Rule the everfree

You woke up in a puddle of wet mud. Blinking, you looked around only to see that you were in a clearing in a forest.  You were in a mud puddle that stretched to a nearby large pond. The sun blazed down you. You could feel beads of sweat roll down on your forehead.

"Where am I?" you thought to yourself.

You brought up your hand, at least that was your intention, to wipe away the drops of sweat that had assembled on your forehead. Instead of a hand, however, your eyes saw a green hoof.

With a jolt of horror, you jumped up into the air. You looked over your body in a furious pace. You noticed that instead of hands you had hooves and the same case for your legs. Instead of skin, you had green fur. The hairs that made your fur were so many that they became like a thick layer and it felt like you had a permanent set of clothes on you. Your fur's hairs were short though. The only exception to this was the fur on your chest, which was long and fluffy. Your tail was completely pitch black. It seemed simple enough, straight and black. You mane was more interesting since its fringe went off your head down on the right side of your head. It hanged from your head. You checked you flank and sure enough, you had a mark on it. It was a question mark.

You were a pony from my little pony. The show that bronies- I'm sorry if I offended anyone. Ehm, horsefuckers watched. You yourself had not spent much time on the mlp board but you recognized the pony look.

How could this be? And where were you? The last thing that you remembered was that you were binge shitposting. Had you fallen asleep? You had done it before at your desk so it wouldn't be too surprising but how did you get transported here?

You tried to look for something significant with this place but you didn't find anything. You had imagined that there would be some kind of portal next to you, which led back to your world but there wasn't any. Where you still in your world? Was this a dream?

You whacked yourself with your hoof. Since, apparently, your hoof was soft as a taut pillow, it didn't hurt. You only got mud on your face due to the fact that you stood in mud. You hit yourself in the face, hard. That work and you finally felt pain so this wasn't a dream by theorem fourteen eighty-eight of lucid dreaming.

The view was grand though. Infront of you were a great pond. Behind it, there were tall fir trees and behind them, there stuck up a snow-covered mountain range. You followed this mountain range with your eyes only to end up spinning in a circle. At some directions the stood higher above you than others. You realized that due to them being so much higher up than you that you were in a valley.

Other types of trees were present, not just conifer trees. You saw a few trees with leafs on their branches. Both leafs and spruce pines were in a strong green color. A faint breeze swept by you. It helped you cool off, which you needed. This day was hot.

However, the scenery did not help your current mood. What was going on?

You realized that you had been so stunned until now that you had forgotten to panic. Luckily for you, you just remembered that. You began to hyperventilate and trembled greatly. You grinned your teeth and felt how you were about to womit but you managed to keep it in.

Then you slapped yourself for the third time of the day. Dr. Smulesteinberg might have to ask you if you have any pent up sexual frustration.

"Everything is going to be okay," you told yourself. "I will be fine I just need to figure out how I got here. Then I can get back the same way."

You ignored the voice that in your mind that said that it would be easier said than done and put your mind on a task.

The mud in your fur on your hooves and in your face had dried up by now. You could feel that your stomach nipping at you. You had to find some food soon. You were getting hungry.

You couldn't find any food nearby but in a hot day like this, it probably was a good idea to stay hydrated. You walked up the pond and began to drink its water. You had dipped your chin into the surface so that water entered your mouth. You caught water with your tongue. Its motion made ripples in the water.

When you were done and the ripples had evened out, you noticed how clear the water was in the pond. You noticed it especially in your shadow that fell over the water since you had the sun in your back. The water was transparent or should have been if the sun didn't cause it to be reflective.

As you inspected the bottom of the pond through the water, You saw that it got a lot deeper further along its edge. You walked along the edge of the pond, on its red-rock beach, to the deeper area. There you stood as close as possible to the edge without falling in to optimize your shadow's reach over the surface. You looked down into the depth. It was way deeper here but not enough deep for you not to be able to see the bottom.

There was something weird on the bottom though. It looked like a big tree. It was brown in its color with hues of green mixed in so it wasn't your typical brown bark. Another odd feature it had was that when its five branches broke off with the main stock they seemed to be equally long and similar in shape. They also had no smaller branches of their own and the only few branches it had were big as logs themselves.

The water became a bit murkier in the deeper area. You figured that even if the concentration of particles in the water was low, a pillar of it would make it harder to see through. This made you unsure of what you were seeing since the image of the tree was a bit blurry.

