Three days since Matthew, Jason, and October had returned to the little town of Ponyville, they had laid out blue prints, planned guide lines, and had a foundation dug where they had wished to build what was to be their new house. It was quite a happy time for them—building what was to be a place they were to really settle, instead of sitting down, just to get up and run the next day. Applejack had so graciously offered her help for the construction, since she had had more experience of that ilk than the Irons did. The house was being built a ways away from town. In fact it was just a quarter mile within the Everfree Forest. It was far enough from town for the brothers to do things like hunt without disturbing anypony, but also close enough for in-town convenience. Within another week, there was a swath cut through the forest. Trees had been taken down to make a clean path for one, and secondly, there were no sawmills. Apparently they were never invented on Equis, so it all was to be made by hand and hoof.

The Irons had dedicated all their daylight hours to the construction of their new home, and also got the help of a few willing ponies. Applejack, of course, was one to help, along with Macintosh to come later, with ones like Caramel, Bonbon, Thunder Lane, and Bulk Biceps. With the work put in to the project, the new home was made in a total of two weeks. It was simple, with only four rooms. The kitchen and dining place were the same room, and the living was connected to it by open space. The living room had a hearth, though it was empty other than that. In the downstairs, there was the main room, that was more or less to be made into a rec room, and then there was their bedroom. Again, they shared the same bedroom, because they had never had it any other way. The downstairs itself was actually the basement, being built into the ground, so from the outside, there was only one story to be seen. There was certainly much more work to be done, but it was now livable. What it really needed was some furniture. That could wait however, because it was Wednesday—they day they planned to hunt. Fortunately, they no longer had to use stones, but now had something more suitable for hunting. Matthew had made himself a new set of arrowed. They were made of pine wood, and tipped with steal heads, courtesy of Vulcan, the father of Thunder Lane. It turned out that Vulcan and his family was a band of smithies.

The Irons were swiftly in the depths of the woods with surprising stealth. They weren’t as quiet as the Injun hunters, but it was good enough for now. While the brothers sneaked into the forest, Twilight got the foolish idea to follow them to see what it was that they were doing. The little princess was too quite sneaky, as she kept out of sight as well as she could, and just a quiet.

It had been only one hour until the brothers stopped. They had been combing the forest floor when there was a loud splash of water. When the brothers had stopped at the noise, Twilight feared she would be spotted, but they instead slowly crept to the noise. At the edge of a burbling river was a golden manticore with a fluffy red mane and ten foot long scorpion tail. It stood about five and a half feet at the shoulders, making it quite a bit larger than any lion. The beast perked his ears as October swiftly took to the air, perching himself in a tree. He was followed by Matthew and Jason just before the manticore turned its head. It looked around the forest for danger, but found nothing, and so went back to drinking from the river.

There was a slight breeze that flowed through the trees that suddenly changed directions. It had Twilight downwind of the beast, but now it had provided the manticore with her scent. Twilight stood there, terrified and trembling. As soon as the wind shifted, she knew she was in danger. She was a powerful one to contest, but creatures that dwelt in the Everfree could care less about her magical prowess. The manticore turned its head, spying the mare in the bushes.

Up above, the brothers felt the wind change as well, though they were a little curious as to what the manticore was looking at. Jason looked through the foliage, thanking that perhaps it was a deer, or a bear that had come to drink as well. His eyes went wide and he gasped when he saw Twilight shivering in the bushes. Matthew had obviously seen as well. The manticore was only a few moments from pouncing upon the princess, but was stopped as an arrow was lodged in its eye. It roared in pain as it thrashed its head about, while Twilight took that moment to turn on her hooves and run. October jumped down from the trees with his mace raised in the air and his wings spread to soften his fall. He smacked the crown of the monster, tarring open the skin, as well as perhaps cracking its head. The beast plucked the arrow from its left eye while it became to strike out at October. Another arrow was planted in its side as Matthew came down with Jason following. Jason rushed up to the maticore and ran around it, striking it in sensitive places as it tried to follow him. All the while, Matthew continued to volley his arrows as he picked up those the manticore tore out of itself. October took to the air, and came down on the beast as it was focused on Matthew. It seemed to want him dead first, as he was the main danger. However, as the manticore took a few steps forward, October came down on it again, just as Jason came up under it. Jason thrust his spear into the throat of the monster as October slammed his mace in between its eyes. The blow forced the manticore’s head down onto Jason’s spear with a crack and a gurgle. The manticore suddenly stopped fighting and fell forward. Jason had just enough time to jet himself backwards into Matthew, who dropped his bow to catch his brother. They stood there for a moment, until October hopped down from the manticore’s head. Jason stood up and looked at his now bloodied blade as Matthew began to gather the arrows strewn across the forest floor.

