Author's Note

A horrible thing, separation. However, this too will come to pass.

Sorry for the wait my readers. I finally got a new laptop to continue working on my stories for all of you to read. So expect chapters to begin flowing again. I am also thinking about rewriting Child of the Night, but I'm not so sure I want to.

XIV

Gentle humming graced my ears as I slowly came to. It came from a voice I didn't recognize at first, until I remembered last night's mad dash to the forest to get away from heat season. Laying there, I let the beautiful voice of Everfree melt my stress away as I continued to wake up.

I opened my eyes to see that I was still laying on the bed of flowers, with Everfree gracefully sitting next to me, as she started to vocalize her song. It was a gentle song, and seemed to come from all around me. The song had a subtle life to it. No impressive runs, no extreme high or low notes, just a simple melody that was easy to wake up to.

"You slept longer than I had guessed you would, Dark Child." Everfree says calmly," Are you ready to finish creating your first child?"

"Yes." I answer as I slowly sit up from the extremely comfortable bed of flora. She smiles and waves her hand over the side of the bed, and I see several small trees grow into saplings right before my eyes.

"I'm glad. Please choose one of these trees for your child to be made from." She tells me. I eye the several trees with wonder as none of them were recognizable. The first has a pure white bark with a smattering of leaves that seem to consume the light near them. The second looked as if the entire tree was made of gold, and the leaves seemed to glow with what appeared to be sunlight. The third has normal brown bark, but the leaves seemed to constantly drip water from their tips. The forth appears to radiate some waves of heat, and the leaves look to be burning with small flames. The fifth has a deep brown bark with leaves that appear to be made of gemstones of all kinds. The sixth seems to not have a hard physical shape, and the leaves appear to contain clouds within them. And finally, the seventh has bark made out of a deep blue crystal with leaves that all glow a different color.

"These trees are all vastly unique. May I know what they are called?" I ask the forest Goddess next to me. She giggles and gestures to the first tree.

"This one is called Luasyl, a tree normally only found in the moonlight grove. it has properties that match what a lunar equine has." She moves to the golden sapling, "This is a Solaric tree, the opposite of the Luasyl tree." She moves on to the next, "This is a Marelantian tree, normally only found in or near the city of Marelantis." The next," This is a Dohvaan tree, it's wood contains and radiates dragons fire when fully matured." She moves to the fifth, "This is a Tectoni Tree, normally found underground holding two vast lands together with it's roots." On to the sixth, "This is a Ventius tree. Only found on the peaks of the tallest mountains." She moves over to the last sapling,
"And this is an Arcaniuum tree, it contains unmatched arcane properties."

She looks at me with a small smile gracing her lips and says, "Each of these trees are extremely rare, and will give your child different attributes and abilities once they are fully matured." My eyes are wide in awe at the fact that these trees are only found in legends and myth. I had no idea that they actually existed, and now I had to choose which one to make my child out of.

Looking over the trees again, I pause on each one thinking of which would be the best to pick out of the seven legendary saplings before me. Looking between all of them I make my mind on the Solaric sapling with a nod to myself.

"My child will be born from a solaric tree." I tell her. She smiles before waving her hand over the saplings, making all but the Solaric tree revert to what I assume is their seed state as they had all appeared to shrink back into the ground.

Everfree then begins to glow with a godly power, and the Solaric tree before me begins to mature at a rapid pace. As the tree gets taller the Golden hue of the bark starts to shine and glimmer in the den that we reside in before it starts to leak solar magic from the leaves like the flares of the sun itself. Soon enough the tree reached full maturity. The bark almost seemed to glow with a radiance that only the sun produces, and the leaves had constant flares of white and gold magic streaming from them. The tree had grown to about four meters tall, and lit up the den in a bright golden hue.

I glance at Everfree to see that she has a ball of magic in her hands and is walking towards the Solaric tree with a motherly smile on her face.

