33 - The Colony
The growls chilled Amanita to the bone. The light of the group didn’t reach far and all that she could see of the timberwolves were their glowing eyes in the dark. She almost took a step back, but she’d be running away from the cave’s exit. Maybe its only exit. How far was it? Maybe they could still-
She realized she was standing on a root when it writhed beneath her, nearly throwing her off-balance. Part of it shattered with an almighty crack, sending branch-sized splinters bouncing around the tunnel. Yet almost immediately, their paths twisted and they quickly started forming into an approximation of a foot, two feet, a leg-
“Move!” Code yelled as another root snapped. “Further in! Further in!”
The party turned and ran. Echolocative chirps hit Amanita like rain in a storm. She fought to keep her horn alight and gallop at the same time, and she wasn’t the only one. The cave was now as flat and even as a hallway, but she still stumbled, panic pushing her onwards faster than she could actually run.
“Ai!” Arrastra yelled behind them. Chirp chirp. “Get away-” Chirp. “-ye varmint!” The hum of the chainsaw’s crystal dynamos pierced through the gloom. “Avay!”
Amanita risked a glance back; Arrastra was galloping after them, her jaws holding tight to the chainsaw’s handle. A timberwolf was nipping at her tail, but she was managing to stay ahead of it thanks to quick flaps-
“Eyes forward!” yelled Code. Whether she was yelling at Amanita or not didn’t matter; Amanita quickly turned her head forward, stampeding onward as the black cave streaked past around her.
Bitterroot examined a tree closely in Charcoal’s light. She hadn’t seen aspen trees very often, but she recognized them well enough. “What do you think this means?” she asked. “It has to mean something, right?”
“It might not, aspens do grow normally in these sorts of climates,” muttered Charcoal. She was pacing back and forth, her tail flicking restlessly. “But, I mean, look, if it’s just a coincidence, I’ll eat my tail.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I, I don’t know. Can you let me think? Sweet Shine, why does it smell?”
“Shutting up.”
Charcoal kept pacing, so Bitterroot put a hoof on the tree, just to check. It felt like a normal tree, as far as she remembered. Next tree, same thing. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for and it wasn’t coming to mind; apparently, the Deormont’s knowledge didn’t extend to non-Tratonmane things, for whatever reason. Maybe that was part of the deal they’d made with it. Or they just didn’t think to ask-
“Okay,” said Charcoal. Her voice had picked up speed, enough for her to sound hoarse, and her pacing was growing frantic. “Okay. We follow the river that doesn’t follow the ley line, right? And we do it based on the advice of a god. It takes us to a muskeg bog, of all things. And there’s a cave, and it’s surrounded by these aspen trees that timberwolves are made of but we don’t see anywhere else.” She ran a hoof through her mane. “Something’s bad here. Really bad. We, we need to go in there and get them.” She pointed at the cave with a shaking hoof.
Bitterroot knew better than to ask questions of someone in that state. Charcoal could explain herself later. “Alright,” said Bitterroot. She flared her wings to take flight. “I’ll give them a holler-”
Something in the cave groaned; a few moments later, the surface of the muskeg flexed. And the light from Charcoal’s light flickered as she dropped to her knees, coughing.
“Whoa, hey.” Bitterroot zipped over to her and laid a hoof on her back. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s-” Wheezing, a hoof on her throat, Charcoal nearly collapsed onto the ground before Bitterroot caught her. “There’s something in my-” She spasmed, slipped from Bitterroot’s hooves, and started screaming. In the last half-second before her horn went out, leaves forced their way out of her gums.
Bitterroot’s pulse spiked. Scrabbling backwards, she instinctively flared her wings and nearly took off. It was going to happen to her again, she was going to-
-if she ran, what would happen to Charcoal?
She froze, paralyzed with thought as Charcoal twisted and her wails turned to snarls and her flesh was replaced with bark. Charcoal would be in the middle of the forest; she could go anywhere. Maybe be gone by the time Amanita and company got out. If they got out. And maybe Charcoal would-
The timberwolf’s sounds changed, but Bitterroot could barely make out anything in the dark. Was its transformation complete? She immediately started flapping her wings, focusing on nothing but climbing. Wooden claws swiped the air beneath her, but didn’t touch her.
Okay. Hovering. She could do that. Bitterroot flapped harder and climbed higher. The eyes of the timberwolf glared up at her; it jumped again, missed again.
Lead it on a merry chase to keep it distracted? She could do that, too. She dropped to just above the ground, still hovering; right when the wolf tensed to pounce, Bitterroot jinked away and the wolf missed by a mile. “Hey!” she yelled. “Come get me!” And she darted off, the wolf in hot pursuit.
