//------------------------------//
// The Madness of Isolation 
// Story: Necromancy For Foals 2 
// by Queen Sanguine Dreams 
//------------------------------//

Another sunrise interrupted Bone Marrow's experimentation with his magic. How many had it been? Weeks, that is. He'd spent so long talking only to himself -- or Toothpick if he was going to be overly specific -- that he'd long forgotten what a normal conversation was like. Maybe it had been months since he broke out of this rut?

As he took stock of himself, he realised that he'd let himself go. He saw that his legs and hooves had become little more than skin that stretched over bone. His throat had holes in it from disuse and there were even patches on his body where he could see his own ribcage. At one point had he become used to this? Did he stop caring once he realised that he didn't feel pain once his flesh had died? Since when did he think of himself like this? 

This wasn't normal, that was for certain. Looking back, he realised that his body had begun dying when he stopped regularly breathing. He'd used his magic to heal his body while walking through the sandstorms that had lead him to this forgotten city; this safe haven without food or water in the middle of nowhere, where anything but a necromancer like himself would surely die within days. 

Could he consider himself a pony at this point? He rolled his neck and heard bones pop with alarming volume. Scratching his face revealed that his skin was paper thin and that it peeled off without much effort. He was almost indistinguishable from the skeletons that he controlled. 

"You should get help." Toothpick suggested. "We should, that is."

As Bone Marrow willed his body to be mended, for flesh to grow and for blood to return, he took in a deep breath and coughed for several minutes as he got used to the feeling of saliva and moisture.

"We can't keep talking to ourself forever. This is how people go insane, right?" Toothpick crossed his skeletal arms, his clawed fingers clacking against bone.

"Yep," The foal coughed. "I know that I'm gonna go crazy out here. I've been feeling off for a few weeks now, but I just noticed what was wrong."

"Loneliness," Toothpick agreed.

"There's over seven thousand skeletons in this city and I can't hold a conversation with a single one of them, aside from you, which is actually a different version of me." Bone Marrow shook his head and rubbed his watery eyes. That was a feeling he'd forgotten as well. "Where should I even go? I don't know anything about the desert around here or what's beyond it."

"Take a look around? Maybe have the skeletons do it for you." 

They both considered the idea for a moment before disagreeing in unison. "Seven thousand skeletons wandering the dunes is going to get us in trouble."

"What if we tried giving them flesh and blood?" Toothpick suggested as he raised his hand. "Nobody will bat an eyelid at regular people, will they?"

Bone Marrow raised an eyebrow at that. "You're sure we can be considered 'regular' at any point in time? I'm talking to myself while arguing with myself. Just a moment ago I was a skeleton draped in ragged fur and skin, and now I'm fine. Like nothing ever happened. There's no way that's going to be considered 'normal' by anyone or anything that exists."

The Necromancer hopped onto a chair that had been mended by his magic a dozen times. It was made from wood, and through his experiments, he'd discovered an ability to repair certain structures to a limited degree. Stone was off the table, as was metal and crystals. Wood, however, was something that his magic could affect. He had no idea what the distinction was, but it was beneficial even if he didn't know the specifics.

"So what do we do about this?" Bone looked to Toothpick. "I'm not going to sit out here in the middle of the desert playing with sand and dead bodies until the end of time. I'm really not gonna keep Scenic waiting much longer to return to life, either. I just don't want her to come back and immediately starve to death, die of thirst, bake in the desert sun, choke on sand--"

Toothpick held up his hand. "Easy, Bone Marrow. I know and you know that I know."

The foal rolled his eyes. "I'm talking with myself. That's it. Me, talking to me, about my own plans while pretending that I don't know what I already know! Maybe I'm already crazy. How am I supposed to survive out here as some kind of unkillable and unfath... unflappa... strange thing that controls the dead!?"

"Erm... deal with it?" Toothpick shrugged. "You're going to keep living no matter what -- short of throwing yourself into a volcano or stuffing your soul into a container."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Bone leaned into his chair and covered his eyes with his hooves. "I just want... something. I don't know what. Maybe if I get Scenic back then everything will be fine? Maybe not."

