Everfree Delivery Service: Book 1
On rare occasions… very rare occasions… you may say the wrong thing at the wrong time. And these are lessons taught… lessons learned. And pride is always something we can afford to lose. Once… just once… maybe the tides will tur-
There are a few rules with travelling through a forest riddled with monsters. Rules that are easy enough to follow. Running for your life makes you look like food. But a brisk walk displays that you’re confident food. Also tread very lightly and be sure to not make a single sound. If by chance you do draw the attention of a feral monster… simply lay down and politely wait to die.
- from Motokool, by sc0tticus
Chapter 1
Mail
Everypony gets mail. Typically, it’s packages for old nags who order worthless treasures from sleazy salesponies on their television, letters from a colt at summer camp to his parents, Hearth’s Warming Eve cards, junk advertisements, and that kind of stuff that gets sent through Equestria’s mail system. Here at Everfree Delivery Service, we don’t deliver that kind of mail. We would if we had to, but our clientele aren’t the kind of folk who go to summer camps, send holiday greetings, or own televisions for that matter. You see, there aren’t a lot of regular ponies who live in the Everfree Forest. And we’d never last as a company if we only served ponies. Because it’s not just everypony who gets mail. Everything gets mail.
My boss at Everfree Delivery Company is a gruff, stout stallion named Berry Cobbler. From what I can tell, his parents were bakers, and expected him to join the family trade. What made him dissent, and what he did in the years before owning and running the EDS, I’ll likely never know, but he’s still pretty handy in the kitchen, whether he likes it or not. When I first met him, he made it explicitly clear with his rusty accent that he was to be called “Burry” rather than “Berry”. It suits him, as a name, too. A lot better than Berry, anyway. His character brings to mind the burs that litter the forest floor and scratch and jab at everything that comes near. The first time I met him was back when I applied for the job here at the EDS.
“Hello?” I pushed wide the door, which had already been cracked open when I arrived, at the front of a classically-styled mansion just on the edge of the Everfree Forest. I wondered if there would even be anypony alive here. Not a lot of ponies live near the forest, and for good reason. But nailed to a decorative column just a few feet away was a dirty page of parchment that read “HELP WANTED” with another scrap of paper taped below it saying “INQUIRE WITHIN”. So I took a step into the entrance and was greeted by a barking voice.
“Hello yerself, do ye need somethin’ delivered, then, or are ye here fer the job?”
The graying earth pony was seated behind an ancient desk, set to one side of the grand foyer. In the dark, unlit room, this somehow didn’t seem out of place. On the desk were a variety of papers, some of which were coated in what looked menacingly like dried blood.
“The job,” I said, not sure what else to say, and hoofed over an application that he never actually read.
“And what’s yer name, son?”
“Fast Break,” I replied.
He got up and walked into the light of one of the large windows, where I was standing. His hoofsteps were muffled by the dusty, worn rug on the marble floor. He quickly looked me over, no doubt trying to determine whether I was really physically able to make a delivery at all. I’m quite fit, if a little thin, and he didn’t seem displeased. After taking in my smooth grey coat and short rusty mane and tail, he paused for a second over my cutie mark, a broken spear.
“What’s yer special talent, then, boy?”
“Not dying,” I replied. That pretty much is all there is to my talent, though not nearly the full story behind how I earned it. According to his own mark, a wax-sealed scroll, my guess was that his special talent was probably related to message delivery.
“Fair enough,” he said, and made his way back to the desk.
“You must be Berry Cobbler, then?” I asked.
“Yea, I’m Burry Cobbler,” he said, with a pointed look and particularly noticeable enunciation of the ‘u’.
My own woodsy accent wasn’t too far off from his (though I like to think that I sound less like a drunken mule), and I slipped right into calling him Burry and not another word was said on the matter.
“Are ye sure yer qualified fer this position? Ye know what it entails, and ‘re prepared fer it?” he asked, returning to the desk.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t confident.”
