Imperial Hunter

Dragon walked deeper into the Forest, his camping pack full with his supplies. His wingblades pressed his feathers against each other, a familiar irritation he had long grown used to. His hoofblades jostled around in his pack, the metal scraping against each other. As much as he would enjoy having another set of weapons equipped, it was just unpractical to walk with them. By the time he would find his ideal location, they would be stained with grass, dirt, mud, and possibly quite a few other materials and would require a rigorous cleaning.

The Hunter sighed, adjusting his bow and quiver slung at his side with a shrug of his shoulder. He kept it on a strap, allowing him to easily shrug it over his shoulder, plant it, and fire an arrow off quite quickly. He had never really timed himself but he knew planting the bow was the longest part. After that, he could get an accurate arrow off every second or two. With another sigh, he swiped his right wing forward and yet another tangle of thorny vines fell to the ground. Carefully picking them up, he tossed them onto a small sled that he carried behind him and continued on. The Imperial had been traveling for near on seven hours now, though it wasn’t in a straight line. He was moving back and forth through the Forest, looking for a spot suitable enough for him to settle for an extended time. As it was, he had found a large swamp filled with beasts he knew where called cragodiles and he suspected a hydra or two may have lived in it. Naturally, he had hurried around that area and moved on.

Another swipe leveled a small sapling in his way as he shouldered his way through the rest of the thicket. He needed to find some type of clearing to settle in for the night before resuming his search tomorrow. The sky was growing steadily darker as the sun sank across the sky, casting long shadows across the interior of the Everfree Forest. Dragon gave himself another hour. If he didn’t find a place to settle by then he was going to climb a tree and wait out the night. He wanted some form of shelter and to not be weighed down by pouches, a sled of brambles, and a large pack before challenging the nighttime denizens of the Everfree. He had already scared a manticore away with a Fear rune while hunting the Naga but he knew that the Everfree had far worst beasts to offer, not to mention what the Underdark had to offer.

A shiver wracked his body. He had come across three more surface tunnels into the Underdark, though he had left them far behind quite some time ago. The Hunter remembered honestly running from the second one, hearing a scuttling sound exit the tunnel and chase him from behind. He had been too scared to look back and just ran, though now the fear angered him. He hated that he was scared of something as simple as the Underdark. He hated that he was terrified of the creatures living deep underneath the surface. What could he expect? The Underdark could be worse than even Tartarus. At least he would be able to see in Tartarus.

The Hunter stopped suddenly. From his right, deeper into the Forest, he could hear the sound of running water. That was a good sign. Swiftly flowing water was usually clean of contaminants. Stagnant water was a source of disease, insects, and parasites. Turning, he started following the sound. From the sounds of it, it was a full sized river and was a good distance away. It was loud, even from a distance, so he assumed it was rapids. He would have to go further upstream to be able to find a good place to fish, so he hoped he could find a good clearing to stay. A large beach would be effective but somewhat harder to defend should he need to. Dragon was hoping for a large clearing. He could use the brambles he had collected to line the edge of the clearing, giving nasty lacerations to whatever tried to charge in and attack him. Normally, he wouldn’t consider thorns an effective way to drive off hungry predators but those of the Everfree variety were massive, easily three inches long at points. That seemed more like a spike than a thorn so he figured they would keep away some predators.

Ahead of him, he could see the foliage thinning and the sound of the rapids were growing louder. With the undergrowth becoming less dense, he was able to speed up and double-time it to the river. A few minutes later, he arrived. The darkened Forest gave way to a rather wide shore. It wasn’t a sandy shore, as most rivers weren’t, made mostly of dirt with a few large rocks near the water. The river was rather wide but it grew thinner to his left causing the current to speed up and form rapids, the white foam near the obstacles in stark contrast against the otherwise clear water. To his right was calmer waters as the river widened and curved gently away from him. Putting aside the roar of the rapids, he turned toward his right, he started walking. Using the clear shore to his advantage, he made good headway and stopped after nearly a kilometer when he came across what he felt would be a good place to live.

A dozen meters from the river, the Forest began again, the dark oak seeming even darker with the dying light. However, just in front of where he was standing, the Forest receded about twenty meters, forming a small oval-esque shape. The recession had a very minimal canopy which would let the clearing be lit up by sunlight during the day. There was plenty of room for him to make a fire at night without risking whatever he used as a home. He knew that he would expand the clearing over the coming months to give himself even more room, but it would serve his purposes well for the foreseeable future. The clearing had three sides of Forest where he could put the brambles- he was glad that collecting them wouldn’t end up being a waste- and he could resurrect a small wall on the side facing the river.

