Disclaimer: I do not own any My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, they belong to Hasbro
Except for the OCs
I reached out a slip of paper from my pouch; I don’t know where I got it, really. I just got it a few days ago, when I woke up from my lonely camp, it was just there, in my pouch. I wouldn’t even know it was even there if I didn’t open it to get me a healing potion (damn poisonous rats).
Meet me at the pub in a village nearby the Everfree forest,
-D
And perhaps it’s my idiocy or maybe my curiosity that led me into following the message that was sent under the acronym of a man called ‘D’, the fact that the whoever sent it, managed to somehow slipped it in my pouch didn’t help either, and there’s the Everfree forest… it’s a surprise I didn’t it even exists, and for all I know, this message or invitation was a trap from those who swore vengeance against me… not that I know why and not that it would work.
And so, I stood in front of the entrance of the inn/tavern/pub, slipping the paper back into my pouch and checked at the sign of the tavern once more ‘Sinking mare’, it read, I cocked an eyebrow before shrugging and went inside. The warm air, leaking from the cracks of the door, inviting me to enter; to leave the somewhat strange snowy weather (it’s supposed to be spring!), and so I entered the building.
The smell of alcohol, woods, yellow lights, men and women talking and cheering together… all in all, it’s like every other tavern in the north. I preferred the one in the west or east, but that’s just me being bias.
I scanned the whole crowd, and immediately found the man who sent the message. And it wasn’t that difficult to spot him, as he was wearing a seemingly out of place top hat, grinning and waving at me, and if it wasn’t for the fact that said man was the one who sent the message, I would probably smiled at him in response.
And so, I kept my expression still.
As I approached him, weaving through tables, chairs, and a few bipeds, I got clearer features of him. White hair and beard, pale skin, red pupils, and at his late thirties. Was it not by the fact that he’s basically sitting in a middle of a tavern with no covers, I would think of him as a vampire and burn him right there. But he’s not, in fact, a vampire. Though there’s a weird glint in his eyes, making me wonder if he’s sane at the moment.
And his clothes, or costume were those of a jester minus the bell hat, it was colorfully mismatched; purple on his right shoulder, red on his stomach, yellow on left shoulder, blue on left side, silver on right side… the same with his trousers. It’s a miracle he didn’t gather some stares from the patron inside.
“C’mon, take a sit!” he offered, snapping me out of my thoughts and took a sit the opposite of him “Now, you must be asking—“
“Cut the talk, why did you call me for?
He frowned, “You don’t want to know how I sent the message? Or who I am?” the blank look I gave answered his questions; he muttered something about ‘critic’ before his grin returned “No matter, you could call me Mr.D, now; I called you here because I have a request. You see, for the past few weeks, weird creatures began to show up in the Everfree forest. Like a wolf made out of woods, disfigured manticore and beyond fucked-up cockatrice, and I want you to simple ‘Investigate’ where this creatures came from.” Dissy(I refuse calling him D, because fuck innuendos) leaned on the table, looking at me with his disturbing red eyes, “So, what do you say?”
I frowned, fishy would be the best word to describe the whole situation, but then again, it was all fishy from the beginning “Why me?” I asked, and if it was possible, Dissy’s grin seemed to get wider.
“Why, do I need a reason? Your name is quite famous you know, and I just think that you would be perfect for this… adventure.”
I eyed him warily, it was still suspicious… sure, I got a name for myself and it was quite an achievement too. I drew my hands off the table, leaning back and clasped it behind my head, “And why, would I do this?”
Dissy chuckled “Of course, there will be a reward,” he pulled out a tom out of his rucksack “you know what this is?” I eyed the tome; grey leather as the cover, on it was a carved symbol resembling a fire, the symbol itself was outlined by a thick golden thread. “’Course you don’t know about this book, I would be surprised if you do and I am hard to be surprised,” he pointed the book, “this is a one-of-a-kind spell tome, an ancient spell tome, one would say, and this book in particular contained spells of your arts.”
My eyes widened slightly, looking at the grey tome, if he’s saying the truth, then I will have new spells to learn, use, play, and test with… especially if it’s within my arts.