There was just enough light for her to make out the silhouettes of trees and weave through them. She wanted to fly above them, but the wolf might lose interest if she looked impossible to catch. She didn’t fly nearly as fast as she could have; only fools did that in a dark forest. But even cautious, she was fast enough for the wolf to lose ground, especially once she left the tightness of the aspen grove. She did a broad curve; she could make it a circle and hold until Amanita came back out. Hopefully.
She swooped up, turned around. The wolf’s eyes were easy to spot. “Over here, doggy!” She gave it a few moments to catch up again, then dropped back to just above ground level and was off again. How long should she wait until Amanita left the cave? Noon, maybe? Code had said the spell might get destroyed at noon, so if she could hold out-
One of the trees moved.
It was in the dark and hard to make out, but one of the trees bent in a way trees shouldn’t bend, right into her path at exactly the wrong time. Bitterroot yelped and changed course — too much. One of her wings clipped another tree and she spun out. She tumbled head over tail, losing all sense of direction before smashing into the ground. The snow cushioned the worst of the blow, but that wasn’t saying much.
Somehow, she ended up on her belly. Adrenaline kept her going. Head? Throbbing, but intact. Legs? Ached, but worked. She stood up. Wings- She bit back a scream as the one she’d hit flared with pain. Utterly unusable? Another flap- Yes. Oh, Celestia, unusable. Bitterroot hung her head, panting with the pain.
Behind her, the wolf howled. At least she wouldn’t need to worry about losing it. She hobbled off into the dark; the more she was moving, the longer she’d stay alive.
Amanita ran. One foot of the tunnel was the same as another. Every sound was magnified and distorted until she couldn’t make out one from another. Air rushed past her like she was in a storm. She could barely see in front of herself. Still she ran.
With the other ponies galloping alongside her, she didn’t have much of a choice: move or go under the hooves. Then again, that was probably better than getting caught by the timberwolves.
“Back! Back!” Arrastra kept falling behind to swing at the wolves with the chainsaw before catching up again. It was amazing she could manage that.
The strange voice spoke again. “Stop running! It’ll make things simpler!”
Amanita didn’t respond. She was too busy breathing. If she didn’t keep moving-
The cave suddenly opened up into a large room, shrouded in darkness. The herd split blindly and carried on galloping. Amanita jinked to one side to get out of the crowd, only to smash into a table she didn’t see coming. As the air left her lungs and the table was driven forward, her horn went out. And the herd carried on without her.
She could hear the wolves behind her; the growls filled the air as their claws clicked across the rock. Wheezing in pain, she pushed herself off the table and crawled under it. It was too dark for her to see where she was going and that didn’t matter. “Away” was good enough.
Something glowing green flickered behind her. One of her hooves was clamped in a vise, and then she was being dragged out by a hind leg. She kicked blindly with the other, over and over; branches buckled beneath her force, but the timberwolf’s bite stayed strong and-
“Git!”
A crystal dynamo roared as wood and steel screamed. The wolf shuddered and collapsed into mere branches across Amanita’s leg. She scrambled forward and looked over her shoulder just in time to see green eyelights go out.
Arrastra swung the chainsaw again, cleaving the branches that had been its head into a mess of pieces. She didn’t bother looking at Amanita when she asked, “Y’alright?”
“I, I think so,” Amanita said, nodding, “but-”
With a chirp, Arrastra was away again. How could she echolocate in all this din?
“Stop! STOP!” the voice screamed. “Hold still, you little-”
Amanita dragged herself out from under the table. She put weight on her hoof; a slight twinge, but no real problem. The room was still dim enough that she could barely see anything; hornlight was flickering throughout as the flashes of cast spells swung shadows wildly around. But she could see the eyes. All the glowing green eyes of the timberwolves. They were darting around, searching for ponies to eat. But when those eyes stood out so clearly, they were easy targets for the ponies. Amanita heard blades whistling, hooves and clubs pounding, a dynamo whirring.
And right next to her, someone yelling.
She didn’t know much about fighting. That didn’t stop her. She charged, her horn lighting the way.
A chiropterus was on her back, pinned down by the mass of a wolf. She was managing to keep it off her with a spear stuck sideways in its mouth, but its claws were swiping and scoring light hits across her increasingly bloody face.
Amanita lanced off a bolt of magic at the wolf. It was weak and wouldn’t do much more than distract it, but for an animal, it was enough. It twitched in surprise and briefly stopped clawing; the mare managed to gain enough leverage to twist and throw it off. At the same time, Amanita seized one of its legs in her magic and wrenched it away, the conglomerate decohering to a mess of branches as it flew off.
“Thankee!” the chiropterus said as she rolled to her feet. She didn’t seem too badly wounded aside from her face. “That’s-” She blinked, then yanked Amanita to one side.
