Tales from the Everfree RestStop

I DIDN'T DIE

I'm sorry it's been so long. I Just got my laptop back from the police after everything that happened that night. Special thanks to whoever gilded me by the way. I don't know what to do with internet gold, but it brings warmth to my soul. Anyway I know everypony is probably wondering what happened.

Last week, I met a Dark God.

We were in the RestStop for hours, without power. It's cold this time of year so we all huddled around a plate of scented candles, and ate snacks. Smoker almost dozed off a couple of times before BugSpray decided to loot the energy pills behind the counter and handed them all out. We all took a few washed them down with cold coffee and told ourselves it was for alertness, but all they did for me was create a heartbeat arrhythmia. In hindsight it would have been funny if those things broke in here just to find the four of us dead from heart attacks, not counting the 27 Raccoons and the one eyed manticore. Well I guess it wouldn't necessarily be funny, it would be more of like, mildly to morbidly amusing.

BugSpray tried to strike up a conversation with RazorBeak a couple of time, but the bearded Griffon wasn't very social. I think one of the little interactions went down like this.

"So, you army?"

"Nah."

"I was in the army, the Changeling army I mean."

"Yeah, you mentioned something about that."

"Yeah, so, those things out there, any idea what we're dealing with, you ever seen anything like that before."

"No."

"Got any family?"

"No."

After that point I stopped listening. I checked Slasher's phone throughout the day, it wasn't getting any service anymore, I tried to call the police, but even that didn't go through. When the battery got to 5% I turned it off, we might need it later for an emergency call. Eventually the adrenaline pills started to wear off, and I remembered that my leg was still healing from a complex fracture, maybe I shouldn't have agreed to come back to work so soon, but then again hindsight's 20/20. I picked up the jar holding Light's cocoon in my magic and did that whole cripple walk back to the front desk to grab my meds, and while I was there I spotted the still unopened gift wrapped package on the shelf beneath the register, I decide to ignore it and grab the employee whiskey bottle that was behind it, we told ourselves it was for our nerves, while all it did for me was give me an even worse heartbeat arrhythmia.

A few more hours passed, after we killed the first bottle we opened another, then Smoker got into the energy drinks, because well, we all needed mixers. but at some point the former cultist pulled out his stash and lit a joint, without asking I might add, and proceeded to turn the whole place into a hotbox. I can't remember if I had taken my pain meds so I went ahead and took'm, and as the sun started to set I had two thoughts competing for first place in my mind. The first was that it sure is getting dark early these days. The second was that I thought we might be getting a little too fucked up to handle what's about to happen.

Time became even more illusionary than normal, both because of the battery on my laptop dying, and because the second hand smoke from Smoker's weed was seriously messing with all of out senses, I think even the Raccoons were high, the point I'm making here is that we had no idea how long we'd been waiting, we started measuring the time in candles, our snack food and moral raced each other to depletion, no thanks to the Raccoons who were one by one peaking glances at Light's cocoon, I thought the first one who tried to make it into a meal was giving the others ideas. At one point BugSpray brought me away from the others to ask what I thought about RazorBeak, I told him that he was the nicest guy who had pointed a gun at my face all week, but BugSpray told me that he had a weird feeling about him, I reminded BugSpray that he had killed Pillar a couple times and maybe he should get off of his high horse (No pun intended).

"Hey." RazorBeak yelled at us from the room. "What are you two talking about?"

"Anime." I lied, I think he bought it.

"Get back over here, I don't need any more dead bodies piling up tonight." RazorBeak was in the corner between my desk and the dry storage closet, warming his talons over the candle plate, aside from Light's cocoon it was the only source of light in the building, and was casting shadows that could easily be described as spooky if I weren't in such a serious life or death situation, some of the shadows looked like faces, smiling, laughing at us idiots, it was like King Sombra decided to come back to life again just to fuck with us. One of them asked me what time it was, holy crap I was tripping.

"You okay man?" BugSpray asked, snapping me back to reality.

"I honestly have no idea."

"Y-you even figure out who placed that bomb?" Asked Slasher in a gurgle.

"What do you mean, I thought you did."

"Not me, bombs aren't my style, don't even know how to make 'em. Who do you know that can build a bomb?"

"Well where's Smoker?" I asked.

RazorBeak picked up a spear, formally my crutch that he had duck tapped a knife to and asked. "Who the Tartarus is Smoker? Is someone else here?"

"Smoker, y'know the other employee."

