A Pony, A Druid, a Fighter, and a Kobold Walk into a Pub . . .

by AShadowOfCygnus

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Human, Other, Princess Luna, Original Character, Comedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Crossover
Length: 11947

Well, more down a long and dangerous road through a spooky forest, but you get the idea.

In a tavern on the edge of Old Equestria, a wizened pony cleric regales stallion, mare, and foal with the tale of his greatest adventure: a grand epic set in a faraway land, where a much younger pony travelled in the company of three stalwart adventurers along a dangerous road.

Did they slay the dragon? Rescue fair maidens? Walk away with a mountain of treasure? Given that the smartest of the lot was the half-deranged Kobold who thought he was the dragon . . .

Well, just let an old nag spin his tale.

[Human tag included for exactly one character, so I don't want to hear any complaints.]

Based on an ongoing game of D&D/Ponyfinder I'm GMing, written up for the hell of it, and mostly because this lot are making some of the most hilariously misguided decisions a group this experienced possibly could.

Also, they owe me a pint if this actually passes moderation. Ed: SOMEONE'S BUYING AND IT'S NOT ME.

Published 2015-10-18 15:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-12-04 05:55:18 UTC

00: A Tavern in the North

Dear ponies, good folk of the North, gather round. Yes, I mean you. Yes, the sulking little brat in the corner. Your mother only cuffed your ear, boy, don't take it so hard.

*Ahem*

I have had quite a bit to drink tonight, fillies and gentlecolts. Probably more than was wise. I feel my jaw flapping and I'm not entirely sure what's coming out. Could be gibberish, could be the wine I swallowed just now. But!

(And this is a big but.)

I've got that itch. That guestly itch I only get when I've had quite a bit of mead, and these weary old bones feel properly warmed before a fire. The itch of the North, the itch that bids me relate my tale, to regale your colts and fillies with stories of brave heroes and foul monsters and grand adventure, the itch that--

Eh?

Oho!

Don’t think I don’t recognise you there, sir, snickering. I recognise the Rich house’s gold barding on your sash. And no, before you ask, I don't find the pun quaint. You of the South, with your gems and baubles and fancy keeps, you don’t understand us at all, do you? Up here in the winterlands, where once the Crystal Spires rose and sang their wind music to the shimmering stars, we have a tradition: it's common courtesy for a stranger, should she find herself at your hearth, to share with you the story of how she got there. It may seem uncouth, even bawdy to a refined gentleman such as yourself, but here we are.

I mean, it's true, we usually waive the rule for pubs, but I could use a few more drinks, and I'm sure there'll be those willing to ante up to hear this through to the end. And, if not? Well, there's the door. I'll just toddle right on ou--

Alright, alright! Goodness, child, but you've a pair of lungs. Never in all my years has something so small produced such a banshee's wail.

Alright. Hoof over that mug, Frostflower, m'dear. I wasn't finished with it yet.

*cough*

Alright, let's begin.

01: Into the Valley

I'm sure I don't need to explain how I came to be in the lands to the east, across the sea. The fare is cheap if you've the gold, and the seas only as rough as one's hooves aren't steady. Suffice it to say I, Sleipnir, fourth of my name, seventh of my mother, learned early on there was no room on the rock farm for me, and decided other pursuits were called for. So I apprenticed myself at the temple, learned to heal, saved up some gold.

Then I embarked across the sea. Many adventures were had, and much was learned of the ways of the Sun (blessed be, it rise in Her name), but eventually, time passed, restlessness faded, and I began to dream of home. And so, in that land far to the east, I decided it was time to venture back across the sea, to the lands of my birth, to see my kin and kind again (for there are, you see, no ponies like us on that eastern shore -- on that continent, they claim, that sinks deeper with every passing day). And so I bid goodbye to the monasts on their hills, the peasants in their huts, and embarked on my long journey to the West.

What's that?

Yes, you impetuous boy, this is going somewhere.

Hrumph! The nerve of these young folk.

As I say, I journeyed West, towards the setting Sun (blessed be, it sink in Her name), with naught but my sword and a few hymns for company. And thus it came to pass, that I found myself at the head of a rather remarkable Valley, filled to brimming with trees! Huge trees! The tallest I'd seen on either side of the sea -- half as tall at least as Mount Canter, where the Princesses (blessed be--

If you roll your eyes like that again, boy, I shall knock them straight for you.

-- where the Princesses reside.

Camped at the head of the path leading down into the valley -- I was at the narrow end, you see, and this was the only obvious way forward -- were three hard-looking individuals who seemed to be enjoying a late lunch.

The first of them was Daria, a short, slim, and dangerous-looking Human, with two swords strapped to her back and girded in the heaviest platemail modest money could buy. She wore a perpetual frown, knitting her brows into a single, unbroken line, and spoke quietly of how frequently she ended up having to kill things. She was the most martial among us, and we called her Fighter.

The second was the Elf, Taranath: tall and slender and pointy-eared, like all of his kind. He wore light, leather armour, in the manner of his forest upbringing -- all fur and feathers and tanned hides. His round, easy face held shadows; of that I was certain even then. He carried a wooden bow, and a sword at his waist. He claimed to have travelled far from his home forests to reach this spot, and, like me, was similarly adventured. He called himself Druid, a clan or house or title he refused to describe in any detail.

The third was a surprise even to me. I had met many creatures of his ilk in my travels, but never once broken bread with one -- most were too busy trying to cook me up for supper. I refer, of course, to Kobolds, a race of tiny lizardy men standing barely as tall as our withers. And a Kobold he was, all nine hands of him, dressed in a silver-flecked black cloak, and nothing else. Of himself he spoke little, but something in his eyes spoke of unplumbed depths. I came to learn, over the course of our adventure, that he was one of a small number of gifted mentalists renowned in that part of the world: a Psion, who could wield arcane energies with the power of his mind alone, bypassing magic entirely.

And me? Well, I was much as you see me now, if a bit less grey. I was tawny stallion of perhaps fifteen summers, a good twelve hands tall, and wore the barding of my order: the High Clerics of the Sun (blessed be, it rise in Her name and, BOY, I swear if I had my sword). I was brash, devout, convinced that introducing the world to my own, adventuresome brand of the True Companionship preached in the halls of Canterlot was the only worthy endeavour to be pursued, and I carried a very large sword to that effect.

This motley crew introduced themselves to me by clicking their tongues and offering bits of carrot from their dinners. Well, except the Kobold. He was too busy trying to levitate himself onto my back and nibble at my ears. I bucked him off easily enough, introduced myself, chuckled when they recoiled at my speech.

Yes, yes, laugh as you will, but remember the kind of brutish horses they’re forced to put up with in place of us noble ponies out there.

That did not apply to you, Rich.

Anyway, I settled down, relieved myself of my pack and sword, and supped with them. They seemed to adjust to the idea easily enough, and we fell to talking of this and that. They told me they had each planned to head down into the valley, each deflecting questions as to why, and had met up at the head of the trail not long before I'd arrived. The Elf, in particular, spoke feverishly of heading down into the valley before it got too dark, and was the first among us to notice the plume of smoke billowing from between some trees below us and a little to the right of the path.

