Chapter 2
Everfree not long before midnight
Chariots belonging to the night guard these most of them were regular earth ponies and unicorns but the pegasus were actually thestrals that is to say a pegasus with bat wings, ears and cat eyes. Thestrals mainly slept in the day and came out at night which made them perfect to be in the night guard during Luna’s nights, “anything sergeant?” the captain asked, “nothing yet captain” the same sergeant replied.

“Sir i think i found something” a unicorn said, they all came to the source of the disturbance, it was a body, blackened and burnt for unknown reasons, it was unrecognisable, almost all of the guards who lay eyes on it threw up for none of them were at all professionals and in all honesty even the best guard captain shining armor wasn’t that well trained.

“Wha-what is that thing?” a rookie asked, “i don’t know b-but keep it together i think it’s dead” the older and better trained captain said, “how the buck can you tell” a female guard asked, “look it’s clearly been burnt to death” the captain said. “What do we do with it?” the sergeant asked, “send it to princess twilight sparkle” the captain said “ponyville is the closest town and let her study it, and inform our princess while we're at it”.

Ponyville past midnight
Princess Twilight Sparkle was sleeping in her bed with Spike in his little bed next to hers, then there was a knock at the door of the castle, she woke up after three more knocks, “wa what?! She asked blurrily as she got up and walked to the door and opened it, she was wide awake now as there were some night guards outside her house, “we are sorry to disturb you at this hour Princess Twilight” the leader said bowing.

“Wha-what is this about?” Twilight asked, “it’s about this” the guard said, showing Twilight a large body bag that two guards were carrying, “all i’ll say is it’s not pretty”, “what’s in it?” Twilight asked, “w-what's going on?” said a very sleepy Spike appearing next to Twilight. “It's a dead creature, cause of death unknown but it’s burnt badly and we were hoping you could study it” the lead guard said.

“Place it in the lab, I'll check it out in the morning,” Twilight said, allowing the guards in.

Baltimare past midnight
Baltimare was usually a quiet town like Ponyville with everypony slipping in their homes comfortable and quiet, not tonight however because skulking in the shadows were unusual wooden creatures, hundreds of them about half as many as the population of the town. They stalked in the shadows, there were only a few royal guards around, two of these creatures snuck up behind two guards who were patrolling around and in one quick movement both covered the guards muzzles so they wouldn’t yell out and bit into their necks severing the nerves and killing them.

Many other guards suffered the same fate, or had large stone daggers impaled through their necks leaving large thin wounds, large enough that you could see straight through to the other side, one by one each of the wolves entered a house or building with residence, and then a particularly big creature howled waking everypony from their sleep. Not a single pony didn’t wake up at the howl so close to Baltimore and that was the last thing they heard.

The last thing many of them saw was the large anthro form of the Timber werewolves sinking their fangs into their necks and that was about half the population, the other half was rounded up but many of them were missing a hoof or an eye, the wolves simply ate the children as a little snack before the main course.

The ponies cowered in fear at the new kind of Timberwolves, what were they?, where did they come from? and what were they going to do? The biggest of these Wolves, the leader by the looks or the Alpha in some regards stomped forward with a growl at the cornered ponies and that was when he raised his clawed hand up slowly then swiftly he brought it down and as the city smoked with fires as the Timberwolves had set some corpses on fire.

The screams of the ponies would have even made a Dragon scared enough to run off and huddle back into his eggshell within his mothers grasp.

Everfree forest-that morning
“Okay this is interesting” Hellboy said as he looked down from a high mountain, it was a rather tall mountain and he could see for miles, however it was not the highest mountain that could be seen as the tallest mountain to be seen for miles had what appeared to be a very large castle or city with a castle built into the mountain.

It didn’t look at all high tech and only slightly industrial, “color me impressed” Hellboy thought at the sight of it, he then saw a nearby town not too far away with what looked like a large crystal tree and formed into a castle. He took out his binoculars and looked through them. “Well well well what do we have here?” Hellboy asked sarcastically. What he saw made his shaved horns almost pop right off his head, multicolored horses of three breeds, normal Ponies, Pegasi and Unicorns.