"Solaric tree, I grant upon thee the seed of the Prince of Darkness. In return I ask thee to create a child of the Everfree, and Darkness' blood. Make them pure of your aspects, but child of the man next to me." She says with a multilayered voice that reverberates through the entire den, and most likely the nearby forest outside.

She then pushes the orb of magic into the tree, and chants something in a language that made my head spin slightly. The tree reacts to this by dropping a couple of its large branches to the ground, where they broke apart and started to swirl together like a normal timberwolf. However my child was much more defined in its wolf like features, for as it was forming together it took the sleek shape of a flesh and blood wolf, not the blocky wolf like shape of the normal timberwolves outside.

It took an hour for my child to fully form, and once it was done it looked like a golden statue. Everfree grasps my hand and places it on my child's head.

"Name them to grant them life." She tells me. I look into the lifeless eyes of my child and start thinking of names for them. I settle to name them after my grandmother.

"I name thee Aurora Whisper, Daughter of Osiris Eclipse." I tell the Solaric timberwolf before me. My daughter's eyes light with an Aurora green glow, and solar magic starts to flow from her neck like a lion's mane. The end of her tale does so as well, and she takes her first breath while looking me dead in the eyes.

"Father." She says in a quiet feminine voice reminding me of a certain shy pegasus I know. She stood only up to my knees, and when standing on her hind legs she would probably come up to my lower chest. Aurora looks over to Everfree, and gives a slow deep nod of respect before walking up to me and sitting on her haunches.

"Now that your child has been born," Everfree starts, "You may continue to elude the heat season at the old pony castle." She finishes before she seems to have an 'aha' moment and looks over to Aurora then back to me.

"The only things you need to worry about with your daughter, are feeding her, caring for her, and making sure she doesn't bite off more than she can chew in a fight. Other than that, she will be just fine." Everfree says before she starts to glow and continues with, "The rest is for you to find out Child of Darkness. Until we meet again."

With those final words Everfree seems to fall apart into random forest pieces. Said pieces reform into the six timberwolves that made her avatar in the first place.

I look over to my daughter and say," Come, we have some travel time before we make it to the old castle." before walking towards the exit of the den. Aurora follows close behind me to my left.

As we left the den, all the nearby timberwolves gave a howl before bounding off into the forest. After a few short moments we were alone in the Everfree, with no sign that the den was there in the first place. I look around to get my bearings, and realize that we're lost.

"Stay here for a moment." I tell Aurora. She lies down as I summon my magic into my feet. I crouch down, and leap high into the air, breaching the forest canopy looking around quickly to get my bearings. Canterlot was just visible to the north, and the old castle ruins were only a kilometer or two away to the southeast.

I land on a cushion of magic with a decent thud, and look to Aurora.

"Alright, we got a fair hike ahead of us to get to the castle ruins, and about four hours of daylight left to get there. You ready to go?" I ask my daughter. She nods her head a couple times as she stands up, and we start walking southeast.

"So before we get too far in our journey, what kind of diet do you have so I know what to gather on the way there?" I ask Aurora.

"I need a heavy in meat omnivore diet." She tells me before falling silent. I blink and grin a bit. Looks like I get to go hunting while we walk.

Most of our journey was spent in silence. Mostly to not attract predators, but also because we didn't need to talk all that much. I had killed a few rabbits for dinner, and they were strung from my belt with some twine I had summoned from Canterlot. I also had a decent bundle of sticks on my back for a fire once we get to the ruins.

After about three hours of travel we make it to the castle ruins with little resistance from the forest itself. I sigh at the state of my old home before walking through the rotted portcullis. Aurora gazes around the courtyard in mild interest before she suddenly stops and takes a defensive stance while growling.

"Something else is here." She tells me quietly. My eyes narrow as I ready my magic to be used. I take slow cautious steps towards the entrance of the castle ruins, and pause outside them, seeing something in the antechamber that I had hoped would have died out in the last thousand years.

An ancient Ursine.