“What was Twilight doing here?” October growled as he smacked his mace into the dead creature’s eye.

Jason chuckled a bit, though he was no less irritated with what she had done, and said, “Learning, studying, watching.”

Matthew was staring at their new kill with a frown on his face. “I’ll have a chat with that mare later. Right now, we need AJ’s axe.”

Twilight came running into town in quite a fright. She had a few tears in her eyes as she barreled through the market place. She ran into Macintosh, putting the princess on her rump. Mac grunted and looked down at Twilight a little curiously. When he saw her in tears, he immediately unhitched himself from his quarter ton chart and lowered his head to her, saying, “You aight, Twi?”

Twilight sniffled a little before she answered, “I followed the Iron Brothers into the Everfree to see what they were up to.” Mac raised an eyebrow in a glaring reprimand, though he let her continue. “They found a manticore, so they hid up in the trees while I hid in a bush. The wind changed and it got my scent. I—I didn’t know what to do. It was about ready to…and then, there was suddenly an arrow sticking out of its eye, so while it was distracted, I ran.”

Mac sighed and shook his head. Twilight was a good friend of his, but sometime she did the darndest things. “Twilight, they built their house out there for a reason. Hunting—that’s what they were doing, I’d think,” the red stallion told her, though the last part was more or less thinking out loud. “Don’t you be doing that sort of thing, Twi. You may get more study than you bargained for.”

Twilight nodded in response as she wiped her face with a hoof. She stood back up and said, “Sorry, Mac. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It ain’t me you should be apologizing to,” quoth Mac as he hitched himself back to the cart and began to pull through that market place again.
Luckily enough, her conversation with Macintosh was on the edge of the market, so not many were there to watch it all. Twilight stood there for a moment until she headed straight for her crystal castle.

The day the Irons had returned to Ponyville was the same day Parasol left off to Trottingham for a little end of her family. Indeed, she was rather disappointed that she wasn’t able to welcome them back, but it was every year on the same day she went to visit her great uncle, and she certainly couldn’t disappoint her uncle. So off she went, early in the morning on the day of the Irons return, by way of the train.

Coincidentally enough, there was a mother with her young colt heading for Trottingham as well. Desert was her name, with her colt named Pipsqueak. They had just come down from Canterlot, and were now going back to the colt’s father in Trottingham, before Desert had to return to Appaloosa. It was a bit of a sad story—the divorce of Akin and Desert. Pipsqueak was quite a cheery little lad though, as he was now on his way to stay with his father for a few weeks.

The train pulled into the Trottingham station in the sixth hour of Saturday’s morning, being three days after her departure from Ponyville. Parasol awoke rather drably that morning to the call of the train conductor shouting out the arrival at Trottinham Town. Leaving the train, and bidding farewell to her newest acquaintance, since Desert and Pipsqueak had their own things to tend to, Parasol began her search for her uncle’s carpenter shop.

Ponies, griffons, zebras, and minotaurs stomped around the market place, each after their own business. Trottinham was a town with many races that abode within its borders. Her uncle was an easy one to spot, for, as most knew, he was the biggest minotaur in the town. Even if his great size and stature weren’t accounted for, his black colored fur and white horns would certainly give him away. Oddly enough, however, Abner, who was Parasol’s great uncle, was not at his shop stand. And a tall stand it was, reaching above her head, so she would have to stand on her hind hooves to reach the counter top.

