//------------------------------// // Helping With Violence // Story: Necromancy For Foals 2 // by Queen Sanguine Dreams //------------------------------// Bone Marrow had continued to watch the townsfolk for a week. Even though he knew it would tear at him emotionally, he still wanted to see if there was any way he could help. While he watched, day after day, he saw the townsfolk becoming skinny again. Emaciated. They were starving but they didn't leave their settlement. They didn't look for help, they didn't even pay him a glance. Though he had become like scenery to the townsfolk -- a haunted gargoyle that perched itself on the walls -- he had begun to notice something. It didn't strike him immediately, but he realized that there was a difference between ponies and the different kinds of people outside of Equestria. If a pony needed help with something, they asked someone nearby to help them. Be it advice, labor, food, or even conversation, a pony would help someone if they so much as asked. With these people, however, they never asked for help. They outright refused help if offered, and they would rather starve to death than accept any form of charity. Bone Marrow sighed, pressing the bottom of his hoof into his forehead. "Is this why the place is a desert?" "What do you mean?" Toothpick asked. He knew what he meant, but since he was also Bone Marrow, he knew that venting was a somewhat normal thing to do. "What if after the Battle of Canterlot, they just... I don't know. They didn't want anything to do with Equestria again? I killed I don't even know how many people in that battle, so all the ones that went home probably just had nightmarish memories of what happened. Maybe they're terrified of ponies?" Toothpick shook his head. "They didn't care who you were until you mentioned you were a Necromancer, Bone." The foal rested his head on his hoof. "Yeah, that's true. Maybe I should wear goggles or something?" "With tinted lenses so your eyes can't be seen?" Bone glanced at Toothpick and then paused, taking a longer look. "You know, I just got an idea. You're me, right? So that means that at least some part of me is in you. Doesn't that mean that I'm not really tied to this body?" He gestured to his pony-self. "If that's the case, then... what's stopping me from swapping my body?" "To what end, Bone Marrow?" Toothpick's head tilted with curiosity. "If I could look like a cat-person, then I could go back to Equestria, couldn't I?" He thought on the idea for a moment. "I mean yeah, I've still got the skulls in my eyes, but I could just wear more clothes and maybe a hood." "And risk angering Celestia?" Toothpick pointed out. Bone paused and blinked. "Right..." He sighed. "So then what? What do I do out here in the desert where everyone is starving themselves? They don't want my help, they don't want anyone's help." Then don't help them. The Necromancer's ears flattened. Where had that suiggestion come from? Did he think it? He shared a worried look with Toothpick and was given a shrug in return. "Don't help them?" Bone scratched his cheek. "Why the emphasis on help?" He was doing his best to wrack his twelve-year-old mind for an answer to that question. "Don't help them, don't help them..." Bone was rambling to himself, as if repeating the line over and over might reveal some new insight. The sun was setting at this point and the glowing eyes of himself and his skeletal friends acted like blue fireflies in the darkness. "You know..." Toothpick spoke up. "Perhaps we've been looking at this solution the wrong way?" Bone looked to his proxy with his attentive ears perked up. "We noticed earlier on that they don't want help, right? Then maybe that voice isn't wrong. We don't help them, we give them something that they'll feel like they've earned. A reward for doing something. Kind of like employment?" Bone shook his head. "I can't force people to work for me if I don't even know what I want done. Even then, they won't work for me or accept anything I give them anyway." "No, no, that isn't what I meant." Toothpick raised a hand and pointed towards the huts that the villagers were sleeping in. "They are on the hunt for herbivores, aren't they? They want something to eat." He gestured to the other skeletons wearing meat suits. "We have a supply of meat, but they won't take it when offered." "So... what?" Bone wasn't keeping track of his own line of logic. "So, what we do is we give them a reason to eat the skeletons. Make them threatening. Make them tasty. Give them a monster to fight, an animal or something else, something that they won't feel like they're being patronized with." "You want us to make monsters to attack a village? I'm not going to do that... unless..." Now Bone Marrow's mind was spinning. He didn't have to make monsters, he just had to make skeletons that looked like monsters. Something horrible enough to get people spooked, but reel them in enough that the skeletons never killed anyone. Heck, he could command his skeletons as easily as thinking, so