You were thinking about taking a bath in the pond just to clean yourself and wash out the mud in your fur. You were a bit scared that it wouldn't be a tree but some kind of monster but you didn't want to let your paranoia get the best of you. What else could it be?

But you figured better safe than sorry so you decided to wade into the shallow parts of the pond first and move into the deeper ones later. Both in case it was a monster you were close to the edge and also you didn't know if you could swim in this new body yet.

You had also realized that the body you had now wasn't an adult one. It was clearly smaller than the ones the ponyfags were obsessing about. You had seen this model of a pony as well as the normal ones from mlp memes spreading to other boards. This was the filly version. The major difference you had noticed except for the obvious smaller body, in general, was that you had shorter legs. From this, you deduced even without something to compare to that you were indeed a filly. This is why you wanted to be careful. You didn't know how much physical exertion you could manage.

You dipped one of your muddy hooves into the pond. The mud dissolved into the water and created a brown cloud under the surface. The water was warm so you walked down into it until only your head was above the water. You dipped your head to get rid of the mud splatter on your cheek. To be sure that your cheek got clean you rubbed it with a hoof while you were submerged.

You paddled out into the deeper area of the water. You felt like it wasn't that difficult to control this body nor was it that exhausting to paddle with your hooves to swim either. You swam near the pond's edge. You were in the spot in the water from where you had inspected the tree on the bottom now. This meant that it was just below you. You paddled slowly and looked down on it. It didn't move. You were pretty sure it was a tree but you couldn't shake this feeling.

You climbed up on the edge and walked distance from the pond. Enough of this crazy paranoia. If it had been something it would have down something to you by now. You had been a good diver as a human. With a little momentum, you could reach its highest reaching branch and paddle back up to the surface. Then you would have a good view of it and prove to your self that it was just a tree.  You had noticed that you weren't even tired from your swim and it sort of made sense you were a kid full of energy, except when you were spent. Eh, whatever it would work out.

You ran to the edge and jumped into the water. You tried to do a cannonball jump for good measure. You went from hearing the sound of you crashing into the pond's surface to become severely muted as you were deeply submerged into the water. You wasted no time to swim down to the nearest branch.

As you came in close proximity to it, you could see it end. You managed to keep yourself from gasping and let out any air. It was ahead of something that looked like a mix between a crocodile and snake.

You only noticed that it had had its eyes closed when it opened them. Its eyes' were green and its pupils were black rhombus shaped slits.

You, against better judgment, shot a quick glance at the rest of the tree. Now when you were so close you could finally see what it was. It was a hydra.
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You began to dog paddle upwards and backward. You really wanted to look up towards the surface to see where you were going but you didn't want to take off your eyes off the creature. Although you paddled your most, you didn't get very far. Because you hooves were so small, your paddle only moved you a bit higher up towards the surface.

The head that you had come close to ascended towards you. Its neck wasn't fully stretched out so it began to stretch itself towards you. You saw three other of its heads either shaking there head, seemingly to wake up or reaching after you.

Wait, three? There were five. Where is the last head? You thought.

You looked at the part of the hydra's torso that was the base for the heads' necks. There you saw the neck of the missing head and followed it with your gaze. It went under and up behind you.

You spun around in the water. The missing head was behind you and its snout was so close to you that it actually poked you in the stomach. It seemed to have some kind of grin on its face.

A yellow cloud formed between your legs and slowly dispersed. You put our hooves on the snout of the hydra and tried to push yourself away from it. It opened its mouth a bit. You became afraid that it would open it completely so you did something pointless in retrospect. You put one front hoof on either side of its jaw and tried to hold the mouth closed.

Very suddenly you were being pushed in the stomach again by the creature's snout. Because it came so suddenly and with so much force, the impact caused your back hooves and front hooves to fall downwards as the rest of your body continued being pushed upwards to the surface. The impact had caused you to lose all the air in your lungs as it had been pushed out and you had released it all in a gasp. The gasp from your mouth shot out bubbles like an underwater volcano.

You were pushed up to the surface on the snout of the creature. You fell off its snout onto the beach when it breached the surface. Your fall hadn't been so high and you landed on your hooves so it hadn't hurt so bad even though the beach was covered in mostly small rocks and a few patches of grass.

