Of Fire and Ice

I woke up early the next morning to find myself coiled around and almost cuddling something in my bed. Upon closer inspection, and by that I mean opening my eyes, I realized it wasn’t so much a something as it was, in fact, a someone. It seemed I was spooning Eris, the immortal goddess of trickery and being.

“It’s too god damn early for this.” I mumbled, uncoupling myself from the surprisingly cuddly goddess and rolling off the bed. I yelped in surprise as I actually fell off the side of the bed, like the true American hero I am. As I hit the ground, I heard a rustling on the bed, indicating that its other occupant had awoken too. I stood up, straightened my shirt in an attempt to look official, and looked over to Eris, who was stretching out on the bed in a similar manner to a cat. “Is there any particular reason I woke up spooning you?” I asked tiredly, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes. She looked toward me with an expression that was probably as exhausted looking as mine.

“When you spend thousands of years inside of a magic clay pot, one gets lonely. I simply wanted to not feel alone whilst I slept.” She said simply. I just shrugged.

“I had nothing wrong with it, but you could have just asked. Quite frankly, I thought it was kinda nice. You’re very cuddly for a goddess, you know.” I said, gathering my meager collection of belongings and putting them into my bag. As I turned back to Eris, I was somewhat surprised to see the x-thousand year old woman blushing like a young schoolgirl. It was pretty silly to see, really. “Alright, unless you have anything you need to grab, let’s go wake the others. We need to set out soon if we want to make good time, after all.” I said, motioning toward the door. She quickly stood up, and walked toward the door.

“Let’s go then! Wouldn’t want to keep our companions waiting, hmm?” She said, in her trademark abnormally cheerful voice, almost skipping out the door. I followed, grumbling something about morning people.

~~~

After a few minutes of waking people up, and purchasing a map from the innkeeper, we were all seated around a table, discussing the possible routes we could take over bowls of oatmeal (though it was more hot water than oats, frankly).

“We could go back down this trail, toward the fork from before.” Said Cold, gesturing to the trail we arrived from on the map.

“I dunno Freezie, maybe it would be faster to go this way.” I said, pointing toward a trail that went around the other edge of the forest. “It seems shorter, we would only need to cut though this small wooded area.” I added, now pointing at a small area next to the larger forest labeled ‘The Whitetail Woods’.

“I’d suggest flying over it, but that’s not an option. Why can’t we go through the forest? It’s the most direct route, so it would probably take the shortest amount of time.” Said Gryphos, tracing a line through the forest with one of his talons.

“We can’t do that, the Everfree Forest is way too dangerous!” Cold exclaimed, must to the annoyance of the rest of us. “Besides,” she said quietly, as if trying to tell some particularly juicy piece of gossip “I hear the forest grows on its own. Even the weather controls itself!” I looked to Eris, who looked to Gryphos, who looked to me. We all started laughing, much to the confusion of Cold Snap. She tilted her head at me in that adorably questioning way.

“T-that’s how it works everywhere else!” I said between laughs, as her eyes widened in realization, then quickly narrowed in indignation.

“Well how was I supposed to know?” She said, pouting. I looked toward her with my best ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ face at the ready.

“When you were telling me about how Equestria worked, I told you about my world too. That was literally the first thing I told you.” I said, calming down from my little fit. She just scrunched up her muzzle and crossed her forelegs, mumbling angrily. I chuckled at the unintentionally adorable scene, before looking back at the map.

“Well, the forest must be dangerous for a reason. I assume it has animals that are rather dangerous, so I think we should take either of the two paths around it.” I said, motioning to the aforementioned paths. The rest nodded in agreement, with the exception of Cold, who was still angry. I rolled up the map, and after a quick gear check, we set off with high spirits.

~

“Are we there yet?” asked Eris for what must’ve been the four hundredth time.

“Eris, you’re the one leading us through the forest. You are literally the only one who will know if we’re there yet.” I said, silently contemplating suicide for what would probably not the last time. We had been walking for what had probably been hours, and very little in the way of eventful had happened. I figure the lack of interference from the native fauna was due to our group size. That, or they could feel the formidable amounts of raw magical power exuding from our group goddess. Our group knew very little of what lay in this forest, honestly. Eris had said that when she was free and roaming, from what she remembered, everywhere was like this. As for Gryphos, he had grown up in the mountains of Gryphonia until he learned he could magic, and even when he did move to Equestria, he stayed mostly in Maresden for reasons he refused to reveal. This distinct lack of knowledge bothered me, as we knew nothing about our destination, other than Eris’ cryptic revelation about Ponyville the other day.

After about another hour of walking, we reached what looked like the ruins of a once majestic castle, surrounded by a ravine. It had probably at one time been on par with the castle of a Disney princess, but now it was like a ruin in the Welsh countryside. When I inquired to Eris about the castle, she responded with a simple shrug, which I took as it being after her time. We gave it a wide berth, but I made sure to remember the path for later, in case we needed shelter or something to do. As we continued down our little game trail, we soon hit a clearing that was connected to a much wider path. On one side of the clearing, I spied a rather peculiar hut. It reminded me of that generic tribal hut you see in the Africa specials on the Discovery Channel. There was no light coming from the hut, a clear indicator that no one was home. Regardless of this observation, we gave it a wide berth, walking as quietly as possible. When we reached the path, I sped up so I could be walking alongside Eris for the moment.

“Hey Eris, about how close would you say we are to town?” I asked, out of both genuine curiosity and boredom from the mostly silent hike.

“I’m not sure, honestly. I was just moving in the direction of the power sources.” She said, then suddenly stopped, causing Gryphos to run into me. “Wait.” She whispered just loud enough for us to hear, raising her hands as if reaching out to something invisible. She suddenly stopped and turned toward us. “The power sources are moving toward us. I used what I suppose you could call a magical radar to ping their magic, and they are about half a mile ahead of us on this trail. One of the magical signatures feel familiar, to say the least. In any case, I doubt whatever they are intend to chat.” She said, getting into a combat stance. I fell into stance as well, as Gryph limbered his wings and Cold stretched her legs.

“Alright, I’ve got a plan. I’ll stand out here, looking somewhat weak, while you guys hide in the tree line. If they attack, you guys swoop in and ambush them, if not, you can step out when I give the signal. You’ll know it when you hear it. Sound good?” I asked, moving to the center of the trail.

“Not really. They’ll see right through it, I’m sure.” Said Gryphos, looking less than impressed by my tactical genius.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” I asked, meeting his gaze with my own. He raised a talon, as if to make a point, then lowered it, looking somewhat sheepish. “That’s what I thought. Get ready then, I’m sure this’ll be interesting.” By the time they were adequately camouflaged, I could hear the voices of our possible doom from just down the path.