The Wanderer

A forest, but not any such regular one. Buzzing with vivid life, its evergreen trees showing off their bright green color. The wind allowing the large trunk plants to sway to the breeze, like an evening dance, making the sweet sounds of rustling between their leaves. Down below these trees were lilies, daisies, and red poppies bursting their color across the earthy ground, giving off an ephemeral beauty. Off the side of these gorgeous blooming flowers, were small streams, flowing freely through their still eroding path. The water was as clear as water could be. Mostly because the water came down from the mountains, allowing it to filter anything that contaminated it. The mountains were as tall as any man could tell a tall tale. Most of their tops capped with snow, giving the whole forest a unique look. The forest seemed down right a silence, that was until a whistling came from the ground below it.

Off the small stony path laid out for all pony kind, was the noise of a crackling fire. Its flaming red colors dancing to the wind, but the flames slowly transformed color upward into a reddish orange until it disappeared as smoke. The pony by the fire, was only a wanderer. A pony who has no definite area of home. A pony who is kind, but has the skillful way with the blade. His black mane with a crimson red inside was also swaying with the wind. A cutie mark of two axes crossing each other with blood on the tips of the blade. His light grey coat standing on end from the chilling breeze, thankfully the fire was there to equalize the effects. His darker grayish wings which transitioned into a night black at the tips, were tucked in comfortingly. The feathers whistling against the wind, almost to a high enough pitched decibel to where it could be heard to ponies and other woodland creature. He was humming a tranquil tune, probably trying to relax for the night to come.

He looked over to his lute, something that his family has passed down for generations. It's sound almost holy, and the carvings on it resembled those of the gods. Its wood made from the redwood trees up in northern Skyrim, and damn did it have a sound. He grabbed the instrument and took his hoof, he lightly strummed all the strings, earning a pleasant sound, knowing that it is tuned correctly. He then began to play, plucking string by string creating a melody of the sorts. The song was beautiful enough as it was, but then he plucked louder and louder, until the sound waves could have been heard from the cave he had seen a mile back. He was then forced to stop his gorgeous song when he heard an odd and high pitched noise that caused him to cringe.

"Aw dammit!" He shouted with annoyance. Apparently, his fifth string had broken. Usually the strings he had bought were durable and only having strings broken only a few times, but it happened. He then put down the lute by the rock he was near, and as lightly as he could without anger.

"Don't I have some luck, this god forsaken forest is killing me without the beasts," he sputtered out of his mouth. A wise elder once said that the first knowing of wisdom is when you talk to yourself, of course he never knew he was doing it. He looked to the night sky above him, the night not a cloudy one, so the stars would shine brightly this night, and indeed they did. Their bright whitish yellow twinkles like dots in the vastness of the dark heavens. The sight of the stars, the calming crackling noise of the fire, the cool wind rustling the trees, all these sounds came to the wanderer's ears and he was out like a light.

The morning wasn't that much different from the night other than the sun shining its rays to creep anywhere its light could touch. The light finally moved towards our wanderer's eyes. The light now hitting him, made him twist and turn, clearly not wanting to awake. Finally he managed to open his greenish blue eyes to the world again. He stood up and stretched, also yawning very loudly.

The stream today was louder than it usually was, it must have rained heavy in the mountain tops. Our wanderer smacked his face a couple of times to try to waken himself a bit more, but then heard the noisy stream and perked up at the idea. Leaving his camp, he slowly made his way towards the stream, his ears being used to direct him. His body was heavy as a stump, thump after thump from being sleepy. Finally after twenty or so feet, he reached the pristine looking stream. He kneeled down, looking at his reflection with a smile.

"Look at you, you handsome bastard," he said chuckling before he took his callused hooves to the water. He dipped his hoof into the small stream, the water splashing upward and around his hoof. He quickly recoiled from the coldness of the water and made a burr sound.

"holy lord that is cold, perfect," he said. He quickly took his hoof and splashed some water onto his face. His eyes pried wide open from the temperature. He took the opportunity to splash his mane. The water dampened his spiky hair down and made it more vivid. Once he was done, he now walked with haste back to the campsite he set up just for the night.

After a small trot back, he made it to the small opening he saw as campsite material. Using his magic, he grabbed his saddlebags. Using his magic again, he grabbed his lute. The cyan colored magic wrapping around his holy musical instrument before finally taking uplift, then moved into his bag. Finally, he wrapped his magic around his throwing knifes, their odd swooshing noises arose as he spun them in the air. Once putting everything in his back, our wanderer was finally ready to head off.

Once his hooves stepped onto the stony path made by the city pony-folk nearby, he hummed an all to familiar tune. Trotting with pride every step of the way. His whistling attracted a group of friendly squirrels, who quickly showed themselves before making haste to the evergreen tree nearby.