"You've learned everything you can here, Bone Marrow. What else is there to study? Just a moment ago you were dead, and now you're not." Toothpick hopped up and sat on the table, his skeletal cat tail swishing with the irritation that both of them felt. "Try giving me some flesh and blood and we'll go from there, yeah? Maybe some clothing, too. Most of the other skeletons at least have some tattered rags."

"How am I supposed to do that, again? I've only seen the bones of a cat-person." He set his hooves on the table. "You know we've never even seen one of these things in the flesh before, let alone healed one. Am I supposed to just slap flesh together and hope it looks right? I practiced on dozens of kobolds to learn how they worked."

"And you've thousands of cat-people skeletons to work with. Diamond dogs, minotaur, and other creatures skeletons too." Toothpick sprawled out on the table like the subject of a painting. "Come on, Bone Marrow. Who is going to complain about a few horrors out here in the desert? You can always turn them into dust when you're finished experimenting."

"This is how the insanity starts, you know." Bone shook his head and hopped off of his chair to head for the door. "The bad guy in all the folk tales? They start experimenting on their own in the middle of nowhere and then when the heroes show up, the bad guy is surrounded by things that shouldn't exist."

"Have you killed anyone you're experimenting on? Is their soul even here to complain?"

Bone shook his head. "Guess not..."

"Then lets get to experimenting, shall we?"





It was a good thing that Bone Marrow didn't need to sleep very often, because every time he did during the last twelve days he was plagued by nightmares. 

His experimentation with unfamiliar bodies and species had lead to horrifying abberations. Muscles that were too tightly packed and that contorted in the wrong direction. Bones that were given tendons too limp or too strong, either resulting in the skeleton falling apart or being snapped into pieces from a simple wave of the hand. At one point, even a jaw was given too much and a test-bite shattered the teeth of a diamond dog skeleton into dust.

The young necromancer was very relieved that he had so many dead people to help him learn more about his powers, but it also unnerved him. He had taken to creating skin and fur over the muscles and tendons, leading to horrifically warped appearances that bordered on the unseen works of a painter who had lost their mind years ago and fallen into insanity. Lips would twist and curl at odd angles, eyelashes that would snap like a whip, ears that would droop from a lack of cartilage and noses that were half finished or forgotten entirely. 

After hundreds of frustrating attempts and failures, Bone Marrow had developed a method. Starting from the feet and working his way up, he discovered that by referring to his own exposed muscles he could learn how they worked. Pain, blood and hard work had accumulated to the point that he could now guess with some degree of appreciable precision that whatever he was doing was close enough to avoid scrutiny. 

He made a silent vow that as soon as he was able to get a proper amount of practice healing still-living cat-people and similar that he would revise his methods of skeletons being given flesh and blood, but for now, this was all he had to work with.

"It's coming along nicely." The still skeletal Toothpick summarised. 

Bone Marrow rubbed his parched throat. It was so much easier to study without taking care of his body. Parts of him had fallen off once again -- a habit that he'd need to seriously look after if he was going to have any chance of making friends with regular people. A quick burst of healing took care of this in the short term, but things like eating and breathing and drinking needed to be higher on his priority list.

"Are you ready for your turn?" The little necromancer inquired.

Toothpick nodded. "I know you're ready, so let's see how this turns out."

The skeleton stood a few feet away from Bone Marrow so the foal could see what he was doing. 

"It's strange," Bone commented. "I never thought that I'd be doing something like this, you know? When I was in Scoria I was planning on using skeletons to help. To harvest fields, to repair buildings, to chop down trees... and here I am, putting flesh onto bones in order to have a normal life."

"As normal as we're going to get, that is." Toothpick spoke while his body was slowly growing muscle and tendons from the feet upwards. The march was slow and steady, the magic spreading over his skeleton like fog rolling across ice. 

"How do you feel about tan fur?" Bone focused his attention to aesthetics once he had a proper layer of skin over Toothpick's flesh and blood. "Maybe a poofy tail, a spot of white on your left cheek..."

The furless cat-person nodded. "Maybe some clothes?"

"Oh, right." Bone motioned with his head and a few rag-covered skeletons marched over to hand over what passed for clothing to Toothpick.

"And... teal eyes." The necromancer smirked. "That should work fine. It's a shame that you have skulls in your pupils like me, though."

Toothpick took the time to get dressed, his voice shifting from an eerie version of Obscenely Rich to one that was more normal, though higher in pitch. 

