Werewolves of Knicknik

He can see the future

They could hear Doctor Willow’s voice echo across the city towards them.

“I’m coming for you little gnats. I know who you are, the princess’s little pet. Why aren’t you running? I saw you broke your leg, I saw your little bug friend too.”

His voice carried extremely well, Twilight thought he was using a spell to make it heard. The whole thing felt… gross, the voice was fairly normal as ponies went, but it was carried along by a foul magic. There was nothing wrong with the voice in a technical sense but it sent chills up her spine.

“Perhaps you aren’t running away because you are waiting for me to claim you. You could be my research partner.” Something about the way he said that made Twilight feel ill. “You’d be happy there, always happy there, and we could bask in the adoration of Equestria, free from disease, free from strife, free from discontent.”

Racing around in his own mind Doctor Willow’s thoughts took a darker turn.

“You’re planning on fighting me, aren’t you? I can see your future, I can see all ends, I have SEEN all ends. You can’t run, not both of you. No, NO, I’ve seeeen that way, somehow you know what would happen if you both tried to run.” Doctor Willow laughed. “Somebody is there, helping you… Well, if you’ve made your decision I suppose the only thing left is for me to help you along your way.”

Doctor Willow’s voice faded into the distance.

“If he can see the future how can we possibly win against him?” Naudia demanded.

“Think about what you are.”

"A weapon? A tool? A killer?" Twilight asked the First Administrator pointedly.

"A protector. A HERO. You must draw upon this within yourself to overcome the fate Doctor Willow has planned for you."

“How does that help me against somebody who can see the future?”

“He can see the future, A future, now you have to ask yourself are you resigned to that?” The First Adminstrator was getting heated now. “Is this future he’s picked out for you good enough?! Are you going to accept this future he has planned for you? After you’ve come this far, that’s it, he’s predicted the future.”

Camna spoke up in a different voice, a deeper voice, that seemed to come from somewhere down below carrying with it a primal authority.

“NO.”

"I am the forge in which this universe was created, upon my anvil and with my hammer were you were tempered into a weapon against the soul eaters." Camna seemed to grow larger, in the world and in her mind. He wasn't speaking a command, he was stating the immutable truth to her. "You will cast down this pretender god and I will shepherd him to Kana to BURN."

There could be no other way, for that was the truth.

His voice had seemed to come from somewhere deep down below, and it lifted her up, lit a fire inside of her.

Whatever Doctor Willow had planned for them was a lie, obviously meant to demoralize them, a cornered schemer clawing against the walls closing in around him.

“Now what time we have left you need to learn more about your summons.”

Doctor Willow ambled into the clearing he saw in his visions, the clear path between the futures with the voice, the words. There was a valley in the possible futures through here without that voice.

Doctor Willow looked around, he looked through the shattered stone and brickwork around him. They weren’t here, his prey wasn’t here.

He failed to take that into account, those outside of his control, not tailored to his future. Those adverse to the cleansing of all diseases mental and physical. Adverse to the advancement of magic. Those ants that stood in the way of his new frontier of magic that had never been explored in the history of ponykind.

Having worked himself up into a rage Doctor Willow proceeded towards his prey.

Twilight stood on a pile of rubble that had used to be a tower and stared down Doctor Willow. Her cold rage almost made her forget her lines.

“Foul necromancer! You will go no further.”

Doctor Willow had prepared a retort about her bipedal wolf-like appearance but found himself caught up sort. He took in a great breath through his gritted teeth.

“NECROMANCER?!” Doctor Willow bellowed. “You would think I was a necromancer. That’s what they thought.”

“Then what are you?” Twilight challenged.

“I have moved beyond necromancers and their undead puppets. Those feeble mages with their marionette strings think they have transcended death.” Doctor Willow spat. “FOOLS! I am the first pony in history to have truly transcended death. I can reach beyond the barrier, I can shape the soul to my will, I can shape the universe to my will.”

“You sound just like those upstart necromancers.” Twilight jabbed at him again at a signal from the First Administrator.

“And what have they accomplished? There is no need to perform medicine on a corpse, they’re putting off their problems, they are doomed, all of them to decay of their minds. When they truly break those feeble puppets will do nothing for them, their entire legacies broken like their own rotted minds.”

“Are you saying you can fix minds? Fix the souls you have devoured?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re doing it at a loss. Two souls to fix one, four souls to fix those two, the ratio does not improve.” Twilight recited at him.

“Those that are deserving of such a thing are worth fixing.”

“And who is worthy Nerteln?”

“Those that are useful.” He replied so fast that the unspoken addendum “for me” hung in the air like a stench.

Looking around Doctor Willow couldn’t see the main reason he had come here.

“Where is that changeling pet of yours, you know that ongoing walking love experiment?”

Twilight’s face tightened up at that.

“I saw what happened in Canterlot, I know why you kept her around. Power on that scale shouldn’t be squandered, now I need her, give her to me. I’ll grant you anything you ask, and trust me, I can grant you ANYTHING.”