You began to inhale and exhale now that you had air to breath. You rolled over on your side to looked back towards the pond. You saw that the head that had breached the surface with you focused its gaze at you as it slowly sank down into the water. Before it had submerged under water you thought that you saw the creature grin at you.

Maybe, you thought. Since this is probably is the universe of my little pony, a tv show for little girls. Every creature is friendly and the dangerous creatures are only a bit grumpy. That only needs a serious talking to. Maybe that is why the hydra didn't eat me just now.

Then the pond exploded.

Two claws had gripped the edge off the pond and those claws had dragged up the rest of the hydra out the pond. This had caused a large volume of water that was previously in the pond to fly up into the air. When this water returned back to the ground again, it came back as an artificial torrent of rain. If you weren't already drenched, you would have been.

In the midst of the sound of the patter from the waterdrops that hit the ground, there was a roar made by five hydra heads simultaneously. The sound was so loud that you had to cover your ears with your hooves. It sounded like there was a choir with different depths in their voices, who roared together. Low and high tones were mixed and there was gargling noise in the roar as well. You heard a screeching sound that you knew didn't come from the hydra but came from your ears since they were recovering from the shock of the high volume of the roar.
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Now when the hydra was above water you could see that its scales were of a color between light brown and yellow. The word being, "between" since the color of the scales shifted to more of a yellow color when hit by the light of the sun and to brown when not they were shadowed. This reflective color of the scales was consistent for the rest of its scaly body. The size of each scale was about a quarter of one of your hoof's underside's area and those scales arrange themselves in a typical snake scale pattern, which meant that they layered each other to some degree. The part of the scales that wasn't layered protruded out a bit so the overall scale-skin wasn't smooth as normal snakeskin is and was instead rough.

Its head was indeed unique. A simplified description of the jaw would be to compare it to a triangle. Where the chin and the cheekbones were placed on the three vertices that formed the triangle. The underside of the head was flat with an exception for the chin, which stuck out downwards like a hook. The jaw had only two big fangs that stuck up in front of the snout, no other teeth. The upper part of mouth had, however, a whole set of razor-sharp teeth. From the snout of its head till the back of its head, the upper part of the head increased in size. Slits formed the nostrils on the snout and behind them further back two big green eyes.

The hydra had five head with long necks, four thick legs with ginormous black claws on each on the end of them and along a large tail. The front claws looked like they could grip things due to one of the four appendages on each claw resembled a thumb. From your low position in relation to how tall the hydra was, you could see that on its belly to the beginning of each neck there were snake-like body scales.

But the most scare feature it had wasn't its claws, razor-sharp teeth and fangs. It was how tall and large it was. It was high as the tallest trees

You had caught all of this in one quick look at the creature. Why one look? Because as fast as you had heard its roar, your body had turned and started to run across the rocky beach towards the forest all on its own.

When you passed the first tree, you heard began to heard loud thumbs coming after you. The hydra had begun its chase after you. You ran with all that you had and you didn't stop for anything. Running straight into branches that were in your way, you did not care for what damages you got from this as long as you survived. Twigs cut your face, pulled out hairs from you mane or got stuck in it. You shut your eyes as you ran into the barrage of branches but this made it easier to trip on the uneven ground with all its roots and vegetation. Panting, you looked glance at you with out slowing down when you heard a cracking and crashing sound. What you saw made your pupils to dilate.

The trees you had past hadn't been that old. This was obvious due to the fact that their trunk was thin and that they were short nonetheless they were trees and highly concentrated. The hydra hadn't managed to pass between them because of it too wide but it had managed to stomp them into the ground with its forelegs. Trees snap like twigs under the weight of the beast and from your perspective the area you had just been in shone up. This was due to the fact that the sun now had access to areas where it hadn't before.

As you continued to take glances back towards the hydra to see how much progress is made, you didn't pay attention to where you were going. You found out however when you ran off a cliff. The fall was not very long since the cliff was so high up. The impact of the fall was also reduced by something soft and furry that you fell on.

You heard a loud bellow from underneath you before you were promptly swiped by a large paw and thrown away skipping across the ground. Your vision was blurry and this was in no way an excuse for the writerfag to neglect a detailed description of the creature.  So you could only see a fuzzy image of the creature as you glazed at it from were you lied on the ground.

