It was a hot, silent summer’s day over Ponyville, and even hotter (but much less silent) over Everfree’s main path. By the edge of the open fields, the bordering trees crawled with vines. Glowing eyes peered out of dark crevices within the forest’s boundaries. Under the canopy, a low mist rose and undulated, partly obscuring the path.
There was a low rumble, like the groan a chicken would make if its throat was inflated and filtered through a bass speaker.
Two crimson eyes glowed through the fog.
At least, they could only have been eyes. Headlights hadn’t been invented yet, and they wouldn’t have been that small. And they certainly wouldn’t have had what this thing had.
A head poked out of the mist.
There are some chickens which, when you meet them, remind you that despite the inherently funny name and the weird clucking noises and the hundreds of pop culture references essentially making them the world’s chew toy, every chicken is, when you got down to it, descended from creatures that would have given dragons a run for their money.
Being attacked by a feather duster looks and sounds hilarious. Being attacked by a feather duster with raptor claws, a beak that can punch through skin, and the ability to leap up into your face with wings splayed out like an eiderdown-wearing facehugger is decidedly less so.
And then there were chickens that watched their owner's eyes for weaknesses and that dreamed of bringing out some retired hunter instincts and that weren’t averse to eating the occasional bit of flesh…
This chicken – if such it could be called – would have made a chicken like that freeze with a fear so all-encompassing it would have been a full-body bind. Literally. Its gaze would have brought its victims closer to their ancestors by fossilising them on the spot.
A tail whipped out behind it, upsetting the mist slightly. The creature ducked below the surface. Claws clicked against the hard earth. Nearby, bushes rustled as it ploughed through the undergrowth.
It stopped, and made a series of clucking noises. The last one had an interrogative twang at the end. It could hear voices. It licked its beak, and slunk through the undergrowth.
“It’s got to be one of these flowers,” said a voice – feminine, made up not so much by breaths as by a series of gasps. “No, this one’s no good. No. Try that one, Lily.”
“Thanks for coming out with me, Daisy,” said a squeaky voice – also feminine, but with a quaver that meant the speaker was doing their utmost not to scream and flee. “I can’t stand this place. The sooner we find those flowers for the Summer Sun Celebration, the better.”
“I know what you mean, Rose,” said Daisy. “This place gives me the creeps, with all these… creepers everywhere. Doesn’t that wicked enchantress live somewhere near here?”
“Oooh, don’t even talk about her!” This was a third voice, considerably more mature than the other two, but no less frightened sounding. “I heard that if you even utter her name, she appears in a cloud of green smoke and casts a spell on you!”
“Wh-What kind of spell?” said Daisy. Rose gasped in fear. “Oh, sorry Rose. I didn’t mean to walk into you.”
“No pony knows what kind of spell. It could do anything to you.”
“You mean…” said Rose. “You mean like make your legs drop off, or you turn you into a zombie, or something makes you half-dead and obey her and turn you into her slave, or it makes you go berserk and attack other ponies on sight? That kind of spell?”
“Stop,” said Daisy. “I think I’ve found something.”
“Ooh, those look nice,” said Lily. “I like the colour. What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Pages were flicked through. After a short pause, Daisy continued: “The closest match is this one.”
“Let me see,” said Lily. Two flanks bumped into each other. Someone whimpered. “Oh, don’t panic, Rose, it’s just me. Hmm. Tiny heart-shaped outgrowths on the sepals… pink petals with yellow stripes on the inside… stamens longer than the petals… it’s either Heart’s Desire or some kind of crocus.”
“A crocus in this season?” said Rose. “I thought they were spring bloomers.”
“I see your point. All right, Heart’s Desire it is, then.”
The three voices gasped and chattered at their surprise discovery.
“They’d be perfect! Let’s take some,” said Daisy. When she next spoke, her voice was muffled. “Dishish good shtuff. Ohen my sah-hul-hag, hwill hu?” Pony teeth fiddled with a saddlebag flap. “There. That’ll make a nice addition to the bouquet.”
“Here’s something interesting,” said Rose.
“What is it?” said Lily.
