"According to the Map of Sir Fetlock, we must be at the right place."
After three days of camping, avoiding (or fighting) predators, rowing through the rivers, and dozens of wrong turns, Party Favor led his three friends into an abandoned castle.
"So, is this the Castle of Sir Fetlock VII the Valiant?" Sugar Belle inquired.
"If it is, it would look like an exciting place to explore!" Night Glider burst through the door, with her three worried friends in pursuit.
"Wait, Glider!" the magenta baker cried. "I know you're a daring girl, but we don't know what dangers may lurk inside. We have to stick together to be safe!"
The three friends then stopped at a hallway, with two large upward stairs to their left and right, and another dim passageway ahead of them.
"You two will go up the stairs, while I will go straight into that sort of library thing," Party Favor instructed. "Got it?"
The two earth ponies nodded in agreement, and they split ways to search for their friend. The blue unicorn lit his horn with magic, as he explored the hall full of tall bookshelves, cluttered with dust-laden books written in various unknown and archaic languages.
"Glider!" Party called. "Glider, where are you? Perhaps you'd like to play hide and seek, do you? Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
But then, a oaken chest framed with gold curls and bars caught his attention. Other than the faint rays of sunlight that managed to break into the library, and his horn's magical glow, it was the only other discernible source of light to help Party find his way within the hall. He opened the chest, and it raised a platform filled with bottles. Each bottle was filled with a glowing green fluid, labelled with an image of what appears to be a ferocious canine.
"It would be a risk," Party thought to himself, "but if I want to show that I'm braver and better than Double, I'll do it. And I'm thirsty as well." He popped open the cork and chugged the green liquid into his mouth. As he felt that the drink had no effects (other than a sweet apple-like taste), he inconsiderable threw the bottle away.
Not before long, he heard screaming, and then what sounded like something crashing against a bookshelf, and then the roaring collapse of several falling bookshelves. He turned towards a thud, coming from his friend Double who had just landed after jumping from another bookshelf.
"Well, I just fell from a trapdoor," the white pony explained. "Any sign of Glider?"
"She isn't here either," Party answered.
"And did I just hear some broken glass earlier?" Double asked.
"Nothing," Party shrugged. "That's just an old glass that dropped down for not a reason I know off."
The two stallions went up the stairs, and they heard laughter from the hall to their right. When they entered that hall, they had found Night Glider, wallowing next to an unsteady statue of a gryphon. Party noticed that the statue is starting to fall, and so he quickly rushed unto the statue. Double dropped his jaw from the sheer speed of that party horse: he was usually the third-fastest runner of the group, but now that he quickly reached Glider in just a few seconds, he became fast enough to beat Double if the two of them raced again, in spite of the latter being the strongest of the four from his years of mountain skiing.
And another strange thing about Party was that when the falling gryphon sculpture was about to crush Glider, he was not
only able to stop the statue, but he slowly pushed it until it tipped over and fell towards the other side of the pedestal. Perhaps Party was taking some potion somewhere, that gave that small fry of a pony some super strength!
Party then turned towards the laughing pegasus. "Night Gilder," he asked, "what happened to you?" She stopped laughing and realized about her current situation: she was about to be crushed by a large statue, when to her surprise, Party had lifted the statue away from her, and offering a hoof to help her get up.
"Oh, that statue was super ugly!" Glider chuckled.
"Did you find any treasure?" Party asked.
"If you count all of this worthless junk as treasure, you can take as much as you want!" Glider tossed several rusted goblets at the two stallions, who either caught or dodged them.
"Quit it, Glides," Double yelled. "Are you really that crazy now?"
"I'm always crazy, dudes, even before I went into this castle or got brainwashed by Glimmy-Four-Shoes," the pegasus sneered. "That's what I am!"
Sugar ran into the hall. "Guys," she panted, "I think I found treasure as I was looking for Glides. Let's go!"
The four ponies, guided by the pink and purple unicorn, galloped into the other end of the hall, down a spiral staircase, and into a cellar. With a kick of her forelegs Sugar opened the cellar door, and ushered her friends into the cellar's splendid contents.