It looked like a panda with six limbs and large fly wings on its back and a sting shaped rump. If you weren't fleeing for you live in this moment, you would have paralyzed the existence of the creature by setting up some play with Romeo and Juliet but replacing the two main characters with a bear and a bee.

Now, however, was not the time. You tried to stand up but you left leg, which was the body part that had taken the bears blow, hurt insanely much when you tried to rest on it. You saw that it scratched up a wound on your leg and that blood slowly poured out off it. You felt that you had a limited ability to move it now but you managed to tuck it close to your body. The rest of you body was fine if not for being a little wobbly and dizzy. You managed to push yourself to a standing position on only three legs.

Buzzing up in the air, the bear-bee-thingy was glaring at you menacingly and showing its teeth. It looked like it was about to pounce on you but was interrupted as trees from the cliff above fell down on the ground around us. It was the Hydra again. It had caught up to you. However, all of its heads were directed at the bear not at you. The same could be said about the bear's head. Both seemed to have forgotten about you.

You didn't know why the bugbear who could fly didn't just fly away from the hydra. It seemed to you like the most logical thing to do if your opponent big as a house and has gigantic, pointy teeth. Even if you have a fighting chance to win, if there is nothing to win from winning the fight, why risk your life? You didn't know why but apparently the bear instantly began its attack by trying to get close without being beaten with the intention to sting the hydra.

As the hydra's many jaws snapped after the bugbear, who in return had to maneuver away from its flight path for stinging the target to avoid getting bitten, you decided to leave while you could. No matter who won none of the more benevolent towards you. Maybe the bear didn't want to eat you so it might not hunt you down like the hydra probably would but then again why wouldn't it? You were a nice juice, tasty, little herbivore now.

As you staggered away into the woods, with the only intention to get away from the two scary predators, you heard the bear scream that went from loud and shrilly to quiet and whimpering. You had also noticed that you no longer could hear the buzzing of its wings.

This motivated you to move even quicker away from here. You hoped that the hydra had forgotten about you now that it had something else to eat and you also wished that that bear was something it ate.

You were limping forward at a slow pace since you felt that you couldn't go even faster but you were still moving and right now you saw that as a positive thing. The blood in the wound on your left leg from before had coagulated now but you still felt as if the leg was hard to move.

You begin thinking that you missed you all life. You weren't even a fan anon so there really was no connection to you this place so why had you been brought here?

You had managed to get far away from the hydra now and you noticed that, while not evening yet the sun was on it way back down. You figured that it was in the afternoon right now.

You arrived at an area with fewer trees and where blue flowers covered the ground. The flowers had two rings of blades were the outer ring bent outwards and the inner bent inwards. Flower spores twirled out of the inner part of the flowers that had a little blue ball at the end of them.

Walking right into the flowerbed, you collapse in a heap and start to cry. You missed home.
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Tears rolled down your cheeks and dripped down on the flower pedals below. You were hugging yourself with your healthy hoof in an attempt to self-comfort and you also for the same reason stroke yourself on the back. You nuzzled yourself into the flower bed and smelled their scent. It smelled great and calmed your nerves somewhat. You felt sort of safe here even though you could not think of any reason for why you would be. Something told you that these flowers were avoided even though you had nothing to base this on, which  was a bit off putting and eire

At least you could conclude that if this was the, "My little pony universe" or whatever, the ponies weren't safe from predators. The bee-bear or whatever had probably been eaten by the hydra  and both had intended to hurt you. You would assume that they both had intended on killing you if it weren't for the fact that the hydra had been playing with you in the pond instead of just shallow you whole. It might have chased you for a sadistical sense of fun but that didn't seem to fit a children's show either. It was more probable that it knew you couldn't get away, you concluded, and that it played with you before eating you, like a cat those with a mouse.

Why were you even here

Lying on your unhurt hoof's side. you inspected your injured leg. Your coat on the hoof was no longer green. It was now blood clotted with the colors of dark red and brown. You

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Be Starswirl. You were woken up by the sun's beams when they were many enough to pass through your eyelids. You lied wrapped in a blanket in a minor clearing in the everfree forest. You began to stretch out your limbs when you bumped into a small, furry lump that was huddled up next to you. You looked down at the lump and saw that it was your apprentice, the colt prince Sombra of the Crystal Empire. He was sleeping peacefully in your embrace.

