Author's Note

Sorry for this taking a long time to post but I’ve been busy, I hope you all enjoy it.

C57 A week away part 3.

Celestia had grown accustomed to estrus and the unbearable sensation that it brought with it. But this year it was worse.

The princess had confined herself to her room, she couldn’t get Anubis out of her mind. It had only been two days and it had been difficult for her but she had managed so far. She felt bad for Silverfeather but locking her in her room was the only thing she could do, the hen tried to take any opportunity she could to fly off after Anubis.

Celestia wasn’t fairing that much better but at least she kept her self control, it was both of their first estrus cycles with a mate…. That wasn’t with them.

The once regal princess of Equestria had her muzzle pressed against a pillow that was filled with Anubis’s feathers, she had tried giving Silver a pillow but she immediately started tearing into it. Celestia understood how she must have been feeling, it was frustrating knowing that they had Anubis but couldn’t have him with them.

“Aaaaaaahhh! huff!* it’s not fair! I’m the princess of Equestria and I know I’d be able to control myself around him…. I’ve never given in before, so why did my captains believe that I would now.”

Knock!* knock!* knock!*

“E-Excuse me your highness but the griffon princess attempted another escape from her quarters, we managed to stop her but she tried to attack us with her talons. We fear that if she tries again, then we might be in danger. What would you have us do about this?”

“Guards-mare, I’ll be there in a minute or two to set up a magical barrier. Please keep Silverfeather contained until I erect the barrier.”

“Of course your highness, you can count on me!”

Jumping out of bed and making her way to her dresser, Celestia quickly began to tidy up her mane and coat. She then teleported to Silver’s room and was met by the captain of the Wonderbolts, who immediately bowed to her.

“Please rise Captain, so she’s getting out of hoof I take it, don’t worry. I’ll cast a barrier spell to keep her from escaping.”

“That’s good to hear princess, some of the guards have been reminded of her talons and how sharp they are. But thankfully nopony has had to learn the hard way.”

“Good.” Celestia lit up her horn, pouring manna into it and weaving it into a powerful barrier spell that would surround the hen’s room. The spell would only allow ponies to enter and exit. “There, that should do it…. Captain, I’m going to take a flight to…. Help clear my head, so please watch over princess Silverfeather for me. Just in case.”

“Of course your highness…. But I must insist that lieutenant Blazing goes with you, just to be sure you don’t try and look for Anubis…. And for protection also.”

Celestia was visibly shocked at what her Captain just said, to think that she. The princess, would give in to temptation and do such a thing.

“Your highness, I understand that it isn’t my place to tell you what’s best for you but your relationship with Anubis is still a secret…. Somehow. Anyway if you just show up looking for him, then ponies will catch on. Not to mention your scent will probably drive all the stallions crazy, that’s certainly not fair on them so to make sure that doesn’t happen. Please allow the lieutenant to accompany you.”

“Harrumph* very well…. But only to prove that I have the self control to not do that, I’ll be waiting in the gardens.”

Meanwhile at Anubis’s forest mansion, the griff had put on a hazmat suit. He was getting ready to enter Soft Claw’s containment habitat, she hadn’t left her room since he had given her the new drug. Her vitals were okay but he had no idea on the mental state of the hen.

“Soft! Soft Claws! I’m coming in!”

No response.

“Soft! You okay?!”

Still nothing…. So he inched closer to the bedroom door that she resided in, his heart was beating steadily as he placed his claws on the door knob. Giving it a slow twist and pushing the door, opening it just a tiny bit as to only allow his gaze entry. It was complete darkness, Anubis grew concerned but then he saw movement in the void of her room.

“Soft? Talk to me, are you okay?”

“….” There was silence for a few seconds until she responded. “K-king Anubis, p-please forgive me for my disgusting behaviour. I-I wasn’t myself….”

“Soft, I understand and you are forgiven. I can tell that you’re ashamed but please don’t stress it, I don’t think any differently about you. You didn’t have control, so it’s fine…. So how are you feeling?”

“Embarrassed…. And the weird feeling that was driving me crazy isn’t as bad as before but it’s still there, it’s just bearable now…. So it worked?”

“Yes but I’m going to need to do more tests with it…. Sorry but it’s kinda weird talking to the darkness, I’m going to turn on the lights.”

Flick*

“No wait!”

The light came on and Anubis saw the hen but she wasn’t in the best of states, by the looks of it she had been pulling her feathers out and scratching herself until parts of her were raw. Her eyes were puffy, indicating that she had been crying for quite awhile.

“Oh Soft…. Come here, we need to get you cleaned up. How did this happen?”

“Sniffle* p-please don’t look….”

