What's Hidden In The Woods

Making A Companion

We rushed into the the forest as fast as we could. There was the occasional howling of a Timberwolf but also cries of several other creatures that wouldn’t normally just stroll through the forest, some of them I was even hearing for the first time. We were attacked several times but the beasts either ran away shortly after attacking us or were turned into wood splitters. After around 15 minutes Zecoras hut came into view. When we came into a radius of 6 meters to her hut, the ground below us started to glow. For a moment I was scared but nothing happened. We reached her hut and knocked fiercely. For a moment nothing happened. Then the door opened and a rather tired looking Zecora stood in front of us.

“Come quickly inside! Who knows what could hide, out of our sight.” The moment we entered the hut, Zecora slammed the door. “It’s nice to see I’m not forgotten, left out here to end up rotten. “ Zecora seemed pretty scared of what was going on in the forest around her. She had started collecting some ingredients and her saddle bags were almost filled to the top when she stopped. “We must go now, the protection spell won’t hold much longer.” At that moment a pack of Timberwolves started to howl and Zecora almost lost it. She really needed to get out of here.

“Twilight, can you teleport the three of us out of here?”

“Teleporting three people is dangerous. Limbs or organs could be exchanged or even lost completely. As long as the caster is good, two people don’t face that risk.”

I sighed. “Then take Zecora with you and leave. I can get through the forest on my own.”

“What?! Are you crazy?! We have no idea what is mingling outside at the moment. It’s way too dangerous to go alone.” While she was talking I could see how the ground outside stopped glowing. In an instant, something collided with the wall.

“There is no time! I can control nature with my sword, have you forgotten that already? The forest will help me out. Now leave!”

“Alex is right, we need to go. He is a knight; he’ll know a way through.” Twilight still wasn’t ready to go but the fact that the Timberwolves smashed a hole into the wall changed her mind. She stood close to Zecora and lit her horn.

“Do not die on me here, you got that?” I simply nodded. Then, they disappeared in a flash of light. I turned around and drew Nature’s Promise.

“Let’s find out if you actually work.” Twilight had tested the sword on the magical power and said it would work, I had never gotten around to test it though. It better should. The first Timberwolf broke through the wall. The rest of the pack followed soon after. They started circling me and suddenly, one of them jumped. He didn’t get very far before he was turned into a pile of branches but now the fight was opened. Timberwolf after Timberwolf attacked and what was worse, more and more of them came through the hole in the wall. For every wolf that was turned to splinters, two new ones came in. After around 15 minutes of this cycle, I could feel how I was losing strength. The Timberwolves were able to land several hits before I took them out and my situation was getting worse and worse. So, I used the rest of my power and poured all of my magic into sword.

I was not sure what would happen, if a tree would come to live or if roots would pierce the wolves. Nothing like that happened.

Instead, the Timberwolves stopped their attack and laid down, all at once.

For a moment, I just stood there, waiting for something else to happen. But nothing did. Then I took a step forward. Then another one. Then I started walking. When I reached the first wolf, he didn’t even get up but crawled out of my way. Each of them in my way did the same until there was a path towards the door. I stepped outside and saw that easily hundreds of Timberwolves were lying there, bowing down to me. Then I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Sit up.” In an instant, every wolf was sitting upright, with perfectly straight backs. I realized that they would listen to every command I gave them, so I put on my best superior kind of voice and said: “Begone!”

They all stood up and began to leave. They also returned to their normal packs and the groups slowly started disappearing into the forest. Then another idea came to my mind. I pointed my sword towards a pack of them. “Except for you seven.” The pack I pointed to immediately stopped and turned around. “You come with me.” I turned to leave and was soon after surrounded by seven Timberwolves. It seemed like I picked a good pack to be an escort, they all looked bigger than the typical Timberwolf and the leader was made of some dark type of wood.