“Confidence is nothin’ in the forest, lad. Our last delivery colt was confident ‘n ye can guess what happened to him,” he said, gesturing down at the bloody pages in front of him. “He made a good meal, judgin’ by what we found left o’ him.”
“I certainly try to avoid that, myself. When can I start?”
“Ye can pick up where the last one left off,” he said, shoving the bloody pages into my hooves. They were instructions on where to go in the Everfree Forest to deliver the package, which was a small, unmarked box that he pulled from a drawer in the desk. I stuffed them into my saddle bags, in the pocket that had previously held my application.
Pulling out a piece of paper and a quill from another drawer, he told me, “’Fore ye leave ye’ll need to sign this. It’s yer contract. Welcome to the Everfree Deliv’ry Service”
I took the quill in my mouth, dipped it in an open inkwell, and signed the scrap of paper. I noticed that it was actually just a blank page with some notes and sums already scrawled on it. It's good to know that my employer was a serious professional.
“All right, ye’ll be off, then.” It was a command, not a question. “Come back and we’ll talk abou’ how ye’ll be paid.” He pulled a bottle of apple cider and a filthy glass from another drawer in the desk.
“Yes, sir,” I replied, and made my way out the front door and out into the Everfree Forest on my very first delivery.
Chapter 2
Nightmares
Now there’s something I should explain about what we do here at Everfree Delivery Service. Our job is to make deliveries into the Everfree Forest, no matter what they are, and no matter to whom or to what they are being sent, as long as someone pays to get it done. There is nothing safe about any of that. The forest is teeming with monsters and horrible creatures that will rend a pony limb from limb in a heartbeat, if they are feeling merciful. And it’s these creatures that make delivery in the forest nearly impossible for normal ponies. Unless you are a pegasus or unicorn, that is. In that case, it’s simply flat-out impossible.
One would think that the advantage of wings or magic would be enormously helpful in the forest. A pegasus could easily fly above the forest to the delivery location, then drop through the thick, leafy canopy, but this makes them easy prey for the tree-dwelling beasts, which will follow a pegasus’ path through the sky from the treetops, and ambush them during their descent through the branches. And unicorns would fare well, if it weren’t for certain monsters that seek out magical creatures for food. To picture how vicious these monsters can be, just think that their favorite meal is a highly magical creature: a full-grown dragon. These monsters are drawn immediately to a unicorn’s magical aura, and make quick work of them. So it falls to us earth ponies to delve into the forest, without the aid of wings or magical horn to help us through.
As for the deliveries themselves, they can be pleasant, or nightmarish. Sometimes, it’s just taking a cartload of supplies to an old hermit, who’ll invite the deliverypony in for a cup of herbal tea and a chat about the news. Those are the pleasant deliveries. Sometimes it’s taking a package to a family of beasts that will insist that the deliverypony is in fact part of the delivery, and may be made a meal of. Those aren’t even close to the nightmarish deliveries. You don’t want to know about those.
Let me tell you about one in particular.
The delivery was a small cartload of supplies to be delivered to a few cave trolls deep in the forest. I have no idea what supplies a cave troll would need delivered to it, but that’s what we were told, and that’s what we did. Whatever was wrapped up in the cart, however, smelled awful, like rotting meat. The trek would take me through some particularly nasty parts of the Forest. I was prepared, though, with special combat blades on all four hooves, light body armor, and most importantly, knowledge. Some say that knowledge is power. Funnily enough, I agree. Not every monster in the Everfree Forest can be defeated or even deterred by strength and weapons. Knowing how to deal with beasts with your mind is more important than knowing how to kill, though I am fortunate enough that I can do both.
My knowledge came from first-hand experience, not only in past deliveries, but my entire life. I grew up in the forest, you see, with my grandfather. He was a strong, brave, genius of a stallion, and he showed me how to survive when I was young. The story of his death and the story of how I earned my cutie mark are one and the same. But that’s another story.