The narrow, switchback path into the valley looked dangerous enough as it was, and we didn't fancy risking it in the dark, so we packed up camp and edged our way carefully down into the valley. There were some rough patches, and some breaks in the path where a landslide had come through, but we all eventually made it down in one piece.

(Though, Taranth did slide a good thirty feet down the cliffside at one point after trying to step over a five-foot gap. He'd apparently mistaken the distance.)

And thus we found ourselves at the foot of the cliff. The path wound into the tall, tall trees ahead, and the pillar of smoke rose through them to our right. It looked for all the world like chimney smoke, as Daria commented.

So we made our way forward along the path, keeping our eyes on the smoke. Soon enough, the path branched, the well-worn road went straight on ahead while a smaller, rougher track ran off to the right. By common consensus, we explored the smaller track, following it to a small clearing.

Well, I say clearing. It was a circular space cleared of vegetation, but it was no more open to the sky than the rest of the forest had been. In the centre of this space, the source of the smoke became apparent: a small, two-level inn, half-timbered in the regional style. Chickens and a cow were lazing near a stable built into one side of the building, and a worn dirt track led up to the front door.

Once again by common consensus, we meandered up the path and knocked at the door.

‘Ooh, my stars, ‘oo could that be?’ came a crackly old voice, likewise of regional dialect.

There was a shuffling of slippered feet, and an old crone in a headwrap answered the door.

‘Eh? ‘Oo’re you, then?’

‘Yo, we need a place to sleep.’ Taranath, there, exercising his obvious skill in diplomacy.

‘Fair madam!’ spake Daria, obviously covering for her companion. ‘We come seeking shelter from the elements. Could we trouble you to open door and your hearth to us?’

‘Ehhh,’ the woman grumbled. ‘We don’t get too many guests ‘round ‘ere. It’ll be five gold a room.’

There was a general spluttering. Five gold was, after all, an outrageous price for a room in even the finest quarters of the Imperial City; to say that this hovel warranted that much was base heresy in the minds of this adventuring bunch.

‘If’n you don’t like the price,’ said the old woman over their grumbling.’Tha’s a fine, err, pony? you’ve got there.’

I nickered softly in my throat, but said nothing further.

‘We are not selling the horse,’ said Taranath, forking over ten gold for himself and Daria.

Krat looked down at the money-pouch hanging from some interior fold of his cloak, then folded his arms defiantly. ‘Hell with that! Keep room! I sleeping outside.’

I followed him as he stomped off in the direction of the stable. I could hear a certain amount of arguing from within the hall, but the details were lost through the thick stone wall. I peered in one of the large, single-plate windows between the front door and the stable -- a view into the dining hall, as it transpired. A roaring hearth and several long table-and-bench sets took up the majority of the room, with a few doors leading off to a kitchen at the back of the house, and a few more leading off in the direction of the front hall.

An inn, indeed, but where were the guests? Those tables looked ready to accommodate three-score hearty adventurers -- perhaps more. And yet the room stood empty. Something about that troubled me, but the growling of my stomach seemed a more immediate concern, so I left off my window-peering and headed for the stable.

Krat, it transpired, had not been idle in my absence. The little lizard-man -- whom I noticed the livestock were studiously avoiding even looking at -- had dug himself a little pit in which to bed down for the night, and now lay curled around a flame of no obvious source. He lifted his head slightly as I approached.

‘Fire warm,’ he muttered contentedly, then nestled more deeply into the blanket of his cloak. I chuckled at the odd display and hefted my bags and sword into an unoccupied corner. Then, in an effort to stretch my legs, I meandered out to the lawn and began browsing the grass, hoping to fill my belly enough to get me through the night.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have thought twice about simply asking the old woman for some scraps, but tonight it seemed the better part of valour to stay outside. It was becoming obvious to me that we were the first guests this place had had in quite a while, and while the old woman had comported herself well enough before, reintroducing her to society by way of talking horse seemed unwise.

Perhaps it was simply the exertion of the day, but the grass was surprisingly fresh. I never found the fields of the east nearly as tasty as those of home -- too sparse, and too often trod by uncaring hooves. But this -- this was particularly delightful.

And it seems I wasn’t the only one enjoying my supper -- though I was too wrapped up in my own meal to notice, Taranath and Daria were sitting down to bowls of meagre stew in the great hall (the board as horrifically overpriced as the room, from what I later heard.)

What’s that, barkeep? Yes, I suppose I could go in for a hay, lettuce, and tomato. Just be sure and get orders for this lot, too. Some of these foals are skin and bones -- I can practically see the ribs on that one!

Anyway, where was I? The grass, right?

Oh, wait, we have a question. I’m sorry, little one, these old ears aren’t what they used to be. You’ll have to speak up.

. . .

How do I remember all this, you ask? Excellent question! There are rather a lot of little finicky details, aren’t there? Well, child, let me put it to you this way: has there ever been a moment in your life that was so important, so breathtaking that you’ve remembered it with perfect clarity ever since? First time you saw it rain, perhaps? Watching your little brother, little sister greet the Sun (blessed be, it sit there in the middle of the sky in Her name) for the first time?

Well, this was mine. Admittedly, a month is rather longer a memory than a minute, but every moment shines through clear as sundew in spring. And you may sit there all agape and agog as I say so, but let me assure you: it’s nowhere near the gift you might imagine.

Regardless, a fine question, little one. Budge up there, the rest of you, I want this one front and centre. She’s got that gleam in her eye tells me I haven’t quite lost the touch for this storytelling business yet. Good incentive to keep going.

Hrr-hem.

Right, anyway, the grass was delicious, and soon enough I ate my fill and settled down near Krat’s little nest of earth and flame and, nestling my hooves under me, fell into a contented sleep.

To this day, I’m still not sure what woke me. An idle scrape, a rustle of leaves -- something that’d otherwise have been completely innocuous. But that night, in that place, I awoke as soon as I heard it, knowing something was amiss.

It took me a moment to rise, but as I did so, I noticed that the little lizard-man’s fire had been extinguished, and the Kobold himself was nowhere to be seen. I glanced, around, knees half bent, trying to figure out what was going on.

And then, in that truly uncomfortable position, I froze.

Two pairs of glowing yellow eyes were staring balefully at me from the edge of the clearing, half a house-length away.

My breath quickened a little. Trying not to break eye contact, I shuffled backwards, as low on my hoofs as I could comfortably manage, trying to get to my sword. The eyes regarded me, unblinking, then slowly began to circle to my left, just inside the treeline.

A few tense moments passed this way: I taking a step back, they a step to the left. I had almost reached my sword when--

“AWWWRK!”

I had inadvertently stepped on poor Krat’s tail, eliciting a strangled cock’s-cry from the little Kobold. Apparently, he’d burrowed under my pack in an attempt to get away from ‘them big scary eyeballs’. I hefted my sword in my teeth, and he shot out from under the canvas sack, his caped and shuddering form clinging leech-like to my back leg.