Needless to say, I was hyped like that time when I learned the banned meteor spell and a few others. Sure, I was kicked out from the magic college… but it was worth it, and it was nearing the end of the final semester anyway. At least they didn’t ban me from the college itself.
“May I?” I asked, eyeing the grey tome curiously. I glanced at the man who nodded. I put my hand to the book, feeling its integrity and took it. I opened it and flip it to a random page, reading the words…
And closed it afterwards, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before opening again, “Deal.”
“Great! Now, you could take the book with you.”
I stared at him, “What?”
“I said ‘take the book with you’,” I opened my mouth to ask why, but he continued “I know your type of people, you don’t break a deal if it’s not necessary, though if you do…” a dangerous glint in his eyes, and soon replaced with his mad one, “Well, it won’t be pretty.”
I replied with a nod as he left the inn/tavern or anything you would like to call it. He’s true about it though, and besides, crossing him didn’t cross my mind until he mentioned it, and even if it did; I wouldn’t even bother doing it. Standing up, I walked to the innkeeper and rent a room for the night.
And as I wrote this, I couldn’t help but to face-palm for not asking where to go after doing the investigating, but that would be the least of my concern.
Everfree forest, as they would like to call it. At a first glance, it looked like any other forest. That is, if you ignore the fact that it’s in the north where everything is cold, or frozen. The Everfree forest looked more like a tropical jungle, which is much more unbelievable since I was in the north part of the earth. The forest itself wasn’t so bad; it was dark because of the canopies covering the sun, some of the trees were overgrowth and some were malnourished and stout, but none of them were dead. The terrain was uneven; hills, mounds, and even cliff were scattered carelessly without consent. And then there’s the strange aura it gave off, it was as if the forest itself is alive. Not alive as in the trees are green, but alive as if the forest itself has sentience. But other than that, it was fine like any other forest/jungle.
As I trudged through the forest by the next morning, I couldn’t help but to compare my life with a legend in the land of the east, about a broken warrior called Jericho wandering around the earth with his legendary weapons. The only differences were that he fought for the Good, Justice or something about that, while I fought for… well… me, and for the sake of adventuring, loots and knowledge. And I don’t chase a dragon for no good reason, nor do I fight demons and evil God because I can.
My inner musings were snapped as I heard a growling sound, and I quickly casted the first spell that popped up from my mind… but quickly switched it out for another, specifically Frost bolt. It’s not a good idea to cast a fire related magic in a forest prone of fire and while I was in it. My head swiveled to where the growling came from, and from one of the bushes.
And by the gods it was one of the most horrible, nasty, vile, disgusting, sick, twisted, wrong, repulsive living being I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen weird creatures in my many previous adventures.
It was a bad and sick parody of manticore; head and paws of a lion, wings of a bat, tail of a scorpion and posture of a gorilla. But by god it was still disgusting, it all seemed… blocky and disproportionate. It was like one of those child storybook illustrations, only this one would only be drawn by a sick demented painter, pledged on making children and adults alike to vomit.
Oh, it was also red, except for its fur. It has a yellow tan fur, white fangs, and it was growling at me, ready to pounce.
Needless to say, I was more disgusted at the abomination rather than scared, though I think it took the paling of my skin to make it thought otherwise as the edge of his mouth twitched into a smirk while it continued growling, snarling as it pounced…
IT’S FUCKING SENTIENT!
“DIE!”
I raised both of my hands and felt both palms became cold as I instinctively activated the frost bolt spell I had casted earlier, and in a fluid instant. A ball of condensed liquid ice formed in both of my open palms, only two inches away from touching them, and as quick as I formed it, I sent it forward to the pouncing manticore. Freezing its upper parts while it was in a mid-pounce, and shattered into sharp pieces of frozen red meat, leaving its bottom part on the ground.
I did the world a favor just by doing so.
I approached the remains of what used to be the bottom part of a manticore, grabbed the poisonous tail, pulled out an empty vial from my pouch, and proceeded to extract its poison into the empty vial, like every wise/smart adventurer would.
After all, a manticore's still a manticore, no matter how wrong they look.