He had light grey, a zink-grey color for his fur and a pitch black mane and tail. His mane was thick quite long. You had to remind yourself to get him a haircut. Even though his mane was long, his face was still very visible since this mane was combed backward. It was a bit billowy.

You softly shook him out of his slumber. He blinked and yawned. He looked up at you with tired eyes. Then when it looked like he was about to go back to sleep, he shook awake and pushed himself away from you with his hooves. He had a large blush on his face. He clenched his teeth together and glare in the general direction. He was about to stand up and when you put a hoof on his shoulder.

"You don't fret it. It is nothing to be embarrassed by.  I don't mind you sleeping next to me. This is a dangerous forest after all," you said.

"I am not scared," he said, instantly and a bit louder than necessary.

You were about to ask him why then he didn't sleep on the spot he had fallen asleep in the night before and why his blanket was still there. However, you didn't want to push it. You were pretty sure he knew that you knew that he was not being honest.

You weren't sure about how you were going to go about teaching him. You had taught in magic before but that was mostly for young stallions and for a few young mares, who were an exception due to their often peculiar cutie marks. You had not taught a foal before neither had you been private teaching nor had you any experience in teaching in such an intimated relationship. You had been given the job by the King of the crystal empire and because of that, you couldn't decline. You had voiced your objection though, that if you were teaching a foal, you wouldn't have time for your research and you were one of his top mages. Your research was no doubt important for the empire. The king, however, had prioritized his son's education over possible future discoveries but he had made a compromise with you since he felt sympathetic towards your endeavor to research. You could continue with your research as long as his son was taught the things that he should and that you brought him along where ever you went. He had thought it would be educational for him to study you as worked. So now, you were practically his caretaker.

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Still Starswirl. You began to pack up your blanket and put it into you right saddlebag. Sombra followed your example and did the same but since he only had a small backpack, he put the blanket in it.

"We will continue to follow the bugbear's tracks after breakfast," you tell Sombra.

He looks back at you with wide eyes but looks away before it would seem like he was staring at you. He then nods but proceeds to bit his lower lip.

You bring out a piece of bread with your magic and levitates it over to him. Seating himself on the ground, he takes the bread in his magic and proceeds to take a bit of it. While he is eating the bread piece, you use a spell to slowly cut down the lush grass on the ground but before it falls on the ground you begin to levitate it. You bring it up to you and inspects it a bit and then you eat it. You had brought with you a bread loaf for Sombra's sake.

The Everfree forest's grass was nutritious but its taste took a time to get used to. He would anyway be eating it for dinner and supper so you thought that he could start the day with something that tasted good. But you wondered if your reason for spoiling him like this, was because he was a prince or because he was a child. You weren't sure if spoiling a child was a good idea in the first place or if this counted as spoiling. You weren't sure if you were cut out for this job but the king had seemed to differ and even gone so far to give you the rights to discipline the prince if necessary.

Sombra shoulders were pushed up and he seemed a bit tense. He glanced over his shoulder from time to time to look into the forest.

You had noticed his body language because you had been trying to understand him to make their relationship less tense that it was now. You only talked about the job and since your job was too advanced for a child it was hard for him to understand. The silence was most of your relationship and the boy had not opened up to you yet, which you thought was strange since he apparently felt safe enough with you to sleep next to you.

You had concluded from analyzing his body language that he was afraid of the Everfree, which was a fear that you couldn't genuinely seat partly because it was justified and partly because you rather he was scared than that he ran around carelessly. If something happened to him, it would be your head.            If that was literally, you weren't sure and you didn't want to find out.

You finished up your grass and waited for him to finish too. Then you walked up to the track of pawprints of the bugbear and began to follow it. You didn't need to gesture for Sombra to follow you. He had already run up to walk beside you.

The bugbear's tracks were not hard to follow. First, of had it been a big beer so its prints were twice your hoof size and secondly, also due to its size, the prints were deep.  After a while of following the prints, the ground went from grass to a rock surface which was covered here and there by green and white moss. Here the prints disappeared but you saw that natural path or trail lead further on the mountain so you decided to follow it as your best bet.
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Be Sombra. Looking about, you follow your teacher through the forest. You walked practically beside him but you let him take the lead. From time to time you glanced behind you.