“I’m not sure. There’s a whole carpet of them.”
“It looks like some kind of violet. Pass me the herbal.” There was some flicking of pages. “Hm. Can’t find a match. It does look awfully like a violet, though, but some of the details are a bit off.”
“Should we get some?”
“I wouldn’t risk it. If I don’t know what it is, I don’t trust it.”
“Good creed. Can we go now, please?”
“Oh, but it’s right next to the Heart’s Desire, and we know that’s not dangerous.”
“So, you wanna take some?”
“No, we’ll leave it. I’d rather not risk getting a rash or something.”
“Me neither.”
They trotted on in silence.
“Um…” Rose began, swallowing. “Shouldn’t we be getting back now?”
“Yeah, let’s head back while we still can.”
“While we still can? I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
It was easy to trace their presence even after they stopped talking. The chicken-beast simply had to keep tabs on the whimpers. It stepped forwards, and to its alarm heard a pair of wings flapping towards it. Everfree instincts rose to its rescue and it dove into the bushes.
“Hallooo, Rose and Lily and Daisy and trees!” said a dopey voice, floating in like a slightly concussed cloud. The chicken-beast sighed with relief. It could have been much worse – like a monster, or another of its own kind. “Do you need any help with anything?”
“Oh,” said Daisy. “Derpy, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in town.”
“I’m doing my bit for the community!” said Derpy, as though there was no higher honour. “Do you need any help picking flowers?”
“Eeee… no thanks,” said Daisy. “We’ve got many good flowers already. In fact, we were just finishing here, weren’t we, girls?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Rose. “Finishing up right here.”
“All finished and accounted for,” said Lily. You could even hear the broad grins through both their voices.
“We’ll see you later, Derpy,” Daisy called. The chicken-beast groaned. It could hear that its prey was moving on.
The pegasus lingered overhead. At one point, it came down low and sniffed heartily.
“Ooh, these look nice. They’re all blue and bright, like the sky. Or like Rainbow Dash!” she said. Stems were ripped. “Cahn hur jush to hake a hew…” Wings flapped.
The chicken-beast crouched. This was the moment. The Stare. If it didn’t strike now, it never would. Its eyes glowed red, it smoothed its comb back, and its wings flexed. You couldn’t say it didn’t think about image, and at least it took the time to prepare (unlike some monsters it could name).
Branches snapped as several hundred pounds of scaly hide burst through them. A long tail stiffened, balancing the torso on top, and its owner rose from the bushes with a low groan. It opened its eyes. Its blast of roaring stopped dead and the beast’s wings flopped.
The grove was empty. It had dawdled for too long.
It looked up. It looked around. It looked back the way it had come, in case fate had decided to pull a fast one on it. In the language of the jungle fowl, it uttered the gallinaceous equivalent of a swearword.
Then it looked down and noticed the hoofprints embedded deep in the mud. Its gaze craned upwards, following the prints to the bushes and noticing the gap in the overhanging branches, through which it could see the distant town of Ponyville.
It snarled, exposing a vast array of fangs under its beak.
Monsters don’t usually take a gamble this close to the edge. Contrary to ponies, the lack of cover on the vast expanses makes them feel uneasy. But this time, the beast was feeling lucky. The fog was beginning to rise up thick and fast.
A tail slithered out of sight.
Through the undergrowth, the three ponies trod carefully, glancing left and right for any sign of approaching danger.
“I think it’s this way,” said Daisy nervously. “Or was it that way?”
“Please don’t say we’re lost,” moaned Rose.
Daisy gulped. It was all the answer she had to give. As if on cue, a low howl swooped over their ears, which flattened immediately. Their teeth chattered. Even their knees chattered.
Up ahead, the bushes rustled. All three of them froze and their ears swivelled towards the sound. Like all prey animals, ponies have a keen directional sense of hearing. Even long centuries of being civilised hadn’t been enough to remove the stamp their much longer history had put on them. Had they not been quivering on the spot, the ponies might have been quietly thanking their senses.
“D…Derpy?” said Lily.
Or maybe not.