“Well looks like i’m right at home” Hellboy quipped, “well better find the best way to meet the locals, don’t want them freaking out for no apparent reason, “best set up camp here wonder what’s in that cave anyway”. He found a lot of treasure in the cave, and he wondered why there was so much treasure up here, there were plenty of options, one of which is that there was a dragon in here once that either left in a hurry or died since dragons had a longing for gold and other jewelry.

The second was that there had been a band of thieves that tried to hide their stolen goods, Hellboy didn’t really care about the gold, but there were some weapons in here, Hellboy was particularly fond of using swords, and there were a good couple around, but none of them seemed particularly good to use, they broke when hellboy hit them on a rock at the strength a normal human would swing them.

Once more they were blunt, he even found a set of armor which he presumed was used by the pony military, it was actually made of gold, actually gold, he just hoped that they had upgraded that armor otherwise he was concerned about what would happen if those ponies ever went to war. Finally he found a good sword, it was a large sword too large for ponies, and was roughly axe shaped at the tip of the blade.

It was supposed to be a two handed sword but the handle fitted like a one handed sword hilt in his large stone right hand, he found two short sword of way better design then the other pony swords, he quickly found the small ones scabbard, one to clip onto his belt he found one for his back and found that it could magical fit a blade of any bulk into its scabbard so he put the big one on his back, he’d think of a name for them later.

He then exited the cave and then saw a bunch of carriages flying above the everfree forest, they were being pulled by armored pegasi and had soldiers in them, HB ducked for cover behind a rock so as not to be seen, “wonder if they caught wind of the corpse” Hellboy said as he descended the mountain now he could save ammunition for Samaritan, his cloven hooves made quite a bit of noise.

When he got to the bottom he hide from a patrol who had landed at the foot of the mountain and were no doubt looking for something, “do we even know what we’re looking for” one asked, “anything unusual” the presumed leader replied, Hellboy had to raise an eyebrow, “define unusual” Hellboy thought, “define unusual” a trooper echoed, “anything with the power to burn livings creatures to a crisp.

“Wait what?” Hellboy thought, “wait what?” another troop exclaimed, “is there an echo in here?” Hellboy then thought as the leader of the soldiers continued, “there was a corpse of an unknown creature in the forest, we are to track down what killed it and see if it is a threat to the ponies” “should you really be saying all this?” Hellboy thought expecting someone to echo his words.

What really happened was that the soldiers nodded and galloped away presumably to do more patrol, “well thanks for the information” Hellboy muttered sarcastically, he decided that he would stay out of sight for now and hopefully he would find a way home and maybe even befriend these creatures.

Ponyville castle of friendship
Twilight had summoned a meeting of the element bearers to discuss the new creature which she was very unsure off, along with her was Starlight and Sunburst who were both powerful unicorns, Sunburst was also somewhat of a scientist so could help in studying the creature, and so there they all were with the corpse on the table, their reactions were something both comical and worrying.

Applejack to her credit held it together okay, Rainbow dash bragging about her being able to stomach anything had been proven incorrect, Rarity had fainted, Fluttershy had had a heart attack and was frozen on the floor, with Discord trying to revive her in his own comical way, Pinkie was just bouncing around unperturbed and Trixie had joined Rainbow dash in throwing up then joined rarity in fainting.

“Wha-what is that thing” Applejack stuttered, “a corpse cause of death, burnt” Twilight replied, “yeah but what is it”? Pinkie asked, “is it a monster, is it an alien is it a-?” “We don't know Pinkie,” Starlight finally interrupted. “Wonder what happened to it?” Rainbow dash said as she finished emptying out her stomach for breakfast. “Well whatever kills me I'll take care of it”.

“How do we know it wasn’t just a random dragon?” Spike asked flying up to dash’s level, he had grown his wings not to long ago and so far he was the only dragon in equestria, “because dragon fire is hot enough to disintegrate a body not cause this” Sunburst pointed out, Fluttershy, Rarity and Trixie had recovered from their fainting and were now standing and still looking in discuss, “well maybe you’d learn a lot more if you actually go out and help the guards, their already running amuke” Discord said.