“Very well but please tell me why you did this to yourself, I need to know how to help.”

“Look I was really embarrassed okay…. I-I sniffle* didn’t mean to hurt myself but I felt so disgusted and I didn’t want to damage the wall anymore than I had done…. So it started with a few feathers…. And then it escalated….” She was missing most of her feathers and patches of her fur were thin from where she had been scratching violently.

“Okay I see but you wasn’t in your right mind Soft, so let’s get you cleaned up and then patched up. I’m sorry for doing this to you but thanks to you, other hens won’t have to suffer through this. You did great.”

Her head shot up and her eyes locked onto him. “R-really my King?”

“Yes, really.”

“T-thank you.” She got up on shaky legs and started carrying herself to the bathroom, Anubis saw that she was struggling. So he used his magic and picked her up, taking her to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, the griff waited out side.

Roughly 45 minutes later Soft Claws emerged from the bathroom and bumped into Anubis, she looked a little better than before but her skin was raw and her coat thin. He was beginning to wonder if this was a side effect of the hormonal imbalance the drug would have caused or if it was caused by the hen’s embarrassment and past experiences as a Changeling.

“Your legs are still shaking, do you want me to carry you?”

“Oh no my King I couldn’t request for you to do that, I’ll be okay.”

“Sigh* okay then but if you stumble, I will catch you…. Now then, follow me. I believe that you have enough self control to wonder freely but I’d like to run some quick tests on you after I’ve tended to your body.”

“I’m sorry my lord, it was really stupid of me to take it out on myself but I-i didn’t want to upset you….”

“Well I would have rather the walls and bed be damaged than you but I’m not mad, just concerned for your safety.”

“Sorry….”

“Stop saying sorry, there’s nothing to apologise for.”

“B-but I made you worry about me my lord?”

“….Well as your lord, it’s my job to worry about my subjects wellbeing.”

“That’s a lot different from our last Queen, she didn’t really care about our wellbeing all that much….”

Anubis just looked back at her with an inquisitive expression. ‘So the Changeling Queen isn’t a great leader by any means, I guess I’d have to thank her because it makes me look so kind and generous in their eyes.’

“Here apply this to the damaged parts of your skin and coat.” He gave her a small tub of cream.

“Um thank you…. So um what about my winGS!?!?!?!” Anubis grabbed her wings and ignited his claws with a green aura, Soft’s wings began to heal and new feathers grew in.

“There, now give them a flap.” She did and her eyes lit up, she began to inspect them.

“Thank you my king, so what is in this tub?”

“It’s a special ointment that repairs the skin and regrow the fur in the area of effect.” ‘It was made out of the a concentrate substance from the green Necrovine artefact, that I created by separating and isolating the correct parts that trigger recovery in others.’

Soft applied the ointment and then followed Anubis out of the lab and up stairs, where Anubis told her to make herself at home. He left her to explore and disappeared into the library,

The griff went to the third level and got to work on the portal to the Dreamscape, today was the day he’d be able to start it up. It was midday, so he’d get the whole afternoon to get it up and running.

KABOOM!!!*

“AAAAHHHH!!!” Soft jumped and hid under the table, the loud explosion shook the whole mansion.

In the portal room bits of Anubis painted the walls, chunks of flesh and organs. Bits of brain matter covered the consuls and monitors, he began regenerating and once he was fully healed. He took one look at the destroyed portal and repaired it with in seconds before collapsing on the floor. His last thoughts before falling unconscious was ‘nothing but a minor set back.’

Coming to in the void, Anubis felt weak. Then the void changed into an old empty town, one forgotten by the griff and lost to time. It was one of his past experiments, where the residence were infected by a mind altering parasite. But he was in the town and not in its observation room, which meant that the infected residents would try to kill him not to mention that he was weak and vulnerable.

“Zodiac!! Where are you?!?”

———————————————————————

Meanwhile Anubis’s body stirred.

“Ahh what was that? Mortal, explain yourself now…. Oh no, I’m in his body and that means…. He’s in the void alone, this is bad.”

———————————————————————

“Fuck this I need a weapon!!” He was running from an angry mob, they were grossly disfigured and had a seemingly endless amount of stamina. For some reason Anubis was getting tired, to top it off he lacked all his abilities.

He ducked into a alley way and jumped the fence because he couldn’t fly, in fact his wings were just added weight. He fell onto some bins and slammed into the ground, then the ground began to crack and he fell through.

Falling into the hole, Anubis felt his ribs breaking upon impacting the cold steel ground. The pain was excruciating but he focused on the fact that it was steel that he had landed on. Lifting himself up on three legs and wincing from pain, he let out a low growl as he limped weakly through an underground cavern.

