Foregone Fables Chapter ???: WE ARE YOU

Soundtrack: Dreamer's Paradise

Two suns circling each other began to rise over a thick tangled jungle, painting its sky yellow as many of the forest's animals began to wake up and others returned to their slumber. Before long, some of these animals began to notice that this morning was colder than most; Initially they paid no mind, nor were many of them concerned with the clouds in the sky thickening and beginning to snow.

For the smaller ones, the snow did make it harder to navigate. Inside the woods, a few mice scattered around looking for any signs of carrot greens aboveground, and found none.

And then a green shoebill-like bird suddenly descended on one of the mice and ripped it in half with its claws, screeching in inexplicable rage. A few of the other mice were close enough to see this even in the snow, and while normally seeing something like this would make them panic, today they would find themselves filled with hate and swarm at the bird, biting it violently until it bled out.

In response, several more green birds began descending upon mice all over the forest, and the white snow began to be stained red. From a distance, a small racoon-like creature watched the animals slaughtering one another and attempted to run away, only for the very earth he was standing on to suddenly morph into a large maw and bite the racoon in half.

As snow began falling above a tower of lilypads in a large swamp and the water around it began to freeze, the sound of clashing and screaming drew the attention of a small pair of turquoise eyes, which then revealed itself as a cat made of glowing light with a purple and turquoise body in a checkerboard pattern. "Goodness. This is an eyesore." It grunted. "I better leave before any of them can -"

And then a pale blue bird caught the cat in its beak and slammed it into the tower's stem. In response, the cat teleported behind the bird in a flash of pixels and retaliated by breathing a blue bolt of energy from its mouth, burning its body and feathers. Several more creatures began to surround it, and it growled as its body grew in size, becoming bipedal and black and white with gigantic claws.

Far away on a plain covered with sheets of paper, small star-shaped creatures made of several disembodied chunks of crystal were bashing one another's bodies with their fingerless crystal limbs over a burning village made entirely of origami. One of them, a sickly yellow creature and the only flawed gem in the village, ran towards a dam at the edge of the settlement and began pounding and cracking it, only for a red gem creature to jump it from behind and whale at it, sending cracks across the yellow gem's head - Until an invisible apparition of smoke rose out of the ground and entered the yellow one's body, healing its cracks and its sickness before it pushed the red gem away and reached into the water leaking out of the dam, freezing and shaping it into a crystal shard that it used to hit the red gem until it shattered. The apparition proceeded to leave the yellow gem's body and take its mind with it, leaving its lifeless body to collapse next to its former friend.

In the throne room of a dark castle of warped crimson hallways, toy guards were bisecting and dismembering each other with halberds as a furious Prince with porcelain skin barged into the room commanding in vain for them to stop. "If this insurrection won't cease, then so be it!" The Prince shrieked, seeing his soldiers won't listen to him. "Go forth, my Pawns!"

From a shelf next to the throne jumped a battalion of red and white stone pawns with spears, and with a wave of the Prince's hand, they grew even larger than the guards - Only to completely ignore them and instead beeline towards their own Prince. The image of the guards faded into mist, revealing all of them were already dead, and for perhaps the first time in his life, the Prince's perpetual rage turned to terror.

As the various creatures of the island were slaughtering one another, a single figure walked calmly over the frozen water of the swamp, towards the now lifeless body of the Cat. It appeared metallic in nature, a vaguely humanoid construct of rusted steel with a blacksmith's apron and hollow eyesockets.

"As I worried…" The Blacksmith whispered somberly. "Both of my precious gifts have fallen the same hour… And despite so many others falling with them, there was no one to release them towards Ascension. This strange affliction cannot be allowed to continue infesting this world… But first, I must guide you to the same destination that you guided your brethren."

Saying this, roots from below the bottom of the lake broke through the ice and gently enveloped the Cat, dragging him underground and pulling his body - Along with one other body - To the very center of the island, where a massive tree with multicolored leaves was waiting to take them into itself.

Soundtrack: Thundering Doom of Worlds

And then, all of a sudden, the ground beneath the Tree began to rumble, and a pall of darkness spread from it to engulf the island in its entirety. The morning sky became darker than the night, weakening the Blacksmith as every living thing beside her was sliced and disintegrated. Before they could do anything, the Great Tree was ripped by the roots as a gigantic, spiky creature resembling a Mutant Centinel with four serrated scythe-like talons burst out of the ground with the entire Tree in its mouth, lifting it from the ground to beyond the edge of space while biting its massive mandibles at ridiculous speeds and chomping it down its continental throat. It then turned to the Blacksmith, looking at her with a second dragon-like face with three pairs of glowing eyes between its jaws - Which itself had a skull-like third face between its eyes, with a large forehead that had three additional eyes on it.

"A Fiend…" The Blacksmith whispered in fear and bitterness. "This place was supposed to be free of them."