Delivering a cart through the forest makes the journey exponentially more difficult. The loud sound of the cart wheels on the rocky ground attracts the attention of predators who want to eat me and scavengers who want to take whatever is in the cart. I remember once coming under siege by seven bandit ponies not far into the forest. I was forced to sedate them along with myself using a sleeping gas, praying to the Princesses that I would be the first to wake up.
Pulling the cart is also a real pain in the plot.
I had three days of hard travel into the forest and three days back again. The plan was to travel by day and hunker down at night, using a painted tarp to disguise the smelly cart with me under it as a bush. A squareish, goofy-looking bush, yes, but it was enough to fool the nocturnal creatures, being too intent on their own survival to take too much notice.
The first day and night of the trek passed with only one major incident. A large, shadowy creature, on six wicked legs, with razor-like fangs sheathing a long, many-forked tongue, leapt in front of me on the path. Though I had never seen a creature like this myself, I knew enough to guess that this was a magic-hunter, a monster that hunted for magical creatures like unicorns and dragons. It looked me over with piercing eyes, then seemed to decide that I wasn’t interesting enough to bother, and slithered away, it’s tongue sweeping the air as it searched for prey. Other than that, I accidentally pissed on a snake in a bush during the day, but it was harmless, and slithered away, offended, as quickly as it could. The second day, I was diverted from my planned course by an endless expanse of poison joke covering the forest floor. I had to swing well wide of the flowers, but just from inhalation of the flowers’ aroma, my ears twitched and just noticeably started to get a little too large.
When I first encountered poison joke in my youth (I am now convinced that my granddad had planned it) my ears grew to an enormous size, sticking straight up like a rabbit’s (oh, how granddad had laughed), and I wanted to make sure that that never happened again.
After travelling clear of the finicky flora, it was an uphill journey to get back on course, but aside from fatigue, nothing so much as looked in my direction. I suppose, retrospectively, that this was a bad sign, but I thought nothing of it at the time. That night is when this trip began to turn from run-of-the-mill to nightmarish. And by nightmarish, I mean it literally.
I stopped in a clearing, locked the cart’s wheels, unfurled a bedroll under the cart, and threw the camouflage tarp over it all. After an hour or so of simply listening for predators, I finally laid down to sleep, just like any other night.
I began to dream, and in this dream, I was a colt again, in the forest with my granddad. He began to walk farther and farther away from me, and as fast as I cantered after him, the distance between us only grew. I saw the fire bloom in my vision, and before I could scream, he was consumed by flames, yelling and crying out in pain. I was weeping and struggling to get to him, but the burning forest closed in on me, grabbing my legs and lifting me into the air. And then I was flying. I was flying toward a platform in the air, and my granddad’s screams were drowned out by a band playing on the floating stage. As I joined the crowd in front of the band I saw a gorgeous mare looking at me. I was about to speak to her, when the music turned suddenly back to my granddad’s screams of burning pain. I looked at the stage to find it empty except for him, still burning, calling out to me. Crying and pleading for me to help him.
“Yep, this is a dream,” I thought. There is no way that my real grandfather would ever cry and beg for help. He was too proud for that. So why couldn’t I wake up? I racked my dream-muddled thoughts to try to think of why I could be aware of my nightmare without being able to end it, and without a moment’s notice, I was in a library, with a final exam just minutes away - and I hadn’t studied. I just wish all of these ponies around me would quiet down with their party, as it was quite difficult to study. What was I studying again? Oh, right, dreams. I opened a tome of magical beasts to see a hippogriff flying around the page, a very large worm in its beak. That’s it! I was being controlled by a dream-eater. Or, actually, two of them. These leech-like creatures preyed on the dreams of intelligent animals by attaching to their host’s temples in their sleep and secreting a poison that kept the subject asleep and dreaming what they wanted. Some of them liked pleasant dreams while others preferred nightmares, and judging by how up and down this dream had been, I had a little bit of both, and they were fighting for control. I had to take control of this dream, quickly, or I’d be stuck in a drug-fueled slumber until I went insane. I tried to imagine anything that could help me out here. A large cat made its way past me, muttering about being late for its train to Canterlot. Lightning crackled around me as the ceiling turned into a stormy dark cloud. Lights from near my hooves revealed that I was a giant pony stepping over a bustling urban city at night. A swarm of B’s (literally a hundred of the letter B) began buzzing around my head. Yes! This will do the trick! I swatted at the B’s in my dream, daring them to keep attacking, continuing to wave my front hooves around my head until finally, I woke up in a cold sweat.