Doctor Willow noticed her useless dangling arm. He noticed it in a predatory way.

“I can give you your arm back you know. There are greater powers available to me than ponykind has ever seen. Do you really think the ponies will be able to give you anything more than another flimsy prosthetic like that?”

“You don’t even know who I’m working for nerteln.”

“You obviously have backing from something. Those weapons out there aren’t pony weapons. Those aren’t ponies out there either.” Doctor Willow couldn’t help but let out a sneer. “And yet even with all that, where are we now? Where are they now?” He pointed a hoof at Twilight. “Where are YOU now? Backing the wrong flier, that’s where.”

Twilight looked down on him.

“Pathetic. I’ve seen you, the real you. He’s standing right in front of me, squirming, scraping along in a ruined city. Trying to win a fight with words he can’t back up.” Twilight pointed a finger at Doctor Willow. “You’re out of cards to play. I’m going to finish what I started.”

Doctor Willow seemingly couldn’t pick up on the cold flame of hatred he had turned into a towering pillar of flame. Before he could say another word Twilight’s poison infiltrator rat barreled past him slashing at his throat for the killing blow. The slash in Doctor Willow’s skin opened up to reveal that same green-ish brown slime, and nothing that one would recognize inside of a living thing. The slashes themselves were edged with blobs of turquoise green poison that sizzled.

As the rat scampered away it cast more magic at Doctor Willow, seeming to throw glowing white scratches through the air at him, rat magic. However the Nerteln had already pulled up his shielding, and while the cuts to his throat had phased him they were already healing. The glowing white slashes of rat magic cut into the pristine perfectly transparent zoetic shielding that Doctor Willow had copied. The cuts leaked a blue magical blood.

In retaliation Doctor Willow snarled like an animal copied one of Twilight’s spells and sprayed lichen after the retreating rat. That was the big difference Twilight might never get used to, she expected the rat to be able to dodge the attack, that’s how most books went. Or at the very least the attacks wouldn’t draw blood. Yunguaq combat assumed every attack would hit, and draw that blue blood out of the second skin of glass-like shielding.

Doctor Willow decided to retaliate against Twilight, and the next member of her ad-hoc party made itself known. Her bagrat intercepted the attack with a shield blunting it by over half. The bagrat floating inside of the lichenthrope shielding growled at Doctor willow. Even blunted as it were Twilight’s shielding bled.

“Did you make some friends?” Doctor Willow sneered, the offshoot lichen magic growing into a mossy cape and crown around him. “This is your gambit to make up for a lost leg?”

Doctor Willow charged at her, barreling forwards and past the tank. Twilight doesn’t move.

An innocent looking pile of trash on the ground erupts and tangles Doctor Willow, anchoring him to the ground.

Twilight’s next rat, the linebacker snickers as it reaches into it’s trash bag for a spell, it’s ruby red eyes and alert ears sneer at the doctor as it starts to pelt him with garbage. The garbage sizzled, the garbage exploded, the garbage cut at his faux royal cape. None of it reached his body as his shielding was up now, but his shields bleed blue blood, same as hers, and there was only so much punishment they could take.

As the nerteln tears himself away from the garbage trap the smallest member of Twilight’s crew makes itself known. Cloaked in a paladin-like aura of feathery bubbles the ranged dps raises a white sword to the sky and brings it down. The sword sends a glass-like blade through the air that seems almost to not be real, strange patterns, ghostly reflections inside the ghost magic try and catch your eyes, it’s followed by a ghostly aura of fifteen more blades. Each time it slashes it slices sixteen times at Doctor Willow’s shields.

“And why did I not see this from you earlier Twilight Sparkle?” Doctor Willow needled at her.

Twilight couldn’t stop herself from glancing down at her broken prosthetic arm.

“I knew it! This isn’t you fighting at your best, this is at best a stall tactic, a crutch for your broken leg.” Doctor Willow lets out a feral snarl. “What will you do when I break another!”

Twilight’s current plan was a team coordination. Keep herself behind the tank, heal up the ranged DPS, hit and run with the infiltrator, and try and trap the nerteln with the trash rat. She’d been told that last role was a “linebacker” but she didn’t know much about sports.

Doctor Willow charged forwards again, faster than Twilight’s tank bagrat could backpedal after him, but he was caught up again by the trash rat. He was being hounded from all sides, and the tank came in-between him and Twilight to blunt his attacks once again.

He snarled as his cape of misshapen moss arms and legs tried to slap away the oncoming attacks. Like a feral animal trapped in a snare. His own face juxtaposing the lichenthrope skin he wore as he maintained unblinking eye contact with Twilight.

“Don’t you want to know? Contained within my head is a vast unexplored new field of magic, incalculably valuable, worth more than a mountain of gold.”

Twilight looked at him coldly.

“There is nothing valuable in that cancerous lump.”

She ordered her infiltrator rat to slam him from behind with more debuffs.