“Enough thinking of the future.” Dragon said to himself, a habit he had formed over the years. For a time, he had considered it strange until he learned most Hunters spoke to themselves to try to ward off the worst an extended isolation brought. “Let’s get to work.”

He walked into the center of the clearing and untied the leather sled from his back legs. A moment later he shrugged the pack off of his shoulder, then planted his bow next to it. He dropped the arrows next to him, a quick count showing that he didn’t lose any during his travels. Ponies couldn’t really sling a quiver over their back like a Diamond Dog could because the arrows would jostle out constantly. Instead, ponies had to hang them on their sides so they wouldn’t lose any. It made moving quickly and doing work difficult when a large quiver full of arrows would swing around and smack against his side constantly. Because of that, he decided to leave the arrows next to his bow and rely on his wingblades in the event he was attacked and couldn’t get to his bow in time.

Grasping the makeshift cloth strings of his sled, he dragged it over to the left corner of the back side of the clearing, opposite of the river, and started placing the brambles in the brush and lower limbs of trees. Dragon estimated that he had been dragging at least thirty pounds of the thorny vines and hoped that would be enough to get at least the back side done. The Hunter didn’t just place the vines on the edge of the clearing or drop them in the bushes; no, he walked a half-meter into the Forest and laced them throughout the bushes and low hanging branches. He wrapped them around each other and other objects, slowly weaving a wave of brambles between him and the rest of the Forest. Whenever he ran out of length on a specific vine, he returned to his sled and grabbed another. Working quickly, he managed to get a continous line of brambles from the left corner to the right in about an hour, the sun visibly on the horizon as he realized the river was to the west, not the north like he first thought. Stepping back, he examined it. From edge to edge, the line was nearly sixty meters, or a hundred and eighty hooves, at about barrel height for the average pony, leg height for him. Unfortunately, he had ran out of brambles about two meters in the second line that would be at his head height, chest height for some larger predators. The Hunter guessed it would take several days of working on the psuedo-wall before he got it to his satisfaction.

Before he walked back into the clearing, he located four large logs and dragged them back into the clearing, one at a time, while avoiding his own trap. Fortunately, he had thought ahead and placed a purposeful gap in the center of the line to allow him entrance directly into the Forest; otherwise, he would have to go around every time he wanted to go into the Everfree. Dragging the logs toward the center of the clearing, he examined them with the little light he had left. They hadn’t been on the ground long enough to rot, fortunately, and they seemed more like particularly sturdy branches rather than actual logs. They were around his height, two and a half meters, and were relatively straight. Nodding to himself, he slowly lifted the first one up and then reared up, placing his hooves on two of the side branches and let his weight sink the branch into the ground around half meter. Doing the same with the other three, he formed a rough square around four meters wide. It wasn’t much room but it was enough for him to curl up and sleep and have room to stand up when he woke up.

Returning to his leather sled, he dragged it over to the four pillars and took to the air, lifting the leather and resting it on top, letting the edges of the leather drape down the side of the makeshift hut. Landing, he walked over to his pouch and withdrew several lengths of strong string before ducking under the leather and tying it to the pillars, forming a roof and half of the walls. The bottom half of the hut, around a meter, was exposed to air and he didn’t like that. The Hunter didn’t have any more leather as it was and the sun was far too low for him to enough time to scour the nearby Forest for enough leafy branches to create a makeshift wall so he just had to deal with what he didn’t have and be happy for what he did. Moving quickly, he brought his pack, bow, and arrows inside. Before he went to sleep, he retrieved some dried, salted jerky the Hunters were fond of and let his sharp teeth make short work of them, the chewy and tasty meat making him once again happy that he was born an Imperial, not an Equestria. With the sun officially set, he curled up on the ground and trusted his wings and coat to keep him warm thoughout the night.

***

The next three days passed without much incident. Dragon had no visitors, most likely because nopony knew where he chose to live, and he didn’t get attacked by any of the predators of the Everfree, surprisingly enough. He woke up at sunrise every morning and ate breakfast after bathing in the river. The Hunter spent most of his day working more on his new home, the rest of the day spent relaxing and planning more of his home. At night, he would eat dinner and go to sleep.

The first day was simple and easy. The Hunter took the leather off of his house and used it as a sled again, wandering through the woods to collect more brambles. The day before, he had limited himself to only collecting what was in his way rather than what he saw so he wouldn’t weigh himself down so much. Now that he had settled for a location, he could collect all the brambles he saw. Every time he felt his small sled growing heavy and starting to catch on the ground, he turned around and returned to his home before weaving the brambles into the line at head height, bringing it all the way across the back side an hour or so before noon. By four, he had managed to get the sides done as well, connecting them to the original lines and making two continuous ropes of thorny vines around three sides of his home. That night, he ate more of his jerky and went to sleep after reattaching his sled.