I looked at BugSpray who just shrugged and said, "I don't know no Smoker. How many pills did you take man?"

I was dumbfounded, had I imagined Smoker this entire time, did I just Tantabus this pony into existence? I tried to sit down on the tarp but it turned into me lying on my back while the room spun I could feel the Pony debris squishing between that tarp fabric as I rested my head. How much of any of this was real anyway?

"Your losing it y'know." Slasher said into my ear.

"Yeah, I know." I responded thinking back. Back to all those years ago, when the first doctor tried to prepare me for life with my condition. There weren't that many other cases before me, and certainly none as serious, so they didn't know how everything would play out, but every case had a few of the same side effects, weight loss, fatigue, headaches, all the signs of a normal physical illness early on. But as the condition developed there would be more "interesting" side effects. Hallucinations, memory loss, trouble using magic. They said that the patients that experienced the condition normally had at least one of them, but never all three. Seeing as how I'm pretty good at magic, I ruled out the third symptom, which left memory loss and hallucinations, of course there were some cases where patients didn't experience any of the later symptoms, back then that was what I was told mine would be, but as I got older I began to doubt this. When I first developed Zombie Mode I thought I was experience memory loss, but it turns out it was just my consciousness shutting down and letting muscle memory do its thing. My mind wandered back to the surgery where I got my leg fixed, I should mention that I'm always wide awake if only halfway lucid during surgery, if you want to know what it's like I'll tell you. The truth is it's kind boring, you just lie down, let the doctors do their thing, and try not to move until their done stitching you back up.

"You wanna know something cool, usually when I hurt somepony bad enough they pass out from the pain."

"Yeah no dice with that, if that could happen to me I probably would have died in that hole."

Right then Smoker walked out of the bathroom. I pointed at him and yelled, "THAT GUY, SEE'IM RIGHT THERE, THAT'S SMOKER."

Everypony turned to where I was pointing then back to me.

"What you mean Lucky?" BugSpray asked.

"Oh so he's Lucky." I said to myself, just now realizing that I had never asked his real name up until this point.

"Wait so I'm Smoker?"

"Yeah, but that's just what I called you because I didn't know your name."

RazorBeak put the improvised spear down and turned his attention back to the fire. "We gotta get him under control."

"You should open the package." Said Slasher.

I was about to say something before a thought dawned on me. "Hey wait a second, aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Touché Slasher"

"Who are you talking to?" BugSpray asked.

"Slasher."

"Well stop it, you're freaking us out."

Two more large candles burned from start to finish before RazorBeak decided that help wasn't on the way, and that our best chance of survival was to just through caution to the wind and fight it out with the things outside. I disagrees but RazorBeak informed me in his own polite way that it wasn't up for a vote. We peeled back the layers of barricade just enough to get a view of the outside, and once we knew what we were dealing with, we could come up with a better game plan. Only he couldn't actually get a good look because something was blocking the view, something just on the other side of the glass door. RazorBeak yanked the rest of the barricade down and took a few steps back to marvel at it.

"Oh wow, you don't see that everyday." Lucky said.

We were trapped there inside the RestStop and on the other side of the door a network of trees had grown together, they were twisted into knots and pressing against the glass. It was so densely pressed into a single wall of tree trunk, that not even light could get through it, for all we knew it could have been day time outside.

All of us where silent until RazorBeak said something we all agreed with. "We need to get out of here."

We checked the back door, but it was the same thing. I often wondered how long a pony could stay inside the RestStop without any new supplies coming in, I had run that scenario in my head probably a million times on boring nights, when there was nothing else to do. I had run this little thought experiment for countless different contexts, how long could I survive if the RestStop were transported back in time, or to another planet, or if there was a Zombie Pony Apocalypse, which actually happened a couple hours ago. What I had deduced that under ideal circumstances I could live off the supplies on hoof for 4 years IF I could find a source of water, six weeks if not. However ideal circumstances these were not. We had either smashed up, weaponized, or eaten almost half of our supplies. If we where trapped here it wouldn't be long until we were eaten alive by the various carnivores inside with us or were drained of all our energy by BugSpray. While I was pondering this in the hallway by the cooler, we heard the sound of glass shattering from the main room. RazorBeak raised his spear and lead the was back, the wall of trees was still there on the other side of the doors, our mess was still there, everything was as we left it with one exception, the tarp was pulled back, and Slasher's body was gone. A series of hoof prints coagulated in the blood leading from where he should have been to the shattered glass of the front door, like he'd just gotten up, walked over, and was absorbed into the trees.