A nudge broke Rose out of her trance. Next to her, Lily was pointing at a clear patch beyond the trees to their left. If it was the main path, they could use it to return to Ponyville. They snuck over to check, keeping a sidelong eye on the bushes.
The patch up ahead promised wide open space. Old instincts beckoned them on as they guided their hooves over the ferns and spiky brambles. Even if the three of them were visible to anything lurking in the foliage, they had been visible for a long time anyway, and at least now they weren’t likely to trip if they needed to gallop.
They looked around. The space was wide, much like the main path to Ponyville, but they didn’t feel at ease at all. There was still a low mist smothering everything, though it was thinning now. They could see several yards around them before pure grey impeded their sight.
“This place feels…” said Lily.
“What?” said Daisy.
Lily turned around to speak, but saw something past Rose and gasped. Pupils shrinking, Rose spun around to look.
Looming over them was a statue. The podium alone would have been size enough to encase them if it hadn’t been solid granite. Rearing to pounce was the large horse of granite standing on top. Both wings were displayed. One front leg pointed at them accusingly. Its flowing mane and tail billowed so expansively it was a wonder they didn’t break off the rest of the statue. Below a horn like a javelin, two pointed eyes glared at them and a mouth parted to shriek terrible words, now never to be heard.
It looked an awful lot like Princess Celestia. If Celestia ever turned evil.
The three of them huddled closer together. Even if the statue wasn’t moving, its sheer presence alone was enough to make them cower.
“Wh-What is that?” said Lily. “I’ve never seen this b-before.”
They stared at it, entranced by fear, not knowing whether to flee or stay put.
“Maybe…” stammered Rose, “maybe the wicked enchantress built it. Maybe… Maybe it’s an evil spirit!”
“The wicked enchantress,” Daisy said. “How far do you think we are from her?”
Rose gulped. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She also didn’t want to hear what she was hearing right now. They heard the suspicion pop in each other’s heads. Scared minds think alike.
Someone was walking towards them. They could hear the clopping of hooves coming from behind. Almost without any kind of choice on their parts, their heads swivelled slowly round and they peered through the mist. A shadow was approaching them, strangely lumpy for a pony. It was wearing a cloak and it had pulled its hood up. All they could see of its face were two green eyes.
With a scream they bolted, hit the statue, stumbled dizzily around for a moment, and then shook themselves down before bolting around the statue and into the thicket.
“Beware!” shouted the figure behind them. “Beware!”
They didn’t have to be told twice.
The bushes erupted and scaly wings smothered their faces. They screamed and reared in fright at the two red orbs glaring at them. The air turned red. Lines radiated from the beast’s glowing eyes. They felt an icy chill slide up from their legs and found that they couldn’t run. Rose, Lily, and Daisy just had time to look down and see a wave of grey sweeping over their bodies before it washed over their opening mouths and petrified their wide eyes.
Three pony statues fell aside. The cockatrice humphed at them, before it noticed the distant figure at the edge of the mist. Just what it was looking for; more victims.
As elegantly as a bat clutching a bowling ball, it flapped and hurried over. The figure lazily raised a foreleg. Several rings jangled around its striped cannon.
Grey lips pursed. Green dust was blown from the hoof. An emerald cloud like a seasick night sky blocked the cockatrice’s vision. It clucked in surprise and paused.
A green draconic snout burst through the cloud and rows of teeth reached for the cockatrice.
For the second time that day, it clucked a rude word. A flapping body crashed through the bushes. When the green illusion faded and the cloud settled, there was no sign of the chicken-beast except for frantic squawking, which faded into the distance.
The stranger took a few steps forwards and looked down. At her hooves, the statues of the three florists stared up through the canopy. She followed their petrified gazes, and saw the lowering sun.
The tree was old and gnarled. Everfree Forest had been plagued with several lightning storms during the thousand years it had taken to outgrow its former boundaries. This tree had weathered them all, surprisingly because of its hollowness. Younger trees splintered when struck by lightning. They suffered from weakened wood, and that left them vulnerable to high winds. This one had no wood to weaken.
