Chapter 13 - The Cursed Forest

As the group continued advancing, it became evident they wouldn't make it to the Hive that day, as they were still at mid-way, and arriving by flight or teleportation would set-off the Changelings' alarm spells, so they all agreed on advancing as much as possible and then take a short break. Spike, thanks to his Power Stone, could get unlimited stamina, but the others, even Adam, would need to rest a bit before entering the Hive.

"I think we should look for some high place to rest; maybe on top of a tree or some large rocks." Lobo suggested. "It will be safer, and with less bugs crawling on us while we try to sleep."

"Some are already crawling on us." Fumes groaned while using his dragon breath on his own skin, at low power, to get rid of several ants and other insects. The other dragons were having similar problems, while the Mobians had started scratching themselves; Applejack had avoided this problem by hitting the bugs away with her ponytails (both the hairdo and her normal tail) while Adam and Rarity used a low level spell to keep their coats and manes too slippery for the insects.

"Hey, we can use this to scratch our backs." Shakes grinned when finding a large rock, and started rubbing his back against it. On a closer look, however, it was evident this wasn't a normal rock; it was square-shaped, and seemed to be part of a huge pedestal.

"STOP RUBBING YOURSELF ON THAT!" Garble suddenly got very angry, and pushed Shakes away from the stone. The others were surprised at first until Puff looked up at the rock and pointed up, the other dragons noticing this and immediately apologizing to Garble, as they all almost followed Shakes' example before Garble snapped.

"Sorry, Garble, I didn't recognize it at first... it's been years since we were here!" Shakes was now honestly ashamed. The group's non-dragons, very puzzled by now, looked up at the stone, and realized it really was part of a pedestal, and, on top of it, there was a natural-sized adult dragon's statue. Even more, aside the statue's size, and some extra back and neck spikes, this dragon looked too much like Garble.

"This guy must've been pretty important to get a statue this big. Who was he anyway?" Spike asked the dragons.

"Avalor The Wise One, my brother." Garble sighed, shedding a tear; Nicole noticed this and placed a hand on his shoulder for comfort.

"Your brother... and... he's no longer around, is he?" Lupe sighed as well, realizing this was surely a posthumous monument.

"No, he's not. Because of..." Garble couldn't help but give the group's ponies a light glare, turning his back when it was becoming too intense.

"Oh, my... You mean, a pony... eliminated him?" Rarity gasped. "Maybe we're intruding too much, and feel free to ignore us if this is a painful subject, but... why? And how?"

Garble looked down, realizing he couldn't ignore this, the same way it was impossible to ignore a statue this size. Besides, at least, Rarity was asking in a very polite and respectful way, something Garble actually appreciated. The red dragon took a deep breath and started telling the story.

"My brother... well, as you can see from the statue, he was much older than me. A couple centuries older, actually. For the non-dragons and Spike here, I'm gonna tell you this is more or less common among dragons; since we can live for centuries, our parents can have kids every few hundred years. Anyway... my brother... he fell in love... with a pony." Garble barely could say the last part.

"Whoa. So, I wasn't the first one." Spike thought, remembering his former crush on Rarity.

"You know how he got the 'Wise' nickname? Because he liked to learn; he read any book or scroll he could find, and because of that he had a lot more knowledge than most dragons twice his age; and since the only ones who write books are the ponies, he had a lot of contact with them... and because of that, he usually was much more well behaved than the average dragon... Heh, he actually was a lot like Spike, just much bigger."

Spike smiled a bit at this; he liked the idea of him not being the first dragon having good relationships with the ponies.

"Because of his contact with the ponies... he eventually met this mare... she was very impressed with Avalor. And... she had lost her sister some time before meeting him... and she didn't have too much immediate family... so... they started spending a lot of time together. So much, they started falling in love. I don't remember any time Avalor was happier."

Garble sighed and looked down now.

"However... it was still a hard-to-work relationship. She was very busy; I mean, she had lots of responsibilities... especially since her sister was gone, and now she had to do her job too... so her time with Avalor was very limited. And because of that, the other ponies didn't get too used to seeing Avalor as her couple... they started seeing him as a monster. Back then he wasn't as big as the statue, but he was still much bigger than anypony, and still very impressive. Eventually, some ponies feared he'd eventually become dangerous, just like Discord a few centuries before that... guess that my brother being a dragon, and Discord looking a lot like a dragon didn't help either... so... these ponies decided to... finish my brother."