The Fiend's skull-face laughed in response, using the jagged dragon it was attached to as a substitute for a jawbone. "A bold assertion coming from you!" It said in the Blacksmith's own language, one that was long-forgotten on Remnant. "You've already been betrayed by the very Demons who made a deal with you, but they can no longer protect you now, Carpenter. This farce you call the Ever After has been tolerated for far too long, and I was appointed to bring its destruction once and for all!"

"Appointed by who?" The Blacksmith asked, more infuriated than afraid despite the darkness weakening her. "Those fledgling brothers who wished to bring Remnant to its knees? The polymorph trickster I drove away from its moon?"

"That is not for you to know. Your world's axis has already fallen, and soon you will join it!" The Mutant Cenitaur responded, lightning and thunder accompanying its voice.

"The Mother Tree was not this world's axis." Said the Blacksmith. "It was an extension of my own power, made to sustain the cycle of Ascension which I created with my own hand. The Tree does not bestow Ascension... I do!"

Saying this, the Blacksmith gestured her arm, and a wooden statue arose from the ground, a statue with the appearance of the Cat mixed with that of a strange humanoid creature with long horns. The statue cracked and broke open with a burst of light, allowing a new being to emerge out of it - A humanoid of black, white, purple and gold energy with a lengthy, slender, feline-like body, two bladed tails, a helmet-like face with two pairs of horns and a distorted fanged mouth, bug-like eyes with a black and gold checkerboard pattern, four long arms with large and sharp claws, and an even larger vertical maw at the back of its neck.

"Taking you on myself is beneath me, Fiend. You shall be ended by this Glorious Gatekeeper, born from the two gifts given to me by the four Demons. And once I rebuild my Ever After at the wake of this last stand, your wicked masters will be the first of its sacrifices!"

Soundtrack: From Heights Below

The Glorious Gatekeeper opened its mouth and roared, firing a massive beam of dark energy at the Mutant Cenitaur, which opened its dragon maw in response and fired a wave of burning hot lava-like acid, matching the beam and canceling it out. It proceeded to swing one of its four talons, creating a jagged, bird-shaped air blade that the Gatekeeper was forced to dodge, and then breathed out a salvo of ice shards before turning each of its thousands of centipede legs into a twisted humanoid fist with claws and armor and pummeling it with a dash, reshaping the terrain of the island with every movement.

Watching this, the Blacksmith clenched her fist as the two beings around her began to slow down, stop and reverse, leaving the enemy behind and escaping to the past - Only for space itself to distort in return as the Cenitaur followed her backwards in time, its humanoid face's eyes flashing as a portal appeared beneath her feet and she was pushed back to the present through it.

"Those tricks won't work on me, monster!!" The Gatekeeper shouted as it jumped at the Cenitaur from behind; The monster's main centipedic maw spat out sticky dark webs that restrained it, only for the Gatekeeper to snake and slither out of them and then land a barrage of claw strikes and tail whips at its humanoid face. Not only was the Mutant undamaged, the Blacksmith's own rusted armor began to take damage with each hit her creation landed.

"That damnable being could curse me!?" The Blacksmith panted.

"That is your punishment for trying to escape!" The Cenitaur laughed, summoning a long magical blade of darkness and grasping it in one of its arms before gashing the Blacksmith's armor once more. The cut on her metal body began to extend as the metal around it was deteriorating, revealing there was nothing underneath but flowing energy light brown as the trunk of a tree.

The Blacksmith only grinned as the rest of her metal shell crumbled, revealing a pure energy form of a faceless humanoid with horns resembling branches. "It's been eons since anyone has laid their eyes on my true form." She spoke. "You who laid waste to my creation will be killed by me, the God of the Woods!"

Turning into a pillar of energy and launching itself upwards, the God of the Woods summoned dozens of swords that flew towards the Cenitaur and cut its skin while the Glorious Gatekeeper rapidly swiped its claws and sent energy blades to strike it further, but its body only continued to heal as it transformed and grew wings before striking both of its opponents with ice spikes and lightning bolts it summoned from its body.

"You're sorely mistaken if you believe you have the upper hand now. Let's see what your Godly power is worth against THIS!!" The Mutant Cenitaur exclaimed as its whole body twisted, spinning like a massive drill that launched itself right at the Blacksmith. Transforming into a giant dinosaur-like dragon with five horns, both her and the Gatekeeper breathed out massive beams of light and dark energy that then combined into one and repelled the Grimm. Not wasting a second, the dragon turned back into a humanoid, the Glorious Gatekeeper transformed itself into a distorted energy blade in the Goddess' hand, and with a single swing, the Mutant Cenitaur was cleaved in half from head to tail…

…Only for each half of the monster to regenerate into a whole Mutant Cenitaur. The Blacksmith didn't even have time to scream before one of them fired an enormous energy beam from its mouth, propelling her into the mouth of the other as it devoured her soul.

Both monsters then coiled around one another's bodies, crossing their arms to create the shape of a double helix, and flew away into the Ever After's sky. As they did, a rift opened before the sky itself shattered like a dome of glass, revealing the greater sky of Remnant and its vast oceans were encompassing this realm all along.