if he told his skeletons not to kill anyone then they wouldn't. "You see what I mean now?" Toothpick looked like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. "Well we can't really just sit on the wall while making monsters, can we?" Bone looked to the small group of skeletons outside the settlement's borders. "We'll need a place to base everything out of. A fortress or something where I can work on things without... being... bothered." They shared a look and groaned. "Does it have to be so far away?" "I hope these people like what I'm doing for them, even if these things look horrifying." Bone Marrow grumbled to himself. He'd returned to the empty city filled with thousands of skeletons waiting for a purpose. He could see through his skeletons, and with that knowledge, he could command a group of monsters to carefully attack a settlement. Well, 'attack' with heavy sarcasm. The monsters he was creating weren't anywhere near as lethal or horrible as what he'd scraped together during the Battle of Canterlot. Then again, he'd had no real idea of what he was doing back then. In the Battle of Canterlot he'd just been bringing back skeletons to swing weapons wildly in the vague direction of the enemy. As it turns out, swordsmanship goes out of the window when the opponent doesn't have a self preservation instinct nor any idea of how to use a weapon. For these creatures, Bone Marrow planned on making them... unique. He got the idea from lines of ants marching across the desert, and after healing a few thousand of them, he figured out how the little things worked. Quite convenient, considering they worked until they died. For his monsters, however, he planned on making them a little bit more stylish. These monsters stood at about his height -- that of the average pony -- and walked on two legs. They were a bit similar to kobolds in that they were bipedal and had scales, claws, and sharp teeth housed in an elongated mouth, but the similarities ended there. These creatures had eyes like that of an ant, no ears, no nose, and they had antennae sticking out from the top of their head where the ears would've been. The eyes had such small lenses that they glowed a light blue. He didn't really know what to call these things. They had hands, they had clawed feet and a lizard-like tail, they had toned muscles and a slim build, but they could pick up Bone Marrow with one hand if he balanced correctly. As it turns out, knowing how muscles work and making them function even better with the magic of necromancy was a huge benefit. Add on to that the ability to give the horrible monsters he was making things that should have never been combined, such as the internal structure of a cactus to hold life-giving water, he had the perfect mobile meal-source. It offered meat, it gave water since it was technically part plant, and it fought back just enough to make a villager consider it a hard-fought victory worthy of celebration with a campfire and a song while they cooked the thing. The only issue Bone Marrow ran into was... well, what was he supposed to do with the skeleton after it played dead? Was he supposed to go to a town and sneakily recover the corpses once all the flesh and plant-matter had been picked clean? What if the villagers used the skeletons that he was hand-crafting from the pieces of a bunch of other skeletons and made a door out of it? "We might be over-thinking things, Bone Marrow." Toothpick spoke up to wrench the Necromancer out of his thoughts. "Let's see how a test run goes first, shall we?" "It's going to take them a whole week to get over to that settlement though, won't it?" Bone was weary in his mind, not his body. He wanted to help, but if it took that long, the town filled with villagers might starve to death before the monsters arrived. "They're monsters, Bone Marrow." Toothpick smirked. "They don't need to behave like normal people, do they?" The little foal perked up. "They don't! They can even leave trails of ice behind!" "Exactly, since you can use your magic through your skeletons -- so long as it's necromancy that is -- they can run as fast as you did when we were in Canterlot." "I should've just given them wings." Bone Marrow lamented. "It would've probably been more... I dunno, efficient? I think that's the word. Having five of those things sprinting like this is kind of taxing." "Taxing, really?" Bone Marrow was watching the progress of his pet monstrosities as they zoomed across the desert in the night like streaks of blue light as he talked with Toothpick back at the dead city. He couldn't hear from his skeletons after all, so that gave him something to do while he waited to see the results of his experiment. "Yeah. It's like I'm running five times over. Like each step is five, and all of them are catapulted forward at stupid speeds." "Couldn't you give them wings from here?" Toothpick suggested. The five monsters halted. "Uh... yeah. I could." He shook his head. "I know I thought of that, but why not think of that sooner?" Using