‘Look!’ he squawked, one trembling claw extended. ‘Lookit! Wolveses!’

I whipped my head up, and, sure enough, the owners of the glowing eyes had come forward a ways into the clearing. They maintained a cautious distance from us and the house, but even as I watched, they continued to circle to our left, heading in the direction of the front door.

Everypony was tense in that moment -- Krat, myself, the two wolves. Everypony was sizing up everypony else, probing the motives of the mutually inscrutable.

I suppose, in hindsight, we should have noticed that the livestock had not roused themselves for any of this, or perhaps that it was but two wolves bearing down on us, rather than a pack. Perhaps it was our natural wariness of such creatures that guided our hooves, or simply heroic instinct; the result was the same.

Krat and I have discussed this many times since, and neither of us quite remembers who fired the first shot. It might have been the hoary blast of psionic cold that toppled the first wolf, or my wild, whinnying charge at the second, but in the space of a confused moment the battle was joined.

The wolves (both, as Krat’s . . . spell? I never did learn what he called them . . . had knocked over but failed to kill the first) charged us. Sword met claw met tooth met hoof, and Krat provided magical covering fire from the shelter of the stables. I dodged and swung, weaved and struck, and the wolves did much the same. Blood welled under fur, tooth scraped over armour, and steel bit deep into flesh.

Our dance had gone on less than a minute when lights started coming on upstairs. Even from outside, I could hear the confused clamour of voices, and the clatter of heavy hoof-falls. The door smashed open, and there stood Taranath, wild-eyed and fully-armoured. His eyes raced over the scene, fell upon the wolves -- and he grinned.

In that moment, I learned to respect the name ‘Druid’.

Taranath let loose an animalistic howl, and all pretense of battle ceased as we turned to look. His flesh was . . . well, I don’t know how else to describe it: curdling. Muscles rippled, eyes spun wildly, and with a sickening, bony crunch -- Taranath the Bear stood on the inn’s stoop. Raising himself to his fullest height, he bellowed again at the wolves, who turned, hackles aquiver, to face this new onslaught.

Taranath loped forward, the wolves circled back to fight side-by-side, I hefted my sword once more, and the battle was again joined. Hearty wolves, our opponents were, and they only seemed spurred to greater action by the addition of a third combatant. They jumped and snarled, twisted away from sword, hoof, and claw, and scored good hits on myself and Taranath alike.

Finally, after what seemed like ages of countering the deftly acrobatic motions of the wolves, Taranath scored a lucky hit on the first wolf’s flank, and Krat fried a second with a bolt of some kind of lightning. As one, they loosed a horrible, pained howling, and bolted away from us -- and directly into the house.

We all stood agog for a moment. No-one could quite believe the implication.

‘Fuck,’ rumbled Bearanath, and it was agreed that was a good summation.

Now, you may be wondering: where was Daria while all of this was going on? Well, our dear Fighter had invested in full-plate armour, which, as everypony knows, is hard as a Hydra’s scaly arse to get on, and even more cumbersome to wander around half-clothed in. Such was her plight: to be stuck in her room half-dressed, as the fight raged on outside.

Around the time Krat was firing off his last lightning bolt, Daria threw down her gauntlets in a rage and, clad in half a breastplate and a nightgown, stalked out into the hall. The first wolf, whimpering in defeat, reached the top of the stairs at the same moment. Wild-eyed, it turned to Daria, trying to gauge its chances in the narrow corridor. It squared its shoulders, and in a mad dash, tried to jump over the half-dressed Fighter.

Daria was having none of it. She caught the creature mid-arc, her sword slicing the beast open from throat to navel. It was dead before it hit the floor.

Somehow sensing her work was not yet finished, Daria then moved to the head of the stairs. The remaining wolf was at the bottom. Its golden eyes moved from her bloody sword to her pale, set face, and it snarled.

The subsequent charge ended much as the leap had.

Taranath and I were piling through the door as the wolf’s lifeless body slid back down the stairs, and we were the only ones to see the old woman standing over Daria’s heaving shoulder.

We had no time to warn her, no time to say a word.

‘Wha’ve you done?!’ screeched the old woman, regarding the lupine corpses with horror. ‘Wha’ve you done t’my babies?!’

Taranath stepped forward to explain, but in a whirl of fur and musty linens, the old woman was an old woman no more, and instead, a large, snarling, and quite obviously irate Dire Wolf stood in the upstairs hall.

Armour was soiled in that moment, though no-one ever admitted it. Taranath and I froze on the spot, petrified. Daria, sword still dripping with childly viscera, meeped something incoherent, and fled back towards her room, running full pelt.

The Dire Wolf -- dare I call her the Wolfmother? -- let loose a pained, grieving howl, and charged after her, sending side tables, candlesticks, and wall hangings flying in all directions.

I was still dumbstruck by the whole thing -- the wolves, the inn, all of it -- and so I barely noticed when Taranath (now of elven shape once more) brushed past me, charging up the stairs to Daria’s defence. The Wolfmother took one look at him and, swinging wide one mighty paw, swatted him back down the stairs like an errant pup. He fell into a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs, and did not stir.

The Wolfmother stalked, seething, towards Daria’s door.

I blinked, several times, before realising my healing craft was needed. I knelt at Taranath’s side and, rather than spend precious energy reciting incantations, pulled a healing potion from my pack, swilling the contents between his lips.

As the contents of the flask drained into his eager throat, I heard a soft whump to my left, in the great hall. Turning my attention there, I saw Krat, surrounded by a cloud of thatch, scurrying in the direction of the kitchen. Apparently, he had made his entrance by way of the roof.

Daria, meanwhile, was frantically gathering all she could of her equipment. The first loud crunch of splintering door-timbers caused her to drop it all again. At the second, she grabbed her dagger and heaved it at the single-pane window, hoping to break it and dive to freedom.

She missed, and rather spectacularly, at that. Her dagger lodged in the bedpost a good eight or nine hooflengths wide of the mark. The sword ended up similarly lodged in the wardrobe in another, further corner of the room. She only managed to retrieve the sword before the door was blasted off its hinges by the third and last of the Wolfmother’s powerful swipes.

Daria pondered the panting, enraged mother for a moment, sighed, and dived out the (unbroken) window. A conveniently-placed hay pile (‘My, how convenient!’ the fighter was heard to exclaim) broke her fall. She rolled off the scratchy pile only a few scrapes the worse for wear and took off -- still half-clothed -- in the direction we’d from which we'd first approached the inn.

Taranath had regained consciousness as the door upstairs splintered, and together we watched Daria streak across the lawn like a well-armed Lady Godiva, as another howl sounded from upstairs. Still very much aware of the clear and present danger, Taranath and I turned to face the hulking beast stalking towards the head of the stairs. The Elf was barely on his feet after the first, near-fatal swatting, so I sent him outside to cover the retreat, with a healing spell to spur him on.

I had just steeled myself to head for the stairs when, without warning, Krat reappeared, a hock of venison clutched in each claw and a poker between his teeth. Squealing with a mixture of what I can only assume were abject terror and mischievous glee, he scampered between my legs and out the front door into the night beyond.

