Author's Note

Hey, guys, I'm alive. Honestly, this was mostly just to see if I could get back into the story, and I'm glad to say that I can. The story isn't dead, I just kinda took a long hiatus without really meaning to. I'm back now however.

The updates are probably going to be really sporadic and as such you have my apologies. I also went back and corrected as many errors as I could find in the previous chapters and even rewrote some paragraphs in an attempt to make the story flow a little better, please do let me know how I did, as always don't feel afraid to comment I love you guys opinions and questions they honestly make my day.

Mysticsim

I perhaps had overestimated my ability to learn magic, or rather I had overestimated how to use pony magic. I had tried to call the ambient mana of the forest and use it to cast a rather common combat spell that was in all appearances a bolt of concentrated mana, a non-tracking magic missile if you like. The problem bloomed from one simple issue, the way ponies formed spells was by forcibly commanding ambient mana to form a spell and then using a mental image and generally a few words to direct the spell into reality. However, the book stated that talented casters could say the words mentally as well. I could not cast like this. Any attempt to command the ambient manna felt like I was trying to grasp the raging torrents of a waterfall. The spell would often fizzle and even backfire when I tried.

I snarled as I shot to my paws, quickly pacing around in anger. Six goddamned hours and I hadn't managed to cast one of the simplest combat spells in the entire book. The books stated that most unicorns could cast this spell by accident and yet here I was failing, surely unicorns didn't have that much of an advantage. I had no problems casting my fire, it was as simple as reaching for it and coaxing it out, and asking it to do what I wanted. "What the hell is the difference? I ask, and my fire comes but this magic ..., oh."

That was it, when I summoned my fire I didn't command it to shape and work, I asked. Hesitantly I reached out for the ambient mana once again caressing it with my own. I did not command it but instead, I coaxed it into the shape I wanted using my own magic and noted that this felt better, more right. The magic followed my own, gleefully following it like a cat followed a toy, and then with simple askance, I launched it. The bolt of arcane energy was tinged with cyan sparks, but it flew straight and impacted against a bit of rubble in a shower of dirt.

I laughed happily, and quickly cast a few more bolts, each one gathered and fired faster than the last. I perhaps arrogantly switched to a fire bolt spell I had seen, surly it wouldn't be any different from casting with my own fire. I gathered the magic then panicked as it quickly rebelled and blew up, scorching fur from my muzzle and blinding me temporarily. I sat there stunned, it had not been nearly as easy as manipulating my foxfire. The ambient magic had resisted, not being as easily coaxed into the fire as it had pure energy. Perhaps elemental manipulation would have to wait till I got the hang of the manipulation of mana on its own.

Despite the burns, I found myself smiling, a strange thing to do with a muzzle, as my lips pulled pack enough to move upwards but not enough to reveal my fangs in their entirety. I had completed the first step in my goal of survival, even the most basic of spells would be a game changer inside this forest, and given that leaving it was no longer an option, survival had become a priority. I glanced around at the small piles of debris that littered inside my walled sanctuary. People had called this forest home before, the village proved that. It would certainly be hard, and painful, but there was no reason I couldn't call this place home for now. The walls were old and the path that led here was long overgrown, the people who attacked this place were surely dead. The state of what was left of the houses would indicate that at least three to five hundred years had passed, and this place wasn't mentioned in the geography book.

It would be a tedious task to clear out the few piles of rubble, but it was certainly something I could do, filling the holes inside the walls would have to be regulated to a long-term job as the only solution I could think of was to fill them with rocks and hope I could make my fire hot enough to melt them solid in a similar process to how the holes were created in the first place. The ground seemed fertile enough to grow a small farm. It would require me to go back to that town and steal seeds and some tools, but else than that there didn't seem to be anything that would stop me. The creek provided fresh water, the giant willow would act as shelter for now, and the forest supplied ample food for something of my size as long as I was careful.

It seemed the only situation that I would truly have to worry about was if the ponies decided to come looking for me, the forest was by far more dangerous than I was, so that seemed like it would be unlikely. I took a moment to stretch and shake my fur clean of any debris it had picked up while I was reading. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do, did I return to the village, or explore more of the forest around the walls, I knew that building a garden or shelter would have to wait. It was a comfortable temperature, about sixty-six degrees, but I didn't know what season it was nor how long they lasted on a planet as large as this one.