his magic through his skeletons, the monsters soon grew insectoid wings modled after the ants that he had come across earlier. Now the monsters were part lizard, part insect, part cactus. "I didn't give them weapons, did I?" Bone pressed a hoof to his forehead and saw that the skeleton he was looking through mirrored the action. "Nevermind, these guys aren't meant to win, they're meant to feed people." An hour later, a total of two since departing from the dead city, the insectoid monsters arrived at the outskirts of the town. Bone could see a few weak looking cat people standing watch in the towers at the main entrance of the town. "Think they'll be able to fight off the monsters?" Bone asked himself. "Perhaps send them in... inefficiently?" Toothpick suggested. "A single one to begin with, and once the guards rally and get organized, send in two, and finally three?" "Yeah, the goal isn't to win." Bone nodded, his skeleton mirroring the action. One of the monsters went out, and Bone watched with a smile of anticipation. "Gods, I hate standing guard." Thomas, one of the catfolk in the guard towers, loudly complained. "Especially after that necromancer showed up and spooked everyone. Glad he's gone." "You gonna stand there talkin' all night?" The other guard, named Tabbin, grumbled loudly from the other tower. "We've gotta listen for things creeping up on us out of the darkness, you know?" Thomas was quiet for a while, directing his aggression towards the darkness outside of the town's walls with a glare. After a few minutes, he spotted something strange. Ten glowing lights in the sky that were heading towards the town. "Hey, Tabbin, you see that?" Thomas pointed out towards the strangeness. Tabbin leaned on the side of his tower and squinted. "What in Tartarus is that? You don't think thats the necromancer, do you?" "Nah, he couldn't fly." Thomas shook his head. "Maybe it's something else?" Two of the lights were moving closer now, while the others laid back in wait. "Oh no." Tabbin picked up a spear that was leaning against the side of the tower's guard rail and gripped it in his hands. "Ring the bell?" Thomas suggested. "Right, yeah, ring the thing!" The loud clanging of a hand-held bell sounded out from the town. "Ooh, they saw it!" "It's getting closer man, get down from the tower already!" Tabbin shouted up at Thomas. "What's all the racket for?" Some of the town's villagers complained. "We've got a bunch of glowing lights coming towards us in the dark and we've gotta be ready for it." Tabbin explained. "Glowing lights?" An older gentleman yawned. "I think my club is around here somewhere." "They're getting closer, maybe a minute till they reach the wall!" Thomas yelled with alarm. "Get in formation, maces up front, spears in back!" Their line consisted of the two town guards, an elderly man, a few diamond dogs with shields and their clawed hands, and an Alligator-person with a two-handed axe in the back. What came around the corner was... unexpected. The line took a step back as they got a better look at what they were dealing with now that it was illuminated by the light of the town's torches. The thing, standing around four feet tall, had the body of a kobold. Its eyes were like that of a fly, antennae protruded from its head like an ant, and its long maw revealed rows of sharp teeth with a tongue that was split in the middle like a snake. It was expressionless, probably incapable of raising an eyebrow or even sneering, and that coldness made it all the more unsettling to witness. The creature's head tilted to the side, and silently, it charged the line. The shields held, but just barely. They were worn and sun-baked, leading the wood to warp and crack. With the strength of this small thing, the shields held by the diamond dogs nearly splintered and broke apart when the thing swung its claws. Spears from the back line lanced into the creature's chest, but it didn't scream. It didn't so much as grunt in pain or weeze. Maces from the cat-people fell on the creatures head, bludgeoning it repeatedly while the creature tried to bite and lash out at the villagers, seemingly without concern to its own well-being. After a few dozen seconds, the monster collapsed into the sand. Its blood was clear, without color, and flowed easily as water from its cracked flesh. There was no time to dwell on this as two more of the same creatures rounded the corner. "Oh grief, here comes more of them!" Bone Marrow couldn't help but smile. They were dealing with his creations really well, even if he'd had them hold back. They weren't meant to win, so having them behave like idiots was the best course of action. Not that he had any real idea of how to go up against a shield wall like that, but hey, he was making progress. The two monsters that he had sent were giving the villagers a little bit more trouble, and thankfully they weren't doing anything that would actually harm the weakened people. He did notice that his creations were bleeding out a bit faster than he'd