It was still alive even when the enchantress moved in and carved out a front door and windows. This gave the house an owl-like face, but she put a hollow mask over the front door and planted a larger one in the dirt like a mailbox just outside. It paid to give the resident monsters a hint.
Vines hung from the branches. Rows of bottled potions were attached to the ends to soak up what little moonlight peeked through the canopy.
A cauldron bubbled over a pit of burning logs. Masks more colourful than the ones outside leered down at the brew. Beakers lined the shelves. Branches poked through the walls, snaked across the ceiling, and poked into the walls again like woody sea serpents. More potions were dangled from these. The two pony statues reared either side of the pot as though terrified of its contents.
The stranger lowered her hood, giving her striped Mohawk a chance to breathe. Thick earrings swung either side of her face. She walked over to the pot and stirred the ladle with her teeth. It was a tricky operation when you had a neck stiff with rings, but the stranger had worn them for years and barely gave it much thought.
She stopped and licked the surface.
“Hm,” she said, and smacked her lips. Her voice had a peculiar accent. “Yes, this seems to be just right.”
Now for the tricky part. With her neck braced for the weight, the stranger reached under the first statue’s forelegs and placed her own hoof gingerly over its back. She heaved. The point wasn’t to lift it straight up, but to raise the statue’s back legs higher than the cauldron.
The splash soaked both the upper half of the statue and the stranger’s mane. She shook it out and moved towards the second statue.
Nothing happened for a while. Cracks started to appear along the statue’s length. A white aura surrounded it. Beams of light seared through the heart, flakes of stone fell off, cream coloured fur was revealed, and with a flash of light the stone shell was blasted off Rose. She completed her scream.
Rose paused and blinked in confusion. She rubbed her eyes and looked around the hut.
She opened her mouth to ask where she was, but was interrupted by two pony statues falling onto her head and crushing her below the surface. The stranger waited until the flash of light to close her eyes. Bits of stone bounced off her forehead.
Lily and Daisy shook themselves down. Then they gave a squeal and Rose burst to the surface, gasping greedily.
They remembered the mist, the screaming, the ambushing magic cockerel, and the blackout before this point. They glanced at the masks. They glanced at the potions. They glanced at the stranger. Finally, and with an impending sense of dread, they looked down at the cauldron brew they were currently sitting in.
The scream could be heard all the way down in Ponyville, where a few ponies looked around in mild surprise before deciding that it was just the wind being frightened.
The stranger bared her teeth until the scream subsided. “There is no need to scream in fright!”
As one, the three ponies knocked the cauldron over and bolted for the door. The stranger landed in front of them, making them skid to a halt.
“Wait!” she cried urgently. “You cannot go so soon!”
They shot for any corner of the room they could claim. Since the room was mostly circular, they ended up with their backs against the far wall, never once turning away from the approaching stranger.
“Tell me about the Mare in the Moon!”
They closed their eyes. The stranger blinked at them in astonishment and put her hoof down.
“Now, my ponies, please be calm!
“I am not here to cause you harm.”
None of them seemed convinced. Instead, they continued quivering and curled up tighter. The stranger frowned and screwed her lips up thoughtfully. Then she blinked. On the flank of the pink blonde was a lily cutie mark. She looked across at the cream pony. Her flank bore a rose. The third one boasted a daisy. Beside the stranger was a large and dull-coloured vase tall enough to rest her chin on. She peered inside.
Something slapped onto the floor before the three gibbering ponies. They peeked through their eyelids. The flower before them bore tiny heart-shaped outgrowths on the sepals, pink petals with yellow stripes on the inside, and stamens longer than the petals. It looked a little like a crocus.
Rose, Lily, and Daisy stopped gibbering. They glanced at each other for help. None of them had heard any stories about enchantresses keeping Heart’s Desire, and their minds worked feverishly to make one up.
The stranger – whom they now saw was a striped pony – placed a hoof on the pot and tipped it over. A flurry of flowers poured onto the floor. She arranged the heap into a more respectable line.
“Allow me to show you what was in that brew,
“Which I concocted to help revive you.”
