Druids and the Wooden Heart

Spirit was sitting with Bite next to princess Celestia as suddenly a note in front of Celestia appeared. She opened it and she put the letter down after a few seconds and turned to Spirit. "I have bad news. It seems like Bolt has got a feather from Cadence. She wrote that he fooled her and that Leaf is on her way back."

Spirit stared for a few second in nothing after he had heard that. Suddenly poke Bite him in the side with the nose and brought him back to reality with that. "Then I have to go. I am sorry your highness that we wasted you time."

She smiled calmly. "There is no need to be sorry. I have faith that you will win the fight against this pony."

Spirit nodded and jumped on Bites back who immediately began to ran out of the castle and in the direction of the house from Root.

As he and Bite reached the house of Root they saw that the lights were on. Spirit jumped from Bites back and ran to the door and knocked at it while Bite followed him and waited behind him. "Root? Root, are you there?"

Shortly afterwards the door opened and Spirit saw the archdruid in front of him. Spirit bowed shortly before he began his explanation. "I immediately came back as I got this letter. It seems that Bolt has the feather."

The archdruid Root just nodded and waved them in. "I know. Now came in you two we have to discuss what to do next."

The archdruid walked back in and Spirit and Bite followed him. As they walked in the living room he saw that Darren and Switch were already there.

Spirit looked confused at Switch. "How did you all came here so fast? I mean Darren sure he is faster than Bite but you? You came the whole way from Ponyville to here in a few minutes?"

Switch grinned at him. "Well, being able to teleport is a nice thing, isn't it? Also Twilight helped me with the spell."

Spirit turned his head to Root. "Do we wait for Leaf?"

He shook his head and sat down. "No we don't have time to wait for her when she arrives I will give her the instructions what to do next."

Switch nodded in agreement. "That begs one question, what should we do next?"

Root pulled out a piece of paper. On it where the instructions for the rune that Test Bolt wanted to make. "Our next step would be to find out what this next part is. A root from harmony, does any of you know something that would fit this description?"

Bite yawned and Spirit tapped at his chin. "Twilight once mentioned something like that, I think it was the flower of harmony or something like that." "Tree of harmony." "Right the tree of harmony, thanks Bite."

Root nodded. "Ok then you will go to Twilight and ask her about this tree but you have to do it without the others." He turned to the other two. "I received information from other druids that all around Equestria the forests seem to die. After a bit searching they found smaller and simpler versions of this rune."

Darren looked at the rune for a moment before he answered. "So he tries to distract us? How many forests are affected?"

Root sighed sadly. "It seems like every single one in Equestria. Bolt planned this much better than we thought. I need you, Darren and Switch to help finding theses runes and disable them. Darren you will go to the north and Switch you will go to the west. Search in every forest you find and disable all runes you can and if you can't destroy one try to call for help from other druids."

They both nodded and stood up. They turned to the door to leave but the archdruid stopped them a last time. "Before you go take this with you." He pulled out two green stones and gave them to the two. "When these stones begin to glow immediately leave and go wherever the stones lead you, we will meet there."

The both nodded serious and left through the door. Now the archdruid turned to Spirit and Bite. "You will go to Ponyville and guard this tree of harmony as best as you can. I will look if I can find any other possible thing that could be meant by root of harmony. If you get Bolt or if he gets the root use this stone, just strew a bit of your magic powder on it and say if you succeeded or not."

He gave Spirit a stone, one that looked similarly to the stones he gave Switch and Darren but it had thin lines in form of a complex pattern on it. Spirit nodded and put it in his bag. He turned to the door but before he stepped outside he stopped and turned to Root. "What about Leaf?"

"It will take her a few more hours till she arrives and I will have to talk with her about the rune. She is the only one who can find out what this rune does in time."

Spirit nodded and walked out of the door followed by Bite. As they were outside turned Spirit to Bite. "So are you ready to go?"

Bite nodded and sat a bit down so that Spirit could get easily on his back. Spirit jumped on it and they left in direction of Ponyville.