After extracting the poison to the vial, and storing said vial to my pouch. I preceded my journey in the forest… deeper, or I hoped it was (it felt as if the forest itself were guiding me), and trying to find wherever these eldritch abominations came from.
A few minutes or so after I encountered the disgusting manticore, I quickly cursed myself as I heard rustling of bushes surrounding me.
Couldn’t a mage/adventurer finish their quest without some kind of disruption? The answer was, unsurprisingly, not.
The gods really hates adventurers for some reason, I figured that it was probably caused by some of us adventurers (me included) had tried to steal and succeeded in stealing their divine artifacts of their temples.
I turned around to look at each bushes cautiously. The rustling of the bushes were now added with growls, snarling, and a very putrid breath. It smelled like an un-cleaned teeth after eating a raw rotting meat.
I nearly puked.
Then, suddenly, five shadowy figure (thanks to the dark forest) leapt out from the bushes; surrounding and circling me like a pack of wolves cornering a harmless, weak prey.
Except said wolves are made of woods and have sickly glowing yellow eyes, and I wasn’t exactly harmless or, spiritually, weak in any of that matter.
I kept glancing at the circling wolves, not giving them a chance to be out of sight. A spell was already on my mind and casted, draining my magica little bit. As I raised my hand to one of the circling wolf, and a fire bolt flew like an arrow to the wolf, burning it on impact, the wolf in question flailed around the ground; trying and failing to extinguish the flame, though by the time the fire died, it only left a lump of black charcoals on the ground.
I noticed the other wolves were staring with wide eyes (again with these sentient creature), before taking a wary stance, seeing that I was no longer a weak and harmless prey. Two of them jumped at me from both sides with open maws, attempting to trap me from both sides.
I stepped back, and the two jumping wolf’s head met each other with a sickening crack. They fell to the ground, somehow managed to look dazed.
I yelped as a sharp pain pierced the back of my leg, and cursed as I looked back; it was another wolf with its jaws stuck on my right leg. Wincing, I immediately casted another spell and touched the biting leg wolf’s back with an open palm of my right hand.
I quickly regretted my decision as the wolf combusted into flame, it jumped away, trying and failing to kill the fire; but not before the fire from the combusted wolf touched my open wound.
“Fuck.”
Quickly listing to drink a healing potion for later, I turned to the three wolves, two of which were still dazed on the ground, while the last were glaring at me. I noticed that the last one was bigger than the other, and I figured it was the alpha.
Not giving for three of them to recover, or attack; I immediately casted a spell, causing a blue lightning jutting out from my open palm, resulting a prickling and burning static pain. Already aiming at the alpha, I let loose the lighting.
It immediately roasted the alpha into dead smoking black logs, then the lightning jumped from dead alpha to the two recovering wolves, roasting the as well, into dead black logs.
The lighting didn’t even give the three wolves to react.
Coughing and wheezing from the smoke, I took a look at my wound, and winced, it was pretty deep. I pulled out two vials that would be the savior of my life, and every people with dangerous occupational hazards; a blue liquid of energy potion and red liquid of healing potion.
I pulled the cork of both vials and drank both of them in one big swig. Almost immediately, the effect of the red liquid worked its way as I felt a warm and soothing sensation on my wound, the wounded flesh then re-grew itself until it was no more but a scar.
Truthfully, I didn’t really need to drink the energy potion, being a trained wizard/elementalist/warlock. My magic reserve could just regenerate itself, albeit slowly, by converting the magic residue in the air into my own magic reserve… but just to be on the err side of caution.
Looking at the corpses of the… timberwolves (yes, I’ll call it that), I sighed. I could just kill the five of them easily with a specific spell, but seeing that I was in a forest, and the fact that I was in said forest… I didn’t want to risk it. Shaking my head, I stared at my surrounding and raised an eyebrow. I swore that road wasn’t there before. Shaking my head again (I’m doing that a lot lately), I followed the road; thinking something along the thought of ‘Too old for this shit.’
