//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Demon Hunter // by The Dude //------------------------------// "You'll never take me alive!!" Said the necromancer jumping from gravestone to gravestone dodging my sword. "Who said that was the intention?" I said now getting aggravated that he just jumped over my sword a thousand times. It was midnight, the graveyard which we found ourselves fighting, even though I was the only one actually doing any fighting, a necromancer who apparently was harvesting something from the bodies that were buried there. The necromancer was wearing a long black robe and he was carrying a large wooden staff that had some sort of orb on it. The necromancer stood on one of the grave stones at the end of the graveyard, looking at me with his big green eyes. "Alright I'm done toying with you, ARISE!!!!!" He said as he waved his staff as it glowed and suddenly the ground began to shake. Hands started reaching out from the ground and what emerged were figures without eyes, faces, or arms. They were zombie ponies. About 14. "AHHHH" Screamed Twilight. Even though she had seen me hunt a couple demons, she still wasn't completely resistant to seeing scary things yet. I immediately pulled out both my guns and began shooting. I got a couple in the head (That's where you got to shoot to kill them according to Twilight.) but most of my bullets hit the zombies chest. After killing bout 5, I put my guns away and pulled out my sword and charged. I sliced off the heads of 3 almost immediately and then I killed the others soon after that, leaving a trail of former pony heads hitting the ground. "Oh you little bastard." Said the necromancer giving me the kinda look like a just farted on his brand new couch. "Alright I'm done with you, I've got more important things." He then turned and ran as fast as he can, But I wasn't gonna let him leave. I dropped my sword and pulled out my guns. Trying to aim carefully, I got him in sight. I pulled the trigger and saw him get shot straight in the leg, this was then accompanied by the appropriate "OWWW MOTHERFUCKER". I walked up to him and saw him clutching his leg, his hoof was covering in his own blood. The wound left a big hole in his leg that kept bleeding like a fountain, it hit on the lower end of his leg so he wouldn't be able to walk again. Not like it mattered for long. "Alright alright."After taking a long breath continued, "I'll go to jail." I had to look at him and chuckle, "Who said that was my intention?" He looked at me with his eyes opened wide and a sudden terrified look struck his face."OH NO OH N-" Was all he got to see before I put a bullet in his face. I turned around and saw Twilight's face. Some kind of mix of anger and rage. I looked at her in confusion. "What?" I said. "You just desecrated some ponies dead relatives, and you just killed somepony in cold blood!" She yelled at me. "But he was going to kill us if I didn't kill him." Twilight looked at me and sighed, " I guess thats true,so how are we going to put the zombies back in their graves and clean up this mess?" "Lets just ask the princess to clean this up for us, isn't that what usually happens?" Twilight sighed," I guess." she looked at me with sad eyes,"Sorry for getting mad, I know its your job but i'm just not used to this type of violence." I simply nodded, she told me she was in ponyville to learn about friendship so I couldn't blame her if she wasn't completely numb yet. "So you finally done with this demon observation?" I said to her. Her face suddenly lit up "Oh no, i'm learning so much that I couldn't from reading. It's just i'm not used to violence and stuff like that." I sighed and said "Well, tell Celestia about the mess here because I just wanna go home." She nodded at me and both of us headed back to Ponyville. On the walk back to the small town Twilight asked me a question i'd rather she didn't." Hey Iceheart," She said in a soft voice,"How did you become a demon hunter in the first place?" "Um...well I was walking in the woods and some demon boar attacked me an.." "Oh" She said " You mean a nago right?" I had no idea what she just said but I just nodded and continued talking,"Uh yeah. Then a guard took me to celestia and she said she would offer me a job demon hunting, then I went into training for 5 months learning how to fight and other stuff like learning about demons and stuff." Twilight looked at me with a confused look,"But it looks like you don't know anything about demons." "Well the same guy taught me all I know about fighting and stuff like that. Basically he just told me that pretty much most demons just need a good beating except the bigger ones. Actually in retrospect he was a really shitty teacher." She gave a slight giggle,"Well what did you to before this?" "I was a writer." I said then I lifted up my red coat showing her the quill cutie mark on my flank. "Uh." I could tell by her voice she was thinking "Of course, I've seen his cutie mark how could I not think he was a writer." Her face changed into a look of confusion,"Well if you were a writer then why did you become a demon hunter?" I sighed,"Well nobody bought any of the books I wrote, nobody really cared about them." "So you just gave up?" "No, its just it didn't pay enough and if I had the opportunity to make money and do something that kinda actually matters I would take it. And thats why I became a hunter." The rest of the trip was walked in silence.When we reached town, Twilight went back to her house and I went back to mine. I woke up in my bed and looked at the clock on my dresser. 