Twilight and Lieutenant StarBurst looked over a disturbingly empty map of the Deep Everfree Forest.
“Not that I doubt you Princess, but is this really the most detailed map of the anomaly’s location? It seems kind of… blank…” StarBurst hesitantly said.
Twilight sighed, “Yes, unfortunately. The Deep Everfree is the most unexplored location in the world, and as such most of this map is made from both measurements made from afar and estimates based on what we do know.”
“So… we’ll be the first to actually explore that area?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
“That’s close enough for me,” StarBurst said, suddenly more confident. “Let’s go find out what’s going on there, what’s your plan?” StarBurst said as the rest of the squad gathered around.
“The plan is for us to fly out to the general location, once there I will scan for the anomaly’s more precise location and we’ll go to it. Once at “ground zero” your team will provide protection while I preform more precise scans of the area, and hopefully the anomaly itself. Any questions?”
A pegasus in extra light armor raised his hoof. “What if this ana… anam… thing is dangerous and we can’t get close?”
“Then we’ll improvise. Any other questions?”
A pegasus in heavy (for pegasus troops) armor raised her hoof. “What if we suddenly need an evac?”
“Then let me know and I’ll stop scanning it and perform an emergency large-scale teleport back to this castle.”
“If you can do that, why do we need to fly out there?”
“I can only teleport to locations that I’ve been to or seen with my own eyes, also a teleport of that distance would leave me unable to do much of anything for a short time after it’s complete, I’m not that powerful yet,” that resulted in a few chuckles from the troops. “Anything else?”
There were none.
“Then let’s go!” StarBurst said as they took to the skies and headed deep into the EverFree Forest.
Ember woke up to the sunlight poking through the branches of the tree shi slept in.
‘That’s… a rather nice way to wake up actually… I could get used to this…’ Shi thought as shi stretched, before being interrupted by hir stomach.
‘Hungry already? Guess I didn’t have as much fat stored up as I thought, I could probably still go for another day without much problems but why bother? Time to go hunting, after I figure out how to get down from this tree…’
After a few moments of thinking the answer hit hir like a freight train ‘I’ve got WINGS!!! I’ll just glide down!’
As shi stepped up to the edge and estimated hir flight path another thought struck hir ‘I haven’t actually flown anywhere before… well no time like the present!’ And with that shi spread hir bat-like wings and hopped forward off the edge of the branch platform.
Hir first flight went surprisingly well, especially considering that shi hardly had any instincts for flying.
Landing on hir face shi thought ‘Well, that went better than expected, now I just need to work on landing on my feet.’
So shi climbed back up the tree to try again.
“We’re now entering unexplored area, stick close, we have no idea what’s down there…” StarBurst said through the magical communicators that had become standard issue along with the guard armor since Princess Twilight Sparkle had invented their basic design.
“ETA?” Came the general reply from the troops.
“Princess?”
“About 30 minutes at our current pace,” came Twilight’s reply as she started doing broad sweeps with her magic to locate the anomaly’s location.
After about 15 face plants, 10 half front flips, and one complete failure, Ember had finally figured out how to land.
‘Well, that’s that. Now to get something to eat!’
And with that, shi headed back in the direction of the clearing to see what shi could find.
Ember was being stalked.
Shi had first noticed that something was off when there wasn’t any sounds from the local wild life.
‘Alright… where are you?’ Shi thought as shi started “looking” around with hir other senses.
Hir trip to the clearing was otherwise uneventful, but that didn’t make hir feel any more comfortable.
Upon stepping into the center of the clearing shi heard the sound of twigs snapping coming from all around hir, along with an unfamiliar smell.
Looking around, Ember could only see the trees and bushes, but something seemed off about them, almost as if they were telling hir to run.
Hearing a slightly louder snap behind hir, shi turned not knowing what to expect.
‘What’s- What the- is that… Is that a wolf made out of wood? WHAT THE HELL?!? AND WHY ARE ITS EYES GLOWING?!??!!?’
