guys.”
They all muttered, Ira Toto saying something under his breath about how silly he thought the whole perfume thing was. Khaydin edited his earlier mental note. There would be no severance package for a blasphemer such as this.
“It’s a wonder we didn’t smell you before we found your happy tree friend.”
He turned back to the notrock. “What?”
“The bloke you buried under an elfwood sapling. What’d he do, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“He polluted the air with incessant chatter. He continually violated the-”
“Yes, yes, I read the paperwork you buried him with.”
Khaydin sputtered for a second, both at the flagrant interruption of legal recitation and at the fact that this beast had read the interred forms, which meant-
“You dug him up!?”
“Well, yeah. Elfwood’s an invasive species. I wasn’t letting that thing take root in Poison Joke country.”
“You dug up Ira Jormung.”
“So that’s his name,” the notrock pondered, beginning to slowly pace around Khaydin. “That was bugging me.”
The normally pale face of Khaydin was turning a shade of ruby red in indignation, nearly matching his hair.
“That’s...! You can’t...!”
“I did. Oh well.”
The sheer audacious flippancy of this being! It was almost like... like...!
“Humans,” he spat.
“He finally recognizes me!” said the profane one, clapping. “I know it’s been a while since we last kicked your tuchuses out of Gloamshire, but you certainly took your time puzzling it out.”
“I had hoped to never befall your kind again,” growled Khaydin, clenching his teeth until his cheekbones hurt. “There’s a list of your transgressions against Elvish law longer than the laws themselves.”
“Yeah, that sounds like us,” the human said, idly unsheathing and examining a crude iron blade coated in... Oh, dear Mamril.
“What is that on your sword,” said Khaydin, attempting to keep his composure.
“Oh, I imagine plant sap. You know, there’s a bush in your way, and you’re sure as hell not gonna go around it, eh?” He grinned stupidly and elbowed Khaydin in the side. “Eh?”
The human defiled graves, he presumed to order around a Noxa, and now this... travesty against nature. Khaydin was certain of one thing. Whoever this human was, he needed to die. Immediately.
With an inelven cry, he brandished his shotel and made to stab the infidel.
This of course was a rather sloppy move that no elf who had seen actual combat in the last century would make.
Something heavy stopped Khaydin’s wild lunge as soon as it had started. He felt something like poison ivy in between two of his ribs.
“I swear,” said the infidel. “You Elves are so easy to bait.”
The human withdrew his machete, now covered in thin white Elven blood mixed with clumpy green plant remains. He sheathed his weapon, swiped Khaydin’s left armor plate straight off of his shoulder, and turned to leave. The jerk didn’t even bury him. This was just humiliating all around.
Khaydin toppled backwards, resigned to his inevitable reincarnation as mudmoss.
Secretly, the rest of the platoon agreed that was about what he deserved.
***
The assembled Elven soldiers collectively took a few steps back and Garf climbed up the gullyward side of the felled tree, leaning one elbow on the top and peering down at them. The shiny shoulder plate he was now wearing meant that, by some ridiculous millennia-old rite or ritual, he now commanded all of these gaudily-dressed, odd-smelling, pale-skinned pansies.
Best to do what he came here for, then.
Further dumbfounding them by climbing down and blatantly displaying how he was touching a dead plant, all over, dear Mamril, make it stop, he jumped down and looked them over.
“We’re not going to have any more problems like that, are we?”
They shook their heads, half-bewildered, half-terrified.
“The whole uprooting thing isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”
“Well, it was an invasive species...” offered one of the spearmen.
The platoon quickly came to the consensus that Jormung didn’t really need that tree growing on top of him if it meant the whole ecosystem went belly-up, and that Garf was an alright guy, other heinous sins notwithstanding.
“Alright, then.” Garf started pacing in front of the assembled troops. “According to this shiny bit of metal, I tell you what to do now, right? First order, drop all your weapons and strip your amor. All of your metal bits and bobs are now property of the Vorlanian-Equestrian Border Patrol.”
They hurriedly did so, collecting every piece of wargear they had in a giant gold-and-silver mound. Thankfully, the traditional Elven combat dressing included a shirt and trousers. The alternative was the last thing anyone needed today.