The others were completely silent by now.

"Several unicorns came up with a spell that would make my brother get back to his 'baby dragon' age... so his girlfriend could educate him from a very early age and make sure he'd never become a monster... but the spell didn't work. Instead of making him a baby dragon, they aged him to full adult... and the spell changed him so fast and... painfully... Argh... I still can hear his roaring in my nightmares. Avalor was in super pain when he got changed!"

Realizing Garble was feeling now very bad about retelling this story, Fumes decided to continue it for him.

"You guys know that greed can age a dragon very quickly, right? Well, the problem with that quick aging is that, if it's too fast, the dragon has problems controlling him/herself, and acts like a wild-er animal. Avalor became the monster those ponies were trying to stop in the first place."

"Irony strikes again." Lobo sighed.

"And even worse irony... Avalor's girlfriend was the only one strong enough to stop him." Garble talked again.

"His girlfriend... whoa, hold on." Applejack gasped. "A super powerful mare, that had lost her sister and was doing both their jobs, and had lots of responsibilities... Yah aren't saying this mare was..."

"Princess Celestia." Garble groaned, shocking Spike and the non-dragons. "She tried to... calm him down... but Avalor was so furious and so big that it was impossible to reason with him; when I tried to do it, Princess Celestia herself had to save me from my own brother! And even the other adult dragons couldn't stop him either; it was... ugh... it was so bad that... Princess Celestia had to use her strongest attack spell to stop him."

"Oh, no." Leeta gulped.

"B-but Celestia can stop a monster (no offense) by turning it into stone or some other non-lethal way, right?" Lyco asked.

"Yes, but when she stopped Discord, she did it with the help of Princess Luna, and the same happened with some other monsters and super villains; without Luna to help her, Princess Celestia couldn't use... uh... what's the word... when you are having... compassion..."

"Merciful." Nicole helped him.

"Yes; merciful magic. Princess Celestia couldn't use spells that wouldn't... k-kill Avalor... at least, the spells that wouldn't hurt him wouldn't stop him either... so, she used a very powerful attack called Dragon Slayer." Garble and his gang cringed at the mere mention of this spell.

"I've heard about that spell. It's the magical equivalent of a super volcanic eruption. Only for the most desperate situations." Adam added.

"Yeah... after the spell hit my brother, there wasn't enough left of him to bury." Garble sighed sadly. "Princess Celestia then made this monument to honor him... but of course, the damage was already done; after Avalor's death, ponies and dragons were no longer that social with each other. In fact, before meeting Spike, I hadn't met any other dragon close to ponies."

Spike was now very thoughtful, and realized something; his own VERY close relationship with Princess Celestia was probably influenced by her past romance with Avalor. She probably saw her mentoring of a young dragon as a way to make up for Avalor's death.

"So... what Celestia did for me... it's pretty much the same those ponies wanted her to do with Avalor. Raise a young dragon and see him as a surrogate son instead of a love interest." Spike commented.

"In that case, I can say she did a good job with you." Sally said to Spike. "Still, it was a very tragic ending for her and Avalor's story. Sorry about that, Garble."

"Yeah... not the best way to get a good image of us ponies." Applejack added, looking at Garble with an almost apologetic expression.

"Thanks... okay... let's get going before I start 'sweating by my eyes', alright?" Garble groaned a bit, making it obvious he wanted to drop this conversation as he was in the verge of tears.

The group nodded at this and started walking away from the huge monument, some of them, especially Adam and Spike, making mental notes about talking with Princess Celestia about this when getting back to Canterlot.

After a while, the group decided to take a break and set camp. They all dispersed a bit to look for a good place, when Lyco noticed something in a tree.

"Hey, Leeta, come see this." The wolf called her twin, and soon they were both checking out a series of markings on some trees. They didn't look like claw marks, so, obviously, no wild animal had made them, but the whole place smelled like a mix of dry wood and canine fur, not to mention a stinky scent they didn't recognize.

"Mmm... wonder what these marks mean..." Lyco started touching the marks, and then noticed a few of them resembled a wolf's head. "Do you think these marks are part of that Timberwolf's Curse the Diamond Dogs were talking about?"

"Maybe... but those dogs' heads are harder than their diamonds. They didn't even know the details of the curse." Leeta reminded her as they continued seeing the marks. Suddenly, the marks started glowing, and before the twins could say another word, their eyes started glowing as well, both sisters freezing on the spot. Then, the trees around them started producing a smelly mist that covered their bodies.