The timberwolf flew past Amanita, close enough that its twigs ruffled her furs. It’d used some of its body mass to regrow its leg and its mobility was back. Its claws gouged scars in the roots across the floor as it dragged itself to a halt. It growled, snapped it jaws-
Another telekinetic grab and throw, another missing leg. As the wolf stumbled, the mare jumped forward and brought the blunt end of her spear down on the wolf. Branches clattered to the ground and she started trampling on them, reducing them to chips and splinters.
Around her was chaos. The sound in the room was immense. Amanita heard yells, screams, battle cries, bouncing around and lasting longer than they should have. At the same time, she could barely see anything that wasn’t inside her little ball of light. Shadows surrounded her, brief spells cut small holes through the gloom, and she couldn’t place a sound to a thing. Maybe nopony else-
Amanita nearly smacked herself; instead, she loosed balls of light in every direction. They weren’t bright, but there were a lot of them, and soon enough light was being shed on the room for her to more than barely see by. For the first time, she took in the room’s contents. In a dimly-lit, half-moment’s glance-over, she saw large tables covered with books and papers, once stacked neatly, now scattered in the fighting. Machines of various shapes and sizes, from tiny crystalline resonators to hulking things bigger than Celestia, were scattered around the room, either lurking in corners or taking a place of honor in the center. Fetters and muzzles, some of them bloodstained, hung from hooks on the wall. Roots ran across the floor and up the walls in rows too neat to be natural. The ceiling was high above them, nearly two or three stories. Amanita’s first guess was that it was a lab of some sort.
And, then, of course, there were the people.
The group had been split up by the wolves, but nopony seemed to be down. Weapons and hooves were swinging; there was Arrastra, chainsawing away, while Code had unsheathed her sword and twirling like a dancer, with more dexterity in her mouth than some unicorns had in their horns. But the timberwolves wouldn’t stay down. The fighters did their best, but you could only do so much against something that technically didn’t have a body.
But there was something in here, something controlling the timberwolves. That voice. And the timberwolves had come from the roots, so… The entrance was there, which meant the roots were running in that direction. A direction that led to a wall made entirely of those roots. A wall that seemed to be twitching.
As she galloped for the wall, Amanita gave brief spots of help to the brawls she passed — a telekinetic nudge her, a thwack there — but she had her goal. She didn’t bother trying to stop herself, but let herself hit the wall, hard. It was moving slowly, but it was moving. And was there something behind it? On a whim, she loosed off a force blast and managed to blow off a small chunk of wood. She could see darkness behind the cords: empty space.
Then the voice screamed again. “Don’t go back there! You can’t go back there!”
Amanita decided that she very much needed to go back there. She reached deeper to pull up more of her magic, maybe make a bigger hole-
Roots burst from the wall, waving like tentacles, and before Amanita could react, they’d wrapped around her neck.
The ache in Bitterroot’s legs was going away as she ran. She tried her bad wing; no such luck.
She didn’t know where she was heading besides “east”, and that was only because of the glowing western wall at her back. Would she end up at the cave again? It didn’t matter at the moment. She kept her ears turned back. The wolf’s footsteps had stopped and she could hear it chuffing at the ground. It could smell her, it’d catch up eventually. It could track her wherever she went-
Could it climb?
Bitterroot didn’t stop to think. She darted to the nearest tree and clambered up. Her good wing gave her enough lift to reach the lowest branches and pull herself up. The bark grated against her perhaps more than it ought, but she could climb.
And that might not be enough, so Bitterroot scurried out onto one of the branches. The forest was thick and the trees were close. A quick flap gave Bitterroot enough oomph to leap from one tree to the next. At least her scent trail wouldn’t lead to this tree. Immediately.
Down below, the timberwolf had reached the tree she’d climbed. It walked around, sniffing and sniffing and sniffing. Its growl was long and low, and it spread out its search. Bitterroot scooted and jumped to another tree.
So: now what? Just keep jumping from tree to tree and try to keep an eye on the timberwolf? Well, maybe. It was the only option she had at the moment. Bitterroot giggled shrilly to herself. When you were in danger, in real danger, now was all that mattered. Not the second later, not the second before, now. Everything else might as well not exist.
Stuck there in her state of detached panic, Bitterroot wasn’t as worried about dying as most people. She’d done it more times than anyone in the world, probably. But Charcoal was still aware in the wolf. If she caught and killed Bitterroot, what would she think? Would she be able to live with herself? Even if-
Charcoal was aware.
Charcoal could get angry.
Charcoal was a kirin.
Worth a shot.
“Hey! Charcoal!” Bitterroot yelled down.
The wolf’s head snapped in her direction and it growled. Snow crackled as it stalked her way and its sniffing echoed loudly. The air began curling with the stench of its breath.
Beating down her fear, ignoring her aching skull, Bitterroot kept an easygoing tone. “I heard about you. You wanted to show Princess Twilight that you could be relied upon! And you know what? You came close!”
Green eyes threw out just enough light for Bitterroot to see the wolf’s silhouette. It circled the tree, sniffing. Then it turned its head upward and she knew it saw her. It started growling.