RazorBeak turned to us and said. "Okay, I'm gonna need you boys to think real hard, is there any other way out of this place?"

"Well there is that hole." Lucky said. I had completely forgotten about that hole myself.

"Hole, what hole?"

"The hole in the secret room back here, past the cooler."

"Secret room?"

"Yeah, right over there." Lucky point to the blank space in the wall where the door use to be. The Boss had decided that the smartest thing that they could do when the found out about that secret room was to remove the door, build a good ole fashioned wall, and forget all about it, but apparently that only works if everypony agrees to forget all about it, which apparently Lucky hadn't. I was fine with never seen that hole again, by it was seeming pretty useful right about now.

"You're telling me there's a secret room behind there, and a hole in that room that we can maybe fit inside and escape? Why didn't you boys tell me this earlier?"

"I actually didn't know about the secret room until now." BugSpray said.

"I personally wanted to forget the whole thing since that where I broke my leg."

RazorBeak rushed past us and started breaking down the door with his spear. As he did so I grabbed BugSpray and pulled him aside to talk to him.

"Hey, I should tell you something." I said. "I opened that package."

"The one that looked like a present?"

"Yeah."

I'm not sure at what point I finally cracked and opened it but I've been carrying around the content of that box in my pocket for at least one candle. Just like the last package there was a note with this one. It read as follows.

Dear Bright.
I didn't expect you to use my letter as part of the story, but thanks, LOL. I didn't mind you using it, that was very neat. I liked it and was very surprised thank you. I enjoyed your stories from the very beginning that's why I wrote what I did. I was surprised that you used my letter, but in a good way LOL. Thank you, I'm honored, really honored. I also appreciate you taking my advice. I know that things have been getting more and more dangerous so I've sent you this as a gift. I hope you don't ever have to use it, but I want you to have it just incase that Slasher guy comes back.
Sincerely Anonymous.
P.S. Don't forget the double-tap

Underneath the letter was a small hand gun. I knew just enough about pistols from playing video games, to know how to check the clip, and sure enough it was loaded.

I showed the gun to BugSpray who said. "That a Thunder 380."

"Is it good?"

"Well it's a gun, so it'll probably have more stopping power than a chair leg, why don't you've it to him?" he asked pointing to our "Fearless leader".

"I don't know our trust him well enough to give him a gun, and besides the box was addressed to me so it's technically my gun."

"Yeah good point."

"Y'all ready or what time to see what's down here."

"Just a second gotta grab a few things." I yelled back. I rushed over to my desk, grabbed my stash of stealth potions, the lawn gnomes, my laptop, and finally my journal book. I stuffed all of these into my saddle bags, then tied Light's little jar to a rope and put it around my neck, before walking back over to the place I had broken my leg a week ago. "Alright lets do this."

"Gotcha, anything we should know?" RazorBeak asked

"Well it's a 10 ft drop more or less, which is how I got this broken leg."

"Got it, all right then I'll got first, then the animal, then you two can carry him down." RazorBeak said before jumping into the hole. Like he had instructed I picked up Scar and the Raccoons in my magic and lowered them down into the hole, before BugSpray and Lucky grabbed my by the shoulders and lowered me down. Once we reached the bottom I used my horn to light up the surrounding area.

I should probably mention that it stank down there, I mean compared to the stink up in the RestStop. We had spent several hours above ground in a room with a dead body, unrefrigerated food, and the combined body odor of RazorBeak, Scar, and Rocco's little horde. We where all eating snacks and canned goods which tasted and smelled like they were past their expiration dates, and I think somepony probably threw up in a garbage can. My point is that we were all smelling pretty bad, to the point where I was doubting that I still had a sense of smell. But once we went into the whole, I knew for a fact that I had it. The smell down there made our RestStop funk smell like cologne. The very worst putrid odors from the storm drains around the RestStop were nothing compared to this. Is it possible for a smell to be heavy? I ask this because that's the best word I could think of for it, not thick, just heavy.

BugSpray and Lucky took turns barfing as they lowered me down, and when they were done RazorBeak handed out the torches that he had made from chair legs and rags soaked in liter fluid. I don't know what that Griffon's deal is, but he sure is cracked in the head. Back to the cave itself.

The cave was a straight tunnel starting under the RestStop and heading off somewhere, I'm not sure where to since it had been a few hours since I was able to think straight due to Lucky's weed. The cave was also tall enough for all of us to stand comfortably, I also noticed that there was a slight incline taking us downhill as we walked further into the hole.