"Huh." Bone Marrow finished his work on Toothpick and circled around him, having a better look at his handiwork. "I think this is the best attempt yet!"

"I'd hope so." Toothpick commented while pulling rags over his head as a shirt. "It's going to be my body after all."

"Don't you miss the flying from when you were a raven?"

The cat-person examined himself, noting his ears that swiveled towards sound and his now poofy tail. "Mm... there's upsides and downsides, I'd say."

"You're taking the lack of water pretty well, Toothpick." Bone rubbed his own throat in sympathy. "No pain or scratchyness?"

Toothpick shook his head. "Not as far as I can tell. My heart's beating at least, so that's working." He took in and exhaled a few deep breaths, ending with a cough. "Yep, that's fine as well. Blood is pumping, air is flowing, head is... surprisingly heavier than I thought it would be, and my body is very fuzzy."

"Success?" Bone raised an eyebrow, his eye glinting with hope.

Toothpick gave a thumbs up. "Success!"





"So..." 

"So." 

Toothpick and Bone Marrow nodded at one another. They had a small group of 'people'. Three cat-people, four diamond dogs, a minotaur, and Bone Marrow. Each member of this group had small skulls in their pupils, though the only ones that spoke were Toothpick and Bone Marrow.

"What now?" Bone asked the group, though he wasn't really expecting an answer. All of them were dressed in rags that had been dyed a sandy tan by the necromancer's magic. Since he could change the color of fur, he discovered he could change the tint of cloth.

"I suppose we head out into the desert to find new people and meet new faces." Toothpick rubbed his face with both hands. "Is flesh supposed to slide around like this?"

Bone nodded. "Yeah, I forget about it sometimes. Try not to slide the meat on your bones around too much or you'll look weird to others."

"It's like I'm in control of a suit of meat that's powered by blood." 

The neromancer sighed. "Yeah, there's no way we're fitting in at this point."

"Where shall we head to? North? East?"

Bone Marrow shrugged. "I don't think I ever learned how to tell which way was which. Maybe we just pick one and go that way?"

"It couldn't hurt, I suppose. We'll either run into Equestria or the sea, or something else." Toothpick tugged at the rags around his chest. "Maybe we'll find some clothes that are as fancy as that cloak of ours?"

The foal looked over his withers at the cloak on his back. The gift from Rarity that he didn't really want to be reminded of.

The cat-person grimaced. "Right, nevermind. We'll find or think of something else."

Toothpick and Bone Marrow took in a deep breath at the same time, and the 'people' behind them mirrored the action. As they exhaled as a group, the foal pointed at the rising sun. "Okay! Time to find someplace or repeatedly die trying."





Bone Marrow's head hung low with his hood blocking out the sun overhead.

"The flesh is weaaak." He complained. "It's sore and it's so heavy to carry around! Skeletons are so much better..."

"You're doing it again, Bone Marrow." Toothpick flicked the foal's ear, causing it to twitch.

"Ow!" He raised his head to glare at the cat-person. "You're one to talk, mister 'I'm a part of your subconcious'."

"Then stop flicking yourself." Toothpick once again flicked one of Bone's ears.

With half-lidded eyes of irritation, the foal grumbled and continued onward.





"Are we there yet?" Bone whined.

"No." Toothpick chided.

"What if we run? We could get where we're going so much faster if we run."

"And if someone sees us leaving a trail of ice across the desert while running faster than a flying griffon?"

"Then they'll talk with us?" Bone looked up at Toothpick with a hopeful smile that was born out of desperation.

"They'll run in terror from the nightmare in front of their eyes."

His head lowered and his ears drooped. 





"How long has it been?" Bone Marrow looked up at the starry night sky as the group of nine continued their march across the sandy dunes. "A week?"

"I think so. The sun has come and gone enough times for it to have been a week." Toothpick carried himself extremely well despite needing to be healed every few hours. His hands were held at the small of his back and he walked like he was a nobleman. 

"How long do we keep looking?"

"How long do you want to be lonely?" Toothpick countered.

The foal could only offer a grumble in reply.





"Finally!" Bone couldn't help but jump for joy, kicking up tufts of sand everywhere as he hopped and skipped. "Finally! We found something!"