After a good 30 minutes, we reached the border of the Everfree Forest. I decided to go to Fluttershy’s cottage, maybe Twilight would still be there. When I got closer to it, the animals suddenly freaked out. Oh god, was I an idiot. Of  course the Timberwolves scared them. How could I think they wouldn’t. In less than 15 seconds, Fluttershy was outside and already trying to calm them down. Shortly after, Twilight came out the cottage, looking at Fluttershy first and then turning to me. If it would have been possible, Twilight’s jaw probably would’ve hit the ground.

“H-How… why are they not attacking you? Or the animals? Or anything? How are they simply standing there doing nothing? What did you do to them?”

“The sword works. But would you mind coming over here? I don’t want to scare the animals any more than they already are. Don’t worry about the wolves, they’re completely tame.” Twilight hesitated for a moment and then slowly approached me, stopping every few meters. When she finally reached me, Fluttershy had been able to calm down her animals, so there wasn’t any more noise. “So, what do you think? Nice escort, eh? Also, where's Zecora?”

"She fell unconcius when we arrived here, so brought her into the hospital. THe doctor said she was simply way too stressed out and hadn't had enough sleep for a while, nothing serious. Now about the wolves..."Twilight’s facial expression told me that she still couldn’t believe it. Her mouth had opened once again and she was trying to regain her composure. “So… Nature’s Promise did this?”

“Yep. The moment I poured my magic into it, the Timberwolves stopped attacking me and followed each and every of my commands since then. This is pretty cool.” Then I got a crazy idea. “Hey do you think I could keep one of them? That would be SO awesome.”

“Uuuh, in theory yes, but I don’t think that that would be a good idea. A Timberwolf strolling through Ponyville would probably freak everypony out.”

I gave her my best puppy eyes. “Oh come on Twilight, Pleeeaaaaase? I’ll always be around him and make sure he doesn’t attack anypony.” She did obviously not like the idea, but she also seemed interested in doing it.

She sighed. “Fine then. But you only get one, so pick who you want to keep and send the others back into the Everfree.”

My choice was clear from the moment I had the idea. I pointed towards the bigger and darker one and said: “You stay here. The rest of you return to the forest.” His comrades immediately turned around and left, leaving him behind. “So Twilight, how is this going to work?”

Twilight lit her horn. “You’ll be mentally linked and it’ll make him your servant. I could give you a big explanation about how it works in detail but that would take hours. And please don’t tell Celestia about this.”

“Why not?” Suddenly Twilight’s eyes turned green and a black kind of smoke came out of them.

“This is forbidden dark magic. Sombra used it to take over the Crystal Empire’s original leaders. Now if you would please touch him.” I decided not to question the spell and laid my hand on the wolf’s forehead. A strange feeling crept up my arm. Twilight’s eyes turned back normal and her horn stopped glowing. I let go of the Timberwolf. “There, now you just have to think up whatever he should do and he’ll happily do it.”

“Thanks Twilight.” I turned to the Timberwolf. ”He needs a name. You got any ideas Twi?”

“Not he. She needs a name. You picked one of the few female Timberwolves out there. I just remembered that only females are made out of such dark types of wood.”

“I think you should call her Lupa. T-that is if you don’t mind…” Twilight spun around.

“Flutters?! You saw that?” Fluttershy jumped back and nodded fiercely. “Please don’t tell anyone how I did that, okay?” Fluttershy nodded again.

“Where did you get that name, Fluttershy?”

“I just made it up at some point. I have plenty of other names if you don’t like it.”

“No, no, that’s not it. It’ just that in my world there is a myth about a wolf named Lupa. She raises the sons of a god after he kicks them out. One of the kids builds up a city which would turn into one of the greatest empires Earth has ever seen. I like the name.” I turned to the Timberwolf. “Yeah, from now on, your name is Lupa. Welcome to Ponyville.” Then suddenly, my vision became blurry and I started stumbling around. When I fell over, I was caught at my belt. When I looked up, I saw that Lupa had caught me. I smiled at her as I passed out.