//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 - The Work // Story: The Stereotypical Necromancer // by JinxTJL //------------------------------// Light Flow may not have been all there at the moment. He had confronted Applejack at the cemetery, where he knew she would come to find him. She was really easy to predict like that, always so eager to do the right thing. It was obvious that she would look for him when he didn't show up at... Anyway. He had planned on calmly telling her why hanging around him was dangerous and that she should distance herself for the sake of her and her family. But when he had asked his opener, and she had..... She had said that thing... and he.... Anyway. He had left the cemetery. The itching in his eyes had eventually abated, and his head cleared as he made his way to his house. His house... He tried not to think about it. He focused every fiber of his being on thinking of literally anything else. His house. Where he lived. Alone. And that was fine. Everything would be fine. He would make everything fine. Anyway. He tried not to look at the ponies around him as he passed. He could only guess what they thought of him, wearing a ragged and torn robe that smelled like literal death. He bumped into a passing pony, and mumbled out an apology. He didn't feel comfortable out here, out in the open. Among the living. He hurried away from Ponyville's center, and towards his home. Houses passed by him rapidly, and his worn-down cloak billowed in the breeze as he galloped forward. He just wanted to get to his house, get his box, and get back to the comforting depths of the Everfree Forest. It had been there for him when he had needed it. It had welcomed him with open... branches? It had welcomed him with open branches, and given him a place to go when his... when his mother... Anyway. He arrived at his house. He tried not to look at it too much as he circled around back. In his backyard, there wasn't really much of anything to look at actually. Some gardening tools and a couple flowers. He tried not to think about where the flowers had come from. Anyway, he floated a nearby shovel over to him. He walked over to a specific spot that had been cleverly marked by two orange flowers and began digging into the dirt. It didn't take long, he hadn't buried it too deep. Very soon, all too soon, a medium-sized brown-colored box was unearthed. He took it from the hole, and left his house behind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Everfree welcomed him like an old friend. It was comforting, in a way. Hidden there underneath the familiar darkened leaves of the cursed forest. Nopony was there to look at him, or talk to him, or..... ask him about things... It was just him. Him and the shadows. He had spent the last two days here. And he was planning to spend quite a few more beneath the dim leafy skies. He wasn't ready to go home yet. He had bought some bread and bottled water before he left town and slipped them into the box with the other stuff, so he wouldn't be lacking for supplies. He had almost gone inside the house for free food, but he just... He couldn't be there right now. It was odd though. He hadn't had anything to eat or drink since..... Well, the point was that he should be feeling hungry, or at least thirsty. But he wasn't? He supposed it was the shock. That was the only explanation that made sense. Logic was really the only thing that was keeping him grounded at this point. He was smart enough to see that he was drifting, and he was due to snap any moment now. But until then, he wasn't going to just sit around mourning. He levitated the medium sized box behind him as he walked, and idly noted that it should have been much harder to lift. He supposed it had been a few years since he had last tried. Though it wasn't like he had grown especially magically strong since then. His hair was much like his magic. It had barely changed from its previous length, even despite all of his attempts to make it grow. The reddish brown growth on his head just didn't want to change. At least his height hadn't remained stunted like his hair. He had grown to quite a comfortable height, and he stood at about level with most adults. Considering he was only fourteen, he guessed he would end up fairly tall. This was good. He had gone almost three minutes without thinking about... Damn. While he was mentally admonishing himself for being an idiot, he finally came to a familiar sight. A little bed he had made out of bits of leaves and moss he had found. It was nestled into the base of an especially large tree, right into the visibly overgrown roots. The tree had pretty much been his main way of finding this place again, which was mostly why he had settled here. Near his bed's side there lay another familiar sight. "Hey there friend..." He murmured to the Timberwolf softly from where it was laying near his bed, and it raised its strange wooden head. It opened its terrifying green maw, and made a noise not unlike a tree falling, which he assumed was supposed to be a strange facsimile of a yawn. Its wooden body creaked as it laid its head back down on its likely uncomfortable wooden paws. Seriously, how did it sleep like that? Did it even sleep? Did it just sit there? "Glad you stuck around." He muttered quietly as he picked his way over the large roots of the tree. He settled down into the relatively plush material, and glanced over at the erstwhile beast turned reluctant friend. He hadn't been surprised to find the Timberwolf when he had come into the woods two days ago. Creatures like that tended to imprint on ponies, though it was usually a predator/prey situation. He had guessed that it was the same Timberwolf he had met all those years ago, and he was probably right. After the wooden beast had tracked him down in his delirious state, it had just sort of sat near him as his world fell apart. He didn't think he could ever repay it for that. He set the box into the cleft behind his bed as he got comfortable. He was going to be sitting there for a while yet, so he wanted to make sure he was ready for what came next. After searching his environment once again and stealing a glance at the seemingly napping wooden wolf, he levitated a familiar brown-colored book out of the box behind him. He briefly flicked his eyes over the title before cracking the book open. "Four years in the making." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Four years in the making of GARBAGE! He groaned in extreme frustration as he looked up from his attempts to decipher the needlessly complex writing of the beginners tome on Necromancy in his hooves. He had no idea how long he had been reading, but it felt like an eternity. "Who even titled this?! 'Necromancy for Foals' my fat butt! No foal could read something like this!" His angered voice rang loudly in the otherwise dead-silence of the forest. His friend perked a wooden ear, and he scoffed at the sight. As if it actually listened with those things. It was probably just mimicking behaviour it had seen from other animals. But back to the book, it was a load of garbage! It was a horrible mix of foal-level instructions, indecipherable magical lingo, diagrams, and stuttering prose that would make any modern-ponish student vomit in disgust. It was so. hard. to. read. He wanted so badly to throw the book into a hole somewhere and let it rot. But it was his only source of Necromantic learning, so he had to suffer through it. Why couldn't his mysterious benefactor have given him something straightforward? He couldn't believe he had waited so long to read this drivel. From what he could glean from its insufferable pages, it was a book covering the theory of Necromancy. What wasn't horribly confusing was incredibly enlightening. Apparently, he had been correct about ponies' souls. That's what the orbs were. The literal manifestation of a pony's entire being, condensed into a small orb. Apparently, you could tell a lot about a pony by their soul, but that particular part of the book was especially vague yet verbose. So he had put that aside for now. He needed to work his way up. Get a feel for the vernacular, the pacing, the subtleties of the writing. He spent almost all of his time reading, so he was basically an expert. No rush. He had all the time in the world.