If only you paid some attention to your surroundings, I won't have to look for monsters in every turn, you thought.

He, however, did not begin to watch his surroundings. No matter how hard you tried to push your thoughts into his head.

I should tell him- But what if he has reasons for it, then I will look like a fool, you thought. But then again, I rather be alive.

"Master Starswirl, why are you not surveiling for potential dangers," you said and you emphasized the word, "Master."

You felt like kicking yourself after that comment. You had been taught to titled ponies ever since you learned to speak. You had been taught that it was polite and therefore your intent was with empathizing the word master was to be respectful but now it came off as if you were sarcastic.

One of his eyebrows sunk down over his eye and he pushed his lips together to a thin line. He also put his head a bit to the side as he looked at you. Yeah, he had totally interpreted it as you were questioning his authority.

"Well, you see I do this or have this [insert reason]. So you see, I don't simply go about these things without thinking about them," he said.

You looked at the ground. Your face was flushed but you could also feel your face tense from annoyance. It had gone exactly the way you didn't want it to.

He turned back to the path he had found and you continued to follow him. You felt like you wanted to explain yourself. However, you didn't want to be perceived to be a pony who couldn't take being reprimanded. After a while, you couldn't stand the feeling in your chest anymore and you walked up in front of him and turned around to face him. You stopped him in his tracks.

"Master Starswirl, you see before when I asked you that question, I did not mean to sound disrespectful. I actually tried  to be respectful."

His eyebrows went upwards and his facial expression seemed to say, "Yeah, right."

"How?" he said.

"How, sir?"

"How were you actually trying to sound respectful?"

"I- I don't really know how to explained it"

Still looking at you skeptically, he seemed to force a smile on his face and nodded at the same time as he spoke the next words.

"Calm down and try to explain. We have time."

"I don't know a good  word for this but I said the word, "master" louder than necessary not to make fun of you but to show how much I do respect you."

You had been looking away while saying this to him. His eyes were so piercing even that even though you knew hadn't done anything wrong, you could feel yourself sink into the ground under his gaze.

You felt a hoof ruffle your mane, which caused you to look up. His special face had softened up and he now had a broad smile on his face.

"It is good that you talked to me about this. If we hadn't had this conversation we wouldn't know that is was all a misunderstanding."

You were a taken aback by this. You starred up at him.

"Why did you ask me about that?" you asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Dad, tells me that I can't take being wrong and that I only make up excuses so I don't think he would listen to me like you did. He wouldn't- I think the word is, "investigate" for an explanation like you did."

"Well, I also thought when you started talking as well, to be honest, but I it is a bit of my life philosophy. I am interested in finding the reason for why ponies do the things they do. I was just curious about you. If your reason didn't hold water, I would have told you so and nothing would have changed. If, however, your reason did make sense, then we would both be wiser, won't we? It also helps that I have time to hear you out right now."

 As he said the last part he winked at you with one eye. You smiled. What he said had made sense in your ears and it made you happy that he gave you the benefit of a doubt.

"However," he continued, "if you abuse this kindness and try to come up with convincing lies to trick me with, this kindness and so will my faith in you. You get what you deserve from me."

"No, I would never do that," you reponed instantly.

He laughed a bit at your quick response. "Of course you wouldn't. Now let's not brew over this anymore, we are getting close.

He pointed to a spot behind you, there on the ground lied a pile of droppings. From that spot paw prints, conveniently began to take form again, which you followed. After a little while of following the new tracks, you arrived at a minor clearing. To your right side was a steep cliff.

Your gaze wandered over the cliff's mountain wall and saw something cause to instantly fall down on your front hooves' knees and vomit

On the edge of the cliff, hanged from different entrails and intestines two sack one green one dark red from the cliff. The green one was much smaller than the red one. A large trail of blood ran down the mountain wall to the ground underneath.

You felt a hoof stroke your back and you felt the presence of your teacher beside you. Not wanting to see that sight again you looked straightforward instead. That was when you saw something that would have vomit again if you hadn't done so already.

Covered by festering flies, lied the bugbear's bottom, which was torn and it had its sting sticking up into the air.
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Be Starswirl. Sombra seemed to have calmed down a bit from the shock that he got from the disgusting sight on the mountain wall. His eyes were still big as saucers and he trembled slightly but he had stopped vomiting at least.