As Spirit was gone turned Root to the paper again and looked at it. "It doesn't matter if we win or not if I can't find the place. We should have searched for it years earlier." He walked to his desk and pulled out a box from under the desk. In the box were a bunch of old looking books. The book on the top had the title, The heart of the nature. Root opened it and began to read it like several times before but this time he searched for something in particular.

Spirit, on Bites back arrived in Ponyville at noon. Ponies were walking around and Bite had to be very careful not to bump into the Ponies. They went directly to Twilights castle and ran inside.

As they ran through the door they bumped into Spike, who was carrying a bunch of scrolls, who fell on the ground and Bite stopped. Spirit turned his head to him. "Spike do you know where Twilight is?"

Spike began to collect the scrolls again. "You know, that really hurt."

Spirit quickly nodded. "Oh right, I am sorry."

Spike pointed at a door at the left. "If you look for Twilight she is right now in a lesson with Bright right now. You might want to come back later..."

But Spirit didn't listened he and Bite just ran through the door. Inside the room sat Twilight and in front of her Bright who seemed to try to do some sort of spell.

The both looked confused at Spirit as he began to speak quickly. "I need your help. You told me once about this tree of harmony. Well I and the others think it has something to do with the next thing Bolt wants! Can you bring me to it?"

The both mares looked at him confused at him before Twilight said anything. "Of course I can. But may I ask how you'd get that idea?"

"Well on a note from Test Bolt was written that he needs a root of harmony. Then I remembered that you said something about a tree of harmony. So we thought that he wants a root from this tree."

Twilight nodded and stood up. She turned to Bright. "I will go and bring Spirit to the tree, you can read the rest of the chapter."

Bright nodded and Twilight turned to Spirit. "Ok then let's go."

Twilight walked outside, followed by Bite and Spirit. They walked in silence until Twilight began to speak. "Earlier this day I got a letter that said that Test Bolt has a feather from Cadence. Switch immediately left as he heard that. Can you tell me what Test Bolt wants with that feather?"

"Well, it seems like he wants to draw some kind of rune and for that he needs a bunch of things. One of them was the alicron feather."

They now entered the forest and Twilight looked at Spirit while walking. "What exactly does this rune?"

"We are not sure. We only know that its destroys the forests all over Equestria to get energy but we still don't know what the rune does with that energy ."

Twilight nodded and they walked the rest of the way without saying anything. Just as they were almost able to see the tree again began Twilight to speak again.

She pointed at the direction where the tree stands and began. "Over there is the tree. You only have to walk a little bit more in that direction."

Spirit nodded. "Thank you Twilight. You can go now I think I and Bite can guard this tree alone. See you... Oh and say the others I said hi."

Twilight nodded flew away. "See you."

Spirit turned back to the direction where Twilight pointed and smiled at Bite. "So let's go. We have luck that we got here so fast there is no way that Bolt could get here faster than we."

The walked in the cave were the tree of harmony was but as they walked in they saw that there was a silhouette in a robe. A shovel was leaning against the tree and a pile of dirt next to it.

As Bite saw the silhouette he instantly sniffed the air and turned to Spirit. "It is Crey!" Spirit looked at the griffon and made himself ready. "What are you doing here?"

The griffon turned his head to Spirit and his eyes went wide. "You again." In his claw was a small piece of a white root. As Spirit saw that he ran in his direction.

Crey opened his wings and flew in the sky. Spirit saw him flying in the direction of Ponyville. Spirit turned to Bite. "Can you track him?" Bite quickly nodded and Spirit jumped on his back and Bite began to ran.

From the sky looked Crey down and searched for the two but his view was cut by the leaves of the trees. After a few minutes flying he decided that he needed a bit of rest and landed.

He landed on the crown of a tree and began to look around. As he couldn't see them he sat on a branch and whispered to himself. "This dam pony. Every time I try to do my job he and his stupid wolf are in the way!"

Suddenly he heard a noise from the left and he saw Bite and Spirit jumping from another tree at him. It was too late for Crey to react and Bite grabbed him from the Branch and pinched him down to the earth. The root from the tree fell on the ground a few feet away from Crey.