I decided that practicing my magic would be the best use of my time, at least until I was confident I could survive encountering another unicorn, should I try my luck with gathering supplies and information from the village a second time. Ideally, I needed something that would work as a shield if one started tossing magic at me. Quickly scooping the book from where I had dropped it during my bout of frustration, I flipped through it, searching out the shield spell I remembered seeing near the middle of it. The spell was simply named Ward and was the first of a series of similar spells, the concept was simple enough. One simply manipulated mana into a convex shield around a point and made and forced it to hold shape until the hostile spell slipped around the curve. It was less about stopping a spell and more about redirecting it to your left and right. From there, the next few pages were about how you could shape the spell to catch rather than redirect, and the final page was about modifying the ward to block small projectiles like shards of glass and other debris.

Unfortunately for me, the writer made it clear that spells designed to stop physical blows were far more complicated than ward was, and that it would not stop anything stronger than a lightly thrown knife. I briefly looked at the example given on the last page and balked at the complexity of what was needed, the physical shields had only what I could describe as rune matrixes formed into the spell itself. Distracted from my task, I quickly opened one of the more advanced spell books and found to my horror that most spells labeled beyond intermediate level also had rune matrixes woven into the spells. A panicked glance at the more advanced theory revealed that more advanced spells used the same method as lesser ones but with ancient unicorn runes woven into them to help focus and direct the spells how the caster wanted, and while possible to be done without them, it was incredibly difficult to do so.

Not wanting to focus on that particular issue, I moved back to the task at hand, paw? Forming the magic and getting the ambient mana to accept what I was trying to do was surprisingly easy. It was almost like the ambient magic wanted to do as I asked, forming a plane of energy over the spiderweb I had woven with my own. It was here that I ran into an issue. I could form the shield, yes, but I had no way of telling if it worked. Maybe I could hit it myself? Deciding to ere on the side of caution, I slipped my mask on and shivered slightly as my armor once again formed over my body.

Shifting into a more comfortable stance, I brought the ward into existence a few feet from my right side, double-checking that it looked like I wanted it to, I slowly brought up a tail and began to gather a bolt of energy on the tip, only to frown when my concentration faltered and my shield slipped out of existence. Staring where my shield used to be, I inhaled deeply before sighing. I should have guessed that attempting to cast two spells at once would be difficult, Unfortunately, it was a skill I was going to have to learn before I left the walls as there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to face another mage before I determined if my shield worked.

The best bet would be attempting to cast two mana bolts at the same time, if I could do that then I could move on to trying two shields at the same time before trying to cast both spells at once. I sat there and watched my magic for a while, memorizing the patterns it made when I drew it to guide the bolts to form. The process was surprisingly pretty, a spiral of my cyan flames forming around a teardrop of ambient white mana constantly spiraling inside of mine. With effort, I began forming another spiral on one of my other tails, it was easier with the first and I idly wondered if it was because that one was formed on the middle tail, the one more pronounced with magic. It took me several tries and losing track of time, but eventually, I did manage to form the other bolt. Launching them without one fizzling out took even more practice, but by the time I managed to do so and confirm that it wasn't just a fluke, I could launch one within a second of molding the magic.

The shield was different. Attempting to mold two separate webs for the magic to coat ended with either one being the wrong shape or both webs merging into one, despite what one would think the two shields combining did not make them stronger. No, when two wards collided together they shattered with enough force to knock an eight-hundred-pound kitsune off his paws, who knew? After two hours and three more times being thrown off my paws I figured out the trick to making two shields, or rather how to split one shield into two. I had to make one big shield and then split it along the webbing to form a mirrored copy. While it was good information to know, it did not help me cast it and my bolt spells at the same time.

Night had fallen by the time I managed to make any progress, I was exhausted by the time I managed both spells at once having cast so many times that I now sported a vicious headache and my vision was slightly blurry. My shield did work, redirecting bolts of magic around itself like an umbrella parting rain. I figured that most of my success at casting both at the same time came less from my increased ability to split my focus and more from the fact that I no longer needed to put thought into casting those spells. In reaching my goal I had progressed in both spells so much that I could now cast the arcane bolts three at a time and in rapid succession, they didn't exactly do a lot of damage mind you, only about the same as a heavy punch or thrown rock. The fact that I could cast so many was still an achievement in my mind.