You thought nothing of his reaction since it was both gut-wrenching to see and Sombra had probably not seen to much gore before as prince. His home was a castle and that castle was in a city, which in turn had great walls. He was probably pretty sheltered from any type of gore. It probably didn't even matter to him that this was a bear's entrails he saw and not a pony's.

You motioned to him to not speak by making a gesture with your hoof. You brought up your hoof to your lips and made that typical, "hush now" sound. As you moved towards the bugbear's bottom, you noticed that the colt clung on to you. Well, he wasn't holding your legs while you walked forward since that would be impossible without falling. He just walked so close to you that he was practically leaning on to you as you walked.

The horde of flies that were feeding on the bottom flew up towards your face when you came up to it. It wasn't a problem though since you weren't one of the greatest wizards in the land for no reason. The cloud of flies that were going to land on your face, not for any particular reason that is just something they do, change their direction and flew away from you towards a bubble that just had appeared into existence behind them. Its surface was transparent and from its core glowed a golden light. When the flies penetrated the surface, they were zapped by an electric shock. They poured down on the ground. The stench from fried flies made Sombra cover his snout with his hooves.

You levitated the bottom up from the ground into the air. There you rotated it to dump the now dead flies that lied on it on the ground. Maybe you should have described this before but the bottom wasn't some kind of ass with two cheeks. It was like a bee abdomen. It was covered in fur that was stripped in the colors black and white. The stripes formed circles around the abdomen. Since the white stripes were wider than the black stripes, the black stripes looked like rings on a white-furred bee abdomen. The only parts that weren't in black and white were the gory torn up end that should have been connected to the rest of the bugbear's body and clotted blood speck on its fur.

___________________________________________________________

Be Sombra.

You see Starswirl open his left saddlebag with his magic. He levitated out a large glass jar, corresponding lid, and a large metal funnel. He pushed the jar into the ground to make it stable and then put the pipe part of the funnel inside the jar. Now you noticed that the funnel was a perfect match for the jar. The jar's opening meet the conically shaped part of the funnel before the pipe reached the bottom. This made the funnel stand stable.

As the bee abdomen was hovering exactly over the funnel's larger opening, it was engulfed in a transparent yellow-golden hued magic veil. Starswirl's horn was also engulfed in the same type of veil. The area that was attatched to the sting was jerked backward several times until it broke off. The sting's tube's inner diameter was rather large and a large amount of yellowish vanilla colored fluid pour out of it. The jar was almost full when the pour started to decrease and was replaced with just dripping of drops. Then Master Starswirl tossed the abdomen on the ground. He removed the funnel and screwed on the lid. Then he put the jar and after thoroughly wiping it off, back into the saddlebag.

The poison was what you had come for so now you could get out of here. You were very glad over this development since whatever kill the bugbear could still be lurking around here. You had already turned around and started to walk back from where you came when you noticed that Starswirl was not with you. You turned around to see that he had gone back to follow the bugbear prints. You quickly got up to his side and whispered,"Why aren't we leaving?"

"I want to see which ones of the big three it is," he said without looking at you. He only paid attention to the prints in front of him as he followed them.

"The big three?" You had wanted to ask if that was smart thing but that choose to satisfy your curiosity instead.

"Yes, there are three predators that are in a league of there own.  They are the dragons, the hydras, and the ursa majors. I doubt it was a cannibalistic bugbear that ate our friend here."

You were about to ask why then we still were here if there were potential monsters here but you didn't. You thought it was best not to pester him with such an obvious question. he probably had an answer for it. You did know what hydras and dragons were but you had never heard of ursas. You did, however, not ask about them but chose to ask about something else that was bothering you.

"How do you know it was eaten? It could have just been attacked by something. There are unicorns that I know that can cause explosions with their magic."

"Yes, but how do you blow something up without hurting the entire body except for the liver, gallbladder and the abdomen, which are extremely poisonous on bugbear. Why would an explosion remove them as if it would eat the rest?"

Starswirl glanced back over to your shoulder. You were looking away and it felt like you were scrunching a bit. He hadn't said it in a demeaning tone either. He had spoken very factually about it.

You and Starswirl followed the prints to a spot next to the mountain wall. Here you could see that a big body had slept on the grass since the grass was flattened here in weird shape. You also noticed that white and black hairs were lying haphazardly in the shape on the ground.