He held his sides tight with his wings but the pain was almost unbearable, he thought that it was funny that he believed that his ribs were broken when he first arrived in Equestria because this pain was a thousand times worse. He didn’t know if it was because of the fact that he was weaker here.

He tried to forget about the pain by focusing on where he was, it was the underground labs that was new. Anubis did not recall this existing in the real town, but he thought that it was no different from his last experience in the void when Zodiac wasn’t in control. So staying calm and killing anything that’s a threat, would be the first response to anything that moves. For now.

“Where is Zodiac, that cosmic cock face. Bloody prick left me without anything to help me…. It’s kinda concerning but I’ve not got the time to be worrying, I need to fix myself up first.”

Wondering the empty halls, hunting for a first aid kit or something similar. Anubis was growing tired, the only thing keeping him awake was the pain. He hadn’t encountered any creature or experiments and he couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or not.

The injured griff stumbled into a sanitised lab that contained a med kit that was missing most of its contents and a side arm. Grabbing the gun he removed the magazine and checked how many rounds were inside, he was pleased to find 8 shots. Taking it and using morphine to numb his ribs, leaving the room with the gun in tow. Anubis found that the once clean halls were now covered in dry blood and slow lumbering beasts wondered around.

Their appearances were tall gangly biped things with long mechanical arms, that ended with two razor sharp blades on each limb. They had no head just one eye located on their chest, their skin was a rotten gray as if they had been rotting away as they lived.

They initially didn’t seem hostile so Anubis warily went past them, keeping his gun at the ready just in case. Another problem was that he had no sense of real time here, he knew that days could be hours and hours could be days in this place. He only wanted to open a portal to the Dreamscape, nothing more.

Then all of a sudden, one of the lumbering creatures attacked him. Swinging its claws at Anubis, he opened fire and hit it twice in the abdomen. The beast stumbled back before falling over, Anubis decided to take his leave as quickly as he could.

He found it odd that the creature didn’t cry out in pain…. now that he thought about it, he didn’t remember seeing a mouth on the thing.

‘What the fuck was that thing and how many of them are down here? I need to stay alert, there’s got to be an exit somewhere….’

———————————————————————

Meanwhile Zodiacrdanals was working on the interdimensional portal in the real world, the cosmic entity was frustrated with how his mortal companion had went about building it. He was fixing, adjusting and fine tuning it for him.

“Sigh* mortal I gave you the knowledge to build this and you’ve made it the most unstable thing possible, you never cease to amaze me and more importantly where are you?”

Zodiac was concerned by the lack of Anubis’s presence in his mind or body, the only other possibility was that he had entered a world of his creation and past.

Which raised more questions because when Anubis woke up in the real world he would leave him to takeover in the dream but how can he wake up if his body is already awake?

———————————————————————

Anubis’s POV

I’ve been making what seems to be zero fucking progress, all these rooms are empty and the hall are filled with those things. I need to get back to the surface, so I pressed on and found a staircase but it goes down instead of up.

Going down them is going to be a struggle in my current condition but I must push on, so I began my descent backwards. It wasn’t too pleasant but I didn’t have any other options.

Once I made it to the bottom, I spurn around and pulled my side arm from under my wing. Scanning the area for anything that moves, but the environment caught me off guard because it was over ground with plants.

Placing my gun back under my wing, I limped in and began to investigate the overgrown plant life. I didn’t touch anything because I couldn’t tell if it was poisonous or not, taking a closer look I noticed that the larger vines were pulsating with a red fluid. Not wanting to disturb it, I continued on my way and came across a room filled with skeletons of ponies and griffons. This made my hair stand on edge and I reached for my gun, my ears swivelled upon hearing movement from the far left corner of the room.

I took aim. “Identify yourself now!”

“Help us…. Help usss…. HELP US!!!” A vine shot out from the darkness and I rolled out of the way, it hurt but definitely beats being killed by a flower.

Bang!* Bang!*

“Aaaaaarrghh!!!!”

Fffuck! That hurts, okay I need to get out of here.” I’ve used three bullets, so that leaves me with 5 rounds left. I need to find ammo quick or get creative. As I stumbled away as fast as my three legs could take me, I began climbing the stairs to safety but something grabbed my tail. My initial reaction was to kick with my claws but I hit nothing, looking back I saw that a small vine had wrapped itself around my hind leg. That’s when I got a clear look at the owner of the vines, it was a giant Venus flytrap that had a singular yellow eye in its mouth.

“This day just keeps getting better and better, Grrrrrrrrr….” Grabbing my gun I opened fire, aiming for the over grown plants eye, it recoiled in pain and released my leg. I immediately began dragging myself up the stairs ignoring the pain, I had to get out of here now.