12:56pm. But the thing is that unlike a regular job I don't really get up unless Celestia tells me there's a demon on the loose. It wasn't until about 1:09pm until I finally decided my bed wasn't the place to be at the moment. I Got up and went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. By the look of my scraggly blue mane and dirty face I decided the best thing to go do was get a shower. Oh Celestia I forgot how much I loved showering. It's been 3 weeks since I got back and it still surprises me how much I missed my old shower. I think the fact is all the little shower stuff. When I used to write I would just shower and think up new ideas. I had like high quality shampoo, I had little shower beads, little scrubber things, and conditioner that I all buy from a store all the way in Canterlot. Anyway when I was done I dried up myself with a towel and went down to my kitchen to make some breakfast.I walked up to my tom the cabinet where I kept all my cereal and pulled out a box of "Pony Hooves". I grabbed a bowl and set it down and then I got some milk out of my fridge. I poured some cereal then some milk in and began to eat my breakfast. I didn't really know if this counted as breakfast unless breakfast includes a bunch of sugary marsh mellows and some shapes made out of..something I don't really know. After I ate all the marsh mellows I emptied the bowl in the sink and then went to my living room and crashed out on my couch. I looked around the room while still sitting on the couch like I was looking for something. This place really needs some good music. I looked over and saw my record player on the other side of the room sitting on a shelf with all of my records. I stood up and went to the shelf and looked at my records. What did I feel like listening to today? After a minute of thinking I selected a record and pulled it out of its sleeve and put it on the record player and and put the needle down. Oh god I loved this song. I sat back on my couch and slowly began to embrace and enjoy my situation at the moment. Everything seemed perfect, I could just hang out and listen to music all day, maybe even go get some food or something. Yep today seemed like I wouldn't need to do anything today. Then some pony knocked on my door. Celestia damnit. I opened up the door to see Rainbow dash standing outside. "Hey Iceheart Twilight says you need to meet her at her house. Celestia says she needs you." "Uh..alright, just let me get my things." I turned around and found my coat rack and saw my beautiful red coat. I grabbed it and put my hooves through the sleeves and headed back to the door way. I took off the record and put it back in its sleeve. I then walked back to the door. I turned to dash,"Alright lets go." Rainbow nodded and we began to walk to Twilight's. "Hey Iceheart." Rainbow Dash turned to me and started to speak. "So what are you and Twilight doing?" I looked at her in slight confusion but I knew what she was talking about."What do you mean?" "Well you and her are spending a lot of time together so I was wondering if you guys are....." "Look, me and her aren't doing anything together, when i'm with her i'm hunting demons. Thats it." "Ok ok, I just wanted to know." Said Rainbow. By now we were near Twilight's house. I could already see that giant tree and the purple pony and small dragon out front. Rainbow and I walked to the house until we were in talking distance from Twilight. As soon as we were close Twilight looked at me and spoke. "There you are. Celestia just sent me a letter saying that there's something in the forest that's apparently attacked a pony and she wants us to go defeat it." "You mean kill it right?" "Uhhh right..so you ready?" "Yeah I'm ready,lets go." And with that me and Twilight went to go kill some demon in the woods. Wait she never said that it was a demon,so why was I called to take care of this. What if the disturbance was caused by a angry panda?? I don't think I want to go kill a panda. Well I didn't want to ask so I just kept walking with Twilight into the woods. "So where is this disturbance exactly??" I had to ask Twilight after walking in the woods for over 20 minutes. I was starting to get impatient for something that might not even be a demon. "Well..Celestia said that the attacking happened