"Help!" a high pitched stallions voice was suddenly heard by our wanderer while he lightly trotted. The noise so loud that it scared most of the birds that camouflaged themselves inside the trees, making their twiggy nests and chirping their placid tones to attract a male or female. Once hearing the cry for help, the wanderer immediately tried to focus his ears on the direction the shout for help came from and made his way with speed. Was he fast, sure he was but not Rainbow Dash fast. She had been a high commanding rebel for the Stormcloak army...well that's for another time.

After several seconds of running my hooves off, I made it to the scene. The stallion was a unicorn. His coat a shade of a lightish grass green, but his mane and tail were the coolest ever. Mostly all black, except there was what looked like yellow lightning bolts coming through it. His cutie mark a yellow lightning bolt with it striking and cracking a star in half. He was being attacked by what looked like a group of vicious timberwolves. Their eyes were zoned in like an eagle to its prey, the unicorn. Their twiggy bodies inching their way, going in for the kill.

"Yo! Whimper-wolves!" I yelled towards them. They must have caught the message; their heads now took their gaze off the helpless unicorn and towards me. The two quickly made a quick run for me. I smirked and used my magic to grab out of my bags the throwing daggers. You could hear the crackling noise of the timberwolves twig-like legs bending. I threw the first one with my magic at grasp, its point piercing through the air particles, making a whooshing sound. It penetrated straight through the closest timberwolves head. You could hear the impact of the blade as it made the twigs snap with ease. As the blade made its way out of the back of the head, the whole wolves body crumbled like the faggot it was; Hehe faggot. Surprising to the Wanderer, the other timber-wolf ignored his broken friend. He could tell it only filled the beast with rage, and it increased its speed. The noise from the joints of his legs now growing at an increased speed. Shocked, the Wanderer quickly used his magic, allowing the blade to come back. The blade spun and whistled as it reversed direction. Our Wanderer as now sweating, he could not tell instinctively if the blade would make it in time. Thankfully he did not need to; in surprise he watched as a bolt of yellow magic shot straight through the wolf, collapsing it instantly. The blade finally returned, the Wanderer stuck out his hoof right at the projected point, and grabbed onto the blade mid air while it was still zooming at intense speed.While he was putting his blade back in his hands, the unicorn abruptly talked.

"You know you had the other dagger," he pointed out. Scrunching his eyebrows, he looked at him.

"And how did you know that exactly?" He said, even though knowing he was correct, he was intrigued how he knew.

"One wouldn't carry around one dagger, especially if you throw them, and how did you use magic? You have no horn all I see is wings." He questioned. I smiled, knowing how awesome this is. Indeed, it was a special gift passed on with our family.

"Passed down from family, supposedly my great great grand-stallion was a magi at the college of Winterhoof, of course he also used his hooves to control magic. But they say before him, it was the ancients way of controlling the spirits of Oblivion, and their gods had bestowed upon them."

"Wow I am amazed, I had always wanted to go to the college and study magic, but I had not the time." he said regretfully. "What is your name?" he asked.

"I don't have a name..." the Wanderer merely said.

"Oh, well mine is Star, Star Struck...nice to meet you." he held out his hoof. The Wanderer rolled his eyes, not that he doesn't shake hands, he could already tell where this was going. It was simple, he would want to travel with him. He shook his hands anyways, grabbing them with a firm grip. He then took his hoof away from the unicorn and made his way down the path once more. Star was confused at first, I mean who just leaves after saving someones life?

"Hey hold up!" Star shouting, now trotting a faster pace to catch up with him. "where are you going?"

"Nowhere..." He managed to spit out of his mouth, you could tell he didn't want to talk. A man of little words he is...of course no one really knew that...no one knew him.

"Then uh, I was wondering..."

"No..." The Wanderer said. Star gave a confused look to him, not knowing what he knew. "No. I am not letting you accompany me on my journey."

"And why not?" he said in such an attitude it made the Wanderer stop and almost blow his top off.

"Can't you see something about me? I am a nobody, all I do is wander around, trying to live out my life to get to someplace better." he said in an annoyed and angered tone.

"You don't look like a nobody to me, you saved my life. The best I can do is be a companion on your journey. Doesn't it ever get lonely...out here in the vast forests and plains?" you could tell by the Wanderer's face he was ready to blow up like a volcano on the unicorn, couldn't he get that he didn't want anyone?

"I swear if you don't stop asking me...I'll..."

"You'll do what! Just face it, the only way your going to get me to stop annoying you is if you let me join you." he said with attitude. There was no way the Wander could get him off his back now, looks like he would just yell at him and give him a fine.