“Arm thyself, ye scurvy dog, else I shall be fain to crack thy pate with thine very own cudgel!” came an angered shout from out behind the stand.

Parasol gasped in concern for whoever had gotten anger out of her uncle. Abner wasn’t easily provoked, but once he was, Tartarus was let loose against whoever it was that irritated him. The little, yellow pegasus ran back behind the carpenter shop where there stood a crowd of minotaurs and griffons mostly, as they were two rather fierce races with much sport of battling and such. What Parasol saw gave her a fright. On the ground, lying at Abner’s hooves, was a broken and bloodied minotaurian lad with a brown coat flecked with blood, grasping desperately for a wooden cudgel which Abner was not keen to let go of either. The minotaur at Abner’s hooves must have been only about fifteen by his looks, and faring quite poorly to his adversary. Abner brought his massive fist back for another blow to the lad who already needed a doctor for the damage done. Before Abner could lay another blow to his opponent, however, Parasol has put herself between the two, fearing for the poor boy’s life. Abner was taken aback by the sudden intrusion of his niece. A brow he raised at her as his fist softened and lowered. A smile then broke out on the black minotaur’s welted face as he brought his arms around the yellow pegasus in a ferocious hug.

“Parasol! Hast thou a brain in that head of thine? Know ye not the danger thou hast put thyself in a moment ago?” quoth a now merry Abner as he held his niece tightly.

“Uncle!” Parasol protested in reply, “You could have just ended that poor boy’s life! What were you thinking!?”

Abner, now looking a bit more ashamed of his actions at his niece’s disapproval, quickly dropped his smile as he set her down again. “You’ve gotten drunk again, haven’t you?” Parasol asked with a bit of disappointment.

Abner was one quick to wet his lips with ale for any occasion as an excuse to drink himself mad. Now was a blatant message why that was quite a foolish habit of his. “Indeed, I have drunk mine own head to it’s fill. A mad bull becometh I in mine drunken rage. I prithee thy pardon, Parasol,” said Abner as he held a red welt on his dizzy head.

“It’s not my pardon you should be asking,” retorted the pegasus as she pointed to the minotaurian boy that had just gotten up from the ground, now with his cudgel tightly back in hand as the leather grip creak in protest to the bullock’s strength.

Abner turned to the boy, only to snort in anger once again and stomp away, going back to his shop with a fuming head. The mad bull’s niece, however, softly flew to the beaten bullock’s side, looking up at him with sorry eyes as the minotaur stood twice her height.

“Ye be the niece of that ale-lusty rapscallion?” asked the bullock as he glared angrily down at the pegasus.

“Yes, I supposed I am,” replied Parasol bitterly as she watched the crowd round about them begin to disperse.

The minotaurian boy harrumphed as he stuck out a large, callused hand to her, saying, “Karadok hast been my name here.”

Parasol took the bullock’s hand in greeting, though, she was a little confused as she said, “Do you mean you once had another name?”

Instead of answering, Karadok said, “Be ye a wayfarer from Ponyville Town? Ye speak as if thou were indeed.”

“Well, yes. I came here to visit my uncle.”

“Ye should be fain to keep a stern pair of eyes on that bully bar bender.”

“I suppose I should,” said Parasol as she watched Karadok limp himself to the Trottingham Doctor with a hand on his swollen side, where there was no doubt a broken rib or two.
Shaking her head clear, Parasol, now a little anger coming back to her, stormed into her uncle’s carpentry shop, or, as well as she could storm about that is. She flew in through an open window to her uncle’s shop, spotting him rocking back and forth in a large, pine made rocking chair that creaked its old joints with each rock.

“Uncle,” Parasol said, only getting a grunt from Abner in return. “Why do you do this to yourself? You’ve been getting drunk earlier every day, then go beat some poor bullock. Why? ” she asked Abner. Getting nothing in response, she continued, “She’s not as gone as you think she is. Adonai—” though, she couldn’t finish as Abner suddenly stood from his old chair and faces his niece.