The Wolfmother and I stared, blinking, for a moment, before remembering what it was we were supposed to be doing. I muttered a few words under my breath, and suddenly found the room much smaller. Embiggening spells were tricky, but I reckoned narrowing the size difference between the enraged creature and myself would . . . level the field, so to speak.

I see by the looks in some of your eyes you find it hard to imagine an Earth Pony wielding magic, as I do. The details, I think, are a story for another time, but at the very least, rest assured, my little ponies -- the very same power that flows through our brethren the unicorns and the pegasi flows too through us. It just sometimes take a bit more work to get it to come out of hiding.

Where was I? Embiggening, yes.

Well, I was embiggened, and somehow still managing to squeeze my way onto the stairs. The Wolfmother stood firm at their head. Pulling my sword once again from its sheath, I trudged up to meet her.

We eyeballed each other for a moment, the Mother of Wolves and I. She, determined to get through me to avenge her children; I, determined to keep my companions safe from harm (the recentness of our acquaintance be damned; I was a young and headstrong sort). She crouched, and prepared to pounce. I squared my withers, and braced myself for her attack.

She swung a massive paw in my direction; I blocked. Another swing; I parried and chopped, scoring a hit. She lunged in for a bite, and teeth raked my side as I narrowly slid past. The skin beneath the fur stung, and badly, but I was still on my feet.

Then, the unexpected: as I prepared to put my full and considerable weight behind another attack, the Wolfmother pounced, and together we rolled to the bottom of the stairs.

We grappled as we fell, we two titanic beasts, but in the end, she came out on top. My sword clattered away, and I was left with but my flat, broad teeth to defend myself. I snapped at her, knowing it was only delaying the inevitable; she had me pinned, and my companions were long gone. One quick bite and it would all be over. I only hoped they were somewhere safe.

Or, at least, not being eaten. I’d settle for not eaten.

But obviously, she did not bite; no, else I would not be sitting here beside this cosy fire telling little colts and fillies this story, would I? No, for whatever then-inscrutable reason, the Wolfmother stayed her paw, and, rather than wrap her teeth around my defenceless throat, she head-butted me.

I was suitably confused at this, of course (well, that and the violent impact my head had on the wooden floor); no-one expects to be headbutted by any creature other than a goat, and sure as I was seeing stars, she was no goat. The second headbutt left me dazed and on the edge of consciousness, and the third finished the job.

What happened then was related to me by the others afterwards. Apparently, those goodly souls decided they just couldn’t bear to leave me behind, and charged back in -- piecemeal, for whatever reason -- to save me.

Krat was closest to the door, and thus was the first to poke his little nose in. There seemed no immediate threat, so he edged forward to the bottom of the stairs, where I was apparently still flopped like a sack of middlingly-holy potatoes. He had just enough time to ascertain that I wasn’t bleeding before, as he put it, ‘a large, furry, and very angry blanket’ descended upon his head and laid him flat.

When Krat did not immediately respond to the calls of the others, a panicked and half-whispered discussion broke out: fight or run? The frank possibility of death was apparently too much for Daria, who ignored Taranath’s protests and ran for the cliff. The Elf himself, however, was not to be dissuaded from doing the heroic thing, and charged headlong towards the house, bellowing war cries. He stopped at the door, however, upon seeing my insensate corpse being dragged in the direction of the kitchen. This chilled him so thoroughly that all thought of attack was immediately abandoned, and he, too, took to his heels.

Thus began what could only be described as a cock-up, a cock-up of the first order. It was the kind of cock-up that leaves everyone blaming everyone else, the kind of cock-up that the very cocks themselves will be crowing about every morning for the next century, at least.

First, as he ran, Taranath transformed himself into a wolf, attempting to mimic those we had fought (and Daria had killed) earlier), his reasoning apparently being that he could outrun the Wolfmother in that form, or perhaps that the Wolfmother wouldn’t kill what she perceived as kin.

Regardless, it was in this form that he ran towards the cliff.

Daria, meanwhile, was attempting (unsuccessfully) to scramble up the cliff face, which seemed a good deal smoother than she remembered, although she could not, in her blind panic, determine why. She heard Taranath coming, had the wherewithal to turn and prepare to attack whatever came flying out of the forest, but she apparently failed to put two and two together when she saw a wolf identical to those she had slain earlier come charging out of the underbrush with its tail firmly between its legs.

So she raised her sword high, and as Taranath the Wolf yelped in surprise, swung it in a clean, cleaving arc. A rather surprised head flew in one direction, body in the other, and Daria lauded herself on a job well-done.

She had just enough time to note that the wolf’s body was looking distinctly more elven than it had a moment earlier before another, larger mass of fur tore its way through the forest to her right, pinned her against the cliff wall, and smacked her into unconsciousness.

And that w--

Oh, leave off your wailing, children, please! The story’s not over yet, not by a long shot. But dinner looks to be ready, and I could use a little time to catch my breath.

Just give it a moment, and we’ll pick up right where we left off.

Author's Note

For the record, attacking the wolves was a bad idea.

This is no great work of art, folks; I hold no delusions as to that. Feel free to comment on the innumerable problems you find below.

02: The Way Out is the Way Inn

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like a toasted lavender sandwich on a cold autumn night, is there? Especially when you’ve as merry a band of companions as these to share it with. You’ve all been a fine audience so far -- Sir Rich back there hasn’t dozed off even once! -- so I’ve no compunctions about going on for a bit longer tonight. Not that I imagine you rascals here at the front would let me get away if I tried, of course. Heh!

So, where were we? Just after Daria did in poor Taranath, yes? Don’t cry too hard for him, m’dear -- as he himself was astonished to discover not long after, in those strange and perilous eastern lands, death is rarely the last we hear of somepony.

And he was dead. Quite dead. Dead as a doornail! Head clean off his shoulders, thanks to the whirling swords and uncanny skill of our dear Fighter. Make no mistake: he was dead as a brained hare, and under any other circumstance, at any point in his life, he would’ve stayed that way!

But, as for the rest of us? Well, we’d fared a bit better for not accidentally going up against our wild-eyed swordswoman -- we’d only been beaten into unconsciousness.

Now, I know this’ll fly right over the tousled manes of some of you younger rascals, but I’m sure no small number of the older folk know what a night of hard drinking feels like the morning after. May be that one or two of you’ve even been had a scrap in this very pub, had to sleep it off. But let me tell you, none of it compares to what a sixty-stone and very angry she-wolf can do to your head if she feels like it. She may not have been aiming for the kill, but Star Swirl’s saggy left bollock if it didn’t hurt!

(And if your mums and dads catch you using that expression, my fine foals, I very much doubt you’ll be hearing any stories out of me again. Or much at all, for that matter.)

But yes, she gave us quite a beating. And when Krat, Daria and I finally awoke in a battered pile of limbs, heads, and arses, we all very much felt it.

Krat was, I think, the first to properly wake up; his futile struggling to free himself from the bottom of the pile was what finally roused me, and Daria jolted awake almost immediately afterwards. It took some doing, and there was a certain amount of pained wincing as hands, hooves, and claws brushed against others’ raw bruises, but eventually we all found ourselves standing once again. Stumbling, true; staggering, most likely, but we weren’t in much of a position at that point to care.

