//------------------------------//
// Colleagues 
// Story: White Sun 
// by The Psychopath 
//------------------------------//

Not much happened while Twilight traveled through the city. She was becoming increasingly upset at being unable to find any traces of whomever she was meant to meet, and even with Spike out and about, she couldn't get any attention outside of those enamored by the undead dragon. On a few occasions, the mare happened upon more crumbled temples with the strange, bipedal entity standing guard in front of it. Every time she saw it, the unicorn would flinch, expecting herself to go frozen in place while the two lights approached her again. Fortunately, it never did, but the first event stuck to her soul like glue.

After what felt like hours of walking under an eternal sun, she eventually stumbled upon a food stall and grabbed a fried corn cob filled with a white sauce mixed with other fried vegetables and what the cook called 'tofu'. Something from the far east, the equine claimed. Twilight sat on a public bench carved from brown clay and took several bites of her meal, finding it bizarrely flavorful. She proposed some to spike, but the undead continued its task of staring at the mare instead. The Saddle Arabians around took note of the mare's behavior and seemed to display concern at the sight. Why would a god of the dead give such a servant of its to a pony so...unstable?

"There she is," a voice said.  

Twilight looked around to see two ponies covered in thick, black robes looking at her. "Can I help you?" the mare asked with a full mouth.

"Yes. You see, I believe that you were called here by somepony?" the first hooded figure asked.

The unicorn's eyes brightened and she quickly swallowed her bite, coughing from the sudden influx of corn. "Yes! Are you my contact?" she asked eagerly.

"I believe so. See, we're like you, and we think it would be prudent to take you somewhere more...quiet. You know, away from prying eyes."

Twilight scampered to her hooves and almost dropped her meal when she finally got off the bench. "Alright! Lead the way!"

So engrossed was Twilight in the need to find Celestia and her being in another world entirely that she let her guard down and didn't think very far about who might approach her. It was too easy for the person she was looking for to just pop up out of nowhere almost instantly, and while this thought did nag at the unicorn's mind, she didn't give it much attention. Instead, she followed the hooded figures through abandoned alleyways and ended up going through several crumbling buildings until she ended up surrounded by black stone and collapsed walls. Several other ponies were there, having set up several different areas to work at. One was mixing a bunch of different products together in vials and pouring the contents into several pots filled with dead plants, but nothing seemed to be occurring. A group of four were pouring over a pile of books they had and exchanged their thoughts, albeit reluctantly, with each other. There wasn't much natural decoration already present, like whoever had the building constructed stripped it of any and all personality. It was also eerily quiet. The hustle and bustle of the city barely even reached the open interior, letting the quiet murmurs of the other ponies around act as ambiance for this surprisingly 'dead' area.

"What is this?" Twilight asked as she shoved a mite-eaten banner covering the 'entrance'. "Is the pony I'm meant to meet here?"

"You're looking at them!" the first hooded pony declared.

Instinctively looking toward the sudden explosion of noise, the ponies pulled back their hoods to get a better look at Spike. They looked like ordinary ponies to Twilight, but something was also off about the magic suffusing them. They gathered around the undead, poking and prodding at it in an attempt to understand it.

"How did you get an intact dragon skeleton?" a stallion asked Twilight.

The mare was taken aback. "Um...I just went to an old graveyard filled with them."

"But dragons hide their own!" the stallion rebutted.

"They even chuck them into their volcanoes and lava streams when they die," a mare added. "There can't be a graveyard full of them."

Twilight furrowed her brow and backed away. "I didn't come here to talk with ponies. I came here to talk with the one I'm supposed to meet with in Saddle Arabia's capital."  

The first hooded pony, a mare, became confused. "Aren't you the necromancer from Prance?"

"Who?" Twilight asked after a long pause.

The group cursed and groaned loudly.

"That's another we're not seeing," one of them complained.

The first pony sighed while another pulled out a sheet of paper and crossed out a name written on it. "Well, we still got another necromancer with us, at least, and one with an undead servant."

"Necromancers?"

The mare leaned forward. "How much mana are you using to keep it up like that?" the mare asked as she looked Spike up and down.

