“You’re undead!”
The words spilled from Lex’s lips without conscious thought, staring in horror at the unliving creature hovering barely a dozen feet in front of him. While the eyeless and fleshless head was a far cry from the ghouls that had overrun Vanhoover – being nothing more than a pale skull and jawbone, its lack of a horn signifying that the once-living pony hadn’t been a unicorn – the same wave of absolute revulsion that he’d felt for the unliving cannibals washed over him now.
“Interesting. So now you are able to see me?” mused the Keeper, its jawbone moving ever-so-slightly as it spoke. “Why did you wait so long to employ such a power?”
The thing’s question was enough to snap Lex out of his shock. Silently berating himself for being taken so completely by surprise, he brought a hoof up and quickly began to gesture, rattling off a series of arcane syllables.
Undeath was a state that utterly warped the mind, Lex knew. Given how much a person’s consciousness could be altered by even a minor chemical imbalance in their body, being bombarded with negative energy to the point of not only dying but then being reanimated was more than sufficient to drastically pervert a person’s sense of self. That was why the ghouls infesting Vanhoover had been, without exception, completely mad; hooting and gibbering and chanting disgusting rhymes as they’d gleefully devoured the ponies who’d once been their friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
While the Keeper was clearly no ghoul, it was still a creature which no longer belonged in the world of the living, which meant that there was no reasoning with it, nor any way he’d trust it to perform a ritual over him. Now that its true nature had been uncovered, it would likely discard the pretense of sanity that it had been feigning, which was all the more reason to strike first. With any luck, his initial spell would be enough to destroy the creature outri-
“Ahh!”
The gasp that Lex gave then was as much surprise as it was pain, the barbed wire around his hoof slicing bloody ribbons across his flesh, the wound sharp enough that it disrupted his spell before it could go off.
A low laugh came from the Keeper then, and this time the source of the clicking sound that accompanied it was clear: the creature’s jawbone was opening and shutting as it chuckled, its desiccated teeth tapping lightly against each other. “Did you forget that the Night Mare herself forbids her worshipers from slaying each other in this place?”
Abandoning his spell, Lex didn’t immediately answer as the barbed wire around his foreleg stilled itself. The very idea that an undead pony – particularly one that was reduced to nothing more than an empty skull – could venerate a god was preposterous. That it revered the one deity that he actually respected, and that said deity recognized and accepted its devotion in turn, was almost an affront.
But as much as that flew in the face of everything he knew to be true, Lex was cognizant that there was no other explanation: the barbed wire around his foreleg was nothing less than the outward manifestation of the power the Night Mare had given him, and it never misrepresented her will.
“Of course,” continued the Keeper, voice still cordial, “if you truly wished to destroy me, you could simply fall back and order your subordinates to undertake that task for you. Not Akna, of course; as an adherent of the Night Mare, she would be punished quite severely for attempting to break the prohibition laid onto this shrine. But those other ponies, the ones who worship lesser deities, are under no such restriction. Though naturally, if you did that, I would be obliged to have my acolytes respond in kind.”
“Or,” hissed Lex, eyes blazing at the unsubtle threat, “I could simply have the environment attack you on my behalf.”
He was already turning his gaze upward, toward the onyx-studded roof of the cavern. Standing at the top of the claw-shaped tower, they were already close to the blackened canopy. A few well-placed black crystals should be enough to carve out a chunk of the roof, Lex decided, horn lighting up as he called upon his dark magic. If I can get a large enough piece of stone to crush-
This time, the agony that shot through him had nothing to do with the Night Mare.
Instead, Lex felt his blood turn to fire even as the entire cavern gave a nauseating lurch to the side, causing his hooves to slide out from under him, nearly pitching over the side of the platform. No cry of pain escaped his mouth this time, however, as his lungs seemed to have forgotten how to work, leaving him feeling as though his chest were being squeezed in the grasp of some invisible giant. Worse, his vision blacked out a second later, everything turning black as pitch.
For an instant, Lex was sure the Keeper had done something to him. But even as he managed to force himself to draw a breath – the act causing the burning in his veins to flare up in a way that made his body feel like he were burning to death from the inside, his sense of balance telling him that things were spinning wildly – he knew that couldn’t have been the case. If the Night Mare hadn’t allowed him to attack the talking skull, recognizing it as another of her faithful, then surely that constraint served to protect him as well.