My shields could be split almost immediately now and I figured out that changing the shape of the webbing allowed me to leave intentional holes in the shield. Likewise, I could increase the distance I could form them from myself by roughly twelve feet, meaning I still had some ability to dodge things the shield couldn't stop. The spell was still limited to only two shields at a time but I could cover most of one side of me with it so I was happy with it for now.

With a tired yawn, I sat back on my haunches and stared up at the night sky, the stars were wrong of course but I couldn't help but try and find some that were familiar to me. A few minutes passed before I gave up, the only constellation that was the same was Pegasus and it was in the wrong spot. I didn't know why but the fact that my skill of reading the night sky being made useless disturbed me greatly, I had taken pride in that ability. Something I had learned lovingly from one of those faceless figures of my past, another piece of my old life lost forever. I did not sleep well that night.

Luna's p.o.v

Luna soared threw the swirling abyss that was the dreamscape, the surge of power that had woken her had happened only once before in her lifetime. A similar surge of power had been what birthed the Everfree. Old history books would claim that the castle of the two sisters was destroyed during her battle with Celestia the truth was far more horrifying. A powerful surge of magic similar to the one she had felt the day before had washed over them. The forest burnt and broken in their fight had shuttered and heaved, and then ponies started dying. Vines crawled into homes and strangled them in their beds, wolves of wood seethed with hatred as they ripped apart Threstrals and day guards alike. Behind it all a presence, a dreamscape she managed to glimpse only once before she had been banished.

It had been a sad, rage-filled being, a child then. A wolfkin, a member of one of the more feral diamond dog packs that called the forest home at the time of their rule. Her dream was filled with loss, loss of pack, loss of home, and loss of self. Luna didn't know how she came to be the heart of the dreaded Everfree only that her loss had shifted to rage, a rage that persisted even now a thousand years later. Her maddened counterpart had searched library after library looking for what that surge meant and had only found two accounts of it happening before, once recorded by the dragons during one of the greatest storms to ever form, during the birth of Omen the luck dragon. A being so powerful that Celestia and Luna both had to resort to trickery and underhanded tactics to defeat it.

The surge was supposedly recorded again during the reign of discord not once but twice in the year that she and her sister were born. Luna wasn't stupid, the surge wasn't random, and the only thing it could signify was the birth of a powerful immortal. Once she would have brought the topic up with her sister, but Celestia had changed. She had read the history books, the war with the griffons, the near eradication of the surface-dwelling dog tribes, and the portrayal of dragons as beast and monsters. Celestia had kept her people safe, yes, but she had forsaken the other races in the process. Worse was the fact she could do nothing to reverse it.

Her sister's ponies treated her like a cornered beast, ready to strike at any moment, and they truly were her sisters. She had at most four ponies come to her night court to ask for aid or wisdom, and the nobles held more power than they ever had before. Laws, such as the ones that banned predatory races from setting up shops or entering public spaces without a guard present had to be approved by them before they could be changed. Were they not the twin goddesses of day and night? When she brought it up with her sister she had simply looked at Luna with a scolding gaze and told her that times had changed, that the world no longer needed them to be goddesses but just and kind rulers, the hypocrite. They had once called several griffons friends, they had gambled with dragons and traded with dogs. Where was their justice? Still, Luna's duty was to her people, she would find this new immortal and determine whether or not it was a threat to Equestria.

Harbinger's p.o.v

I awoke with a start, my stomach unhappily reminding me that I hadn't eaten lunch or dinner the day before. Slowly I sat up wiping the crust from my eyes with a tail and ignoring the dampness that I found there. It was time for me to prepare for my second foray into the town, I didn't know exactly what all I needed from Ponyville, but I had a good idea of where to start, pots, pans, and other cooking equipment were one thing. I also wanted to grab some blankets, a bucket or two, and a saw. I rummaged through my bag as I made a mental list of all the things I was going to steal, pulling out a few pieces of thankfully still-preserved boar and one of those cube fruits, they made a surprisingly filling breakfast when combined.

Soon I was bounding my way through the forest with a goal in mind, nothing attacked me on the way to the village, it was honestly kind of peaceful as I ran. I noted that beyond the forest scents the air smelt of water and ozone, a glance through one of the gaps in the canopy showed dark clouds forming. A toothy smile split my lips, it seemed luck was on my side this time. I left the path before I got to the town, surely they would have posted guards on the path I had originally used. It was not long before I reached the edge of the forest, the town was visible but a decent distance away. I could see the golden armor of the guard even from here. Now it was just time to wait for the storm and nightfall.