"True gold!" Glider's eyes melted in delight. "Rather than all those fake treasures back in the Gryphon Hall, there's the real deal! And it's ourrrrrrs for the taking, yar-harr!" She flew into the room, and as she clutched with her hooves as much artifacts as she could find, she tossed them to her friends, who either caught them or avoided them again.
"Glider?" Double objected. "We can't take home all this bling in the room. They're a lotta stuff for us to carry, and the treasure chests add to its weight."
"We're supposed to be exploring, not getting ourselves obsessed over some old treasure," Sugar complained. When she and Double tried to stop Glider, she shoved them aside.
"You two are either with me, or you should go back, whining and crying like the losers you are, to our village," she ranted. The two decided to examine the treasures to study more about them.
The dark blue pegasus hovered over the nervous cyan unicorn, who was wondering whether to join her or guard the team from any possible enemies outside. Even though Party saved her from being crushed by a falling statue, she still stuck to her usual daring attitude, and mocked her miserable rescuer. "What are you waiting for, Party-boy?" Glider sneered again,. "Get inside and have your share of the plunder, you silly-faced loser!"
"Loser": with that very word, Party's mind was plunged back into his horrible adolescent days, when he used to enjoy racing other ponies. Even though he was a determined young colt, his losses were so frequent and clumsy that the audience used to poke fun of his party-related interests and mishaps, leading to his escape years later into before becoming a citizen of Our Town with many other dejected ponies.
Party was not just sad; he was also very angry, because he grew tired of other people's insults against him all the time. While he normally kept his rage to himself, the chemicals that the party pony had ingested earlier strengthened his emotions, to the extent that he could not easily control them as he usually did.
Meanwhile, the other three ponies were looking around the treasure room for any useful artifacts to take. Gilder was stuffing her saddlebags with as much gold as she can take, that they overflowed and messed the room. She did not care whether her falling goods would hurt her two friends, as they remained with her to ensure her safety.
While most of the inscriptions in the room and its artifacts were written in unknown ancient languages, there was one written in Equestrian that caught Double's attention. He slowly read it to himself:
"Find your fill of lime, my guest,
And your mind will not attain rest.
In irritation is your descent,
Into canine rage and torment."
As Double was reading the inscription and thinking about its meaning, he noticed that the word "lime" in the first verse was etched by a bygone vandal to read "wine", perhaps to trick the reader into drinking that elixir. Surrounding the text were images of a unicorn in noble's robes ingesting a goblet of wine, before he ended up becoming a strange, ferocious creature who attacked everypony else in the scene.
Then the white pony recalled the broken bottle in the library where he found Party. It had a puddle of a green liquid that smelled like apples. In front of him over a distance, a platform loaded with bottles filled with a glowing emerald fluid beckoned. He also noticed that some time after drinking one of those bottles, Party became more faster and stronger, enough to beat all the strength that he had achieved from his years of skiing. Furthermore, Party looked more serious, and he also tended to sniff more frequently and loudly.
~~~~
Double turned towards the breathing and snarling from behind him: he found that Party has grown bigger and fluffier, large enough to be confused for a prick-eared Ursa Minor without its glow.
"You okay there, dude?" the white horse asked. But before he could touch him, his friend twitched and snarled: his face has become as sharp as a wolf's muzzle, in place of his blocky stallion snout. His grinding teeth had grown into a frame of jaws, all of which were sharp enough to have ripped open scars into anyone careless enough to approach him. His eyes were two fiery pieces of amber that angrily gazed back at Double's icy pupils.
"Tell me, bright guy," Party snarled and glared at the frightened white pony's face, "who was that loser pony who called me a 'loser'?!" The blue monstrous creature of fluff stomped his fore-hooves. "I want to crush, crush, crush!" His voice was no longer as wheezy as the released balloons that he loved very much, but as deep and crude as the roars of a bear.