And an instant later, as he tried to force himself to retake shadow-form, only to cause his agony and nausea to surge even worse, he realized what was happening: he was paying the price for having overexerted himself trying to see through the Keeper’s supernatural darkness.
“Hm, is this the answer about why you waited to see through my concealment?” wondered the Keeper aloud. “If so, then I suppose the better question is why you used such a power at all, if the cost is this severe. But perhaps this is an opportunity for me to correct your earlier misconception: you see, I am not undead.”
Although the cavern’s whirling was starting to slow, and the pain wracking his body was gradually beginning to recede, Lex wasn’t able to answer, still needing to focus on drawing in air. Even so, his reaction to that news must have been outwardly visible, because another clicking laugh came from the Keeper. “I can understand finding that answer difficult to believe, but it is nevertheless the truth. This is the result of having a body which still feels the ravages of age, even as it refuses to succumb to it. Eternal life without eternal youth, if you will.”
“...lies...” hacked Lex, managing to prop himself up on one hoof. He didn’t dare use his dark magic now; any attempt to do so would doubtlessly make his condition worse. But if divine authority wouldn’t work on the Keeper, and he had no allies to fight for him, then that left only his arcane and divine spells. But with the Night Mare refusing to let him fight the Keeper, his options were sharply limited.
“It would behoove you to recognize the truth of my words,” continued the Keeper blithely. “Since it was the same rite which you now seek that did this to me.”
That was enough to give Lex pause. Akna had been clear that the Rite of Sublimation was a risky endeavor, since while never fatal, a failed undertaking could leave someone in a state far worse than before they’d attempted it. And with how Spinner had predicted that he’d be “misshapen” because of what happened here...
“The irony, of course, is that this is precisely what I was seeking when I first came here,” intoned the Keeper. “The desire to live forever is universal among those who are doomed to die, and yet had I known that I would be trapped here forever, watching myself waste away...”
“You...can’t leave?” muttered Lex, not because he was interested in the Keeper’s story, but because the longer the floating skull kept talking, the more time it gave him to recover. He still didn’t know what he’d do, short of retreating – one of the thaumaturgical spells he’d prepared allowed the targeted creature to float downward through open air as gently as a feather, so if he rolled off the edge of the viewing platform he’d at least have a way to make it safely down – but until he managed to get back a modicum of self-control he wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.
“Indeed. This Shrine is sacred territory which I am charged with overseeing, and yet it is also my prison.” The Keeper’s voice seemed to move slightly, as though it were floating over toward the edge of the platform. “Such a punishment is fitting for those who dare to demand Our Dark Lady’s attention, and yet fail to live up to her expectations when they receive it. Had I merely been given a body that rotted without expiring, I still could have fulfilled my dream of conquering Taralos, but now...now that hope is dead, while I yet linger.”
“Taralos?” The name wasn’t one that Lex was familiar with, but hopefully the Keeper would expound on. Already, Lex could feel his breathing ease, the dizziness receding along with the pain.
“If you are unfamiliar with the name, that would be no surprise,” answered the Keeper. “It was one of many pony nations that covered the land in the days before the Empire. Indeed, sat in what is now that nation’s very heart. But when I was young, all I knew was that Taralos was the country ruled by King Greybeard. My father.”
The admission came with another clicking laugh. “Of course, he never acknowledged having sired me. To do so would have shamed him, as my mother was an earth mare from Turves. Do you know of that place?”
When Lex grunted in the affirmative, the Keeper continued. “Though I am given to understand that today my home is little more than a sleepy village, the name of Turves was once applied to a large swath of the countryside east of Taralos, where my mother’s kin roamed freely as tribes of warriors.”
The raspy voice softened then, growing quieter. “To say that their lifestyle clashed with the more ‘civilized’ unicorns of Taralos was a gross understatement. So I suppose it should be no surprise that my father, in his youthful days as prince of a prosperous nation, looked to win glory for himself by riding out to subdue the ‘barbarians’ at his country’s gates. And indeed, stories of his victories over tribes of Turves were quite popular among his people. I wonder if they would have been so popular if they had spoken of how he availed himself of the conqueror’s rights toward the mares he and his soldiers captured.”