"I'm not using anything. I summoned Spike using a ritual, and now he's alive again," Twilight said.

The mare gave her a side-eye but kept herself hooked onto the undead dragon. "Alive. Yes. Sure." She nodded to herself. "A ritual to summon an adolescent dragon, it looks like. I'm surprised you can even control an adolescent. I expected it to break out of your control and become a rogue undead."

Twilight hugged her assistant's leg. "Spike would never do that! He's my most trusted assistant!"

At a loss for words, the mare heard somepony whistle and looked at the source: A stallion making a circling motion next to his head. She snorted in response. "Yes. Well. There are many of our ilk that attempt to use rituals to summon mighty beasts and end up overwhelmed by strength of will left behind by their departed souls."

The lavender unicorn sighed and looked at Spike again. "Well, I didn't want to do anything like that. I didn't need something big, and an adult dragon is too big. Plus, I don't think they would listen to me if I brought them back anyways, so I left them where they were." She shrugged. "Maybe later, but I don't see a reason."

"Later?" The necromancer cleared her throat. "You could stay with us and help us find more skeletons like that, no?" she asked. "It wouldn't be too hard to help your fellows, would it? We aren't asking much."

"And you have a dragon with you anyways. Best to share," one of the others commented.

Twilight shook her head. "N-no. I have a lot I need to do first. Maybe later."

The necromancer's mouth creased. "We're both necromancers," she started. She gestured to everypony else. "All of us have fled to Saddle Arabia because of the persecution of those close-minded fools in Equestria." Her muscles tensed and released several times. "Any one of us could become an alicorn of the undead with all the power we could get. A new kind of lich!" she said in amazement. She grabbed Twilight's shoulders and shook her energetically. "Could you imagine what all of us combined could accomplish? Controlling the dead! So many possibilities! Having control of our own cities where the ponies work forever, enriching us and allowing us to improve our research and eventually raise dead and forgotten gods as our thralls! The world they could take us to! The enlightenment that might occur." She let go of Twilight when Spike shifted towards her and put a hoof to her forehead, grunting in pain. "I've been at this for a century now, but I'm no closer to my goals. I took out whole villages to get subjects for testing and to help me recover vital materials to progress my purpose."

"A century?" Twilight repeated in shock.  

The mare was barely out of her twenties by the lavender unicorn's deduction.

"Yes. How much longer must I wait?!" She grabbed Twilight again, pressing down and inciting a grunt of pain from the mare. "Work with us and you'll also be able to-!"

Spike grabbed the mare and casually tossed her several feet away, surprising the other necromancers and making them laugh at their colleague's misery.

"If anypony is going to succeed at anything, it'll be me. I have much more to discover and learn in life, and my lichdom is but a stone's throw away," a stallion declared. This one looked far older than the rest, with a decrepit body, thin, gray hair, and most of his teeth missing. "Then I won't have to worry about all this pain I'm living through anymore." He moved his neck to the side and caused a loud crack. "Ow!"

"You should just look into Necroboreomancy," the stallion working on his plants said. "Even if you die, you'll come back as a creature infused with the immortality of plant life. No souls, no body to fight for occupation, and no diseases. Only the good stuff"

A colleague of his working on trees scoffed. "Plants still have diseases, you idiot," she berated. "Plus, you can just bring their souls in the plants and animated those twisted things afterwards."

The first necroboreomancer shrugged. "There's more to do than just shoving them into the dead plants or simply reanimating them. You have to reshape them to your needs. Get the angriest thing you can!"

The others started going on their own tirades about their own pursuits into necromancy and the goals they have, and the more they talked, the more Twilight realized that they were going too far into their craft. The necroboreomancers had their plants dig into the living and drain them of their life force so that they could live longer. Others went to dead foals and used magic to dig out whatever life they would have had before their situation and used that as a new form of power to empower themselves and their spells without even working on strengthening themselves. They all took from others to give to themselves and didn't bother doing anything to reach their goals without harming others.  