The other two mares overheard their confrontation, and found that Party has been turned into a monster. While Sugar hid behind a golden statue, Glider tsk-tsked at the poor blue stallion who threatened his skiing friend, who pointed at her with a downcast head.
"If you really want an answer, doggy," the pegasus spat, "I did it. I really hate looking at you dawdle around in your party-land fantasies. You really need to hunger for adventure, dude."
Double sighed. "Glider, Glider, Glider," he shrugged. "You're always that insensitive, are you?"
The overgrown party horse roared and leaped towards the defiant pegasus, who blew a raspberry at his direction and kicked his face.
"I do love a good fight, loser." Glider stomped her fore-hooves towards each other, as if she was ready to beat him up some more. Every time Party leaped towards her, or tried to punch or bite her, the pegasus kicked back at his eyes. But in one other attempt, Party grabbed her left hind-leg and tossed her towards the statue where Sugar was hiding. As she slammed against the wall, she injured her right wing so badly, that she was not able to fly properly.
The two mares could hear the slow stomps from the party pony's advancing hind-legs, as he slowly loomed over the both of them. He tore the statue away so they would have to look at him.
"I should not have saved you earlier for your rudeness, punk!" Party boomed. "On the other hoof, you really need to think about others' being hurt!"
As the rampaging blue equine beast was about to crush his mocker, Sugar came out of hiding to stop his advance. "Please, stop," she pleaded. "Don't you know what you're doing?" Her words were broken by her sobs: she was afraid for the harm Party would inflict not only on herself, but also towards her other friends for his rage. Who knows, if his anger will also affect him as well for the worse?
"I'm very, very angry, and you better get out of my way if you don't want to get hurt!" The blue, beastly unicorn was about to crush the two mares when he felt periodic pokes against his back. He turned to his left and yelped with each projectile, where he found Double throwing silver artifacts at him.
"Party Favor, my friend," the white horse glared, "I have no choice but to fight you. I can't lose you by letting you destroy everything!"
"Too bad, skiing star. Everypony who has mocked me must pay!" But as the azure-coated creature raged on, Double rolled a silver spyglass at his direction, causing him to trip and fall towards the white horse, who smacked his face with a silver skillet.
"Frying pans," he commented. "They always work."
~~~~
He and the two mares watched as the blue creature shrunk to his normal self, before he drowsily tried to stand on his four legs.
"Uuurgh, what happened ... ?" Party tripped on a goblet, and knocked himself against a statue, to the amusement of his three friends.
Sugar directed him towards the inscription with the legible poem, and she showed him its mural.
"Double told me that you were drinking something green in the library, did you?" the magenta unicorn asked.
"Yeah, out of curiosity."
"That drink was what turned you into a hengstwolf,"
"What, what?" Party's sapphire eyes widened in wonder. He also began to tilt his head right-wards and even wag his tail.
"A hengstwolf is a creature that resembles a bigger pony, but with more fuzz and rage, with sharpened jaws for teeth, like a very big wolf." Upon the mention of that creature, Party trembled with fear.
"Th-that means ... " the blue unicorn muttered, " ... I-I'm a monster? I'll never have friends again, because every-pony will hate me as a public threat!"
"You almost became one, until our white friend stopped you," Sugar answered. "He threw silver objects at you to help you return to normal."
"Sorry about that, but it's for your own good," Double explained. "Silver objects suppress the hengstwolf effect, which was why any-pony with hengstwolfism has to wear a silver artifact that he or she keeps with them to continue their lives." He tied a grey pendant around his friend's neck. "Keep this with you if you don't want to burst into rage, and learn to control your temper."
"Okay," Party agreed. "But is there any cure for my condition?"
"I'll find a way to help you."
"Me too!" Sugar joined in.
But Glider turned away from her opponent. "Not me," she huffed. "I'm not helping losers like him, sorry."
Party was tempted to lash out again, but he kept his cool out of fear of his earlier rampage.
"Come on, Glider," Double requested. "Just be a good friend as you usually are, will you?"
The blue pegasus groaned. "Fine!" she yelled.