This time Lex said nothing, concentrating on recovering enough to stand back up. The inky blackness clinging to the Keeper was once again impenetrable to his eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. Trying to see through it again now would only wound him again, likely worse. As it was, just getting back to his hooves was an uphill battle.
With no interruption forthcoming, the Keeper continued. “I was fortunate to have been born of the earth tribe. Had I my father’s horn, my mother would have left me in the wilds after birthing me, unable to bear the shame. As it was, she told me of my heritage only as she lay dying from the sweating sickness. Once she passed, I sought my father out, determined to lay claim to the other half of my heritage.”
“Is there a point to all this?” growled Lex. Although he still felt like he was liable to collapse if he tried to do anything strenuous, he’d managed to recuperate enough that stalling for time was quickly losing its merit. “Your attempt to complete the Rite of Sublimation might have been unsuccessful, but mine won’t be.”
“I recall saying much the same to the previous Keeper, an old leatherwing who was quite glad to have a pony so perfectly suited to being his successor; there was little else for me to do once I was trapped here, you see. But if you wish to know the moral of my story, it is this.”
This time, when the Keeper spoke, his voice sounded closer, as though he’d floated to within hooves’ reach of Lex. “My father, King Greybeard, refused to recognize me as his son when I presented myself to him, his lawfully-wedded wife already having born him a legitimate heir. I used to think he turned me away because he was ashamed, either of having ravished my mother or at the thought of having an earth pony son. But in time, I came to see that it was neither.”
A pause came then, and when Lex didn’t bother asking, the Keeper provided the answer without prompting. “He refused to acknowledge me because I was a complication that he did not want to deal with. To admit that I was his, and how he had sired me, would have thrown the future of the country he’d spent his life strengthening into doubt. Faced with gaining a son, or potentially losing a kingdom, he made the only choice he could.”
When he spoke next, the Keeper’s voice had taken on a harsher edge. “In other words, I would have weakened his hold on his domain...as you have weakened my hold on mine.”
Despite knowing that the Keeper couldn’t harm him, Lex tensed up. “What do you...” Then he remembered what Akna had said to him only a few minutes prior. “This is about Ganas.”
“He was petty and foolish, but those qualities made him easy to control,” replied the Keeper. “More importantly, he was mine. Slaying him, and doing it so openly, is a challenge to my authority, one performed not only in the eyes of my acolytes, but in those of the Night Mare herself. And then you expect me to lend you my aid?”
“Expect it?” sneered Lex. “As the Night Mare’s champion, I demand it! You already admitted that you’re obligated to perform the Rite for any of her faithful who come here!”
“I am,” agreed the Keeper. “But I never said that I was obligated to do so for free. If you want me to perform the Rite of Sublimation for you, then there is a task that I would have you do for me. One that should be easy for someone so favored by our goddess.”
Lex grit his teeth at that, and almost renewed his threat to bring the roof down on the Keeper’s head. But now that his visceral reaction to the undead thing – for he had serious doubts about the veracity of the creature’s claims otherwise – had worn off, he realized he didn’t have that luxury. He needed to undergo the Rite, if for no other reason than to save Thermal Draft. The powers he would gain as an alicorn were the only recourse he could think of in order to prevent her from dying, body and soul.
To say nothing of the possibility of gaining enough power to bring back Solvei...
Despite how much it galled him, particularly with how he’d sworn not to forgive the Keeper’s attempts to manipulate him less than five minutes prior, Lex forced the words out. “What task?”
Even knowing that he would have been hit with the Night Mare’s prohibition had he tried, when the Keeper’s clicking laugh came again, it was only because he was still suffering the effects of overstraining himself that Lex didn’t lash out. “Despite having spent centuries immersing myself in the tenets of the Night Mare’s faith, I am not a spellcaster,” explained the Keeper. “Rather, I use a number of minor miracles by appealing to her directly. One of them is a miracle to bestow intelligence upon magical beasts that lack it. But in order to do that, I need them brought here, alive.”
The admission made Lex snort. “So you want me to replace the servant of yours that I slew.”
“Indeed, and I have a very specific creature in mind. Venture into the catacombs and bring it to me, and once you have, I will perform the Rite of Sublimation for you.”