Toothpick squinted to get a better look at what was in the distance. There were sandy walls, some wooden towers, a few buildings, and maybe even people walking in and out of the camp ahead of them. Or was it a town? A village? There was no real way to tell at this extreme distance.

"Ooh I'm so excited! We'll get to talk with people! I don't care if they're strangers, at least it won't be me talking to myself!"

Toothpick raised an eyebrow at such an exclamation. 

"Yeah yeah, I know, I'm not going to trust them, I'm just going to talk with them. Besides, what's the worst they can do? Kill me?" Bone giggled at the thought. "I'm pretty sure the whole 'eating everything as soon as I die' only happens when my body gets messed up to the point I can't heal myself anymore. At least I've jumped off buildings enough in that abandoned city to guess that it's how it works."

"Who are you explaining this to?" Toothpick questioned the excited foal.

"Practice!"

"For what, exactly?"

"For um..." Bone Marrow came to a halt. "Oh, right... I can't really tell anyone, can I?" 

"We never really thought about what we would talk about with others, did we?"

The unicorn sat in the sand as a heavy dose of reality slammed into his awareness. "Oooh... oh no." He scratched the side of his face with his hoof. "We could talk about... the weather? The sand? Anything?" He nodded. "Yeah, talking about anything sounds good."

Toothpick sighed and sat down next to Bone Marrow. The other seven 'people' in the group followed suit.

"Bone Marrow, all we've known the last half year have been running, being eaten by hydras, being killed in various horrible ways, fearing for our lives due to Celestia, and regrets from accidentally destroying a third of Ponyville."

"Hey," Bone raised a hoof, "We've also met Scenic, Bright Ideas, Obscenely Rich, Frosty Pie, Shy Sprint, Scenic's mom... and um..." He was losing track. There were more, weren't there? He was certain of it. Why couldn't he remember?

"We've been away from people too long." Toothpick patted Bone Marrow on the head. It was strange, considering this was like he was patting himself on the head given the circumstances. "I think at this point we need to focus on getting ourselves together; to becoming not so crazy."

"Am I crazy, though? I mean yeah I'm not normal, but I'm not marching an army on Canterlot either, right?"

"Bone Marrow, you're having a conversation with yourself while being surrounded by skeletons wearing meatsuits that were fashioned by your own magic that are speaking with faces that don't resemble any person that has ever lived."

"... Right."





The defenses of this town were very bare and minimalistic. The towers were nailed together not by some master artisan like the spires of Canterlot, but by what seemed to be whoever was around and using whatever was available. Bone Marrow supposed it was a miracle to even find lumber in a dry desert like this. 

Sandstone walls made up the majority of the defense of the town. There were a few patrols walking around, though they were armed with spears and shabby shields rather than golden fullplate and magical swords. No, the people of this town were scraping by, that much was clear. 

The citizens were mostly Diamond Dogs. At least, whatever species they were supposed to be called. Bone Marrow had only ever known about the 'clan name' of the few that had attacked his home town. The rest were cat-people and some others that he wasn't entirely sure about. They looked like lizards, but not in the same way that kobolds were lizard-like. These ones were muscular, powerfully built, and very hungry. It was a wonder they were still standing. 

Bone Marrow's hope was dashed when he saw one of the guards topple forwards into the sand. His ears flattened and his eyes were wide. How were people surviving out here? How did anyone manage to make anything work? 

Toothpick and the necromancer shared a glance of concern before the foal hurried over to the collapsed cat-person. 

"Whoa, hold it there." The friend of the first guard held up a hand as he struggled to lift his emaciated friend. "Give us a second before you try tresspassin', okay?" 

This was a shock to Bone Marrow. This was what had happened? A thousand years ago, before he'd been frozen in stone, the world outside of Equestria was supposed to be a powerful and terrifying place where armies gathered to march into Equestria's borders. Was this what had happened after the Battle of Canterlot? 

He gulped down a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was partly to blame. How many hundreds of thousands did he kill back then?

"Hey there." The cat-person waved a hand in front of Bone's face to get his attention. "What's a pony doin' way out here? You lost?"

"He doesn't look lost." The guard that had fallen over grumbled. "Looks perfectly healthy and fine to me." The guard then spat on the sand in front of Bone Marrow.