Crey tried to pull himself free. "Let go of me! Can't I cut a small root from a white tree without being stopped by a stupid pony like you?"

Spirit jumped from Bite's back. "No you can't. Not from this tree! Do you even know what kind of trouble this root could cause?"

Spirit began to walk towards the root as Crey answered angrily. "No and I don't care. If I find this pony who gave me the job! He said nothing could go wrong!"

Spirit reached down to grab the root. "You will get a lot of trouble for this." As he was about to put the root in his bag it disappeared with a dark green blink.

Spirit turned his head around trying to find something."Who is there?"

Suddenly in the shadows opened tow eyes. One yellow and one blue eye and a the familiar voice of Test Bolt began to speak. "I thought the runes would keep you druids away but still I have what I want."

Spirit didn't wasted a second and jumped at Bolt but the unicorn just teleported away. Spirit looked around but Bolt had teleported too far away. "Seems like I finished my job after all."

Spirit turned his head around to see that Crey who was still pinched to the ground by Bite grinned at him. Spirit walked to him and looked angry at him. "You are such an ignorant idiot! Thanks to you has Bolt, a mad mage, an powerful magical object that might lead to the total destruction of every forest in Equestria!"

Crey just grinned more. "I don't care. I would go to jail anyway. I will probably not even notice the missing of a few forests."

Spirit opened his mouth but then just sighed and shook his head. He pulled out a rope from his saddlebags and began to tie Crey. He laid him on Bites back and they walked back to Ponyville.

While they walked back pulled Spirit the stone that the archdruid gave him and strew some magic powder on it and whispered to the stone. "Bolt won... again."

As they reached Ponyville again they walked directly to Twilight and told her what happened. She ordered a bunch of guards who arrived a few hours later.

They threw Crey in a closed carriage and the captain turned to Spirit. "Thank you for your help getting this piece of scum back in jail."

Spirit nodded and sighed. "No problem but please ensure that he can't escape this time. He did enough damage in his time free."

The captain nodded serious. "Of course. We will ensure that he won't come free for the next few years."

Spirit nodded thankfully and watched how the guards flying away. He walked to Twilight. "I have to go I must tell the archdruid that I failed..." He sighed.

Twilight pointed behind him. "Maybe you don't have to. Look Leaf is there."

As he turned around he saw Leaf walking towards him. She was smiling as she saw Spirit but stopped as she saw his expression. "What happened?"

Spirit sighed again. "Bolt has the root from the tree of harmony. He send Crey to get it but just as we stopped him, he appeared and took the root."

Leaf mumbled something just quiet enough that Spirit couldn't hear her. Spirit looked at Bite, who just shrugged he turned his head back and looked at her. "So Where will be meet for the next thing on the list?"

Leaf sighed before she answered. "That's the point we have no idea what with the breath of the cold one could mean. The archdruid said we all should keep looking around and that we should activate the rune stone if we find Bolt or something else that would help."

Spirit nodded. Bite poked him in the side and nodded in the direction of Leaf. "Did somepony found something about this rune out and what it does?" Spirit translated to Leaf who then sighed again and nodded sadly.

"It seems that Bolt was wrong as he said that the rune would do something else if it is finished. The rune is actually nothing more than a spell to destroy nature with the components it just does it faster and if the rune is once started it cannot be stopped again, except with the right counter rune."

Spirit looked shocked at her as he heard that. "Do you know the counter rune?"

She let her head down and sighed again. "No... I don't know the rune. This rune... it is so complicated! Every part of it works different I tried it a dozen times there was always one part that I couldn't stop!"

Bite walked to Leaf, sat down in front of her and just looked at her face. She looked up again and Spirit now also walked towards her next to Bite. "If the achrdruid doesn't need us right now can we help you with that. Hey Twilight do you mind if we look a bit in your library?"

Twilight smiled. "No of course not. I can help you researching too."

Spirit nodded to all of them. "Thank you Twilight. We could use every help we can get. How about we immediately start searching?"