A several hours of walking in the forest later, the sun had set and I was tired, both of my leg’s muscles were sore as a first time anal. Along those several hours, I encountered –what I thought to be- a cockatrice; It has a half-top of a chicken and half-bottom of a snake, and I only knew so after I killed it (you don’t exactly find a chicken head popping out of a random bush in a middle of a deadly forest and hoped it’s tame) and another encounter with a manticore.
But after that, there were no more creatures attacking, whether they’re scared of me or something, I don’t know.
After humming an old tune, I saw a clearing or an opening from top of a small hill. I sauntered to it, and froze. It was a normal meadow-like circle clearing with blade green grass, but that wasn’t the cause why I froze. It’s not the ominous looking gate standing in the center of the circle-like clearing. It’s not the skeletons that were scattered around the gate, either I wasn’t the first one Dissy hired or they were foolish enough to fight the creature.
My attention were stuck on said creature; a snoring (thus sleeping) nine-headed with a very large torso. It was none other than… a Hydra. Though, this one is different, rather than a normal hydra that I had seen. This one had brown skin instead of green, each of its head were somewhat shaped like a triangle, red fins on top, eyebrows for each eyes, and finally, it had four heads rather than nine.
Now, Hydra is one of the most dangerous creatures in the world if not handled or fought properly. A single trick of its poison is all what it needs to paralyze, followed by a sudden seizures and ended with a death of heart attack.
All in one minute.
This is one of the very few reasons why the rich assassins’ guild would mainly use this poison against big target.
That said. There are a few ways to kill it, and if it’s under some circumstances, like for example: Sleeping. It would make things so much easier.
So, bless those Gods above who’d given me the opportunity.
Pulling out my own spell tome out of pocket dimension, a neat spell created by some random guy who thought that it was stupid to bring things with bags when you can store it within a pouch created between time and space. It’s one of the few spells that I learnt that wasn’t physically destructive, in nature.
Flipping to the tome to a spell I was going to use, I silently made a beeline a few feet from the sleeping Hydra.
One of the few ways to kill a hydra is by destroying all of their heads. Contrary to the popular belief, Hydra does not regrow its head, unless after an excessive amount of time.
I took a deep breath, relaxing my muscles. I glanced at the page of the tome I was in, before closing my eyes. I began to chant. I could feel the letters and words became alive, and the runes in it began to dance and my magic flows through it, giving the spell, energy necessary to use it.
Four exact dark clouds were formed, accompanied by storm-like winds, darkening the already dark night and making it gloomier. I raised my free hand until it was aimed to the sky, and with another deep breath, I slashed my hand down vertically through the air.
“Fulgura Pluviae”
And I let it out. It was a word, a simple word to finish the chanting and to begin the magic. The world began to brighten, almost blindly; all the darkness from before was gone. The flash only remained within mere nanoseconds, before it was soon followed by a deafening roar of multiple thunders going off in one synchronized in one go, resulting a big thunderclap, almost throwing me away.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t probably casted the spell near the target.
My ears were ringing, I dropped my tome and covered my ears, I felt something wet oozing out from both of my ears. I screamed and screamed, I screamed a few seconds later after the damage was done.
The pain was like both of my eardrums were blown away, literally. Which is what just happened.
The pain still lingers, but it was quickly followed by massive headache. Quickly shuffling my hand to my pouch, I grabbed a smaller bottle, equivalent to three vials, and pulled out the cork then I began to drink it, letting the warm and numbing sensation lingers as it fixed and healed my senses, and damage within my ears or even brain.
As soon as the pain was slowly gone, I began to breath faster; it seemed that I put too much in that spell, that it was burning half of my magic reserves when I just needed to use only a quarter of it.
I guess I got a little bit excited…
As prove of that. There. What used to be where the Hydra slept, were now only bits of overcooked meats, as the others were turned into ashes, and the singed parts on the grass, where the Hydra slept.
I shook my head, eliciting a groan of pain, and pulled myself out of the ground. I picked up my tome and inserted it back to the pocket dimension. Thinking whether or not I should restore my magic right now, or just take a rest and let it fill by itself.
I chose the latter. I then dragged myself to the gate. It was somehow given of the feeling (or emotion) of congratulation… Shaking my head, in hope it was just my imagination. I leaned by the side of the gate and slept.