She almost started hyperventilating. Bitterroot scooched to the end of the branch, ready to jump if need be. “And the only thing stopping you is this! This stupid little tree, right before the end! That’s it! It’s not even your fault! All that work, just to end here! That’s-”
The wolf moved faster than she could’ve thought. It climbed up the tree in an instant and lunged along the branch like a tightrope walker. But Bitterroot was ready and she leapt for a nice, thick branch right ahead-
Right as she landed, the branch twisted in a way it shouldn’t have. She lost her footing and tumbled. An instinctive flare of the wings rewarded her with her bad wing hurting her and her good one flipping her over so she landed hard on her back. Stars danced in her eyes from the impact, and as she groaned, the wolf dropped from its branch and landed just a few yards from her. Its breath made her want to gag.
Too close. One more phrase, and that was it. Bitterroot managed to gasp out, “Doesn’t that just cheese you off?”
The wolf raised a foot. It didn’t set it down again. It twitched a little.
It burst into flame so intense Bitterroot was bowled back by the shockwave of heat. A bloodcurdling scream boomed across the valley, one laced with anger and frustration that had boiled over into something dangerous to touch. Harsh shadows were thrown through the forest by the fire’s glare and Bitterroot had to put up a hoof to shield her eyes.
Her eyes adjusted after a few moments. More importantly, nothing tried to rip her flesh from her bones. She lowered her leg, squinted, managed to peer into the blaze.
The wolf was gone. Within the inferno was Charcoal. And she was really pissed off.
The roots around Amanita’s neck tightened like a noose. She yelped, grabbing at them, but they were too strong. She tried to breathe; her throat was sealed tight. Her hooves slid against the floor as she reared and pulled back, to no avail. Her lungs started begging for air, and she couldn’t even scream for help-
A silver-plated sword dropped down between Amanita and the wall, slicing through the roots like a hot knife through butter. She toppled onto her back and wheezed with the pain of strangulation.
Code was at her side. “What’d you find?” she asked. It was amazing how clear she was when her mouth had such a tight grip on her sword.
“Room,” Amanita gasped, pointing. “Behind- wall. Might be- controller.”
Thankfully, Code seemed to get it immediately. She stabbed her sword into the wall, earth pony strength allowing her to push it all the way up to the hilt, and yanked it across. Amanita felt something buzz as some form of magic fell beneath the silver blade. Dark magic?
“Stop! STOP!” the voice screamed. This time Amanita felt it more than anything, an arcane wave of agony. The entire room flinched; the roots on the floor writhed, the ponies staggered, and every single timberwolf collapsed into a mere pile of sticks.
Just like that, the fight stopped.
The echoes of conflict petered out, but the room wasn’t silent. Ponies were breathing heavily in exertion or moaning from their wounds. Amanita noticed one pony crouched over another and went over to look.
An earth pony stallion was hunched over a pegasus mare covered in gashes, blood already pooling around her as she struggled to breathe. The stallion was futilely attempting to stem the flow. His spear lay forgotten at his side. “Stay wi’ me, Scallion,” he mumble-growled. “Y’ain’t goin’ tae die yet, I ain’t goin’ tae let ye-”
Sighing, Amanita picked up the spear and stabbed Scallion through the heart.
The stallion cursed and lurched backwards as Scallion shuddered and stopped moving. He stared up at Amanita, his mouth open in aghast confusion.
“I’ll bring her-” Amanita blinked. “I, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
The stallion stood up. “Whetstone, an’ what in the BLAZES dae ye-”
“Sorry, but I’ll bring her back when we get back to Tratonmane,” said Amanita wearily. “Necromancer. She wouldn’t have lived long, anyway.”
“Ach, an’ what if’n you’un dinnae make it back, ah?” demanded Whetstone.
Wait-
“What are you all DOING?” The voice slid through the air again. It sounded… petulant? “You could’ve had it easy, but nooooooo. Where do you think you’re going to end up?”
The ponies looked up, ears trembling in trepidation. Amanita wondered if the roots were really moving underneath her hooves or if that was just her imagination. It was a moment before Arrastra spoke up. “An’ who dae ye presume yerself tae be, beast?” she demanded.
The voice huffed. “My name is not Beast, it’s Lixivia, not that MATTERS to you idiots. What are you-”
“Whippletree’s here, ain’t he?”
“Who? That pegasus I turned two nights ago? Yeah, I’ve got him, but I NEED him, he’s-”
Arrastra’s chainsaw roared and she slammed it into the woody wall without another word.
Lixivia screamed and the roots bunched up; Arrastra was able to pull the chainsaw back out before they clamped down on it. “You do NOT hurt me!” snapped Lixivia. Whined? “You should just- Oh, forget this.”