Twilight started shaking again, feeling another form of fear. It was like looking at a dark mirror of herself. Did she really just stay in the dark all the time and work on her experiments? She never wanted to harm anypony alive even in her pursuit of reviving Princess Celestia. She didn't see a logical reason to, but these ponies did it without a second thought. She didn't like it at all. These weren't the ones she was looking for.

"Let's try and sneak out of here," Twilight whispered to Spike.

The necromancers started fighting with each other, completely unaware of Twilight sneaking away, and as she did so, the words she heard during her supposed hallucination echoed again in her mind:

"Succumb to greed and feel its wrath. Succumb to greed and feel its despair. Succumb to greed and join its flock."

When she got past the tattered banner, she met face-to-bronze-mask with an equine clad in black clothing whose surface seemed to replicate the night sky. It put a hoof to Twilight's mouth and spirited her and Spike away, back onto the main street where water flowed under.

"Who are you?" Twilight asked. "I don't want to deal with more crazy ponies!" she stated angrily.

"There is no need for concern. I am no mind worm," the equine said. "The dancers of the dead fear no dread and see no red. Their hooves are stained in blood and their minds are gone. Leave them be. See them quartered and drawn."

"Why are you talking like that?" the unicorn asked.

"A bit of training told to me, by my teacher of fifty-three," the equine mused. "Very hard to speak like this, but it is as easy to learn as breaking a stick."

Twilight snorted. "Uh huh."

"'Leave me my amusement and see to the sands your summoning culprit," the equine declared as he pointed far beyond towards the sand dunes. "The one you seek lives beyond those sand peaks in her humble abode away from the dangers of the road. Gather drink, or you won't survive long while you think."

Twilight grinned despite herself. "You reached for that one."

The equine shrugged. "I do my best. It is not a test."  

He looked down one of the alleyways and saw the necromancers spot Twilight. They made to pursue, but a brief tilt of the masked equine's head and several more dressed like him appeared from seemingly out of nowhere and standing in the shadows or hanging on the walls. One excessively tall one stepped in front of them, its body thin and lanky and towering over them. After what the unicorn assumed to be a brief exchange, the creature pointed in the opposite direction, telling them to leave.

"Necromancers are beloved by the people," the equine started. "But they are wild and unpredictable. Stuck in their whims, greed, and fables. We keep watch, that's it," he sighed. He patted Twilight on the shoulder and backed away. "Your contact is waiting. She sent me. Don't do the same. Please hurry."

The masked equine bowed to Twilight and walked away casually, not bothering to hide himself in the crowd. The mare felt he had more to tell her, but being stuck with rhyming as a way of communication felt extremely limiting. Still, she now had a direction to go toward, although she felt unusually tired.





"Your Highness," one of Shining Armor's guards called out. "We found a city called 'Flarolina' to the north-west."

"And?" the stallion asked.

"The guards there confirmed that they have often seen a mare draped in a cloak going there frequently enough that her arriving recently with a giant, quilted figure stuck out like a sore thumb." She took several deep breaths, having galloped all the way to camp. "She always came in from the south."

Shining was startled when the bonfire crackled suddenly by one of his guards throwing a stick in it angrily. "Well, that brings us closer to where she is for sure."

The white unicorn was about to interject when another of the guards spoke up first. "No. That narrows it down extremely."

"How so?"

The stallion grinned with his teeth bared. "They've seen her enough that she's become a regular. There are no other villages or cities for miles and miles down south, meaning that she lives close enough to be a regular at Flarolina."

A mare with a fake eye of enchanted crystal mumbled to herself. "Which means she does live near the border, like Emperor Shining Armor said."

"And there are no houses or anything around, otherwise she would have been easily found during her necromantic experiments."

"So we have to look for natural shelters," Shining contributed. He nodded. "With the smell that corpses give off after a while, it's obvious she can't be too close to the surface."

The mare nodded. "And there have been no sightings of wandering undead, so she's either destroyed them after they were made-"

"-Or she's been keeping them where they'll never be seen," the guard stallion finished.

Shining groaned and rubbed his temple. "Let's go spelunking for caves, then," he regretted.