The first thing we noticed was how dark it was; it had been just about dawn when Krat and I discovered the wolves, but the room -- dark, dank, subterranean; a basement, we surmised -- was lit by only the faintest orange glow of a dying sunset. I knew for a fact that Krat could see better than I could, and judging from the way Daria kept thudding off the walls, she seemed entirely blind.

Krat and I crept forward to try and explore our surroundings a bit better, and Daria moved to follow us -- only to trip over her own feet and faceplant into the hard-packed dirt floor. That she landed with more a fleshy smack than a metallic clatter alerted us to a second troubling detail of our situation -- we’d been divested of all our armour and equipment. Krat, fiddling with the door he’d discovered at the other end of the room, made the third unwelcome discovery: we were locked in.

So there we were: sealed in the basement of the inn at the head of the valley, bruised, battered, barely conscious and nude, and with nary a lockpick to our name. And then what should we hear but the shuffling of slippered feet on the stair beyond the door?

No-one said a word, but common consensus had it later that everyone bolted for the furthest corner of the room at once, and ended up huddled together in a single trembling mass. (Daria would later comment enviously on the softness of my fur; I’m not sure I ever found the words to respond.)

The door was flung open with explosive force, slamming off the wall with a dull crack of thick wood meeting thicker stone. There, silhouetted in the light of a single wall sconce, stood a wizened, hunchbacked figure. We collectively huddled closer; never had anypony present been more threatened by somepony thrice their age.

‘Ohh, good! Ye little cravens are awake,’ she said, through clenched teeth. This was no grackle squawk, either; this was the full-throated growling of something old, powerful, and brimming with ill-suppressed fury.

‘Twould be wiser ter kill ye all now,’ she continued. ‘But ye’ve not stewed quite enough yet, and I’ve still my bairns to bury. But come the mornin’ . . . ye’ll all wish yer mothers had never birthed ye.’

She made to close the door on us again, then paused. One crooked finger pointed to the corner of the room opposite our huddled mass of bodies.

‘And if ye think for a second it’ll end like it did for him, ye’ve got another think coming!’

And then she was gone, and the heavy oaken door was rattling on its hinges.

Slowly, in the darkness, our eyes turned to the corner. Krat’s eyes were better than mine, and mine better than Daria’s, but it took everyone a moment to adjust to the Tartarean darkness left behind by the closing of the door. And as we looked, and as we held our breath, a murky shape came into view. It was . . . swinging . . . gently, accompanied by the soft creaking of leather, and looked for all the world like one of the sides of venison Krat had found in the kitchen earlier.

It wasn’t moving, though. That had to be a good sign, right? Nothing left alive in the basement to eat our wee little selves? If we’d only known . . . Heh.

I’m not sure whether it was Krat or myself that suggested it, but we all agreed it would probably be more . . . prudent . . . to cast a light spell, rather than risk something lashing out if we got too close. Neither of us were at full strength yet, after the battle and the repeated knocks on the head, but we both gave it a shot.

Summoning the magical energy required for even such a simple spell made me painfully aware of the dull throbbing behind my eyes, but after a moment’s concentration, it was done. Bright, sourceless light permeated the room, banishing shadows from every corner -- including the one all eyes in the room were locked on.

It didn’t take us long to recognise the Druidic tattoos.

‘Dear Celestia in Heaven! She’s eaten his head!’ I yelped, tripping over my own hooves in an effort to get away from Taranath’s (very headless) corpse. Krat squawked in horror, and Daria had gone white as a sheet.

It was a grisly sight. Stripped bare and swinging freely, the ex-Elf had been suspended by the ankles from a pair of wickedly-sharp meat-hooks embedded in a low rafter. The dried blood pooled on the ground ‘neath his neck-stump, and the deathly pallor his tawny skin had taken on since last we set eyes on him, attested to how long he’d been hanging there.

It took a moment for the shock to fade, but once it did, anger was quick to take its place.

‘Why that flea-bitten bitch! She’ll pay for killing Taranath!’

‘Umm,’ said Daria.

‘There’s a reason I slept outside, pony-man! I knew we couldn’t--’

‘Er, lads?’ said Daria.

‘Why, if I could get my hooves on her--’

‘It wasn't the bloody wolves, ya knobs! Daria bellowed.

And as dust fell from the rafters, she proceeded to tell us what had transpired near the rock wall that morning -- of how Taranath, in wolfen guise, had charged out of the wood and directly at Daria, of how he had made no effort to signal her, of how she -- believing him kin of the wolves she had already slain -- had severed head from neck in a single, brilliant swing.

Thereafter, the general consensus was that the Elf had no-one to blame but himself.

I will say this for Daria, though -- for all that the fact of it had evidently been weighing on her mind, she didn’t seem to feel any particular remorse over Taranath’s death. Angry, certainly -- almost to the point of rage. But beyond that? The Elf was dead, and that was all there was to it; water off a duck’s back.

Perhaps I should have been more concerned by that, but, at the time, there were other, more pressing matters to attend to: namely, how we were going to get out of that basement, and what we were going to do about the Wolfmother when we did. Collectively, we didn’t have a scrap of clothing or equipment to our names, and a quick check of the group confirmed that no-one was particularly well-versed in unarmed combat. Nor was anyone -- least of all Daria -- inclined to simply blunder out into the forest without retrieving our gear.

Further complicating the matter was Taranath’s body, which we weren’t entirely sure what to do with. Even if we’d known where to find a healer capable of reviving him, it wouldn’t have done us much good without a head to pop back on his body. But, by the same token, no matter how recent an acquaintance, he was our friend, and it would be cruel to simply leave him to the wolves. (Though, admittedly, the hilarity of that sentiment escaped us in the moment.)

Ultimately, however, a plan was formulated: Daria, who was, shall we say, the most limber of us, would find a way to quietly open the lock. She grumbled that she was about as dextrous as a boar in a tea shop, but went about her work regardless. I would search the basement for tools, gardening implements, old bits of wood -- anything that could be used as a weapon, really.

And Krat? Well, Krat had volunteered to ‘get the Elfy-man down’, seemingly forgetting that the meathooks dangling from the ceiling were embedded in a rafter more than four times his height off the floor. This didn’t seem to bother him much, however; he was much more interested the parts of Taranath he could get ahold of.

I was nosing around the corner nearest the door when the strange, oddly familiar smacking sound assailed my ears. I turned to Daria, but her eyes were already focussed on the ex-Elf, wearing a look of faint disgust. My eyes followed hers, and soon I was wearing as sour an expression. I’ll spare you fine Celestia-fearing folk the gory details, but suffice it to say Krat had made good progress on Taranath’s free-swinging hand.

He noticed us staring, and gave us a meaningful look. ‘Yuck,’ he opined, and resumed.

And that was how it was for the next half-hour or so: Daria worked at jimmying the door off its hinges, I poked around the room looking for any useable detritus, and Krat . . . nibbled. Every once in awhile, Daria would lose patience with the noise and aim a kick at him, sending the Kobold fleeing for cover, but he’d be back at it inside of a minute.