The Venus flytrap bellowed in pain, fashion its large vines out at everything. The stairs were shaking and the walls were crumbling as lights flickered. But I continued to climb up, not looking back.

It was 2 agonising minutes but I finally managed to reach the top, as I dragged myself off the stairs. It collapsed and imprisoned that thing down there with it. Rolling on to my back and taking a minute to catch my breath, I felt myself getting really tired. My eyes became heavy and the cold steel floor was oddly comfortable, I felt myself slipping into sleep…. ZZZZZZZZ.

———————————————————————

Zodiacrdanals POV

I’ve finally figured out how to use this elevator and now I’m in what appears to be a chamber of knowledge and learning.

I had left the chamber and began exploring this expansive structure, I had stumbled into a room the i believe that Anubis used for the preparation of food. Fascinating but i sense a life form in this room, a female one is hiding and the soulless cub is asleep directly above me….

“Excuse me but I’m not going to bring harm to you, so come out.”

“K-king Anubis? What was that loud bang? It shook the whole mansion.”

“That was nothing more than an explosion, nothing you need to be concerned with…. And who are you mortal?”

“Oh um my king, I’m Soft Claws but you already know this…. I’ve been helping you with a new research for the past two days.”

“Mhmmmm makes sense but why do you smell so good?”

“Yelp! Well I’m in heat my lord…. And um t-thank you for the compliment.”

“Ah so your body is signaling to me that your ready to be bred.” Soft’s wing stiffened and her tail shot up, her face became crimson.

“M-my lord b-but you’re already s-spoken for by p-princess Silverfeather, I mean if you insist but I’ve never a-actually done it b-before….”

“Oh yes the hen and Alicorn would be upset if that was to happen, so what was the drug you were helping with, for.”

“To help estrus be less…. Problematic for hens and griffs as well….”

“So that’s why you’re not offering yourself up, well that makes sense.”

“K-king Anubis, if I may? Why are you acting like you’ve never met me before?”

“Because I’m not Anubis, I’m Zodiacrdanals…. I’m currently in possession of his body right now, as he’s extremely exhausted and is resting currently.”

“Um oh…. So what are you?”

“I’m a cosmic great one, that’s taking a liking to Anubis.”

“Oh so what’s that?”

“Something very powerful and knowledgeable…. That’s all the information I’m giving you mortal but right now I’m in control of your king’s body and all I can do is wait. It’s almost as if this is happened intentionally?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing to worry about, so I’m going to need you to give me the complete layout of this temple.”

“Um lord an- I mean Zodiacrdanals, I not familiar with this place and it’s called a mansion….”

“Oh well that’s a problem…. Then I’ll take all the information you have directly from your mind.” A black inky goo began to ooze out of his claw and Soft took a step back as it sprouted fore large tendrils from its end.

Her legs buckled and a mixture of fear and fascination filled her mind. “A-And how are you going to do that?”

“Open your beak, I promise It won’t hurt. It only hurts when I give knowledge.”

“W-What if I don’t want to?”

“I’m not asking.”

“Gulp* p-please no.”

“Sorry but I rather dislike not having info of my surroundings.”

‘Zodiac!!! What are you doing?!?’

“Getting information, why?”

‘Look at her! She’s clearly scared!! So give me control over my body and allow me to ease her fears.’

“As much as I’d like to Anubis, I don’t know how….”

‘What?!?! B-but surely you can do something, right?’

“Sigh* not right now, I can’t….”

“Urr who are you talking to, Mr Zodiacrdanals?”

“Your king, his consciousness has returned but his control has not…. On the bright side I no longer need that information anymore, you’re welcome.”

“Oh t-that’s good to hear…. Um I’m feeling a little t-tired, so once my king is in control come and get me please.” She stiffly smiled and flew away, up stairs and into the first room she found.

‘What did you do to her?’

“Nothing other than probably confuse her and tell her that I was going to take information from her mind.”

‘I’m glad I came back when I did, you bloody fool Zodiac.’ “At least you didn’t get forceful…. Hey I’m speaking?!?”

‘And I now have access to the void…. My void’

“Sigh* now to fix this mess of yours.”

‘I don’t see what I did wrong?’

“That’s because you assume that every living creature is just going to comply with your wishes, when it’s more efficient to treat it like a trade…. For example I’ve given them new hope and a potential future, in return I gain their loyalty.”

‘I would have rewarded her for the knowledge.’

“Did you tell her that?”

‘No but what difference would it have made.’

“Probably a lot…. Anyway have fun in the void and take all the knowledge I have on the current situation with you, I’m just glad to be back here.”