“Next order,” said Garf, “you’re all going to turn around and go home the way you came, and tell your superiors that you followed their stupid, labyrinthine laws to the letter.”
“Do we have to-”
“No,” exhaled Garf. “You do not have to use those exact words.”
There was a great sigh of relief. The platoon turned and began marching... in a very elfy fashion.
“And stop being so quiet! You’re going to spook the fauna.”
An ex-pikeman shrugged. “We’ve never been under orders to make noise before.”
“I can fix that. Pinkie!”
Pinkie was suddenly sitting on one of the Elves’ shoulders, donning a helmet she had nicked from the Great Pile O’ Elvish Metal Things.
“Hiya!” she called, seriously wigging out the Elf she had appeared on.
“Give our friends here a beat.”
“Aye-aye, cap’n!” With that, she jumped down and trotted over to the fore of the formation. “Okay, everyone, follow my lead!”
What followed would directly lead to the revival of the choral arts in Elvish culture.
Never in the history of warfare had a great number of Elves been so very loud. Nor had they been enjoying themselves so thoroughly.
Pinkie worked miracles like that.
Ira Toto had been granted the Noxa insignia for the duration of their return trip. Pinkie waved them all a fond farewell as they walked -- not marched, not flowed, simply walked -- through the two arched trees that marked the boundary between the Everfree forest and beyond.
As the sounds of Elven acapella faded into the distance, Pinkie started giggling.
“What’s so funny?” Garf asked.
“Oh, you know how the song goes. I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony~!”
He chuckled, thinking that if anyone were to attempt such a feat, it would be Pinkamena Diane Pie.
He stopped laughing when he realized a few things.
“Pinkie, do you remember where the gate between the Everfree and the Vesperwood in Vorlan is?”
“This is it, isn’t it?”
“You’d think, but the gate to Vorlan is in the western quarter of the Everfree. I remember being able to see the Drackenridge in the background. But instead...” he turned, and lo and behold were the Drackenridge mountains behind them. “...We’re in the eastern quarter. Which means...”
“...Which means this isn’t the Vorlan gate at all!” Pinkie concluded, eyes widening to match Garf’s own.
They looked through the portal, under the intertwining tree branches that marked the realms’ boundary.
“This isn’t good,” Garf muttered. “In fact, I do believe this is a very not good thing.”
“And another thing!” interjected Pinkie, shooting a hoof in the air. “What did those guys call themselves again?”
“The, uh, the diplomatic something.”
“Right! That meant they were here to meet and diplomacy-ize with somepony.” She rubbed her chin with a hoof. “But who?”
“Well, I’m not running after them to find out.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Pinkie perked up, grinning. “Hey, I hear Bon Bon’s selling those new flavored chocolates.”
“The ones that come in the foil shaped like an orange?”
“That’s the one!”
“Well then!” He clapped his hands together, spun on a heel, and started walking. “I have even less of a reason to be here than I thought!”
“Why stay in a spooky forest when we could be eating orange chocolate!”
“Brilliant!”
“Inspiring!”
“Wisdom for the ages!”
Eventually, the duet of mutual chocolatey admiration faded into faint wimowehing. All was well.
***
***
“Didn’t come,” one said.
“Useless bloody food-eaters,” said another, scowling and fluttering its wings.
“It’s like I says, isn’t it?” said the third, their leader. “If it’s got carbon in it, it’s not worth spittin’ for.”
“And we didn’t right spit for the elves, now did we?”
“No sir Bob, we didn’t. Got half a mind to float home now, tell Mum t’ call off all this meet-n-greet with the ground-pounders and let us go back t’ killin’ every one of ‘em.”
“S’ gettin’ late, Rab,” noted the first. “Think we ought to get going, eh?”
“Yeah...” the third sighed and spread its wings. “We ought to. But you’s the one tellin’ Mum.”
“I’s always the one tellin’ Mum.”
“Yeah, but you’s it this time especially ‘cause Mum was hopin’ on the Elves. I’m not gettin’ smote again this week.”
With a flash of light, the clearing was suddenly empty of winged beings. Except for one particularly unflappable bluejay. He stuck around.