The discarded branches around the lab stirred. They rolled of their volition towards the center of the room, clumping together into the shape of massive paws, humongous legs. The ponies started desperately smashing branches that passed them, but there was only so much they could do with so many branches. On the other side of the room, more roots closed up across the exit, cutting off escape.
Code twirled her sword. “Keep cutting,” she murmured to Arrastra. “We’re gonna need it.”
Charcoal managed to scream for a full fifteen seconds before she took a breath. Not a light scream, either; this was the sort of bellow myths were built around, full and hearty and packed with rage. She was blazing black as cinder with glowing eyes as the flames curling around her burned a strange red and blue. When she stopped screaming, her hooves were spread in an aggressive, almost primal stance, and her entire body heaved as she breathed like a locomotive.
Bitterroot had thought Charcoal’s display at Pyrita’s death had been shocking. This was something else. “Charcoal?” she asked. “A-are you okay?”
“Do I LOOK like I’m okay, you urine-blooded fecal-brained OATWAGON?” Charcoal roared. Honest-to-goodness roared, with underlying back-of-the-throat bass and everything. She had fangs. “I’m going to burn every twig in this tinder pile of a forest, turn it all to potash, and use that to grow tulips. STREAM-SILENCED TULIPS!”
Bitterroot blanched and scrambled back. “Uh…”
“I’m still me,” growled Charcoal. “I’m just mad. Really. Really. Mad.” The fire flared as she pawed the ground. Well, dug into the ground, given the furrows she was leaving. “Timberwolves don’t even work like that, by ashes! Does everything in this night fertilizer field of a valley want to spite me?!”
Okay. Charcoal was… safe. But what about- Bitterroot’s gaze snapped to the cave, then back to Charcoal, still seething, still searing. How long would that last? Maybe long enough that- “I think the others are in trouble,” she said quickly. “In the cave. We should-”
Charcoal glared at the clearing and threw her head back melodramatically. “Of course!” How could she scream so much without getting hoarse? “Right where I said to their fussocky faces it’d be dangerous to go, and now we need to go save those unmuzzled jolterheads!”
“Um, they didn’t have much of a-”
“For pyre’s sake, I need to keep myself trampling angry or I’ll go out, you moron! This rainforsaken cantrip only works when I’m peeved!”
Bitterroot briefly decided to leave well enough alone before she got a better idea. “Really? What sort of magical being are you that you can’t control your magic?”
Charcoal screamed at Bitterroot with enough vitriol that Bitterroot almost feared for her life. Then she turned and galloped around the clearing, straight for the cave. Bitterroot darted after her, nearly needing to take flight to keep up.
“I don’t know what sort of heatwarped, ricketed bonehead is doing this,” roared Charcoal, “but if you’ve got a head, you’re gonna lose it!”
Amanita seized branches in her magic, snapped them. She pulled hunks more from the growing body of the king wolf. Around her, other ponies were doing the same. If it slowed anything down, she couldn’t tell.
Code and Arrastra were hacking at the wooden wall, trying to carve a way through. Lixivia’s roots kept shifting around, throwing off their aim or blocking their way, but still they carved. She was screaming something at them, but Amanita had stopped listening long ago.
The wolf grew and grew, not yet whole but approaching the ceiling. It tried swiping at a pony, but it couldn’t aim without a head; its target, a pegasus, easily flapped right over the massive paw. But it got less and less blind with every passing second.
“How’s it coming?” Amanita hissed to Code.
“Slowly. Stall,” Code hissed back.
Enough of the head was assembled that the wolf’s eyes were glowing. Amanita gulped.
She fired a bolt at it to get its attention. “Hey!” she yelled, waving her hooves at it. “Look at me! Look at me!” As the wolf turned its attention to her, she started running around, skirting the edge of the room. Distraction.
“I heard what you said about that one pony,” Lixivia said. “You think you’re a necromancer?”
“You bet I am!” Amanita kept running, dodging around roots and clambering over tables, always staying just ahead of the wolf. She didn’t want to waste her breath on pathetic attempts at banter, but as long as it kept up the distraction…
“Oh, please,” snorted Lixivia. “I bet you couldn’t even enthrall a mouse.”
The wolf had its back turned to the search party and they sprang. An earth pony seized a table and swung it through one of the wolf’s legs, smashing a chunk out. A pegasus had a spear and was swiping bits and pieces away from its back. A unicorn started ripping branches off and snapping them one by one. More ponies, all attacking in their own way. The wolf didn’t stop its lumbering and didn’t seem hindered. But it was distracted.
Amanita was ready to say something when she spotted what was probably an opening and bolted forward, right underneath the wolf’s head. She ran and telekinetically ripped clusters of wood from the backs of its legs. They would’ve hamstrung a flesh-and-blood creature, but against an amalgamation like a timberwolf, they were just nicks. As the wolf bent over and reached out a paw to try to attack her, Amanita kept running, rolled over a table, and darted out from between its legs. The wolf kept reaching and overbalanced, but it hadn’t even fully collapsed before the branches blurred and it reformed on its feet.
