//------------------------------// // And then Dialog :( // Story: The Lullaby of the Lich // by Gearhorn //------------------------------//         I was excited, standing in front of me was a means of possible negotiations, I was ecstatic. All it had to do was answer me, hopefully with a nod of its head, but before it could answer, a arrow shot through its eye. I look over to see who did it, the culprit was one of the townsfolk, one of the ones that had tried to kill me. I was pissed, there before me was the dead remains of what could had been a way to talk to the enemy leader, no I was not happy.         “Thanks for the help! That one caught me by surprise, nearly made a snack out of me!” I said sounding for all the world genuinely happy that he had killed the drake, no need to vent on the villagers. Don’t want them to think I am a jerk, even if the timing of his arrow was a little off....yeah, I needed to get more info about this place, and why these creatures were fighting. There are always reasons behind a conflict. Thinking about it, the drakes at the gate seemed to be acting strange, for starters they didn’t seem to be using their fire.                  But then wasn’t the time for deep thought, while I had been thinking, the pegasus had been looking around, no doubt trying to find another drake to kill, and he found one, or rather one found him. While he was looking toward the ground for a drake one bomb dived him, as it dove closer I saw fire building in its open mouth, being a good hero I did the only thing I could - I tackled the pegasus. Knocked him right out of the air, falling in a tangle of limbs, I noticed something, we were going to land in a nice cart of hay, or so I thought. No, fate was not that kind, we landed on the pile of rocks right beside it, with the pegasus landing on top of me.         With my sight slowly dimming, I looked down and saw a pool of blood slowly forming, which was REALLY bad, lichs, liches, lichs...whatever I was, don’t bleed much. Looking back up I saw the pegasus trying to get up, and then I saw the drake land behind him. Waiting, struggling with all my might to hold on to consciousness, I waited for the drake to get close, then I pulled all the strength I could into sending a blood tendril through its eye, killing it. I smile, “Hehe, got ya” I say weakly. All of my joy fades though when with the last of my consciousness I saw the drake fall directly toward me. ------         I woke up sometime later, the sun shining in my face, still laying on the rocks, with my drake corpse blanket keeping me warm. That’s when I realized something. “That ass... flank, he left me here to die, AFTER I SAVED HIM!!!”         I was not a happy undead pony vampire lich thing, to say the least. Having healed on my own over night, and managing to sleep through most the night, which didn’t actually help me be any less tired at all, thanks to the fact that I was healing the whole time, I felt about the same as I did the day before, tired.         Pushing the drake off of me with relatively little effort, I rolled over, and got to my hooves. The day was new, I hadn’t gotten attacked by a group of ponies yet, I was still the self declared leader of a town...probably, even better I wasn’t dead, to say the least things were looking good. Skipping over to Fluffies office I started to sing Smile, just to complete the overly happy thing I had going, plus, the song rocks. Halfway to his office I realized something, I didn’t know the whole song, so I tried to mash it with the parts of ‘Winter Wrap Up’ that I knew. To say the least it didn’t make any sense at all, okay maybe a nickel worth of sense, but that's all. I was still singing this monstrosity, when I barged into Captain Fluffies office. Spotting Fluffy behind his desk I greet him ecstatically, “Hello Fluffy!” I say musically before jumping over the table to hug him. Yeeeuup, he is still just as soft as his name implies, though he did smell a bit of sweat.         “Hello” he replied nervously. I instantly sober up, realizing what was wrong.         “I have something on my face don’t I?”         “Yes.” He said, still trying to squirm away from me, I let him go.         “Le sigh, where is a sink?”         “There is a shower to the right, third door on the left.”         “Thanks!” I say once again peppy. Turning to leave for the shower, I noticed that we weren’t alone, sitting opposite of Captain was Blitzkrieg. “Hi Blitz, how are you?” I ask sincerely. Sure he may have tried to impale me, set me on fire, and have me torn apart by a angry mob, but it all failed, so I was willing to forgive him.         “Hi.” he said, he was trying to act gruff, but the way that he was scooting his chair away from me didn’t really help his image.         “Sorry about starting a fight yesterday.” I said extending a blood covered hoof, got to tease him a bit.         “Yeah, no problem.” He said trying to look anywhere but at my hoof, I start to smile.         “Don’t you think you should hurry, and clean up Red Tide” Captain Fluffy said, while staring at me, clearly not happy with me teasing his soldiers.                  “I do suppose you’re right, I hope we can all work well together in the future, Blitz. The safety of the town depends on it, and so does your own” I added quickly, before hurriedly escaping out the door. Okay, so I may have still been holding a teensy bit of a grudge.         The showers were easy enough to find with the captains directions, walking in I found them similar to a high school shower. The floor was stone carved in such a way to allow traction, but allowing the water to drain, the showerhead and faucet looked like plain, there was little shelves in the wall every so often to allow soaps to be held. While studying all this I failed to notice one glaring detail, the woman showering in the far corner, pony woman, old filly, mare that’s it. Anyway, I didn’t notice her till I was nearly all the way to her. When I finally did notice her, I froze, my mind just locked up. A good two minutes later I realized that I was also of the female gender, and then I realized that ponies just about never wear clothes anyway. So, everything was ok...right?         