“Adonai!? What hath He ever done that my faith should lieth in Him!? Doth ye knowest not that thine own aunt was taken from me? Wot doth I owe to one who taketh my Jewel?” As he finished with his anger, Abner sighed and sat himself back down in his chair. “Ye speakest of a loving Maker, yet is it not He that hath taken?” Without a response from Parasol, he said, “Who would be this knave by the name of Matthew? I heard tale that he hath caught thine eye,” quoth Abner in a calm, rumbling voice.

Parasol began to sputter as she was presented by such an unexpected question. However, it seemed just like Abner to try and take the subject off of himself, and onto his niece. Abner laughed merrily as Parasol began to redden like a spring rose. “Uncle!” protested Parasol as her flustered state got the better of her. “He just helped me out in a pinch, that’s it!”

“Don’t ye be lying to me, dear lass. I hath lived a life that hath shown me better than to be following such rabbit trails. Now then, prithee, dear niece, who be this Matthew that I hath heard much talk?” quoth Anber with a retained, merry smile at his jesting Parasol. “Be he a stout, lusty stallion? Or perhaps a mighty minotaur, as am I? Be he a clever zebracian lad, or swift, lion hearted griffon?”

Parasol began to wildly blush again, but she couldn’t help but smile. It was odd, her first, personal encounter with that stallion. It was rather awkward for her, to say the least, to have someone of any race to be over her the way he was, but she could understand his motive for taking such action.

Taking a calming breath, she replied with rosy cheeks and a merry smile, “Well, he’s a kind of a pegasus, but different.”

“Different how, lass?” Abner interrupted.

“It’s odd, ye see, he’s built like a minotaur, but has traits about him like a pony’s head, with pegasus’ wings and uncloven hooves,” replied the yellow pegasus. “He says he came from a different world, and when he and his brothers ended up in the Everfree forest, they acquired pegasus traits, but still retained their ‘human’ body structure.”

Abner looked at his niece with a queer look and a cocked brow. “Wot ye speakest of be not of anything I knoweth. Be ye to tell me of a new race of creatures?”

The pegasus gave a bit of pause before slowly nodding in reply. “I knoweth naught of any brothers that cameth with this Matthew,” said Abner with a harrumph.

“Why yes, uncle, two brothers he’s got. Their names are Jason and October, Jason being the older of the two, and Matthew being the oldest of either two of his brothers,” replied Parasol with a laugh before the voice of a young heifer came from the window that Parasol came through.

“Abner! Lookest thou here!” she shouted with urgency in her voice as she ran back from where she had come.

“Starteth I a fight to endeth one not a moment later,” Anber grumbled in annoyance as he stood from his chair. He swayed a bit as his head spun from his early ale, but with a shake of his horns, he tromped out of his shop.

Parasol, on the other hoof, went to the doctor’s office to check on the Karadok fellow. What she saw when she walked into the office was not at all what she had expected. There sat in a chair, not the bullock Karadok she had seen come onto the office, but a black plated changeling with a swollen side and welted crown. She just about screamed in fright before the changeling had swiftly bulleted to her and covered her mouth with a now minotaurian hand as the changeling had shape shifted in a split second.

The nurse at the front desk looked up at Parasol and Karadok with a shake of her head. “Speakest ye not of what ye hath seen here outside this town, for Celestia may have my head,” Karadok demanded from her in a low voice.

Slowly nodded in her fright as the nurse said, “Karadok, ye spokest of a niece to Abner, may she be the one of which ye spake?” Karadok looked to the nurse with a single nod, and so she continued, saying, “Parasol, ye mustn’t be one with loose lips. Now, there beth much to discuss.”

Luna breathed in and out very slowly, taking every second with deep breaths. Standing before her, in her private chambers, was a thestral from her Night Guard. His name was Whippoorwill Nightjar. He had a coat of light grey that was streaked with spears of white along his sides. Down at his hooves, the color of his legs faded darker until they became black, and his leathery wings were a pearly white.

The princess released the stallion from her magic and sighed as she came back to her own mind. “October…concerns me,” she said after a while of silence.