“Hold STILL!” said Lixivia. “You shouldn’t be DOING this!”
“I don’t care!” Amanita said. A weak response, but keep up the distraction.
“I will DISSECT you while you’re ALIVE and you will feel EVERYTHING.” The wolf lumbered toward Amanita, ignoring all other attacks. “You will watch as I CUT YOUR HEART OUT and-”
The exit roots glowed, then were utterly incinerated in moments. A wave of heat washed into the room, sending ponies scurrying to the far corners to avoid it. Everything was illuminated in a dancing blaze of twisting red and blue. And within that blaze, breathing like she wanted to cave someone’s head in, was Charcoal.
“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder and a kicking in need of a tail!” Charcoal boomed like a subwoofer. “I don’t know who’s doing this, but whoever you are, I’m gonna shove my hoof so far up your rear it’ll turn your guts inside out and you’ll be puking your own waste for the next week, you tottering strangles-ridden clotpole!”
“You can’t be here,” hissed Lixivia. The wolf ponderously turned to face Charcoal, ignoring everyone else. “How are you here? I turned you when you were infected.”
Charcoal raised her head to look up at the wolf. Her ears twitched and the flames faltered for half a moment, then she sucked in a breath. “You are huge! That means you have a huge tail!”
“Listen to yourself! You sound like an idiot! I control this forest, and you’re not even a pony!”
“AND YOU’RE A CONSEQUENCE OF A TORN CONDOM!”
And Charcoal charged. Even Amanita could tell she had little physical strength and less martial skill, but that didn’t matter much when you were on fire.
The wolf reacted slowly to Charcoal’s sudden moves and couldn’t stop her. It hadn’t even touched her before it recoiled and Lixivia screamed. The roots writhed like they hadn’t before, making tables and machines lurch. Charcoal battered at the roof with what would’ve been the effectiveness of a filly swatting at a buffalo, except that parts of the wolf were soon ablaze. It thrashed; Charcoal darted out of the way, but a clip across her barrel sent her rolling. She was back up as soon as she had a chance, roaring with a rage Amanita hadn’t believed she could possess.
“Got it! In here!” Arrastra screamed above the din. She’d managed to carve open a gap in the roots large enough for a pony to climb through. She started waving ponies through; with the heat rising in the room, they were only too happy to comply. Amanita took the chance to drag Scallion’s body with her, just to be sure it wouldn’t be burned.
On the other side, ponies were sprawled out, panting. The wall muffled a surprising amount of the battle on the other side; it was almost peaceful. It was also almost completely dark, since no spells were being slung. But with a vastly smaller amount of things trying to kill them, that was-
“You’re- You’re not supposed to- graah! You shouldn’t be in here!”
The ponies hurriedly got to their hooves and Amanita started throwing illumination spells at the sound of Lixivia’s voice. But for the first time, it didn’t come from all around them like before. It sounded… almost muffled?
“Get out! GET OUT!”
This room was smaller than the lab, circular roughly the size of the Watering Cave’s common room. Roots covered literally every square inch of wall, floor, and ceiling so there wasn’t a flat surface in sight. The coils traced out strange shapes that Amanita knew have arcane significance, even if she couldn’t recognize them immediately. In the middle, it all gathered to form a twisted pillar wrapped around a sort of translucent pod.
“Don’t you dare come any closer!”
Lixivia’s voice was coming from the pod.
“I reckon I shall,” sneered Arrastra. Before anyone else could move, even Code, she covered the distance with a few quick flaps. Her chainsaw roared and she thrust it in.
Lixivia screamed, screamed louder than she had before, a sound of pain and rage. Arrastra sawed through the roots and surface of the pod easily; green liquid gushed forth from the gap and drenched her head to hoof. The surface of the floor twitched and writhed, but never quite managing to reach for her, like someone trying to walk with a numb foot. The other ponies scattered and circled around the pod, weapons up, ready for whatever might come out.
Nothing did. The movement of the roots died down as Arrastra tossed her chainsaw aside. “C’mere!” she yelled, reaching into the pod. She soon ripped out a shape and tossed it to the ground.
An earth mare. That was all Amanita could make out in the dark. Lixivia slipped as she tried standing up, drenched in chlorophyll as she was. Arrastra pounced. “By the mount’s pit, who dae ye think y’are?” Arrastra yelled, cuffing her across the head.
“A visionary!” screeched Lixivia. “The things I’m doing here-”
Arrastra placed a hoof on her neck and stomped. “Ye took! My family!” she yelled. “Prolly more!” She raised a hoof above Lixivia’s head.