Upon seeing that Ember had noticed it, the wooden wolf charged at Ember who had to quickly jump out of the way to avoid getting leapt on.
Just as the wooden wolf passed Ember, shi heard many more wood snapping sounds all around hir. Quickly looking around shi saw that wooden wolves were stalking out from behind almost every nearby bush.
‘Well… Shit,' was all that Ember got out before chaos ensued.
It was all Ember could do to avoid being overwhelmed, shi dodged, rolled, and sometimes was able to take a slash at one of the wolves with hir semi-retractable claws. Although shi was doing an admirable job, a wolf still managed to slash one of hir wings.
‘I… can’t… keep… this up… for long… need to think… can’t fly away… wing’s torn… I… wait… wood… fire… THAT’S IT!’
Jumping back Ember used a feature of hir biology to spit a highly flammable fluid similar to how a spitting cobra launches venom into the eyes of an attacker.
Startled, the wolves backed off.
‘Check and mate, you lose, firewood.’ And with that, Ember spat another stream of fluid, this time using another quirk of hir biology to create a small spark in hir mouth, little more than a small static shock, but more than enough to ignite the liquid streaming by it.
With a sudden burst of flame, the fluid ignited and lit the wooden wolves on fire.
‘TAKE THAT YOU BITCHES!!!’ Ember thought as shi watched the wolves futilely try to put the fire out.
Grinning manically, shi watched as, one by one, the wolves dropped to the ground, their eyes dimming, and were consumed by the flames.
Staring at the smoldering piles of ash, Ember let the adrenalin rush die down before turning back to the task at hand, finding food.
‘Well, that’ll take down my fat reserves, guess I’ll REALLY have to find some food now…’ and with that, shi turned back to the forest, and resumed the hunt.
Good friends Private SwiftWind and Corporal AreoSmith were having a chat in a private comm channel when Twilight announced that a clearing a little ways ahead was the source of the anomalous signatures.
“Visual contact on the mission site,” Private SwiftWind said in his best military voice.
“Seriously Swift?!? I though you said that you wouldn’t do that!” AreoSmith responded, sounding frustrated.
“Aw… you never let me have some fun…”
“Well, as long as you don’t do stuff like that after we land, I guess it won’t be that big of a deal…”
As they switched back to the squad channel the order to land was given.
“You know what to do, protect the Princess at all costs while she gets the scans. Lethal force is to be withheld until necessary,” came StarBurst’s voice over the comms as they landed in the middle of the clearing.
As Twilight moved into the exact center of the clearing and started some sort of spell, the squad spread out for more viewpoints in case of hostiles.
“Hey, what’s this?” SwiftWind asked when he noticed some piles of scattered charred wood.
“Almost looks like what happens when a pack of Timberwolves attack a squad of Unicorns with fire spells…” AreoSmith commented after looking at what SwiftWind was looking at.
Across the clearing another unit was also investigating the piles.
“Some of these are still warm! So whatever burnt these things could still be around here!”
“Get into a defensive position around the Princess,” StarBurst ordered “If whatever did this is still around, I wouldn’t bet much on it being friendly… Previous orders still stand though, lethal force has yet to be authorized.”
Shortly after they made a ring around Twilight, they all heard the sound of something large moving through the brush.
“Keep your eyes open,” StarBurst said unnecessarily.
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth a large manticore burst through the bush and into the clearing, with the obvious intent to make the ponies its dinner.
“ALPHA MANTICORE!” Somepony shouted.
“Lethal force has been authorized, protect the Princess!” StarBurst ordered as for the second time that day, chaos descended upon the clearing.
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting wild rabbits to be so easily caught, but I guess I don’t look like their normal predators so that might have something to do with it,’ Ember thought as shi cleaned hir claws after catching, cooking, and consuming a pair of rabbits.
Shi was about to re-enter the clearing when a group of 10 things landed in the middle of it.