imagined, but he realized that if their 'blood' was water, then it'd flow out as easily as water. For the last three monsters, he made their liquids behave a little bit more like blood. It could coagulate, at least, so that should help with the whole 'water being dumped out uselessly into the sand before people could drink it' problem. The final three monsters came a few minutes after the previous two, giving the villagers time to rest and plan for the final wave. It came to Bone Marrow's attention that if he was going to be doing this regularly enough to feed a village, then it would take a heck of a lot of time and dedication to personally control things like this. Not to mention, by fighting villagers and others -- even in a mock battle like this -- he was learning how to properly fight. In Canterlot he didn't have much time to really pay attention to what was going on; there was too much to keep track of, so he had told all of his skeletons to just 'kill everything'. With this, however, by sending in waves that were inefficient and stupid, he could learn how to counter certain tactics. How would he get past a shield wall, how could he deal with different things like flying enemies, etcetera. Maybe then he wouldn't need to fear so much for Scenic's safety once he brought her back. If he could fend off armies of villagers and even soldiers, then defending Scenic would be so much easier with a bit of practice. "Whew..." Thomas wiped his forehead from the splatter that had gotten onto him when he noticed something. "What the... is this stuff blood?" He took a closer look at it and noticed that it looked like watermelon had gotten on him. "Hey, Thomas." Tabbin held up one of the creature's arms. "What's the insides look like to you?" Thomas blinked in astonishment. "No way. These things are fleshy and have plants in them? What the heck?" The Alligator-person decided to find out for himself and picked up one of the creature's bodies. "Whoa, Al, what are you doin?" The village's elder spoke up with concern. "Taste test." Al replied simply, biting into the torso of one of the creatures with a sickening crunch. After a few chews, he nodded. "Yep, they've got bones, meat, plant-stuff and uh... water?" The village was silent for a moment as they all looked at one another with alarm and confusion. "S-so..." One of the villagers spoke up. "They're edible?" Al nodded. "Yep." The villagers grinned, looking hungrily at the bodies with a new sparkle in their eyes. "Meat's back on the menu, boys!" Bone gave a satisfied sigh as he watched from one of his skeleton's bodies. They weren't dead, really. He was having them play dead. Still, his idea paid off. The village could eat so long as he consistantly attacked them with monsters, and they were none the wiser as to him helping them. Now all he had to do was make sure that he couldn't be attacked or found out. He didn't want to kill anyone after all, and if people came looking for the source of these monsters he was sending out, he thought that the idea of killing anyone else just because they found him -- or worse, imprisoning those who found him out -- was a terrible weight on his mind. To that end, he took a few notes. Though he still had thousands of skeletons wandering around the town, he hadn't found a use for them. He could create his own creatures just like his dream had shown him so many months ago, but instead of the horrible chimera-monsters that he had sent against the villagers, he figured that if he didn't know how to make a building, he could practice by making a new kind of creature. It didn't have to be make from wood and stone after all, did it? Flesh and chitin worked just as well, and since he'd found so many ants, he had some rough idea of how to structure things together. The bones of various species would work as the scaffolding, the muscles that he could fashion would work to keep the buildings upright, and the chitin could shield the innards from the harsh sun as well as the blowing sands. Add some cactus-bits to keep the inside colder than the outside and he'd need to heal his body less. That, and it would provide some kind of nutrients for himself so long as it rained, and so long as there was enough things beneath him in the dirt to keep the building growing. Well of course he could keep healing himself and the building, but if he was going to have any semblance of living like a normal person, he'd need to start eating food and drinking water again. "This is all coming along rather well, Bone." Toothpick was sitting in a wooden chair while Bone Marrow brainstormed what he was going to do with the city. "Yep! I've got the next wave all ready for when that village runs out of food. So long as I make it regular enough, they'll probably start relying on the monsters to attack them." "Doesn't that create a horrible dependancy on you attacking people in order to help them?" Toothpick pointed out. Bone Marrow shrugged. "As far as people know, Necromancers are just horrible monsters anyway. So what if I