Realizing that me seeing her wasn’t some sort of social taboo, I actually paid attention to what she looked like. She had a cutie mark of a boot, she was a pegasus with rather well defined muscles, almost like a gymnast would have, she had a light blue coat, and a rather long orange mane that was soaked through due to her showering. With her identifiable details listed in my head, I turned on the shower in front of me, and started to wash up. First I started with my teeth scrubbing them as hard as I could with my hoof, then came the hard part, getting all the blood out of my mane and coat. I tried to scrub off the blood with my hoof, while allowing hot water to pour down on it. This worked pretty well for the most part, but after consulting the mirror on the beam in the middle of the room I noticed my coat was still a bit too dark, and there were still patches of dried blood. I went back to showering.         “Hey, kid” I looked up at the pegasus.         “Yes.” I answered politely, didn’t really like being called kid, but that was what I was, so I let it slide.         “You really should have cleaned that blood off of yourself sooner, once it sets dries it’s pretty hard to get off. Actually how did you get all that blood on you anyway?”         “Oh, thanks!” I honestly didn’t know about the whole blood stain thing, I’ll admit my mom still does my laundry, it’s really the only nice thing she does for me anymore. Now I know that sounds childish, but she did try to make me pay for rent in junior high. When I had no way to get a job...         “Not a problem.” She responds.         “As for how I got covered in blood, I fought some drakes, and won.” I said while extending my fangs and showing them to her.         “So, you’re ‘Red Tide’, eh?”         “Yes ma'am, that do be I” I said taking a bow. “So, I’m already famous?”         “Hehe. Try, infamous.”         “Meh, close enough.” I said shrugging, this elects a laugh from her.         “Close enough, eh, so you don’t mind most of the town hating you?” She asked with a slight grin on her face.         “Wow, rough question there, but honestly, no, I don’t care. I plan on getting as many ponies to safety as I can, and if they hate me for defending myself, well they can just get over it, or not it’s their decision. I really don’t care, I still plan on saving them, even if they do hate me... though I may cause problems for them if they are overly hostile.” I said, letting a evil smirk spread across my face. She actually shivered a bit at my expression. “So, anyway what is your name?” I said going back to scrubbing my fur, not that it was doing much.         “Name is Lead Hoof” She says proudly. “and in case you were wondering, my cutie mark is for kicking flank”         “OH MY GOD!!!” I said going into full on fanboy mode, complete with squealing. “That has to be the best cutie mark in the history of cutie marks!!”         “Hehe, thanks kid” She said blushing slightly.         “Oh oh oh oh!” I said jumping around, nearly slipping in the shower. “Can we fight later?”         “Sure, we can spar some time, just don’t complain when you lose” She said with a cocky grin on her face. “Well, I need to go report to Captain, he will want to know how the manticore extermination went.”         “Cool, I need to talk to him as well.” So, I followed her to where the towels were kept, then we both dried off and went back to Fluffies office. Walking in behind Lead Hoof, I noticed that Blitzkrieg was gone.         “Hello Captain” Lead Hoof said giving a smart salute.         “How did the mission go?”         “The mission went well, we managed to kill thirteen manticores, and wounded several more.”         “Good, maybe we won’t have to worry about them attacking us while we are gathering food anytime soon.”         “That would be nice”  Lead Hoof said.         “Hmmm, so you want all the manticores in the area killed? If so I can send Kindle after them, he could use a good meal.”         “Kindle?” The Captain ask me.         “Yeah, he is my bone drake.”         “Bone drake, what is that?” Lead Hoof ask         “Well, I used my necromancy to reanimate a drakes bones and now I am hiding him out in the forest.”         “Necromancy?” Lead Hoof asked.         “It’s a type of magic that perverses the natural cycle of life and death, it is capable of reanimated corpses, creating golems, and at higher levels bringing life to things that have lost their life, or that never lived. The good spells though are so freakin hard to complete, I mean in order to actually revive someone properly, I have to actually go down into Tartarus and find the individual soul. Though I do suppose that the soul location spell would make that rather easy, but then there is Tartanium, which just f’s magic over.” Finally taking a breath, I continued on. “Anyway to sum it up, with necromancy I can make things move that shouldn’t be able to, and under certain conditions can give true life to objects.”         “Oh” Both of them said together         “So, do you want me to send my bone drake construct to search and destroy manticores?”         “Yes?” Captain said not quite sure.         “Do you need me to have him kill anything else while he is out, or do you need him keep any of the parts from the dead?”         “If you could kill some coctirce as well, and keep the tails of the manticores that would be great.”         “Keeping the tails for the poison?” I asked. I mean anything with the tail of a scorpion seems a bit dangerous to me.         “Yes” Fluffy responded.         “Cool,” I relayed the orders to Kindle, and off he went. “Kindle is on his way, so anything else that needs to be done.”         “No, that should be all, not counting the drakes of course.” Captain said.         “Oh, well I heard there was some diamond dogs near here, and that they had kidnapped some ponies.”         “What?!” Both of them said at once.         “Is that where Cold Steel went?” Lead Hoof asked.         “I thought he had gotten killed by the wild life, but being enslaved by diamond dogs seems more likely. He never was good at against them, always breathed in the sleeping gas.” Fluffy said matter-of -factly.         “They have sleeping gas?” I asked         “Sleeping gas, explosive flask, and burrowing under their target are all common tactics for diamond dogs.” Lead foot said.         “Sounds fun!” I exclaimed, they both look at me like I am mad.”What, I like a good fight, and I haven't had one in a long time.”         “And fighting most of the village didn’t count?” Fluffy ask, I just shake my head.         “I had to hold back, and make sure they didn’t kill each other.” I explained.         “What about the drakes?”         “I killed them as quickly as possible, only one actually got to throw a attack at me.” Their eyes bulged a bit at this. “I attacked them from behind” I said, making their eyes a little less huge.”So anyway when we get to go play hero, and kill the bad bipedal subterranean dog creatures....No! Wait I have a much better plan, Cap, can you get me diamonds, lots of diamonds?”