"Ugh. What's that smell?" Amy, who was a few yards away, covered her nose.

"Sorry: it was me. I ate some wild beans I found awhile ago..." Fumes started apologizing.

"No, that's not the smell she's talking about." Lupe took a deep sniff. By now, most of the group was sensing it. "What's that stench..."

"Timberwolf's breath." Applejack, Rarity and Spike chorused. They would recognize this smell anywhere.

"Hey, where are the twins?" Fiona asked. Then, she and all the other elastic ones started stretching their necks to get a high point of view and search around. The dragons followed their example and started flying around the area.

"Leeta! Lyco! Girls, where are..." Maria got closer to where Lyco and Leeta had found the marked trees, and felt the awful smell becoming more intense. Maria decided to play it safe and transformed her hands into large fans while making her arms bigger and more muscular, to fan away the horrible smell; this proved to be a good idea as she soon found the mist, and she could move it away with her improvised fans. "Ah, there you... are... uh... this isn't a... conscious transformation, right?"

The twins were now standing on four legs, and had increased their size at least 3 times, plus having a furious, feral look on their faces, and their fangs and claws being sharp and big enough to cut a bear in half. Maria realized immediately that Leeta and Lyco's current state wasn't the result of their normal shape-shifting, as the twins eyes had turned a bright, glowing green, and they were now exhaling the very same stinky mist from their muzzles.

"Everypony... and dragon... COME QUICKLY!" Maria yelled at her companions. Unfortunately, Lyco and Leeta heard her, and reacted by pouncing on her. Maria barely evaded them by transforming her legs into a large spring and bouncing up, escaping the twins' jaws by mere inches.

The dragons were the next ones to arrive, and gasped at the sight of Lyco and Leeta's feral change, especially Fumes and Shakes. They were so shocked they didn't react when the twins charged at them, and Garble had to breath a large flame to stop them; this didn't help for long, as Lyco and Leeta jumped over the fire and tackled all the dragons at once. Luckily for the reptiles, the rest of the group had already arrived, and they managed to fight the sisters back and force them to retreat.

"What happened here?" Applejack said when finally getting her breath back.

"I don't know! They were acting like... well... animals; wild animals, I mean!" Maria explained. "I found them standing over there, and they attacked me the moment they saw me."

"Let's go check that." Adam nodded at Spike and they both went to see the place Maria told them. Adam recognized the marks on the trees as a very old language that nopony but an experienced alicorn like himself would even remember.

"These are curse marks. Anypony... or whatever... touching them and staying here for more than a few minutes would activate a magical trap. This is how Timberwolves are born... the magical mist transforms the plants that are exposed to it for some time, and get a wolf's characteristics." Adam frowned.

Spike then used the Time Stone, combined with the Reality one, to see scenes from this trap's past, confirming Adam's theory. Spike saw how, every once in awhile, some animal (a bird, a squirrel or a large enough bug) would touch the marks long enough to activate the spell, and besides getting changed themselves into mini-wolf-likes, the mist would also spread and, after some time, affect the nearby plants, creating the Timberwolves. Spike went a bit further, finding the exact moment when this curse was created.

"Mmm... it's a mix of unicorn and changeling magic... with some dragon fire added to the mix." Spike frowned. The spell was originally casted by some corrupt yet powerful unicorns, getting paid by the Changelings, and using a torch with dragon fire to complete the magic. Apparently, the Changelings had wanted to create a mix-up of Magical Trap and Watchdogs Surveillance System; anypony trying to sneak into their hive would be transformed by the mist if touching the marks, or, if evading the trees, getting attacked by the Timberwolves and/or the transformed animals.

"You can see if there's a cure?" Adam asked him.

"No... which means we'll need to create our own cure. Twilight, Zecora, how much I miss you both." Spike groaned.

"I think I might have a solution; the spell is affecting their minds, right?" Sally, who had joined Spike and Adam shortly after Spike started using the Time and Reality Stones, asked the dragon.

"Yes... but I don't know if I can heal them completely just by using the Mind Stone. And I don't wanna risk hurting them if I use the Reality one to force a change." Spike explained.