The first guard flicked his friend's ear. "Don't go wasting water like that you idiot." 

Bone Marrow cleared his throat to get a hold of himself. He'd deal with his feelings later. "Sorry, yes, I'm lost. I've been wandering the desert for a while and I found these friends to help me." He gestured to the eight others behind him. The 'people' that he'd crafted.

"That so?" The first guard raised an eyebrow at that claim. "Well, you must've done better than us at surviving if you're all looking so well. That some kind of magic trick of yours, unicorn?"

Magic trick? The confusion was clear on the foal's face.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Why don't you make yourself useful and do some of your hocus pocus? If you're so healthy, go catch dinner or somethin' and we'll let you in the town." 

Catch dinner? Did he mean for him to go out hunting? He hadn't even seen another creature out here aside from those in this town. 

"Ah, right. You're not a meat eater. You prolly don't get what I'm saying." The guard pointed to the fangs in his mouth. "We eat meat, see? No farms here. No crops, no tending to fields and no raising cattle on account of the lack of grass." He then leveled the tip of his spear towards the sandy dunes. "Go out there and find us some rabbits. Maybe some other ponies, if you catch my meaning. We're starving here and unless you wanna be on the menu, help us out."

Oh. The understanding struck Bone Marrow like a morningstar to the face. That's what they meant by hunting. Why he hadn't seen any creatures around. Is that really how things were out here? Did they have no other means of food than each other? That couldn't be it. There was no way things were that bad for the rest of the world.

"Go on!" The cat-person hissed. "Get going!"

"A-ah," He looked to the 'people' that he'd created. The skeletons covered in meat suits. "I have some here? No, wait," He pressed a hoof into his face. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

Both of the cat-people guards raised their eyebrows in surprise, their ears perking up. "Oh ho!" 

"That's cold blooded of you, isn't it?" The second guard giggled. "Selling out your friends that quickly?"

What should he do? Tell the truth? Lie? He didn't stand to gain much by lying, did he? Besides, who was to say that these people wouldn't try to eat him in his sleep and then get consumed by the void in turn?

"Er..." He decided to go with caution. He didn't want to be the cause of more deaths. "It's not like that. I'm a necromancer, not a traitor to my friends."

The two cat-people paused and blinked in confusion. One of them gripped their spear with enough force to cause the wooden shaft to crack.

"Wh-what'd you just say?" The second one stood, his eyes becoming wide like black discs. "You didn't just... no..." 

There it was. Both of them were looking right into his eyes.

"O-oh, oh, um," The first looked over his shoulder and saw that his friend was already sprinting away in the sand, adrenaline carrying his weak body far faster than anything else could. "Oh hell!" 

The first followed after the second and both ran in terror.

Bone Marrow suddenly felt cold despite the heat of the sun overhead.





He stood in place for quite some time as he came to terms with what had been told to him. The world was a desert outside of Equestria. People had to resort to eating each other to survive, there was nowhere to grow crops or to breed cattle, and in some places they even put out bounties for herbivores. 

"That..." Toothpick tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. 

Bone Marrow shook his head. "No." He then stamped his hoof into the sand. "No, it can't be like this everywhere. There has to be some place that isn't a nightmare. Someplace that's not just a city of skeletons or a few huts in the sand with people on the verge of death. There has to be better!"

"They eat meat?" Toothpick scratched his neck. "Well... you weren't wrong to start with. We do have a unique service to offer." He then extended his claws and ripped off a chunk of his own forearm with a grimace and a hiss. 

"Could you not do that!?" The young necromancer exclaimed. "We don't want people... thinking..." He sighed. "It's too late for that. They already know and they already freaked out." He rubbed the side of his face and looked into the town. Most of the people were running into their huts and closing their doors. 

"You know what?" Bone looked up at Toothpick. "Sure, give 'em your flesh. I'll just make you more. Same as everyone else." He motioned for the other seven in the group to head into the town while he and Toothpick followed behind.

"Hey!" Bone Marrow shouted as loud as his shrill foal voice could carry. "You heard right; I'm a necromancer! I'm not here to kill you, though, I'm here to feed you!" He gestured to his minions that were now each standing outside of a hut. "These people are with me, and no, they don't mind. Look at their eyes. See the skulls? That means they're a part of me." He paused, lowering his voice to a murmur. "Well they're technically a part of me, seeing as I'm controlling them and I made their bodies and everything aside from the bones..." He shook his head and raised his voice. "I can keep healing their bodies, which means you all can keep eating. Understand?"