"What the Tartarus is this?" RazorBeak asked after about 20ft. He waved his torch at the wall and I saw that somepony had spray-painted a message on the cave wall in red. It said in shaky hoof-writing "Rita the raccoon tried to eat the cocoon." I said it a few times in my head and looked to the Raccoons that where currently riding Scar like a war mount, with Rocco sitting comfortably of Scar's head. The Hoof-writing was eerily familiar, especially the capital R, but I couldn't remember why. There was also another lawn gnome on the ground beneath it, which I picked up with my magic and stuffed into the saddle bags with the rest of its brethren.

We continued further into the cave, RazorBeak was way ahead of us while I was at the tail end, hobbling along as best I could with just a single crutch. The deeper we went the more narrow the cave got, and the stronger the smell got along with it. Nothing about being down here, away from the RestStop felt like an improvement over our previous situation, but it wasn't until we made it to the tree, that I decided that we had messed up.

I didn't know how long we'd been walking down there, maybe a half mile or so, crutch miles feel like a lot longer than normal miles, but we eventually came upon an enormous black tree taking up the width of the cave. It looked like one of those thousand year old sequoias that was big enough to put a two lane road through.

"Holy shit." RazorBeak said.

I was the last to see what everypony was so wide-eyed about and gawking at. As I got close I noticed that the tree, in addition to being enormous had some characteristics that you wouldn't expect a tree to have, specifically Pony body parts, a good number of front and hind legs poking out everywhere and right at eye level was a Pony's face.

Lucky looked at the face intently before saying, "Hey, I know that guy, that's StarGazer." When Lucky poked StarGazer's face with a hoof it peeled off and plopped to the ground like the piece of meat that it was.

"Yeah I don't think he's gonna make it." RazorBeak said sarcastically as he pulled something out from behind his wing and stuck it to the tree where the face had been.

"What's that?" I asked nervously.

Surprisingly, it was Lucky who answered. "That looks like a C4 plastic explosive to me."

RazorBeak chuckled and said. "Well you win the prize for that one RainColt."

"My name's Lucky."

"Whatever, this is the last of my explosives, I've been trying to kill this thing piece at a time for the last week, but it keeps growing back. Now I know why, I have to kill the root system, blow it up, if I kill the brains the rest of the network will die, and my work will be done here."

"Oh, so it was you who put the bomb in the RestStop." I said in realization.

"Yeah well back the I thought the building was the epicenter of the whole thing, but now I know better, finally get why they call this place Discord's Dartboard."

"Hey." Interrupted BugSpray "Bright was still in the building when you planted that thing."

"I know."

"Uh guys." Lucky said trying to get their attention but it wasn't working.

"You knew! He could have died if that think went off."

"Guuuys."

"Look Bug-Boy this is war, not your little power grabs to get all the love in the land, Real war, and in real war there are always casualties, you can't make peanut-butter without smashing a few nuts."

"HEY GUYS."

"WHAT!" Screamed RazorBeak. "I'M A LITTLE BUSY."

Lucky pointed back the way we came, we all turned to see Slasher standing in the middle of the path, a wicked smile on his face and blood pooling around his hind legs. "Hey boys, you miss me?"

BugSpray turned to me and screamed. "BRIGHT, THE GUN."

I pulled the weapon out with my hoof and chucked it as hard as I could. It smashed Slasher in the face and he fell over. I was very proud for the two seconds it took me to realize what I had done wrong. I turned to the rest of the group and said "Oops."
RazorBeak's jaw had dropped so low it looked like the bottom half of his namesake was about to fall off.
Lucky just stared blankly probably still processing what had just happened.
Scar and the Raccoons all collectively face-pawed.
And BugSpray just looked at me like had sneezed on a painting.

What came next almost happened too quickly for me to comprehend. Something burst out of the wall next to us, an enormous object the size of a car, and shaped like a hand had wrapped it's fingers around me and pulled me into the wall. went it let me go I began falling, then as I hit the ground below me I began sliding through a dark tunnel as something pulled me by my hind legs. It felt like I was being swallowed. It went on for a while, dirt filled my nose and mouth, and then whatever it was spat me into a pitch black room, onto a rocky wet piece of ground. I landed on my bad leg, and probably broke it again.