“No!” Code darted up to push Arrastra’s hoof aside. “Don’t kill her,” she hissed. “We need to interrogate her. You just said so, she could be responsible for more than Whippletree.”
To Amanita’s surprise, Arrastra nodded almost immediately. “Aye,” she grunted. She gave Lixivia a swift kick in the ribs, though.
Lixivia tried to stand up, but Code raised her sword, nearly poking her in the muzzle. “I’d rather keep you alive, ma’am,” Code said blandly, “but if you really want to keep trying to escape, my options for keeping you secure are limited. Please don’t make me exercise them.”
“Silver, huh?” Lixivia lowered herself back down. “At least somepony knows something.”
The comment on security jogged Amanita’s memory. “I, I saw some fetters back in the first room,” she said, pointing. “Want me to go get them?” Assuming she could even go in there.
“That’d be nice, yes,” said Code, not lowering her sword.
The hole back had twisted a little and Amanita had to wriggle to get through. On the other side, the sticks of the king timberwolf were smoldering pleasantly away. Bitterroot and a very much not-on-fire Charcoal were frantically running around, trying to put the fires out before they ate up all the air in the room. The three exchanged quick waves and Amanita picked up her pace.
The sets of fetters were right where Amanita had seen them last, hanging on the wall. She gave one of them a quick probe for magic; the strengthening enchantments for holding earth ponies seemed to be holding. Good enough. She pulled them off their hook, cringed at the dried blood on it, and darted back to the second chamber.
“This isn’t how it goes,” Lixivia protested as she was chained up. “I’m-”
“That’s nice,” said Code. She gave them a few tests and seemed satisfied.
Amanita took that moment to duck back into the first room where she wordlessly joined Bitterroot and Charcoal at stamping out fires. When she had a free gap of air, she asked, “Are you two okay? What happened out there?”
“Charcoal turned into a mearhwolf and tried to kill me,” said Bitterroot casually, “so I got her angry and she burned her way out.” Stomp. “Though I sprained my wing and I’ve got a headache.” Stomp.
“I turned up my furs,” Charcoal mumbled. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. “I’m gonna be cold until we get back to Tramontane. Tratonmane.”
“I’ll needle you the whole way back,” said Bitterroot. “Then you can be just on fire enough to keep warm.”
“…I don’t know if it works that way, but let’s try it.”
Between the three of them, they soon had the fires out and the air in the cave was still breathable. The branches that had once been a timberwolf were all nicely singed at the very least. There were a lot of branches. “You really fought off a king timberwolf,” Amanita said, slightly awed.
“Sort of?” Charcoal mumbled. “I had it pinned in the corner when it sort of fell apart-”
“You had that pinned.”
“I was on fire! Anyone on fire could do it!”
Amanita and Bitterroot looked at her.
“…I-I mean, they could!”
Behind her, Amanita heard a chopping sound. Code was widening the hole between rooms with her sword. “Tell me what happened later,” she said preemptively. She wrenched away a particularly large chunk of wood and tossed it over her shoulder. “I’d rather- wrnng- hear it in a chair.” She glanced at the lab. “Any idea what was going on here?”
Most of the paper had been reduced to ash in the fires. What remained wasn’t much use to Amanita when she looked it over, fragmented equations and notes with little context. The magic involved seemed to be transformation magic, something Amanita had never looked at much. Maybe she should. That could be her next field of magic: transfigurationist.
“This is… something,” Code murmured as she looked at one of the paper scraps. “I’d be impressed if it came from someone with more dignity.”
The machines were also unfamiliar to her, with few marks and lots of dials and far too many switches. Custom-made, maybe? It was probably the best way to get them out here. Amanita moved around the room, giving them quick glances but not wasting too much time on-
She did a double-take at one of the larger machines. It wasn’t a machine at all; it was a tank. A tank for holding a pony. And the pony in question, curled up on the bottom, was-
“Arrastra!” Amanita yelled. “I found him, I found Whippletree!”
Once they had everyone in the lab, it was a quick matter of shattering the glass and carefully lifting him out. He didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him, physical or otherwise. He groaned as Arrastra cradled him in her wings. “Whipple?” she asked quietly, tenderly. “Please-”
“Arrastra?” Whippletree managed to focus on her, his eyes and wings fluttering. “Ye’re here?”
At the sound of his voice, a tension was released throughout the group and laughter spread throughout the party. Someone even whooped with joy. Arrastra smiled weakly. “We came an’ got ye,” she said. “We-”
Whippletree blinked, growing more alert, his face tightening in horror. “Where’s Crosscut? What happened tae her?”
“There’s a lot tae talk about, we cannae-”
“I k-killed her, aye?” Whippletree said quietly. “Ye c-can tell me.”
“Well, you did,” said Amanita. “But I resurrected her.”