It turns out that being battered from three different directions, having your attacks blunted so badly, and constantly being bogged down in trash, isn’t a great way to learn how to fight. That was the disturbing thing about Doctor Willow, being slashed, poisoned, lasered, haunted, that would cause a lot of ponies to panic.

However even as his shielding was being eaten away at, he had watched Twilight heal the infiltrator. And he had copied that spell and taken one step closer.

Twilight ordered her linebacker to really unload on him, blasts of lasers and miscellaneous trash tore at his shields.

He learned how to block attacks like a tank, and taken another step closer to them in power.

It looked like Twilight made her greatest mistake when she outright blocked an attack from him. There was just a moment after he looked down from that spell for the third time, his gaze caught onto Twilight’s, and he smiled.

The next attack from the ghostly rat was blocked, all sixteen ghostly sword swipes, same with those feathery amplifiers it used. So was the attack from the laser trash rat, and the infiltrator’s poisonous slashes.

Twilight didn’t have to act, to act annoyed at how quickly he picked that spell up. It was infuriating how fast he learned her spells, that’s why she was on healing duty.

Doctor Willow picked up on her annoyance immediately, and thought he saw through her. He started using that spell left and right, blocking every attack that came his way, all the while his shields were recovering.

He saw the wrong thing. This was the plan.

If he could learn so quickly…

Then he could learn the wrong things.

Twilight had immediately stopped using that spell entirely, it was so wasteful, so draining.

Would he pick up on that? She didn’t care.

One of the reasons yunguaq combat resorted to healing and blunting instead of intercepting is that it took a lot of effort and work to block a spell this close up. The other thing is that it basically cost the same to block a barrage of piddly pea shooters as it did a barrage of actual serious attacks, and you couldn’t gauge which was which like this.

Case in point, her rats had stopped making serious attacks on the nerteln very quickly after he learned this spell. They looked big, they looked even more dangerous than what they were using before. But they were intentionally weak.

Every second was another second too late for this piece of trash before her. This charlatan that called himself a practitioner of magic, of medicine, was slowly dragging himself down into a pit. And Twilight was more than happy to bury him in it.

“Aren’t you worried Twilight? Here in just a little bit I’ll have this spell down enough that I can leave it to my pelt here.” Doctor Willow taunted. “Pulled out your trump card too soon did you?”

He demonstrated once again that he didn’t quite understand this new branch of combat. He was letting Twilight keep the bagrat tank inbetween them, unable to really grasp out efficient this setup was. All he could see was that attacks were landing on Twilight, unable to really gauge how blunted those attacks were. Twilight struggled to not taunt him about this, not lead him down another direction she didn’t want the monster to go.

Whispered words only she could hear cleared the path forwards to her.

“Proud of your malformed magic are you? It didn’t take me that long to learn the proper versions of the spell you’re bastardizing there.”

“That’s what they always did!” Willow yelled, any hint of calm evaporated. “This is MY achievement! MINE!”

Unfortunately this led him to fall directly into another linebacker rat trap directly. That was the thing about the linebacker in this formation, once they got you stuck like this you weren’t going to be doing much blocking or dodging. What you will be doing is eating laser blasts and being pelted with trash.

Doctor Willow’s face matched the malformed snarl of his pelt as he struggled between trying to escape this trap and trying to block shots from all directions. Twilight could already see he was having much more trouble with both, as he burned through his energy, rapidly blocking every attack sent his way.

It was difficult to hold herself back on this, Twilight was doing her best not to attack and instead support her summoned friends. She understood why this wasn’t immediately taught to her as a combat strategy. For one their coordination was lacking. More importantly she, as the healer of the group, had to direct her attention to healing.

It was tempting, so tempting, to attack, to try and tear down this monster in his own ruined idea of an ideal future. It was honestly even tempting to get distracted by the ongoing light show of attacks.

It was like watching some sort of malformed hybrid monster trying to pull himself out of muck while being attacked on all sides. It was seriously tempting for Twilight to think she was winning here. Watching him bleed as he was buried in trash, watching a limb from his lichen pelt go cartwheeling off into the distance. It was too easy to think of that essential layer of shielding as an extension of the host’s body.

For a normal yunguaq these would be times to start puling out cooldown abilities, times to start worrying. Doctor Willow didn’t know any cooldown abilities.

Doctor Willow didn’t need any.

Doctor Willow cast a total area dispel.

This is what Twilight had been waiting for, she’d been told he would do this and the strategy was to try and drag this out of him as soon as possible. Nobody could normally do this, dispelling sovereign magic was impossible. That was one of the privileges of being a nerteln, you could break some rules like that.

“Good luck doing that more than once in a fight.” Twilight could not stop herself from saying out loud.

The nerteln opened his mouth as if to utter a rebuttal at Twilight, however he hadn’t re-cast his own shielding yet.

Naudia dropped out of the sky like a brick onto his back with a feral snarl tearing at Doctor Willow casting as many spells as she could. Infecting him with those giant bacteria, dumping every cooldown she knew. Clawing at him like a rabid animal.