somewhere in the middle of the forest." "You know what screw this." I said then I began to flap my wings and fly into the air and flew up into the sky. I didn't really use my wings to fly a lot unless I needed to. I Began to fly around the forest looking for anything that might have caused the disturbance. I kept scanning and scanning until I noticed something. A fast black figure moving through the woods. This was probably it. It was moving faster then a regular animal so my presence might actually make sense. I flew faster to catch up to it but it just kept on running, and running,and running. Finally the being slowed down so I was able to land on the ground a few feet away from the creature. I landed on a small patch of grass away from the trees where the monster was resting. It looked like a big white wolf. I had to get it to notice my presence. "Hey!!" I yelled. The creature turned around and looked into my eyes as I looked into its. It had the body of a wolf but it had the face of some sort of bat. It was certainly an odd demon. I smirked as I pulled out my gun and shot right between preparing a witty one-liner. Or I would if the creature reacted. It didn't even react to being shot but the hole the bullet left was healing itself. It's own black skin seeping into the hole completely healing it. Fuck. The wolf jumped at me only to be met by the edge of my sword. I saw the dog split into because of my sword until there was just 2 halves of a wolf on the floor. I felt pretty bad ass. That is until the two halves suddenly jumped up and collided and merged until they weren't halves, but just one whole animal. It turned to me and growled at me letting me know that instead of talking this over a nice cup of tea, that it was going to tear out my insides and wear them like a fancy scarf like a Canterlot pony. I could hear Twilight's hooves as she came towards me. "Uhh Twilight" I turned towards Twilight and silently spoke,"What is that thing over there?" Twilight looked at the cat and you could see her eyes widen."Oh my Celestia thats a aterlupe!" "What the hell is a aterlupe?" "An aterlupe is a demon wolf. It can separate itself and can't be killed with a sword or gun or even a cannon." "Well can you tell me how to kill it??" "Well you need" Was all she got to say before I saw the aterlupe jump for her. I ran and tackled the dog before he could her. The aterlupe and I hit the ground but I was able to get on top of it as we headed to the ground so I backflipped off the wolf next to Twilight. "Twilight I need to know how do kill this thing now!" "Alright you need to get it wet. You need to get it wet and it will die." "Thank you. Is there a place where I can get it wet then?" "I'm pretty sure there's a lake that way." She said while pointing her hoof to my right. "Alright i'm gonna distract it. Now get to safety." I looked at the wolf and saw it was recovering from my tackle and was readying to attack me. I immediately began running in the direction of the lake and when I saw the aterlupe coming after me I knew that this plan was hopefully going to work. The wolf was chasing me at an alarming rate, I would have to pick up the pace if I wanted to make it to this lake. I was now sprinting as fast as ponily possible. I looked back to see the aterlupe trying to jump on top of me but luckily I was able to swing my sword to cut off its head. I kept running but I saw the wolf's head jumping back on top of its body and growl and run at me full speed. I then turned my head forward and saw the small lake at the end of the woods. I ran until I was only a couple of yards away then I turned around and stood still, waiting for the monster to attack. I saw the wolf sprinting at me at the speed of a Wonderbolt. It kept running until it was close then it leapt for me,but I was able to jump over the creature and see the wolf splash into the lake. I saw the aterlupe get to the surface of the water screaming, it sounded like a high pitch squeal. I could now see its once beautiful coat washing away, revealing its true skin. It's skin looked like billions of tiny bright red worms had infested a wolf's body. The skin looked like it was constantly moving,like it was reshaping itself. Its bat like face was made even more scary by the red skin. The aterlupe ran out of the water and as soon as it reached land it jumped for me, only to be interrupted by my blade impaling the top of the wolfs snout and planting itself on the ground. The skin itself gave a small screech then started to lose it's color. I put my hoof on the wolf's snout and pulled out my sword from the ground. I put my sword away in my coat and suddenly took a good hard look at this demon. It didn't look right. I wonder where any of these types of creatures came to be. "Did you kill it already?" Said Twilight trotting towards me. "Yeah" "Good." Hearing that kinda coldness coming from her made me chuckle. Maybe she is getting used to this after all.