"You know what! Fine, go ahead and help me out and wander the vast lands of boredom!" He shouted, starting to trot forward once again. His face was enraged, he was done with this, he just decided that having a companion who would shut up and maybe be useful would at least be better than some annoying unicorn continuously pestering you. He could here Star's hoof-steps increasing their speed to catch up with him.

"Good, so where to...can I at least give you a name or something, the Wanderer, even though it sounds really cool kinda is hard to work with you know?"

"Yeah yeah, just call me...Crim. I always liked that name," he replied to Star.

"All right Crim, so where are we headed?"

"Wherever the winds take us." he simply replies. The trot along the pathway was just boring. No wind, no animals, no...nothing. There was only the scenery, something which most of the time was always very similar.

"So..." Star began to say, trying to bring up a conversation so that their boredom could be tossed out of their heads. "What spells have you learned of?" Crim raised an eyebrow on that one, no one really did bring up his magical abilities. Well, he barely used them when he went into town which was on rare occasions. He was a lone wolf, he thought being alone with your thoughts was the best thing a Pegasi like him could have. If he could, he would have flown today. He never liked to fly, it just...wasn't necessary.

"Well," he began to say, looking towards Star. "My dad hated magical abilities, thought they were so dumb," he then chuckled. "One time, he made this potion, he was an alchemist you know, and he thought he could get rid of the magic in our bodies," he chuckled again. "To bad the poor bastard tried it on himself, he lost his whole mane, had to wait till it grew back to even go back into the city," Star seemed amused by the whole ordeal. "But my granddaddy, his name was, Silver or something like that. Anyway, he actually taught me how to use it. Some of the spells he taught me were illusion spells and telekinesis. He never taught me how to really use my magic to you know, fight."

"Interesting, so you can learn magic, and you can move objects to you. Do you know if you can use any other spells a unicorn could use?"

"I honestly have no clue, but by the looks of it, I think it could be possible." Crim then took a stop, Star stopped with him, raising an eyebrow in confusion of why they were stopping. "You want to help me with something?" Crim asked.

"Sure, what is it?"

"Well," he said, he then used his magic and opened the bag. Star watched curiously as Crim pulled out of his saddlebags to what looked like a book. "See this book here, I found it in my old granddaddy's shack. If you look at it, it seems to be some dark magic book. I've looked in it, but the words are unreadable, seems to be in some language of the ancients or something like that." Star looked at the book. Indeed it was. The book was a black colored book, the only thing noticeable were the words on the title, some type of language of the world of Oblivion. Star knew this, and he only did because one year he went into the banned section of library books. He tried taking one of the books which actually translates such a language, of course he was caught and was lectured on the study and why he should never learn Oblivion magic.

"I wouldn't if I were you. I remember when I was in school, they taught me about this when I shouldn't have even known about it. It's language is the language of those in the Oblivion. Supposedly, it has something to deal with necromancy, and also complete chaos and destruction.

"But there is already destruction magic?" I say in question.

"yes but this type of magic is over power, as in you could crack the land, make continents move, bring storms from the heavens down onto the earth."

"Oh wow, sounds like this book is something of major value, I wonder why my granddaddy had it?"

"Did you know if he could have been in the..." he walked closer to me and whispered in my ear. "The dark arts..." after the moment of his words going into my head and being processed, I took a quick shake of my head side to side and used my hoof and pushed his head away.

"No no, there's no way he could..." Crim paused for a moment.

"What is it?" Star asked.

"Well...I remember when I was a younger colt, I couldn't sleep one night so I was going to grab something to drink. When I did, I looked out the window, and we have this barn nearby..." Crim looked around to make sure no one heard, then continued. "I saw a dark purple light coming from the barn doors, since they were ajar. I think you are right." Star's mouth dropped slightly agape.

"No way...you had a necromancer granddad all along...that's...crazy..." he said slowly. There was a minute pause of just looking at each other in shock and the look at the book Crim had in his magic. "What do we do with the book?"

"I honestly have no clue, I would be intrigued to have learned it to improve my magic, but if it makes me go bad, no way."

"I don't think the user goes bad doing the magic, I think just it was created by the evil. In a sense you are using magic that should be forgotten forever."

"Wanna find out about it, I know we won't use it for bad, but think of what we could do for the good."

"Sounds like fun," he admits. "I hate the idea of completely disobeying what my teachers have said about not learning it, but you could learn it."

"Cool, I was going to anyways...so where do we learn the language?" We thought for a moment when something lit up in Star's head.

"My old school had a book. I think it's still there to; I say we steal it."

"Wow Star, first you didn't want to disobey your teacher, now your going to steal." Star chuckled.

"For science." he admits.

"Ok then its settled, but once we do this we split paths ok," Crim holds out his hoof.

"Ugh, fine," he draws out his hoof and shakes. "Let's go, by the time we get there it will be dark and perfect for a steal hehe."