"But Lyco and Leeta are shape-shifters, Spike. You don't need to change their bodies; if you can heal their minds, they'll be able to change back by themselves." Sally pointed out. "Also, you can use the Soul Stone so they can get in 'touch' with their real selves."

"That's a good plan." Adam pointed while looking at the trees. "You go find the twins and try helping them, and send Garble and the other dragons here. We need to destroy the curse so it won't affect anypony else, and I'm pretty sure the reason the original spell included dragon fire is to make the marks and trees invulnerable to anything but dragon fire itself."

Spike and Sally nodded and went back with the rest of the group, telling everything to them and sending the dragons to help Adam get rid of the cursed trees. Even if Spike himself could have burned the trees, it was a good idea to give the other dragons something to do while the rest of the group tracked down Lyco and Leeta.

Lupe, Lobo, Maria and Fiona started sniffing around, getting Lyco and Leeta's scent almost immediately. Then, the group started separating into teams in order to close any escape route and catch the twins. Those with elastic powers and Spike (via his Reality-made wings) would get an aerial point of view, moving around via the trees, while the ponies and Lobo would follow by foot... or paw and hoof; plus, they'd have a very important yet dangerous mission.

"Live bait... ugh, couldn't we use a piece of cheese?" Rarity gulped a bit, not liking this job at all.

"Only if yah have a mouse trap the size of a train wagon." Applejack replied.

"Quiet... I think they're getting closer." Lobo said while getting alert... or more than usual.

A second later, Lyco and Leeta jumped out of some bushes and attacked the trio. Lobo jumped to push Rarity out of the way when Lyco tried to bite her while Applejack did her own attack, a roundhouse double kick at Leeta's muzzle. Then, Rarity used her magic to throw several twigs and small stones at the twins, not making a real damage but keeping them distracted.

"NOW!" Lobo yelled while looking up. An instant later, several colorful nets and ropes fell over the twins; meaning all the elastic ones were morphing into a living trap.

Lyco and Leeta resisted them but soon they got immobilized; luckily, as wild animals, they didn't remember their own elastic powers so they couldn't use them to escape. Still, their sheer strength was making it difficult to keep a hold on them.

"Spike, now, do it!" Sally, who had only morphed her hands and therefore was still more than capable of talking, turned at Spike, who then jumped down a tree and pointed at the twins with his staff, the Mind and Soul's Stones glowing intensely.

"Time to get back to normal, Girls." Spike thought while making mental contact with them both. Lobo then howled loudly to alert Adam and the dragons so they could join them.

Spike used the Soul Stone to calm down the twins' wild side, pretty much getting in contact with their 'nice side'. The dragon smiled a bit when this started working, realizing this wasn't too different to how Fluttershy tamed wild beasts, by getting in touch with the animals' wild and soul selves.

With the twins no longer resisting, Spike could start working on their minds. At first, Spike could only see feral, instinctive thoughts, but when finally finding a few memories, he could take them up to the twins' conscious mind, and from that moment, all the memories and normal personality started returning as well. Making a final 'link' between each twin's mind with her respective soul finished the job.

When Spike got out of the wolves' minds and souls, he used the Time Stone to see how long he had been doing this; he was a bit surprised when finding out the whole process took more than an hour.

"No wonder they look so tired." Spike thought while looking at Lyco and Leeta slowly morphing their bodies back to normal, both girls unconscious by now. When the elastic ones returned to their own normal shapes to stop trapping them, Shakes and Fumes moved to the twins' side, Shakes holding Leeta and Fumes doing the same with Lyco when they were finally out of the trap.

"Will they be alright?" Nicole asked Spike, who looked a bit tired himself due to the mental effort.

"Yeah... I got them completely back to normal." Spike explained. "And the cursed trees..."

"They're now cursed ashes." Garble informed him.

"Good. Yah think that, by destroying the trees, the Timberwolves and those already transformed by the curse will get back to normal too?" Applejack asked Adam.

"I doubt it, Applejack. If it was that simple, Spike wouldn't have needed to heal the twins; burning down the trees would have been enough." Adam replied. "Still, at least, the curse will never ever affect anypony else."

"Good to know." Lobo sighed in relief while looking at the dragons holding Lyco and Leeta. "I think they need to rest now. Let's find a camping spot and try to sleep for a couple of hours before continuing."

The others agreed with Lobo, and a few of them couldn't help but smile a bit when looking at Shakes and Fumes carrying the girls bridal style, both dragons having nice, loving smiles all the way.