‘What? Are those… horses? No, they’re too small, and horses can’t fly… wait, they have wings… small pegasi? Either the group that messed me up made some SERIOUS changes to Earth or I’m not on Earth anymore…’ Ember though as shi watched from within a bush.
Shi watched as a purple one walked into the very center and a point just above its head started glowing! Looking more carefully Ember noticed that the purple one had both wings AND a horn!
‘A winged unicorn? What the fuck?!? And what’s it doing? And why have the-,' Ember was cut off by the sound of a large… thing moving through the brush.
Before shi could start to wonder if hir hiding place was safe, a large… something… came charging into the clearing with the clear intent on making the… pegasi plus one it’s lunch.
‘That thing looks like a genetic experiment gone wrong! There’s a scorpion’s tail, parts of a lion, and all kinds of other things!’
Ember watched the pegasi engage it in combat while the winged unicorn continued doing its little light show.
Almost immediately one of the pegasi was swatted by a giant lion paw and smashed into a tree nearby where Ember was hiding.
After about a minute of this apparently the order to retreat had been given, as the winged unicorn suddenly stopped what it was doing as all of the pegasi disengaged from combat and converged on it before they disappeared in a bright ball of purple/lavender light.
Before Ember could start to wonder what had just happened, the Pegasus that had been knocked out of battle groaned, drawing the thing’s attention.
As it slowly stalked towards the helpless Pegasus, Ember was trying to decide whether shi should run or defend the Pegasus.
Seeing that the pegasus was obviously terrified of the thing awoke something within Ember, a need to defend something other than hir own life.
Just before the thing reached the pegasus, Ember leapt out of the bush and, extending hir claws as far as they could go, slashed the abomination in the face.
‘That… was not my best decision in the world…’ Ember thought as it only seemed to piss it off.
‘Why didn’t I keep my distance like I was trained to do?’ SwiftWind thought as he struggled to stay away from the manticore.
As it drew closer, SwiftWind knew that there was nothing he could do, one of his legs and one of his wings were both broken.
As the manticore raised its paw to deal the final blow, SwiftWind thought he saw something leap out of the bushes next to him and attack the manticore in the face before he blacked out.
Ember groaned.
‘That could have gone much better,’ shi though to hirself as shi carried the unconscious pegasus back to hir camp.
‘Why didn’t I open with my FIRE?!? I mean it obviously had fur, and fur can burn! But no, I just HAD to start by slashing it in the face and just pissing it off!’
The fight had gone reasonably well, even though Ember had gotten batted around quite a bit, shi still managed in chasing it off.
‘Although I should have expected that stinger to come into play,’ Shi thought as shi remembered when that scorpion tail lashed out from behind it and almost pierced hir scales ‘good thing I HAVE scales, as I’m sure that the venom in that tail would have been REALLY powerful…’
Upon arriving at the tree, Ember, with great difficulty, gently lifted the pegasus up to the branch platform and laid him down.
‘I guess I should do my best to fix this one up for when it wakes up…’
So with what little medical knowledge that shi could remember, Ember did hir best to realign the pegasus’s broken bones and splint them with sticks and vines nearby.
“WE HAVE TO GO BACK!” AreoSmith shouted almost immediately after the teleport finished, “SWIFTWIND IS STILL BACK THERE!!!”
“It’s too dangerous and far right now!” StarBurst responded.
“But-,”
“Look, I know that you and SwiftWind are good friends, but it’s too far to fly and get there in time, unless he manages to get away and hide, he’s as good as dead.”
“I…”
“Look, I’m not saying that we won’t go back, it’s just that we need to assess our current status before making any decisions. As soon as we can we WILL go back, if only to retrieve what we can.”
Knowing that that was the best she was going to get, Corporal AreoSmith stayed silent as the rest of the team checked themselves for injuries.
“Stay safe…” She whispered to herself, looking out into the vast expanse of forest.