Starswirl look around the spot were the bear had slept and found that there was no other track that led to this spot or away from it. He looked up towards the cliff. The liver bag and the gallbladder hanged just above this spot. He walked up next to you.

His horn began to glow gold-yellow again. Suddenly,  you were blinded by a bunch of yellow lights that glimmered and you felt a strange pull and push, first towards Starswirl and then away. When you managed to see again, you noticed that the scenery had changed. You looked behind you and you confirmed that it was as you suspected. Starswirl had teleported you up the cliff.

The scenery in front of you shocked you so much that it made you gasp. There were trees that had either been uprooted or there trunks had been just broken off. Big branches covered the ground and huge prints that were the size of big tree trunks. The prints also indicated that the creature who had made the prints had four giant claws. Starswirl was already next to one of the prints. Shaken and trembling, you walked quietly up to him.

"It is a hydra," he whispered. "That is not good. They are, in my opinion, the worst of the three."

"Shalln't we go now?" You pleaded.

"Don't worry. That hydra has just eaten a big meal. it will be in a food coma for the next three days at least. It is probably sleeping and hydras like to be in water so if it sleeps in a lake or a pond nearby it won't hear us easily. And besides Sombra, I can teleport a long distance. I will get us to safety if it fins us." He patted you on your back.

This did calm you down. If Starswirl was so clam, then there was probably nothing to worry about but still being in possible close proximity to a hydra made you uneasy nonetheless.

"So why do you think it is the worst of the big three?"

___________________________________________________________

Small update today.
Still Sombra.

"Because they are sadistic beasts, there are many tales about them playing or torture their prey. They also seem to have quite the ego. There is an example of ponies that managed to escape one but later was followed by it. It is like their pride is hurt and they have to gain it back. Although, I don't know how much of it is truth and how much is exaggerated.  What is certain though is that the same is not said about either dragons or ursas."

As Starswirl talked you had looked at the path the hydra had taken to the cliff. It wasn't just because it had left prints through the grass and into the soil below, it was how a road, granted uneven with it has many stumps, tree-roots, logs and big branches, had been created. The trees that stood to the side of where the hydra had been contrasted the area where it had been since everything in the hydra's path had been demolished. It was also clear that it was the hydra who had done it since the branches that lied on the ground had still green leaves. An interesting thought, you deemed it that at least, came to you as you observed and listened to Starswirl.

"Master, do you think that the demolition of the trees is part of its ego? Like, it is trying to show how strong it is by tearing down these trees," you asked.

"You mean like a display of power. Yes, that sounds reasonable. I am impressed Sombra. Well, done!"

He seemed to get some kind of genuine autistic happiness surge through his body. He smiled warmly at you and nodded.

___________________________________________________________

Be Starswirl.

"I have a theory for what happened here. The bugbear flew up from its resting spot and took a sip in the nearest watercourse that must reside somewhere near because hydra's always stays near water. It was discovered by the hydra, the hydra damaged its wings so it could not fly away or attack successfully and then the bugbear tried to flee. The hydra then mockingly pursued and torn down the trees at the same time in a display of power until the bugbear was finally caught at the cliff since it no longer could escape by flying. I will just need to verify that it took this path by moving away the debris and find some paw print or something. But I think we both had enough for today. Let start moving towards hayseed swamp."

You walked up to Sombra, who seemed to be relieved to leave. You two teleported down the cliff. You brought out a map out of your right saddelbag and compass. You began to work out a fitting route. As you and Sombra walked in the direction corresponding to the route, you noticed a small trail of red dots leading in about the same general direction as you were. It was a blood trail some wounded animal.

You began to follow the trail backward, away from the original route, because you had seen that the blood spill had decreased further ahead. You and Sombra arrived back at clearing next to the mountain wall where you were before but at a different spot this time.

Here the blood trail and the blood loss was larger and you could clearly see the prints of whatever that had been injured. Your heart jerked at the realization. The prints on the ground were of pony hooves.

Sombra looked at you with shock in his eyes. You told him to step down with one of his hooves to compare. Naturally, he complied and you saw that his hoof was a bit bigger. It couldn't have been a too young foal who had managed to outrun a hydra. Maybe a filly.

"Sombra, change of plans. This child needs us. We will rescue it."