“And maybe you could find it’s magical signature as well” Twilight deadpanned, “sorry no magical traces on here” Discord informed as he inspected the burnt corpse with a magnifying glass, this shocked everyone, “what! but even dragon fire has at least a trace of magic in it so why doesn’t this corpse if it was burnt by whatever did it?” Twilight exclaimed, “who can say” Discord shrugged, “you're not helping” Sunburst said.

Discord snapped his fingers and left, “okay so-” Twilight began but then Discord reappeared, “just want to make sure we’re still on for tea later” he said, they all smiled and nodded, Discord disappeared again. “And it better not be on the wall again!” Spike shouted, “quite darling” Rarity agreed, “okay so we need to be prepared, we'll let the guards take over for now and we just give them information” Twilight said, “what oh come on can’t we just-?” Rainbow moaned but Applejack pulled her down to ground level, “now sugarcube I think Twi is implying that if the guards can’t handle it then you can take it on,” Applejack said.

“Do you think it's like parties and cupcakes and Balloons?” Pinkie asked enthusiastically, the others rolled their eyes.

Everfree castle of the 2 sisters
Hellboy had found an old abandoned castle in the forest which didn’t seem to be overrun by guards, the amateurs were barely looking in this direction, they were two busy scouring the area around the small town HB had seen, “nice place” Hellboy complemented, it was definitely somewhere he could rest without disturbance.

The Cockatrice tried turning hellboy to stone but after realising they couldn’t they fled, Hellboy broke some tables down and put them into a campfire making sure there was nothing else to catch fire around. He then shot a couple of Cockatrice he would eat them later he then found a library and took some books labelled ‘Basics of equestria’ but judging by the state of the book and library itself it was very outdated and he would need to find another library to research in.

Later he began to hear voices outside the castle, staying out of sight he spared out through a front window. Minotaurs, the oddest minotaurs Hellboy had ever seen, were talking in full sentences for one, the Minotaurs Hellboy had encountered in Greece could barely form words.

“Guess they took my advice and read a dictionary or two” Hellboy thought as he watched them, they were eating around a campfire. Hellboy must have fallen asleep some time ago because there was no way they set up camp at that time.

“What do ya think is with all the royal guards about” one asked, “if I knew I would have told ya the last time ya asked” the second said taking a sip of his soup. “Well they ain’t after Tirek that’s for sure he’s back in tartarus” the third said, “true Copper horn true” the second newly named Copperhorn said. “How’s that soup coming along Savage?” The first one asked the third newly named Savage.

“Just fine Iron burthold” Savage replied to the newly named Iron Burthold or Burt for short, “just a couple more minutes and seconds should be ready”, “mind if i join?” asked a new voice, they looked to the entrance of the castle and saw Hellboy standing there smiling a little, “what the-?” Savage exclaimed, baffled by his appearance, “what kind of minotaur are you ya?” Copperhorn asked, flummoxed as well, “I ain't a minotaur.” Hellboy said, his smile turning a frown, “ya sure?” Copperhorn asked unsure and studying him, other than the position of the shaven hrns, the hands and red skin he looked like a minotaur.

“Ya know any Minotaurs this ugly” Hellboy quipped, the Minotaurs forgot their confusion and laughed, “come sit with us” Savage said, they gave him a bowl of soup, Burt was looking at the sword on Hellboy's back and his stone right hand. “Where'd you get that?” he asked pointing to the sword, “that’s minotaur design”, “I just found it in a dragon cave better then most of those useless ones i found as well”.

“Must have been pony swords, pony’s aren’t a fighting species but they and us get along” Copper said, taking a sip of the soup “what about that glove?” Hellboy inwardly sighed, “it ain’t a glove it’s my actual hand” Hellboy explained, “oh well does it do anything special?” Copper then asked, “yup it breaks skulls” Hellboy quipped.

“Also I'm new around here. Can you guess where I can find a good library?” Hellboy said, “cause the one in theirs a little outdated” “yeah there’s one in ponyville, big castle made of crystal can’t miss it” said Burt “but i suggest that ya go at night as there is royal guards and i have a feeling it was you that raised their awareness”, Hellboy nodded, they finished their soup.