help people by attacking them? No one is actually going to get hurt by it since I'm telling my skeletons to hold back so much." "And of the skeletons that are eaten or buried? We can't keep up this subversive charity forever." That was a problem that gave Bone Marrow pause. "I can't really make a skeleton out of nothing, I think. As far as I know, that's one of my limits for Necromancy. I guess that's what living people are for?" "What, growing skeletons?" Bone Marrow briefly snickered. "Yeah, dead people don't grow skeletons, now do we?" "You might be a special case, then." Toothpick pointed to Bone Marrow. "You've grown a little bit in the last couple of months. Maybe a few inches?" The Necromancer blinked in surprise and shifted his view to that of Toothpick's in order to get a better look at himself. "Hey..." He saw himself speak. "I am getting taller!" Toothpick sighed, not wanting to point out that he wouldn't lie to himself about being taller. When Bone Marrow had finished some days later, he had transformed a section of the nameless city he called home. The center of the city had a tall white structure, the outside being chitin that was a pure white like freshly fallen snow without a single window, but with multiple insectoid eyes around the exterior that provided tiny pin-points of light in the darkness. From those eyes, Bone could get a better view of the land around his city. He'd lost a few thousand skeletons in the process of making the scaffolding for a structure like this, but he still had around two thousand remaining. Some five-hundred of those skeletons had been repurposed into his 'monsters' that he would use to occasionally attack the small town that he was feeding or to patrol around the city itself to make sure no one was going to collapse and die on his doorstep. For himself, he fashioned a few new bits of clothing to help keep the sun from destroying his body. Very thin bits of skin and chitin made something that looked like a sleek silk, and he used that to make a basic shirt and to repair his cloak that covered the rest of his body. Further, he upgraded the clothing of his skeletons from rags to basic shirts, pants, and boots so that they would get damaged less from just walking around. Toothpick got similar treatment, and through his help, Bone Marrow figured out how to make clothing that wouldn't chaff or injure a fleshy-person through continued use. He was developing quite a lot of skills from simply trying to fit in with society, though he found that he was no closer to his goal of avoiding loneliness that he had been over a month ago. It frustrated him, but he had at least found some kind of purpose other than wasting away in the desert. If he could feed people that would've starved to death without his help, and without them knowing he was doing all of this for their continued benefit, then it eased his mind. It was like a hobby for him. "Hey, Toothpick." Bone Marrow was inside of his tower near the very top, as he'd just moved furniture into the room with help from his skeletons. "What do you think about me switching bodies?" Toothpick raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" "If I can change how other skeletons work and look, then why couldn't I change my own?" The little foal looked up at Toothpick with a smile. "Don't you think I could make friends if I didn't look like a unicorn? If I was like you, a cat-person, then I could just wear a hood or a mask or something to hide my eyes and then I could stop being..." His voice caught in his throat. Toothpick nodded. "You could make the attempt, I think. Wouldn't it hurt?" With his mind distracted again, he looked back to Toothpick. "If I consume my nerves, then I wouldn't feel the pain. I could probably edit myself a lot, right? Try some crazy stuff on a skeleton first, then when I figure out something I like, I could shift my whole form to copy whatever I'd made. That way I could be sure all the flesh and organs work correctly before I switch myself." "I'd recommend making a duplicate of yourself first." The helpful part of his brain known as Toothpick suggested. "Then if you don't like the change, you can revert your form." "Right, yeah." The necromancer nodded and closed his eyes, focusing on healing himself so he could get a very accurate map of his body and how it was at present before transferring that mental image to a nearby skeleton. Bone Marrow blinked at himself, who in turn blinked at Bone Marrow. "Okay, that's strange." The real Bone shook his head and rubbed his eyes. His copy continued to stare blankly ahead. "Should... should I wait?" Bone looked up at Toothpick once again, now filled with doubts. "I mean, if I lose my body, am I really me still?" "You've died how many times? You even consumed yourself when you were captured once. I don't think your original body even exists anymore, Bone Marrow." Toothpick pointed to himself. "I'm a part of your mind, remember? You didn't get so concerned with the idea of being someone else or splitting yourself