“I understand, your majesty,” replied Nightjar. “He’s been able to toy with the Royal Guard with ease, as well as keep out of sight from the Night Guard. Perhaps it’s just by mere coincidence, but it would seem more likely that he knows of the Night Guard, and thus he keeps away. How though, I can’t be sure.”

“He’s a nice stallion, but I can’t help but feel on edge about him. Perhaps it was his war? I can’t tell what makes him act the way he does, but it’s eerily similar to Thaurer’s battle tactics of testing his enemy before an attack,” Luna commented as she shifted through the thoughts of Nightjar’s.

“Princess,” asked Nightjar, “you’re not…thinking about that again, are you?”

Luna, being a close friend to the thestral, wasn’t so jumpy about the subject of her ‘search for a stallion’, I suppose you could say. “Oh, he is a handsome lad, if a bit odd, but who am I to talk about odd?”

Nightjar chuckled and replied, “You really have an eye for the exotic ones, eh? First dragon, then minotaurs, now…whatever it is that October is”

Luna blushed and said with a huff, “Now, Whippoorwill, you of all my guards should know about exotic.” Nightjar took his turn to blush as he chuckled awkwardly. Luna sighed with a smile and said, “You’re excused now, Whippoorwill.” And with that, the thestral dipped his head and exited the room.

Luna sat in her bed as she readied herself for her nightly duties. She let out a deep breath as she released her magic out into from the castle. Her world warped from what was real into a dreamscape of wonders. Doors faded into the dreamscape, each representing the entrance to each individual’s mind. She began her job with one of her favorite subjects—Time Turner. His inventive mind was a world of wonder when he was continues, but much more mysterious and illusive in his dreams. She opened Turners dream door to take a look inside.

Far on into her dream job, as a bad pun would have it, she inhaled uncertainly as she came across three doors that she hadn’t come across very much. She had only seen them three times before, and still them, there was no doubt whose dreams they could be. There was an all too unique presence about them, one that the Iron brothers carried with them. What was quite queer about these doors was that, while most dream doors consisted of wood, these three were made of shined steel with some sort of advanced mechanism on each of them, keeping her out. Today, however, she was determined to open those doors. She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t prying, but only doing her job. So, as she had herself prepared, she concentrated her magic on the door to her farthest right.

It seemed to her that it had been at least an hour until a hollow, metallic, grinding sound came from the door. Will a new spark of determination, she pushed herself harder, causing the door to groan loudly before yielding to her prowess. She panted, as the work had taken much from her. She, very, slowly, opened up the door, but what she saw was something she couldn’t have ever prepared for.

Princess Luna had seen many wars in her life, and had dealt with many nightmares before, many by memories of said wars, but nothing could have compared to the nightmares she saw through that door. There were black clouds that billowed into the sky that smelled of burned flesh, giant machines that looked like metal-armored turtles with long cannons on their tops. The machines tore up the ground as they trekked through a lush, green prairie. Odd, bipedal creatures that stood on two legs ran about with these giant machines bearing little cannons that blasted fire, just that the weapons that the Iron brothers had. The last thing she saw was blood gushing from one of the creature’s eyes as another had a knife embedded in it. The noises, the smells, and the sights were horrifying as it was, but that was not all. Emotions poured through to her like a dam had just broken. She felt grief so deep that she was reminded of her exile to the moon. Hate so strong that it felt like standing in a raging furnace. Pain so excruciating; much more than physical beyond belief. She slammed the door shut, from thence it began to make fierce and loud grinding noises as the mechanism locked itself back in place.

She quickly ended her spell and tangled herself in her covers as tears came to her eyes. She didn’t even know who any of those creatures were, but she knew they had to be from the Iron’s world. Having the Irons tell her stories was one thing, but what she had just witnessed broke her heart. “What desecration of life is this?” Luna whispered to herself as she wished now to only sleep. “What pain and sorrow could any bear through like this?”

Author's Note

Okay...so...I got over that writers block pretty quickly. ^^U
Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I've got, and things and stuff.
Also, old English. I'm trying things :3