The second day was a bit harder but it was something he knew he needed to get done. He woke up and skipped breakfast, hoping to get his task done before night fell. Once again, he untied the leather roof and moved it away, toward the south edge of the clearing near a tree that was easily six meters around. Returning to his shelter, he knocked down each of the pillars with a single kick. The four pillars had grown loose in the ground as he knew they would, the constant removing of the leather roof shaking the pillars slightly. He was surprised they didn’t fall beforehoof considering they were nothing more than four large branches, not actual logs.

The first thing he did was go into the Forest and look for two fallen logs that weren’t rotten. Obviously, the task took quite a bit of searching. Most fallen logs in the Everfree were old and rotten, burnt from lightning by the uncontrolled weather, or crushed from large beasts stepping on them. After some time, he found one that was taller than him and dragged it back to his camp. A few minutes later, he found another, smaller, one and did the same. He dragged them over to the large tree and set them away and slightly offset, forming a triangle. Dragon took to the air and lifted one log up and slowly rotated it until it was a few dozen centimeters into the ground. Once it was standing on its own, the Hunter flew a meter above it and let himself fall. His back hooves thudded solidly on the slightly-flat edge of the log, shoving it into the dirt for a half meter. Repeating the process twice more, he managed to get a solid meter into the ground with his weight, leaving a good two and a half meters above ground. Moving to the second log, he did the same and the same amount of log above ground, but the second was shorter so he was only able to get a little under a meter into the dirt.

Grabbing the leather, he looked it over quickly and his eyes picked out spots of wearing where it had been dragged across the ground. He resolved to stop using it as a sled until he had a second sheet of leather and lifted it, draping two corners over the two logs. The other two corners he tied firmly onto the branches of the tree, using an arrow to pierce new holes in the corner as he needed them. Moving to the logs, he tied them to the logs before setting down on the ground again. It was a good start for a shelter, using the tree as a support so he only needed two sturdy logs rather than four. He nodded to himself once and looked at the sky, seeing it was about three in the afternoon. The Hunter spent the rest of his day going through the woods, grabbing solid sticks and bringing them back to his home. He used vines to bundle them together, allowing him to carry them easier, and collected quite a large pile of long sticks, making sure each one was about two meters long.

When night began to fall, he returned to his camp with yet another bundle and got to work. His first step was snapping off the smaller branches from the main section, removing all the leafy material that he didn’t need at the time. Once he was done with that, he moved onto the next step. Using the vines, he roped sticks together into a sort of wall, taking great pain to keep the wall as straight as he could. Once it was two meters tall, he raised it up and set it against his home, using more vine to tie it to the logs and tree. The whole process had taken an hour and the sun was fully set, so he pulled out a Candle rune from his pouch and cracked it, dropping it in front of his new shelter. With the bright light giving him plenty to see by, he repeated the process to form a second wall, erecting it on the opposite side and tying it into place with vines. Finally, he formed the third and final wall. He broke sticks apart to form the gap that would be the doorway, though he had to change the way he wrapped the vines so it would still be supported. Once more, he raised the wall and placed it on the front, the side that faced into the clearing, and stepped back.

With the bigger shelter, the leather didn’t come down to cover part of the wall. Instead, it stopped a few centimeters below the top. The walls themselves were only two meters tall, leaving a half meter gap of open air near the top that would allow smoke to filter out safely. The walls were formed with sticks that were tied close together, making an almost solid wall of wood. Only a few spots held gaps that would allow him to see out, making it effective against wind and rain. He would have to make a door in the future, plus devise some way to block the holes near the top during storms so that he could sit inside his home and not worry about rain blowing in from the top.

With a satisfied nod, the Hunter moved around and took his equipment into his new shelter and settled down for the night, eating more jerky to quell his ravenous hunger. Curling up again, he relaxed and allowed himself to fall asleep, the Candle rune soon burning itself out overnight.

The third day was spent hunting. Dragon tracked a herd of deer for a portion of the day before finally catching up with them around noon. One arrow later and he carried a young buck back to his camp, quickly skinning, gutting, and cleaning it as he was long used to doing. He spent the rest of the day drying the meat out so it would last longer, though it didn’t have any salt to add to make the jerky Hunters were familiar with. Instead, he just wrapped the dried meat in the cloth that held portions of his rations before bedding down for the night. That night, he resolved to head into Ponyville the next day so he could buy some tools. He still had his golden teeth which he could convert into bits at the bank.