“So any other creature of this place I should know about?” Hellboy asked, “I've already met ponies, Manticores, and tons of Cockatrice and of course you guys, anything else I should take note of?” “blimey you must live on the other side of the world” Savage exclaimed, “you could say that” Hellboy thought.

So they went on about Dragons, Yaks, Hippogriffs, Griffons, Changelings, Diamond dogs and other creatures that Hellboy needed to know about and their cultures as well as any wild creatures hellboy would be likely to cross, Hellboy told them he didn’t need a description because he had a good idea about what they looked like from previous adventures in greece, not that the Minotaurs could go into great details anyway, but one caught his ear, “Timberwolves?” he asked, “yeah wolves made out of wooden branches and logs mostly just angry spirits” Burt explained.

“Do they often walk on two legs and form over a pony's body?” Hellboy asked, “no just bits of wood stuck together by an angry spirit nothing more” Copper said surprised, “then what about that werewolf and what is the connection between it and this place”

When all was said and done they bid farewell and were about to go their separate ways when they heard crying, it was very unusual crying to say the least, they followed the sound of it. Till they came to the river and found a purple sea serpent with ginger hair and a mustache with one purple mustache was the one crying, “hey uh buddy you okay?” Hellboy called out, “do i look alright a bunch of ponies came around and stole a chunk of my scales” the Sea serpent said showing them a bit of their body that was missing its scale.

“Blimey” Savage exclaimed, “yeesh” Burt agreed, “okay but why?” Copper asked not to be sure why someone would need sea serpent scales, “and how did they even steal them?” Hellboy asked, “I was drugged okay and they made off with them” the sea serpent wailed, “and they went towards the old mines”. “Nothing there but diamond dogs” Copper said “wonder what ponies are doing there?” Hellboy said, “well let’s go and find out shall we” Savage said, “lead on” Hellboy said drawing the short sword with the skull on it.

Old mines 20 minutes later
“Why haven’t the guards found this yet?” Hellboy asked, as they lay down on a ledge that overlooked the camp, the camp was stationed outside the mines, these ponies weren’t guards, just looked like a bunch of raged tag civilians preparing to riot, “you clearly don’t know royal guards” Savaged scoffed, they had saw the scales and worked out what they were using them for, “shields huh pretty clever” Savage admitted.

Sea serpent scales were a lot harder than anything the ponies had, “what do you think of their planning?” Copper asked, “let’s find out shall we?” Hellboy said, “what are you thinking?” Savaged asked, Hellboy smiled.

The ponies in the camp were minding their own business when a horn blew at the southern edge, they all grabbed their weapons and the ones who had dragon scale shields grabbed those. They were expecting royal guards and were confident they could kill them off easily but what they saw shocked them beyond measure, a red Minotaur-like creature with a large stone in his hand. No the stone was his hand.

“Howdy fellas and mares” HB said, “w-what the buck are you?” one stammered unnerved, “just a guy wondering if he can speak with the bossm..stallion” Hellboy said, correcting himself “well there is no boss stallion but there is a bossmare” said a female tough looking brownish grey mare with wild dark brown hair and an eyepatch, she was tall for a pony, her flank Hellboy observed had a skull and crossbones.

“And you are ma’am?” Hellboy asked as the minotaurs appeared around the camp edges, the ponies were beginning to get unnerved, “we are the ones who will replace the princess with the new order” she said, “what new order? i can’t see much order around here” Hellboy said, “you dare mock us” the mare said, “look miss?” Hellboy began, “Cutthroat liz” the mare said so Hellboy now knew her name.

“Liz huh, i’ve got a friend called Liz back home, she’s a real firestarter” Hellboy said to lighten the mood, “anyway what are ya hoping to achieve?” Hellboy asked, “don’t play dum, Ponies are being attacked, a month ago my village was destroyed and what has the princess done?..Nothing!” Liz responded to the venom in her audible voice. “You set all this up in a month huh, not gonna lie really impressive, but how are you going to do that?” Hellboy asked these Princesses who I assume rule the pony’s have a lot of allies with the other lands i’ve heard about and they seem to be way better fighters” Hellboy wasn’t finished yet but he gave the others a minute to absorb this.