After an aimless half-hour of searching, and as the dim grey of twilight swallowed the last rays of tangerine out the slit window, I nosed under the pile of hay we’d all awoken on, and discovered what appeared to be a couple of discarded iron bars. I called out to the others, and together we examined them more closely.

One really was just a length of iron -- part of a door bar, probably. I hoofed it over to Daria to help her pry open the door. The other seemed to be an old, bent fire poker; this Krat snapped up in an instant, and immediately ran over to poke Taranath with it.

Ignoring the giggling Kobold, Daria and I trotted over to the door. We were still trying, at this point, to be quiet; it wouldn’t do us much good to get through the door if our warden were waiting for us on the other side. So Daria used the iron bar to pop the hinges off the door, and I caught them, depositing them gently to one side. It worked fairly well; we got all three hinges off with minimal trouble and deposited them neatly in the hay.

What we had not factored into our ruminations, however, was that the door itself was heavy, oaken, and therefore susceptible to the inexorable pull of the earth. Daria realised only as it was falling, and made an abortive grab for it, fingertips only barely grazing it on its way down.

The thunderous boom with which it hit the stone floor shook the remaining dust from the rafters and rang our collective heads like churchbells. The whole basement rattled, and probably the house above it. Tartarus, I’d not have been surprised to hear it echoing off the cliffs of the Valley itself!

So loud did it seem, so dreadful a noise, that we all froze. Barely a breath was uttered. Surely, any second now we’d be hearing the thundering paws and recriminating howls that would spell our end.

But seconds passed, and no ghastly monsters appeared.

‘Run!’ Daria snapped, breaking the spell. We bolted, quietly as we could, and I nearly tripped on the stairs as Krat wove between my legs.

We found ourselves in the kitchen, behind a row of hanging meats that I could only assume had been the source of Krat’s hocks earlier. We slid carefully under them, moving stealthily across the rough-hewn stone floor (Daria again cursed her soft human feet), and upon reaching the door to the great Hall, we set about a hushed conference. It was agreed that Krat and I would go first, clear a path to the door if necessary, and head for the relative safety of the Forest. Daria, meanwhile, would search the bottom floor of the house for any hint of our gear, or at least some clothes.

We moved cautiously, as a unit, from the kitchen door through the Hall, past the great hearth we had seen before, and around the long benches separating us from our destination. At the door to the front hall, we nodded to each other, and, doing our best to avoid the squeakier floorboards, parted ways.

Krat and I padded to the front door without incident. It wasn’t barred in any way -- wasn’t even locked. Perhaps the old woman hadn’t thought we’d make it out of the basement; perhaps she’d simply forgotten to in her grief. This second possibility seemed all the more likely once we actually poked our noses out the door and saw what lay on the lawn beyond.

I had heard that certain Human tribes in that eastern land were more given to burning their dead in the manner of the Pegasi, rather than bury them as we do, but I had never in my travels had the opportunity to confirm it. Perhaps it was a ritual peculiar to that Valley, to that old woman, and extended no further than it does here, but . . .

How can I describe a pyre to one who has never seen it? To ponies who have never smelled cooked flesh, let alone the bitter copper tang of heat-cracked bone? Imagine, if you will, a campfire, as you might make in the forest while trapping or foraging -- imagine taking that fire, and adding more wood to it, and more, and more, ‘till it was the size of a house -- a massive pile, a towering flame. Then imagine that, within the pile, rested the bodies of your loved ones. And then? Let it burn. let everything be consumed by the roiling flame, until only the ashes and the bleached bones remain.

That is what we saw when we poked our noses ‘round the door -- a strange ritual, fearful as it was breathtaking. From the look of things, the fire had burned itself out long before we had awoken, but simmering embers remained here and there, and a pair of elongated white skulls were clearly visible amongst the ashes. Something about the tableau tugged at me -- strange and foreign as it was, there was something almost sadly beautiful about it, more so than even a grave.

But what arrested our attention the most was not the pyre itself, but something just off to one side: a narrow shaft of wood, torn carelessly from a tree and still more carelessly rammed into the ground. And atop the shaft--

Mothers, you may wish to cover your foals’ ears for this.

Atop the shaft rested the head of our late friend, Taranath the Elf, slack-jawed and staring. His resting place, it seemed, had been untouched by the fire -- the wood was not even the least bit singed. Neither, for that matter, was Taranath; excluding the obvious, the only change I could detect in him was a slight pallor.

I remember looking to Krat, wanting to ask whether he would mind if I said a few words to help guide the ex-Druid to Celestia’s light. I remember hearing a rather loud cough and a gasp from behind me, as of someone coming up from a lakebed for air. I remember Krat’s eyes going wide, and his scaly lips parting in horrified fascination.

I remember turning.

I remember seeing Taranath’s eyes boring into me.

And I remember seeing him blink.

Now, stop screaming, children! Please! This isn’t a horror story, and I did tell you he’d be coming back. Wherefore you howling? A head is a head, whether on shoulders or elswhere.

And don’t think I don’t hear you scoffing back there, Rich. You think I jest, or that this all some half-mad faerie-tale conjured up by an old coot a few bottles short of a wine cellar; believe you me, had it been me in your place all those long years ago, I would have done the same. But I promise you, as Luna may take me in the night if I lie to you, that it happened thus: that as little Krat and I looked on in horror, Taranath’s head moved.

It turned.

It lookedat us.

And it shouted, 'Seven Hells, don't just stand there, get me off this thing!’

And we were so shocked that we could think of nothing else to do -- we pulled him off the spike. He howled in protest as the sharp wood bit through the soft tissue of his neck, but what else were we to do? Carry him around as a pike? A screaming standard? No.

No, we pulled him off the spike, and Krat held him before us to better converse. Taranath’s eyes were rolling in his head, and he demanded to know where the rest of his body was, and what had happened. We related the events the afternoon as best we could, as well as what Daria had told us of what had happened at the cliff.

‘Fucking Daria!’ Taranath snarled. ‘When I get my hands on-- When I-- OOOH.’

He was incoherent for several moments. Then: ‘I didn’t think she’d actually kill me!’

And he went back to growling menacingly. Krat and I shared an askance glance. It was something of a surreal experience to be consorting with a severed head -- it was something else entirely when it was threatening violence against one of the only other reliable allies we had in the Valley. Had we had a bag, we agreed, he’d have been stuffed in it without a second thought.

Then something occurred to me: we had Taranath’s head, and we knew the way back to his body was clear; surely, it couldn’t hurt to try and reunite the two? Healers would scoff at the idea, but in this Celestia-lit world, happily, medicine is not always the only thing at work. The very fact of Taranath’s survival in the face of . . . well, death, it didn’t seem too huge a stretch to believe further extraordinary things might be in the works.

I presented this idea to Taranath, and he expressed significant enthusiasm at the prospect of opposable thumbs (‘all the better to strangle Fighters with!’); it was therefore with quiet, padding steps that we made our way back through the twilit yard and back into the house.

