Darkness.

It surrounded her form as she jumped from branch to branch, channeling her weather magic to increase her speed.

She flapped her leathery wings every now and then, the cloth of her dark grey, tattered travelling cloak moving with each individual flap.

She smiled at the thoughts of victory that lay with her graps, her fangs glinting in the moonlight that managed to pierce the thick canopy.

Around her, bats chittered and screeched, flying just as fast as her.

She stopped in the very last tree of the forest, the branch serving as her perch barely bending under her weight.

Nearby, the glow of a campfire and the laughs of stallions made the her snarl. Retrieving three knifes from the depths of her cloak, she silently jumped to the ground.

Hidden by the shadows, she sneaked towards the glow of the fire. When she was a mere five meters away, the stallions' voices reached her ears.

"--then she said 'And I said 'Oatmeal, are you crazy?!''What she didn't realise was, the mare was right behind her back!" a unicorn stallion wearing the Royal Guard armour, without the helmet which lay by his side, said, howling with laughter.

His three companions, also unicorns from the Royal Guard, joined in on his laughter. After a while, one of the guards took a sip of his mug. Her delicate nose told her it was stong alcohol.

"Ya know, Teller," the guard said to the still chuckling storyteller, "ya shoulda been a writer, with all those stories o' yers."

The storytelled shook his head. "No can do. I might be good at storytelling and at inventing stories, but I know for a fact that I still suck. Heck, most of my stories are not loved, even though I pour my heart in them. I prefer being a soldier. Less risky."

As his words left his lips, her three knives flew at three of the four stallions'. Her aim was true, and each knife found the heart of a guard, leaving the storyteller staring at the three corpses in front of him in bewilderment.

"W-W-Who g-g-go-go-goes t-th-there?" the storyteller asked, shaking like a leaf as he grabbed his spear and pointed it at the mare.

She smirked, her fangs glinting in the darkness. She stepped forward into the light of the campfire. She stopped by each corpse, retrieving her knives one at a time. As she slowly pulled the last knife out of its victim, she spoke softly to the last guard, sending shivers of unfathomable fright down his spine.

"I am only your worst nightmare," she said, licking the blood off the knife with an impossibly long tongue, letting out a sensual moan as she did.

She pulled the hood of her cloak back, revealing long, flowing pale pink hair, butter-coloured ears with a tuft of fur at the tip and teal eyes that had a glint of mishief, lust and hunger in them.

The guard stallion gulped, arousal and fright fighting for supremacy of his emotions.

Before he could decide between being frightened by the mare or aroused by her, she moved, quicker than the blink of an eye, and slit his throat open with her knife. She sat down where the stallion had been moments before and licked the blade clean as the last gurgling breath of the rapidly bleeding stallion left his lungs.

She smiled as she put the knife back into the cloak where it belonged, parting it just enough for anyone nearby, were they still alive, to catch a glimpse of her appetizing body. She was slim, but still had just enough weight to make her belly slightly squishy. Her curvacous body consisted of a firm and small, but not too small, rear and double-d cup-sized breasts. Her leathery wings were the same colour as her ears.

An eagle flew down to her and landed on her arm just as she extended it. She looked at it with a loving smile.

"What are the news, Mr. Eagle?" she asked in a low, soft voice that was merely above a whisper.

The eagle shrieked his answer, and the mare seemed to lighten up.

"Oh. They're that close?"

The eagle nodded.

The mare smiled gently. "Thank you, Mr. Eagle."

The eagle shrieked his answer before taking off and flying away towards his nest. "I'm coming, my dear Rick. Your dear Fluttershy is coming."

Author's Note

*confetti fall from... somewhere* Hey everyone!!

I know I had canceled this story, but I decided to pull a phoenix on you. I am sure you all love it when a story comes back from the gallows alive... Even if this one was actually dead when it came back... and I had to hired the best evil mage Equestria ever knew, our favourite tyrant, king Sombra...

Yeah...

Anyways, sorry for the dark-ish mood. *sheepish chuckle* If you want to know the resaons this is back from the afterlife, I made a blogpost about it here.

On another note, I realised that this story is over a year old! *blows party favour (not the pony)* So have a chapter as a late 1-year-old birthday present!

Also, and I know I said as such in the blogpost, but I am looking for a better covert art for this story, and maybe covert art for my other stories as well. Fell free to make one and put a link either in a comment or in a PM. If I think the art is good enough, I'll consider it for the cover, and I'll give thanks where thanks are due. I would also like to have a pre-reader (which is different from an editor in my opinion) to read the chapters I write and give me their opinions before I publish them so I can alter them to please my audience more.

Hope you enjoyed this notably short chapter, and expect a much, much longer one in the next weeks. As always, leave a comment about the story, and I'll see you next chapter! Bye!

Also, before I leave, Teller is actually me... And long author's note is long. Bye!