Whippletree’s giggle was shrill. “Y-ye dinnae n-need tae-”
“No, no,” said Arrastra. “Whipple, lissen tae me. Crosscut died. And Amanita brought her back. She- She’s a necromancer, aye, jes’ like she said. Crosscut’s alive an’ kickin’. She’s alright.”
“She…” Something in Whippletree’s eyes changed and his face lifted slightly. “She’s alive?”
“Aye.”
Whippletree gave a soft exhalation of emotion before closing his eyes and lowering his head. It was hard to tell if he was crying or laughing. “She… Dear land, she…” He twisted away from Arrastra and stood, his body shaking, his legs firm.
“She misses ye,” said Arrastra. “Wythe, too. C’mon. Let’s get ye home.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.041 seconds
Total duration
969 users online
1,366,768 hits today, 1,846,785 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
You really outdid yourself with Charcoal's profanity, jesus
It's obvious that Lixivia wasn't working alone but without the pod which is no longer connected to anything she doesn't have means to create and control timberwolves. Midwinter and Carnelian are prime suspects given their previous suspicious behaviour and they're the only ones in Tratonmane who could have build those machines. Of course they might not have been build in Tratonmane but Lixivia will provide some answers.
That's a phenomenal insult. Probably the best one I've seen on this site.
So Charcoal went all: "Rip and sear, until it is done."
11939603
No no.... Charcoal became.......
TROGDOOOORRRRRRRR!!!
This whole chapter just had me screaming "GO CHARCOAL GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
What the fuuu... When did she get infected? Was it from drinking the water?
Whoo, here comes the pain train!
Might make things easier, though. Who knows what tricks she might try on the way back. They do have a necromancer on hoof anyway.
Okay, so Lixivia's a new player in the game. Pretty sure we haven't seen or heard of her before this. And since we've established that it's possible to live in the valley outside of Tratonmane, maybe our mystery red-feathered pegasus is another outsider lurking in the forest instead of an actual town resident.
It's interesting that Charcoal's speech issue goes away when she's livid. Not sure what that says about her, exactly, but she sure was effective here.
Glorious. Simply glorious.
There's a...slight disappointment I have in how quickly that got resolved? That went from 0-100 and into nightmare territory really damn quick with the fight in the dark and ponies getting turned. Could've really turned up the fear dial for effect. But anyways, it was still great. And Charcoal, oh boy...
Outstanding.
I'm honestly surprised Bitterroot's approach worked. I recalled how she described her turning and figured Charcoal would be too mentally dormant to react to her prodding but I guess kirin are just built different. And I got the rampaging nirik assault that I was hoping for that instant in the same chapter.
So, Lixivia...dunno who she is, but all that lab equipment and notes? Yeah, Midwinter and Carnelian have shot even further up in suspicion now.
Also, Whippletree's back. Yay!
Lixivia: "I'm telling you nothing."
Code: "You should, or I'll have to get drastic."
Lixivia: "You wouldn't dare. You'll get no-"
Code: "Don't care. Time for drastic. Amanita, you're up."
Amanita: "Hi. You should have cooperated."
Lixivia: "Bugger off."
Amanita: "Oh, well. You die now. Then I enthrall you. Then you answer our questions whether you want to or not."
Lixivia: "Wha-?!"
Amanita stabs
(No, I don't actually expect that. But it would be highly cathartic.)
P.S. Is it bad that when Amanita mercy slew Scallion to convenience the larger fight, then promised to bring her back, I heard a cheesy 1960s sitcom narrator go "That's our Amanita!" followed by a laugh track?
P.P.S. It's awesome to see that innate personal magic is still effective as long as the mind is there to access it, even if it's just the instinctual stuff. That opens up all sorts of possibilities for creatures to hinder Lixivia's control. Imagine a converted earth pony panic-using the strength of the earth to just... not move. What's the timberwolf going to do then?
Ngl... Charcoal in this chapter... Kinda hot
Okay, really loving Charcoal here.
Charcoal is the fuckin’ best lmao
This is peak seasoned healer that has mastered life and death. So many don't get the potentially callous mindset you can end up in. She did this pony a mercy, it's not a big deal just patch em up later! But to most it just looks cold, brutal and heartless.
Dayuuuum
Wolf is big. That means it has big guts. Big guts to rip and tear.
11939755
I'm pretty sure BitterRoot remembered being aware and trapped inside, so riling up Charcoal had a good shot of getting through.
Oddly Charcoal didn't use Lixivia's name as insult (one of the meaning - drain , muddy stream)
The plot thickens!
Chekov’s Kirin has been fired in every sense of the word. Glorious work. And I do love seeing a self-declared unstoppable arcane genius getting humbled by inconvenient reality. Hopefully she’ll be willing to actually explain herself after seeing Amanita raise Scallion.
(Seriously, I know a lot’s going on right now, bit I hope she doesn’t forget about him.)
Looking forward to some answers. I imagine this will be very enlightening.