into pieces before. Now isn't the time to second guess yourself." As Bone Marrow stared at his clone, he felt conflicted. Was there any part of him left? He had died, sure, but he always felt like himself. What was he doing now, out here in this desert? Making monsters to help people came to mind. Creating monsters in the first place also nagged at him. He was having an argument with himself, and the part he was arguing with had a physical body and sound reasoning. The foal rubbed his face. This was a lot for him to process. For some reason, the idea of sending monsters to feed a village was fine, but was he really attached to his own appearance so much? What had happened to his original idea of being able to visit Equestria if he looked different? That would become a reality. He could probably head back to Ponyville and figure out some way to right his own wrongs if that were the case. Pinkie Pie came to mind, surprisingly. The thought of Sugarcube Corner laying in shambles, the dead ponies that his recklessness had left in his wake, and his complete disconnect from what was going on around him when he was banished. There had to have been a better way to go about all of that, right? He couldn't make up for his mistakes as he was now, but... if he wasn't Bone Marrow but instead someone else, then he had a chance, right? The skulls in his eyes would always remain, even if he changed the color of his eyes to plaid, or some kind of rainbow, he would still be Bone Marrow. That much would always remain the same. That's what Bone continued to tell himself. If there was one constant in all of this confusion, it was that. He was dead, but not. Some kind of inbetween that he very poorly understood. As the young necromancer looked to the other skeleton in the room, the one he had yet to alter in any way, he thought of what he should look like. Perhaps something altogether different? Something unique and unseen by the world? Mm, that might backfire on him. If he wasn't understood, wouldn't people think he was some kind of horrible spirit? If he did it wrong, he'd end up looking like Discord; that floating chimera of bodyparts made anyone uneasy to look at. What, then, should he look like? If he was resolved to change his form to escape scrutiny as a Necromancer, then he couldn't change into something as simple as a different pony or even a cat-person. Anything with a 'standard' eye would give him away. He thought back to the monsters he had created earlier. They had insectoid eyes, but they didn't have skulls in them. The little lenses were too small for him to see the skulls, at least, so maybe he could do something similar? Could he make the lenses so small with so many that he could fake an eyeball? Bone Marrow looked to the untouched skeleton to experiment. Perhaps if he made an insectoid eye with so many lenses that it looked like a glowing orb? Mm, no, that just looked scary and bright. What if he changed the coloration? Maybe some parts could be white, and others could be... well no, it was still glowing. "Maybe try coloring in parts to be black? The glow would be much more dull." Toothpick suggested. The necromancer looked to the one eye in the skeleton he was working on. "You mean like instead of having whites in the eyes, it's all black with some parts for color?" He tried that idea, now making the eye entirely black. The glow had lessened to be almost gone, and Bone smiled. "Okay, so what if we add some color?" He squinted as he changed certain parts of the many lenses to be teal in color, much like Toothpick's eyes. As he worked on it, he realized that he could make the eye look like it had pupils like a cat-person, like a pony, or like a kobold if he tried hard enough. "So the skulls are technically still there, in each and every lens of the eye, but the lenses are so small that we'd need a magnifying glass to see the skulls clearly and there's so many that it's really hard to tell each lens apart." Bone tried to copy the eye he'd been working on and placed a mirror image of it on the other side of the skeleton. To him, and to Toothpick, it looked like a normal eye. The two shared a look and a grin. With this, they could probably sneak their way into settlements and have a look around, couldn't they? No more scary necromancer to haunt the area, no more villagers running away in terror, and no more loneliness. He then realized that he'd had a similar idea to this well before he started making monsters, but now there was a different outlook to the question. Bone Marrow wanted to help the people out here in this inhospitable desert before he tried making amends for what he'd done in Equestria. In a way, he was still experimenting. This way, however, he didn't risk Celestia's wrath for messing up again. Bone Marrow made a solem vow to never intentionally step on an ant again, and if he did, he'd heal them immediately as an apology. If something so small could make such an impact on his own life, then there was no telling what else he'd been overlooking.