"Well." I said to myself. "At least this time I managed to hit Slasher." As far as last moments of life go, slight improvement over the last week. I sat up and looked around. The room I was in was cool, not cold, and cavernous. I could hear my breath echoing off the wall, I could also hear something else breathing. All at once I became aware of another presence down here, an entity in the room with me. It's hard to explain, in the same way I remember it being hard to explain a dream right after you wake up, sounds like you have to experience it to understand, but the feeling's like being plugged into a shared consciousness with another intelligence that was putting thoughts directly into my head. I imagine that's what Changelings feel when they enter into the hive-mind.

"Welcome to my home." Came a loud voice from somewhere in the mostly pitch black room. "I'm sorry it's taken this long to meet face to face."

"I can't see anything, the light from this cocoon isn't that bright (No Pun intended)."

"What part of Dark God don't you understand?"

At this point I was like OH SHIT, I'm in the room of a dark god, he sounds like an internet troll. I guess that would make sense. Well, might as well get this over with. "You think you can maybe turn on some light so I can actually see who I'm talking to?"

The voice let out a very annoyed sounding sigh and exclaimed. "Uuuuggghhh, fiiiiiiine."

Out of nowhere the entire room turned into a intense furious bright white, all I could see was pure light. I covered my eyes but even then I could see the bones of my front legs through my eyelids. Even with the meds that shit hurt.

"TOO BRIGHT, TOOOOO BRIGHT, SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE, PLEASE."

"Wow." Sighed the voice. "I didn't realize you were going to be such a big baby."

And then, just as suddenly, the brightness relented. After a moment my pupils adjusted, and I could see who, or I should say what I had been taking to.

"BEHOLD." The thing exclaimed. "AND TREMBLE BEFORE THE DARK GOD."

The "Dark God" as it called itself, was the size of a full grown elephant. It was swollen and round and had a tanish-yellow hide. The best animal I could think of to compare it to would be like an enormous Tick, with six rows of stubby arms, six rows of sagging breasts, and a pony sized head on the top that contained the face of that Human thing that had appeared on Farmer Brown's animals a couple years ago. It didn't have any neck that I could see, and it's body connected to the ground at the widest point of its stomach making it half buried, and as the cherry on top off this whole bizarre sundae was that he had a red mohawk. He smirked at me and asked. "What do you think?"

"About what?"

"My hair, isn't it amazing." He looked up at his mohawk.

I chose to flatter him. "It certainly is Godly, (no pun intended)." In all honest it was pretty cool, I'd probably have a mohawk like that if I didn't have this thing about putting gel in my mane.

"Hahaaa, it is, isn't it."

I tried to push myself to my feet when I realize my leg was broken, I just then dawned on me that I was immobilized, underground, without any weapons, and was probably still high from Lucky's weed. There really was no chance of escape here. "Y'know if you're gonna kill me, do you mind just getting it over with."

The Dark God looked at me and rubbed his head. "And here we go, what is it with you Ponies being, so untrusting, so prejudiced, why is it you see something you don't understand you either run and hide or fight, I swear you Ponies have spent so much time staring up at Celestia's Sun that you've been blinded to nearly everything else. Let me tell you something, I'm not the monster here, you are."

"Wait what? Why."

"Because you wrote about the ritual that was preformed on Nightmare Night, your the reason all those Ponies died, you should have died yourself, but since your unable to sleep so the curse of Rommel isn't effecting you, if it isn't lifted you will become a Jinx for the curse and it will spread across the land bathing everything in distortion, and to even the elements of harmony will be able to stop it."

"Wait so you brought me here to dispel the curse, that's all?"

"I also wanted to ask you to stop killing my constructs."

"You mean the Pillar Plants?"

"Yes, I made them from Pillar's DNA, they where supposed to be enforcers of the peace, guards who would keep the more bizarre and dangerous things in the Everfree in check."

"But what about Slasher, he beat the shit out of me, that guy's awful, and he's following your order."

"Well excuse me for thinking that people have the potential to be reformed, Discord was able to be reformed by a pegasus, so why can't I reform a sociopathic pony. I hired Slasher because I needed somepony to train the Pillar Plants in proper pony behavior which in hindsight was a mistake on my part, but I'll have you know that I gave him very specific orders not to kill anypony, which he agreed to."

"BUT YOU'VE KILLED TONS OF PONIES, THE CULTIST, THEIR ENTIRE COMPOUND, LUCKY WAS THE ONLY ONE TO SURVIVE, AND THAT'S JUST CAUSE HE WAS ON A VISION QUEST, AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY YOU TURNED THEM INTO ZOMBIE PONIES AND SENT THEM TO THE RESTSTOP, THAT SEEMS PRETTY INCRIMINATING."