There was a terrible silence for a solid five minutes before someone spoke up.

"How do we know you ain't gonna eat us?" 

Bone Marrow applied a hoof to his face and sighed. "I'm already dead! What do I need to eat people for? I don't even need to eat!"

Another silence. This was going to take some doing, wasn't it?

"Look, I'm not here to cause trouble or to destroy anything." Bone walked down the street and tried to look through the windows from a distance. "I saw all your bodies, I've seen how hungry you all are. I don't like seeing this kind of suffering, okay? I've had too much suffering happen already and I'm sick of it! Come on out, take as much meat as you want, and let's talk!" He drew a shaky breath. "I just want someone to talk to."

More quiet. Just the howling of the wind and the shifting of the sands greeted his ears. 

"I've seen another town. A city, much larger than this one." Bone spoke up again. "A place with thousands of people, all of them dead on the ground. Skeletons. Nothing left. There wasn't a single person to cry out, not a single person to sweep the streets or to give a morning 'hello' to. I don't want to see something like that again. I don't want to live alone for months on end to slowly lose my mind!"

"Please, come out here!" He was begging by this point as no one dared to reply to the necromancer in the center of town. "What do I have to do? What do you want? Do you want meat? I've offered it! Do you want me to leave? I can't do that until I see you're all okay. At least give me something!"

Silence. Nothing but terrible silence and horrible wind. Everywhere Bone Marrow looked, no one would reply. No one would show their face. 

Could he blame them? Even he had his own rules. Never trust strangers. Wasn't that the rule? Never. Trust. Strangers. 

That rule went both ways, it seemed. If he were in their place, wouldn't he do the exact same? Sure, he knew that if he really wanted to he could just have his minions burst down the doors and drag everyone out by their ankles. Heck, he could consume their very houses with his magic! 

Bone shook his head. He didn't want that. He didn't want to turn into what he had been during the Battle of Canterlot. He didn't want to be some kind of monster that froze the streets into ice with his passing, nor did he wish to be the horror that parents told their kids about when it was time to sleep. There had to be some other way of going about this. Honesty wasn't working. Kindness wasn't working. 

The necromancer tapped his hoof on the ground in agitation. What could he do? These people were starved. They were resorting to eating others to stay alive, and what choice did they really have? He locked eyes with Toothpick and they stared at one another for a long while. 

Maybe he would need to use force. He did have magic, after all. If he could heal himself from being a skeletal heap of skin and bones, then by all that was right in the world, he could fix their emaciated bodies. That might just go far enough to get them on his side. Would it be terrifying? Probably. Could they do anything about it? Not at all.

Bone Marrow smiled. He had a plan. Was it nice? Absolutely not.

"Fine then!" The foal shouted. "If you won't come out here, then I'm going after you!"

His minions moved in concert, each of them using unnatural strength to open the doors of the huts to the joined screams of startled surprise from those who hid inside. 

"Come on, come on!" Bone Marrow's impatience got the better of him. He was going to help whether these people liked it or not. 

One by one his minions carried the people from their homes and set them down in front of the unicorn. Some were shaking, most were terrified, and some were children. Diamond dogs and cat-people. None of them had the presence of mind to bring a weapon after seeing the necromancer's minions treat the sanctity of their homes like tissue paper in a hurricane.

"Okay!" Bone clacked his hooves together. "I know you don't like me and I know you don't trust me, but that's too bad! I'm going to help you." 

Each of the town's citizens were wrapped in an icy blue field of magic and they clung together for safety as they were lifted from the ground. 

"This won't take long." The necromancer tried to be reassuring, but for whatever reason that he couldn't place, it only terrified the people more.

They soon realized what was happening when their bodies became stronger. When their stomachs stopped aching. When they could move their fingers properly and their throats didn't feel quite so coarse. 

The necromancer smiled. "See? Not too bad, is it?"

He then set the village down and gave them time to become accustomed to their new bodies. 





"Is that really how we're going to greet people from now on?" Toothpick questioned.