She pointed. Lily and Daisy peered closer, though their mouths were still agape and ready to gibber if needed. Rose had already beaten them to it.
“This one is the bud of the Shy-By-Night,
“To reach for the root of the victim’s fright.
“This is the root of the Mother’s Balm,
“To counter the effects of the cockatrice charm.
“The liquid I used was nectar from the flower
“Of the Butterfly Orchid, to give it some power.
“Lastly, I added a pinch of Cold Stare,
“To make the stone shatter and fall from your hair.”
The three of them silently closed their mouths as they quietly examined the flowers, some recognisable, some new. Being florists, they were used to seeing flowers as Celestia’s gift to the world, but being congenital cowards with little understanding of zebras, they were used to treating the striped pony as a terror from the one part of the world Celestia had overlooked. Seeing both at once was just sending out confused messages. Their legs were still tense.
The striped pony sighed. “I think I’ll never understand you pony folk.
“Perhaps you’ll feel at ease if I get rid of this cloak?”
Cloth flapped in the air. Rose, Lily, and Daisy stared at the dark stripes. What kind of pony would paint themselves that way? Even her sun-shaped cutie mark, being a spiral with arrowheads around its circumference, looked painted. Was she secretly a blank flank?
“That feels better. Now perhaps you’ll calm down,
“And tell old Zecora what is happening in town?”
Eventually, some words braved the passage through Daisy’s throat. “Wh-What d-do you w-want from us?”
Zecora swept up the flowers with her hoof. Once they were all back inside the vase, she righted it and beckoned them to follow her. They shivered, but decided not to upset the scary-looking enchantress and followed.
“I trust you are having a party this night?
“Yet, I sense that something is not quite right.
“I see odd things happening in the sky,
“And I cannot fathom the reason why.”
She nudged a telescope, which was pointing out of the window beside her door. Zecora gestured, but the ponies hesitated. Zecora frowned and gestured again. Lily gulped. She heard each clop of her hooves and tried not to look at Zecora as she approached the device.
Out of the window, Lily could see a gap in the canopy. The full moon glared down at her and the dark outline of the Mare in the Moon was unusually prominent. Four twinkling stars were coming towards it, creating a shape much like the famous Square of Pegasus as they did so.
Lily wondered what would happen if they collided. Would the stars simply pass behind it and continue onwards? She was no astronomer, but she was sure that the stars were much further away from the planet than the moon was. Stars shouldn’t be that bright, though.
Rose wedged her snout in between Lily and the telescope, and Lily backed off to give her friend some room. She could feel the lily in her own hair starting to fall out.
“I perused my books, but nothing was there,
“And without guidance, I cannot prepare.”
While Daisy had her turn, Rose pulled herself away from the telescope to stare at the zebra. “P-Prepare f-for what?” she said, her voice becoming extra squeaky. Zecora turned her back on them, (or rather her rump, being a quadruped).
“I was hoping you could tell me, I admit,
“But you know nothing either, not a bit.”
Zecora walked over to the cauldron and put it back onto the logs, which had gone out. A wisp of smoke played over her features. The others began to twitch nervously. Zecora’s face had hardened.
“Now, you head home, as fast as you can go.
“Do not look back, and do not once go slow.”
They threw weak smiles over to her. Their pasterns and knees were itching to gallop.
“Wh-Whatever you s-say,” said Daisy.
“C-Can do,” said Lily.
“D-Don’t l-look b-back,” said Rose, saluting feebly. “G-Got it.”
There was a zip of air, and the door slammed shut. The zebra rolled her eyes and continued cleaning up the hut.
A clear path led from the front of the hut down to the edge of the Everfree Forest, and the earth churned under their hooves as the three mares galloped for the moonlight. They never once looked back. They certainly weren’t going to slow down.
They passed a clump of bushes. A while later, a chicken’s head rose from the leaves and stared after them. It had been ambushed, deprived of its prey, and just when it was getting some sleep something came along and disturbed it. Well, it had had enough.
Branches were shoved aside. A pair of leathery wings flapped. Soon, the bushes were quiet once again.