"Actually no, I hate to be the one to say this, but those guys killed themselves, and yeah it was really sad, I mean a mass suicide is really fucked up, but if you listened to them you'd have seen it coming from a mile away. I think it was pretty obvious. I mean consequentialism, mixed with a moral obligation to end suffering, it makes me want to slit my wrist just talking about it. And as for turning them into zombies I wasn't just going to let all of those perfectly good fully formed adult bodies turn into chow for the Timberwolves, do you even know how hard it is to make one of those from scratch? It's not easy I'll tell you that much. I then sent them to the RestStop to retrieve Slasher's Body, I was hoping I could get him home without any permanent brain damage, which I just barely managed to do. I think the next time you see him you should apologize. I swear ever since movies made Zombie Ponies into monsters, people see a dead pony come back to life and they either think run of kill, I mean what happened to calling this a miracle, nopony freaked out when Holy Cross came back to life, I mean hell he was made into an Alicorn for it."

"Okay wait, so your say that Holy Cross was like those mathmatists out there, just a reanimated corpse?"

"Is that really what you want to talk about Bright?"

"Okay but doesn't "Dark God" sort of imply evil?"

"Before that whole King Sombra thing happened Dark God had a completely different connotation, but my branding doesn't give you the right to burn a nearly complete construct with emotions and feeling to death. If you ask me I'd say you deserve the ass whooping you got."

"So your not evil."

"No. I'm not evil, I was created by the titan Gaia to watch over the Everfree and make sure nothing from the epicenter escapes into Equestria."

"Wait so are you not the reason for all the weird stuff going on in the Everfree."

"No I'm not, like I said before me and my constructs just keep the more dangerous weird stuff in check, that's all I know. If I'm being honest I don't know what half of the things in the forest even are, this place radiates crazy and not even the most ancient titans know why. The Hoof Plants and Pillars where because of me, and I'll admit the smell from the storm drains was me to. But as for all the other stuff my guess is as good as yours, a lot of the things in the woods give me chills."

"So what happens now?"

"Now I lift the curse on you, put the forest back the way it was, and sent you and your friends home."

"Wait what about the bomb RazorBeak strapped to you?"

"Ah don't worry, that's just the place I store the dead bodies for fertilizer, this isn't even my real body, I just made it in my image from plants and other forms biomass, one thing you should know about gods, we're all basically just ghosts with superpowers."

The Dark God summoned a light in each of of it's twelve hands and a dark red orb was pulled out of me before being dispelled by the blue lights.

"Oh one more thing, you might want to cover your eyes on the way back up."

At that moment a giant hand burst out of the ceiling and pulled me up, the next thing I knew I was coughing up dirt on the side of the road outside the RestStop. It was morning and the RestStop was a wreck. RazorBeak, BugSpray, and Lucky where all around me and covered in black dirt, Scar was gone supposedly out in the woods, and the Raccoons where running a loot train, stealing anything that we hadn't already eaten or broken and bringing it out back to their nest.

"Oh hey your alive." RazorBeak said.

"What happened down there man?" BugSpray asked.

"I'm not really sure."

"Yeah well your lucky you got out when you did, your friends made me wait a minute to give you a chance to get out."

"Wait for what?"

"For this." RazorBeak answered as he pressed a button on his remote detonator and somewhere deep in the woods came an explosion that rocked the ground and made birds fly off into the sky. A black cloud rose and I could help but think about what happened to Slasher despite all he did to me.

"Welp." Said RazorBeak. "If you don't mind I'm gonna go get lost before 5-O shows up." Then he flew off into the forest, hopefully never to be seen again, and that's what happened.

I'm on bed rest until the RestStop is fixed. CrackShot is on personal leave from the police force and I didn't care to ask for details, so when we do get the RestStop up and running we'll have a new deputy babysitting us, I'll try to tell you about her another time. From what I can tell BugSpray and Lucky haven't been having their bad dreams anymore and things have begun settling back into our own little brand of normal. I've got the lawn gnomes at my place, and I'm still waiting on light to come out of his cocoon. Now I'm sure there's gonna be more weird stuff going on while I'm gone. But if you guys want to tell me a weird story you have I'd be happy to right about it if you sent it to me.

Until next time, this is Bright from the RestStop signing off.