***

Elsewhere, Daria had made intriguing discoveries of her own. She had followed the main hall away from the front door, past the staircase where two of our number had fallen previously; there, she found another passageway, smaller and at right angles with the first, with several locked doors leading off it.

Two were empty, and immediately discarded, but the third -- the third was locked with a sturdy padlock. Daria snorted, and set about levering it off with the iron bar, as she had before. It was a trick she had pulled a thousand times before, with crowbars, with metal rods, even with swords, in a pinch. Never before had an iron bar broken in her hand as she tried to break a lock.

Daria’s eye twitched as she examined the snapped iron bar in her hand. Had it been rust? Her own strength? Didn’t matter, it was broken now. Shaking with suppressed rage, Daria dropped the bar, gripped the padlock firmly, and yanked.

It did not give.

Beads of sweat ran down her brow as she fought the instinct to head-butt the door. She pulled on the padlock again.

It did not give.

Daria was shuddering now, her whole body tense as a coiled spring. Every fibre of her being was a moment from flying into a throat-tearing, wall-rending rage. Here she was: nude, bereft of equipment, with a talking pony and a half-mad Kobold at her back, an eldritch abomination somewhere in the house, and a dead Elf somewhere on her conscience, and this fucking padlock dared to get in her way? She was irrationally furious, and being forced to acknowledge it only made her MORE irrationally furious.

Summoning her every ounce of strength, she planted her feet firmly, tightened her grip, and pulled.

The lock didn’t give -- but the wood around it did. With a great tearing sound like branches in high wind, the entire lock assembly came off in her hand, and the door swung wide. Still shaking, Daria tossed the thing to one side, tore the door almost off its hinges, and strode inside. There, scattered in a corner in much the same manner as we three in the basement had been early, was the group’s equipment. Daria loosed a shuddering sigh, hefted her armour, and began girding herself for war.

***

It was about this time that Krat, myself, and Taranath’s head came peeping round the corner we had seen Daria disappear down earlier. We found her in the room with the most obvious signs of forced entry. She did not look up as we entered.

‘Lawn clear?’ she snarled, albeit quietly. Even now, in full sight of our equipment, no-one was willing to risk alerting the Wolfmother to our doings.

‘Yeah. But, look, we’ve found Taranath’s head.’

Krat held up the dismembered head with the kind of glee usually reserved for foals showing off their most prized toys. Daria still did not look up.

‘She didn’t eat it.’ A statement, not a question.

‘Not apparently. But . . . there’s more.’

‘Need to work on your swording a bit more if you want to kill a Druid, lady.’

‘He’s alive? Fuck off. There’s no way.’

‘Sitting right here.’

Daria eyed him. ‘If I catch you staring at my chest, I’ll make sure I finish the job this time.’

‘ . . . please don’t let her kill me again.’

I chuckled. ‘Sure.’ To Daria: ‘Hoof me my sewing kit, would you?’

‘What are you-- Oh. Oh?’

‘Oh.’

***

Soon enough, we were all fully clothed, armed and armoured again, and we moved carefully back down past the hanging meats to the basement, where we immediately set to work getting Taranath down from the meathooks and propping him up in such a way that I could set to work putting his head back on his neck.

Now, stitching a wound is as commonplace to us pony-folk as tending the field; it’s just what we do, as any healer from here to Hoofwich will gladly tell you. But to see Krat and Taranath’s reactions as I plied needle and thread to Taranath’s neck, you’d have thought I was Star Swirl himself, whipping up some incredible spell.

For my part, though? I wasn’t even sure the thick twine would be enough to hold his head on straight. I really was working from instinct; between the strangeness of the patient and the sheer madness of the situation as a whole, I think that trying to do more would have only resulted in me actually harming the gammy bastard, or simply losing my nerve. Rote or die, as the weavers say.

So I stitched and I sewed and I drew the string tight, and as I worked, a remarkable change came over Taranath’s cold flesh. He was, as I have tried to make quite clear, dead in every sense of the word; I don’t believe there was enough blood left in his body to fill a wineglass, let alone the buckets on buckets we had seen pooled under his corpse. But as the stitches tightened, and the sinews of neck and stump made contact with one another, Taranath suddenly gasped, and suddenly it was not merely his HEAD that was moving.

I will admit, my intention in putting the Elf back together had been more for our own convenience than any vain hope that I could restore function to his pallid form. Much easier, I think you’ll agree, to carry a tent as a single, rolled-up unit, than a collection of poles and tarp. And yet, here he was, flexing stiff fingers and trying to work ‘feeling’ back into his legs!

Whatever manner of undeath had afflicted him, ‘twas a strange one indeed.

And I realise, here, what a loaded comment that must seem. Very rarely do we Ponyfolk have occasion to deal with those departed from the mortal realm. We have our ghost-stories and our tall tales, but for all that our lands are blest with magical wildlife, UNLIFE eludes us. And perhaps for the better: in my adventures before entering the Valley, I had encountered all manner of undead in those eastern lands, and none had been particularly friendly.

I wish I could say that I knew all there was to tell of them; that I could explain to you the difference between a Ghoul and a Ghast, or by what process a corpse is raised as an animate skeleton as opposed to a zombie. Alas, I am but a simply Pony, and dedicated what brains Celestia gave me to medicine, not necromancy.

But for all that I had heard, and fought, and studied in the field, nothing compared to this. It was as if something kept him a hair’s breadth from death, stopped that last gasp of life from ebbing away. Fortuitous for him, and, I suppose, for our group, but somehow . . . wrong. And moreso than even the bog-standard varieties of corpse-raising.

‘Say!’ Taranath exclaimed. ‘If you put me back together that quick, surely a healing spell should work even better, right?’ He looked around at our stony faces. ‘Right?’

I’m sure my glance to Krat and Daria told them as much as their expressions told me. Where Taranath, fresh-faced youth that he was (or had been) believed himself the recipient of a cosmic second chance, the rest of us were a bit more suspicious of his apparent good luck.

‘Let me try something,’ I said. Drawing on what reserves of magic the day had yet to drain out of me, I cast the weakest healing spell I could think of.

‘Ow,’ stated Taranath, staring down at the sudden oozing welt on his bare chest. Then: ‘Huh. That doesn’t actually hurt nearly as much as you’d expect.’

There was a susurration of air being sucked in through collective teeth. Suspicions, then, confirmed. Had he been alive, the healing magic would’ve done it’s job; that it had hurt him bespoke the alternative we’d all been desperately hoping to avoid.

‘Well, Tare, I’m afraid I have some bad--’

‘You’re a fucken zombie, mate.’

‘Really?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Cool.’

‘Sure. The only downside is being undead,’ I snorted.

‘Ahh, no biggie. This kinda thing happens all the time, right? What’s the worst that could happen? We’ll just try to find some kind of super-healer out there.’ He sniffed. ‘Say, do we have any raw meat?’

Daria tapped her foot, casting tense glances at the stairwell. ‘If we’re done here, we should probably go. I don’t want to be waiting around for the bitch to wake up or come home or whatever.’