I scrambled to get up on my four hooves, and looked down at where my head had been. Surely enough, there were two grotesque slug-like things lying smashed and squashed on the ground. I had probably been flailing around on the ground, beating away at the pests in my dream and in reality for several hours before the effect of their combined toxins wore off. I was still quite dizzy and noxious, however, and promptly threw up at the base of a tree nearby. Leaning against the same tree, I figured that I probably shouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
Morning arrived, and I packed up my bedroll and set off. The stench of the cart was attracting small hungry beasts by this point, but a swift kick would send them scurrying. And so I arrived at the cave that the trolls resided in that afternoon. They proceeded to taunt and verbally abuse me as a weak little pony, but hey, they were the ones who wouldn’t step out into the sunlight, I thought, as I had them sign the delivery paperwork. I thought nothing special of the whole transaction until they lifted the wrappings to check that their delivery was in order.
It’s not my place to judge what is inside any package we deliver, and it’s usually polite to ignore the contents and be on my way. But with the wave of nauseating stench that swept over the area once they took off the wrappings, my eyes couldn’t help but wander over to see what was in the cart. And I wished on the Princesses that I was still back having a jolly good time with the dream-eaters.
What I saw in the cart made me nearly wet myself. About twenty unicorn horns, in various states of decay, were in a pile inside. They appeared to have been crudely hacked away from the heads of dead unicorns, possibly taken from a graveyard, possibly not.
With the delivery paperwork still in my mouth, I stumbled backward from the cave and sprinted away at a full gallop, the loud laughter of the cave trolls following after me. I didn’t stop until night had fallen, and I laid, shaking, under the pathetic bush-tarp until morning.
Leaving the cart behind and with plenty of reason to leave the forest as soon as possible, I was nearly to the edge of the forest by the afternoon of the second day of travel. I would have set a record time, if I had not stumbled blindly into the lair of something worse than any troll.
A fully grown dragon had built a lair in a cave in a small clearing, with the entrance opening upward. I had fallen into this entrance at speed, and, with some searing along the way, tumbled down to land with a thud on the dragon’s horde. Right near its head.
It had apparently been sleeping, as one large eye looked blearily at me for a few seconds before the dragon rose up in a fury. I was touching its horde, and it was pissed.
But I had already dealt with enough on this trip, and I did not have the patience for this shit.
The dragon roared at me, making my mane whip back as its hot breath swept over me.
“Shut. The. Buck. Up. You oversized salamander!” I roared back. I was even more pissed than the dragon at this point. I was physically and mentally exhausted, and now I had fallen into a whole with a fat whiny aurophile.
“I have been through hell the last few days in this damned forest, and you think I’m going to think you’re worth two seconds of my time? Think again plothole! Buck you. Buck your mother. Buck your shitty pile of gold. And buck you again for being such a pathetic piece of trash!”
The dragon looked stunned. It had probably never had anything stand up to it like that before, and it was completely taken aback. I climbed angrily out of the cave, while the dragon looked sheepishly around its den, at a loss for how to react.
As I made my way through the forest, fatigue overcame my anger. I just wanted to get back to EDS and collapse on the couch in the side room by the fireplace.
When I arrived at the mansion, Burry greeted me with a gruff but friendly hello, and I wordlessly responded by flinging myself on the couch and falling immediately to sleep.
Author's Note
These won't update too often, unless I get a lot of positive feedback or something. As it stands, they are more just creative writing practice for me. I do have a few more episodes planned, though.