“Are you gonna just gonna charge in head long, assassinate the princess’s and anger the other nations into bringing war? are you gonna rule over the ponies with an iron hoof and make an stupid ass democratic government? How are you gonna control it huh?” The ponies were mumbling in concern, the Minotaurs smiled as they saw what Hellboy was doing, he was asking questions to make the ponies lose their confidence and make the leader panic in an attempt to keep her followers and spill things on accident.

Indeed their confidence was dropping; they didn’t even have proper weapons, just makeshift ones from fishing harpoons, pitchforks and slingshots to Shovels, pickaxes and dynamite. If it weren’t for the training dummies and set up of the camp one might assume they were farmers, miners or fishermen. “Be silent we will head to the gates of tartarus and release the demon Tirek and in his gratitude he will aid us in stealing magic and conquer everyone” Cutthroat liz said, “big deal” hellboy said unimpressed to her surprise.

“So you awaken the big bad juju from a hell like world and you think he’ll hand over anything you want?” HB continued sarcastically, “I've seen people try that, believe me I have, the last group of people tried to bring a bunch of monsters through an eye portal and ya know what happened when they did guess what?..their head exploded” Hellboy shouted emphasising the point by making an exploding head motion with his hands.

The ponies began to muttered some about the minotaurs, Savage had a two handed axe, Copperhorn had a bulky sword and shield and Iron burthold had dual one handed axes, “so what was your plan again” Cutthroat Liz was losing momentum and she knew it most of the ponies were already swaying away from her idea of a brighter future.

She Gritted her teeth and roared, “Kill them” the ponies possible out of fear or loyalty did as their were told, Hellboy raised the sword above his head and hacked away at the ponies killing them or in some other cases taking off a limb.

The minotaurs were doing the exact same thing, these ponies were almost as badly trained as the guards. If they thought their sea serpent scale shields would protect them, they were wrong. Hellboy a stone hand made mincemeat of those shields and then Cutthroat was panicking now seeing the minotaurs and the Minotaur like creature take down her followers like they were nothing.

The unicorns fired magical blasts at them which either missed or in Hellboy's case did absolutely nothing, some of the Pegasi tried attacking Hellboy from hove but he just picked up some nearby large rocks or logs and threw it at them making them scatter and easy to pick off.

Liz ran for her life, “Hey get back here!” Hellboy called charging through the assaulting ponies and through the camp. The two continued to run through the camp, Cutthroat liz often fired magical blasts or threw objects at Hellboy all of which did absolutely nothing.

“God dammit impress me already” Hellboy shouted back, Live found the armoury and smirked as she took up a short sword which must have been stolen from the royal guard, Hellboy slowed to a walk as this woman was either desperate or just plain stupid as Hellboy took out his big sword from his back in his right hand.

One swip sent the sword flying into little pieces, Hellboy grabbed the woman and hoisted her off the ground, bolstering his sword on his back as he did so. “Your coming with me lady” Hellboy said as he returned to his friends and the ‘revolutionaries’.

The survivors stopped fighting when they saw their leaders being held by her face in HellBoys large stone right hand, “your leaders defeated you can go off and mind your own now” Hellboy declared “well off you go shoo” “b-but we can’t” one pony spoke up, “Oh give me a break why not?” Hellboy asked frustrated, “because she’ll find us and force us back into it” in answer Hellboy through Cut throat liz in a mining cart snapped her horn off making the ponies gasp in both horror and amazement.

Then he punched the kart making it speed off into the mines and then he punched the side of the mountain three times making the ceiling collapse and sealing the cave entrance, “their problem solved” Hellboy said.

Half an hour later
Generally relieved that it was over, the ponies packed up their things and went back to their hometowns, all of Cutthroat Liz’s true loyalists had been killed by Hellboy and the Minotaurs they also put the remaining scales off which their were plenty into a kart to bring back to the sea serpent.

“See ya guys tell the old snake I said hi” Hellboy said to the minotaurs as they parted ways on very friendly terms. Hellboy decided that he would keep the camp for a little longer just to have a place to stay for a few days and clean up.

Author's Note

And that’s another chapter done hope you like it