Bone Marrow looked over at the huddled group of townsfolk that were getting ahold of themselves. He'd pulled his hood over his face to shield himself from the guilt he was feeling about how he'd treated the townspeople when he looked their way, but he really didn't see any other way that he was going to get through to them.

"We really need to work on our people skills, don't we?" He shook his head.

"That's part of the reason we left the ruined city." Bone Marrow pointed out. "One step at a time, I guess."

"Claire, no!" 

Bone turned his head and witnessed a cat-person child run towards him. 

"Th-thanks, um, mister neko mancer." The kid -- a girl by the sound of her voice -- smiled.

The mother quickly came over to snatch up her child into her arms with a fearful expression. "I'm sorry, please forgive us!"

The foal was taken aback by this reaction. "I just... what? I healed all of you, I didn't do anything bad."

"You broke the door." The child, Claire, pointed out. 

The mother was horrified, but Bone Marrow laughed. 

"Yeah... yeah I broke down the doors. That's my bad." He looked to the broken homes and thought about fixing them. He then had a revelation. 

Bone Marrow looked to the townsfolk. "Um, do any of you know how to fix doors?"





It was almost impossible for Bone Marrow to speak with any of the people in the town. He was just as alone as he'd been in the ruined city. 

The townspeople knew how to fix their doors and furniture that had been broken during his 'kindness event' earlier that day, but as the sun set, no one had dared to approach him. 

Now sitting on the wall next to Toothpick, the necromancer laid down and rested his chin on his crossed hooves. 

"We messed up, huh?" Bone Marrow eventually spoke up. "Is there a better way I could've done that? Maybe making meat shipments or something and leaving it out in front of the town for them to find in the morning?"

"What, like trapping rats with cheese?" Toothpick shook his head. "As far as I know, which again I remind you that you are me and I am you, this was about as good as it could've gone."

"Right. I'm talking to myself again, just with a change in scenery." His eye twitched as he raised his head. "What exactly did I accomplish by coming out here?" He pointed out into the dunes with his left hoof. "This entire place is a wasteland of people getting hungry and starving to death. How am I supposed to do anything about that? Am I going to run around the wastes and just give everyone a pet skeleton that's covered with flesh? Maybe I could start a corpse farm and people could drop by and pick up their 'Pack-O-Minotaur' meat for dinner."

"Wait a minute, what do Minotaur even eat?" He scratched his ear. "Are they plant eaters?"

Toothpick shrugged.

"Right, yeah, forget I asked." The foal took a deep breath and sighed as he settled down. "There's gotta be something, though."

"Maybe... make a town?" Toothpick suggested with a hint of hope and a raised eyebrow of expectation.

"What, me?" Bone pressed his hoof against his chest. "Do I look like a carpenter? A mason? A farmer? Heck, I don't even know how to bake bread and my dad was a baker!"

"We could learn." Toothpick pointed out.

"Yeah? From who?" The necromancer pointed towards the town. "They're not gonna teach me, that's for darned sure."

The cat-person shrugged. "Then find someone who will teach a necromancer how to make a house, I guess."

"Real helpful advice, Toothpick." Bone rested his chin on his hooves and pulled his hood over his head with his magic. "But... at least it's something." 

"Maybe they'll be hungry by morning?" Toothpick leaned back while sitting on the wall next to Bone Marrow. "Who knows. We have time on our side, at least."



 

When the next morning came, there were no greetings. No calls of 'hello' to Bone Marrow, not even a wave. He'd been expecting as much, but that didn't lessen the sting. The guards had gone out on patrol and they'd kept a very wide berth between themselves and the crazy necromancer that was now haunting their town.

The citizens of the town were remaining indoors. Occasionally some would peek their heads out of the window to see if he'd gone, but Bone Marrow was like a sad statue. He didn't move, he didn't leave his spot, and his mood only seemed to be getting worse as the hours passed on.

"This can't be good for us, Bone Marrow." Toothpick was leaning against the wall where Bone Marrow stared like a gargoyle from. "Certainly not better than being alone in the desert had been."

Bone Marrow's lip twitched in irritation.

"We should leave," Toothpick continued, "There's nothing here for us except disappointment. They've made their stance on us very clear."

"I know, Toothpick." The foal rubbed his eyes. "I know..."