‘Okay, just one more question: why are half my fingers missing?’

***

We made it out of the house without further incident. We had retrieved all our armour and equipment, and Krat had even kept his poker for use as a melee weapon. No-one was quite sure where the Wolfmother had gone, or when she would be back, but we felt it would be best if we didn’t stick around for a repeat of the morning’s performance.

The first thing that occurred to any of us was to try and high-tail it out of the Valley -- make our way to the nearest town, see if we couldn’t get out injuries assessed, maybe figure out what to do with our newly undead Elf (who, I should point out, was almost entirely in control of his faculties again, raising still more questions as to the nature of his condition). It was a good plan, a sound plan; a much-needed tactical withdrawal while we pondered our choices and got on with our lives.

Alas, upon reaching the edge of the Forest nearest the cliff, we quickly discovered that even the soundest plans can sometimes be led astray.

I have described already the narrow switchbacks we traversed on our way down, and the difficulty we had navigating the areas where rockslides had torn away the track. But this . . . ? It was as if someone had taken the entire rock face and worn away at it, as if a great river had run across it in the night. Sandstone made as smooth as glass, impossible to climb.

Strange as this was, stranger still was the change in the Forest itself. If the road into it split the forest nearly evenly, and if, with one’s back to the cliff face, the inn stood a ways into the forest on the right, then to the left of the road, opposite the inn and stretching far away from the cliff, a wide, undulating swathe had been cut through the dense forest. Trees big around as silos torn up at the root, underbrush flattened -- it was as though a house had gotten up on four legs and smashed its way through the forest.

It was decidedly too large to have been the handiwork of the Wolfmother, at any rate.

And it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched to assume that whatever had cut so easily through the trees also had the power to weather the cliff.

I don’t recall whether we actually spoke, in that moment, or whether the implications of what we were seeing were enough to still our tongues. But whether or not we gave voice to the fears swirling through our minds as we stood at the foot of the cliff, our thoughts when we did later were certain: something LARGE was in the Valley, and whether or not it had followed us, whether or not it was even aware of us, it seemed the better part of valour to avoid it at all costs.

One more thing to add to the list, it seemed.

With the cliff destroyed, the inn more dangerous than the roads, and the Forest itself off-limits by quorum, we had no other recourse; we followed the road. We did not dare risk a light, for fear of attracting the Wolfmother’s attention, but the moon was bright enough and the path clear enough that we found our way without much incident. Eventually, after we had put several hours were between ourselves and the inn, we set aside stealth in favour of speed, and continued trying to put as much distance between ourselves and the head of the Valley as possible.

The terror in our hearts was the worst we had to face that night. We stumbled on and slew a pair of sleeping apes at one point, and near morning we came across a small pack of dead wolves -- all the more reason for us to find shelter soon, especially if they were more of the Wolfmother’s children -- but beyond that the Forest was as quiet and crisp as any other might be at night. The road twisted and turned here and there, and gradually turned east, towards the walls of the Valley.

The light was just beginning to change when the path ended in a large, almost perfectly circular clearing. We were puzzled, and not a little concerned: we’d had no real plan after following the road, and the promise of safety and a warm, unthreatening hearth had been the only things spurring us on.

We were exhausted from the night’s exertion, compounded by what we had been through the preceding day. Krat was fairly shaking with a combination of cold and strain, and even Daria seemed ready to collapse under the nearest tree. Of any of us, only Taranath wasn’t breathing hard; though, perhaps that had something to do with him not breathing.

But there wasn’t time to rest, yet. Not while the threat of violent, furry death hung over us like a thunderhead. Wordlessly, we strode around the clearing, looking for some further path, some other way forward.

The first shafts of sunlight were streaming into the Valley when we heard the howl. It came from somewhere behind us and to the right, to the south, back in the direction of the smoothed cliff-face . . . and the inn. There was no mistaking it -- the Wolfmother had returned to the inn and discovered our absence. The outrage was obvious, the tenor unmistakeable.

That didn’t inspire as much terror in us as it might’ve, though; in fact, it was almost a relief. Knowing where she was, how far she was, was far more reassuring than having to wonder if she would spring from behind the nearest tree at any moment. We had time, and plenty of it; we could find a way to avoid her if need be.

No, the thing that set terror in our hearts was not the Wolfmother’s howl -- it was the fact that something else answered. Not a wolf, not any animal that I had ever remember hearing or hearing being spoken of. It was a deafening, unearthly sound -- trumpeting, ululating, piercing, and seemingly emanating from every direction at once. Birds and wildlife scattered in its wake, and even the howl of the Wolfmother was quickly stifled in its wake.

The shriek lasted for perhaps half a minute, and for half a minute we remained rooted to the spot, not daring to move for fear of attracting the attention of whatever the thing was making that sound. When it finally died down, the last echoes bouncing off the cavern walls, we turned to one another, bug-eyed.

Finding our way out of this clearing had suddenly become that much more desperate.

We raced around the clearing, looking this way and that for clues. Under this rock? Behind that tree? That bird’s nest I can’t reach? But in the end it was I that made the fateful discovery -- a hollowed-out knothole, near the base of one of the thicker trees directly opposite the path on the other side of the clearing. I stuck my hoof in, experimentally, and found . . . a kick pedal, as one might expect on a loom. Carefully I depressed it, and felt some kind of mechanism within the tree click.

I called to the others, and they joined me, waiting tensely for a path to open up into the tree, or below us, or something. But no, our salvation did not come from below, but above; after a few, terrible minutes of waiting, a sort of whirring noise became apparent to our ears, emanating from above. Looking up, we noted with surprise that what looked like a large flower suspended from a series of ropes, was gliding down towards us from the treetops.

We scrambled to get out of the way as it landed with a little fwump in the centre of the clearing, and just as quickly scrambled back towards the promise of sanctuary it offered.

I should note that the platform did not merely look like a flower; it was a flower, an honest-to-Celestia lotus bud some fifteen feet across. I had seen smaller-scale versions of the same flower in herbalists’ shops around the eastern markets. This was much the same in shape and dull white colour, and, much like a flower bud, there was no obvious means of getting inside it, and it was very vocally announced by much of the group that no-one felt comfortable trying to ride the outside of it.

We tried a couple of different tactics -- Taranath even shouted at it in Druidic for awhile -- but nothing made much impact until Daria happened to lay a hand on one of the petals. At that, the entire petal structure folded outward, revealing a carved wooden cage within. We clambered up into the cage, a surprisingly spacious affair which could easily have fit twice as many of us as there were, and watched with interest as the petals folded closed around us. A sort of handle was dimly visible in the vegetable gloom, hanging from the top of the cage, and Taranath gave it a firm yank. With a jolt and a hissing of thick rope, we were speeding skyward, toward whatever destination the makers of this strange lift had intended for us.

What did we find at the top? Well, lads and lasses, that’s a story for tomorrow night. Alas, these tired old bones can only support me so long nowadays, and I can see the littlest heads starting to droop.

So, clear off, tykes, and should the tavern-master not have tired of my voice, we’ll return tomorrow.