//------------------------------// // The King is Back // Story: Tale of the Narcissistic Skeleton // by Magna85 //------------------------------// --POV: Mortis (The First)-- I sprinted through the forest, right behind the RS. It had been two millennia since I had walked, let alone sprinted, and it felt wonderful to have the wind caressing my bones again. Suddenly feeling an abnormal emotion in the forest, I whispered to my RS, "There is an unusual source of tranquility in the forest. Find it. Anything that can be tranquil in this forest is something to seek out." She nodded and relayed the command to the rest of her Eyes, and we tilted towards the source of tranquility. Still sprinting, we ran through the forest, dodging trees this way and that. I saw in my mind's eye that we were coming up on a source of emotion that felt more like something feral. The emotion it was emitting felt like a sense of satisfaction. It was between us and the tranquil one, so we would most likely have to get through it. If I had noticed it, that meant the rest of my selves had noticed it as well. Following the same path of logic I took, we would arrive at the same conclusion. We would have to destroy this obstacle, whatever it may be. Keeping my "eyes" forward, I heard what the obstacle was long before I saw it. Lying in a clearing was a huge lion-bat-scorpion thing, called a manticore. Its back was toward us and it seemed to be eating a fresh kill, possibly only minutes old due to how much of the corpse was left. The actual creature was unrecognizable since the manticore was bent over it, still facing away from us. We could probably assimilate it, but might suffer some bone damage from its powerful claws. Thus, I decided to use one of my most favorite, and, paradoxically, least favorite powers. I could grab the heart of any living creature, and call it to my hand, instantly killing the creature. Obviously, this would only possibly incapacitate those with more than one heart, and would not work at all on non-biological organisms. I liked the power because any threats deemed to dangerous for assimilation could be killed near instantly. I didn't like it because it gave me an alternative to assimilating, and I didn't like to waste good bones. Looking down, I spied a small branch. A plan quickly formed in my head, leading me to believe that my RS and her Eyes had also reached the same conclusion. Looking to her, I signaled that I would step on the branch, causing the manticore to face me. Then, with their help, we would all pull its heart out of its chest. I could do it from behind, but the back is much more resilient compared to the chest, with only a couple layers of muscle and bone to go through. Nodding, my RS and her Eyes extended their hands, ready to call the manticore's heart into the world. I placed my bony foot over the branch, looking back to my selves. With a nod, I put my full weight onto the branch. *SNAP!* The manticore instantly turned around, growling at where the branch was. However, I had already raised my hands and could feel the rhythmic pumps of the large organ. If I had skin on my face I would have grinned. I clenched the bones that made up my hand into a fist and pulled. Immediately, the manticore could feel something wrong. A red circle appeared on its chest as it fell over on its side. The circle burned through fur, skin, muscle, and bone, leaving the heart exposed as it floated into the center of equilibrium for all 7 of my selves. They released their hold and it shot to my waiting hand, beating erratically from residual electric currents. Gazing at it for a second, I tossed it to one of my RS's Shadow Eyes. It was time to start rebuilding my collection, and a manticore heart would make a great first start. Nodding, the Eye sprinted to where my new base supposedly was. This left us with six of me, two of which were leader level. However, one of the Eyes was walking towards the fresh corpse of the manticore, which means he had already thought about what I was thinking about. The fact that so much unused bone would go to waste. He looked to his RS, who then looked to me. I nodded, and two more Eyes left our group to carry back the corpse of the manticore. Thus having taken care of the situation, we started sprinting towards the source of tranquility. Again feeling wind and branches scraping over my bones under the black cloak I was spawned with cast me back to a long time ago... Before I turned into a necessary monster. --Two Thousand Years Ago-- Ugh. What happened, where am I, and who do I have to smack to get something for my throat? I thought as I placed my hand to my head. I opened my eyes but immediately shut them as light burned my retinas after apparently having my eyes closed for several hours. Cracking one eye open, I pointed my head towards the ground, thinking that the grass I felt would at least be less bright than the sun overhead. As I opened both eyes however, I was assaulted by the brightest pastel green I have ever seen. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I steadily got used to the brightness, allowing me to finally see just where in the world I was. I sincerely hope this is just a dream, I thought with wide eyes. What greeted my eyes was a world full of pastel colors, nearly blinding me with their garish brightness. The grass, to the trees, to the sky, to even the dirt road, it was all in ultra-bright colors! I wanted to puke rainbows. But I didn't. Quickly getting used to seeing blinding colors piercing my eyeballs, I lifted myself off the ground, feeling the extraordinarily soft blades of grass caressing my skeletal hands. Wait, what?! Looking at my hands, there was no skin on them at all. No muscle, or even cartilage. Just, bones. I would like to think I took it better than a normal person. Being slightly unhinged gives that ability. I still screamed my head off for all of two seconds, but I got over it quickly. Screaming wasn't going to help, and it only irritated my probably now non-existent throat. Now that I noticed it, I couldn't really feel any skin on the rest of my body either. Looking down, I also noticed what I wearing for the first time. I was covered in a long black cloak, with sleeves reaching down to just past my wrists. My feet, also not covered by skin or muscle, just barely peeked out from underneath the bottom hem of the cloak. I pulled the front of the piece of clothing away from my neck, and saw that my torso had not been spared the skinless treatment either. A sternum and ribs greeted my vision, which were actually what I was feeling my cloak with. I could only feel things that touched my bones. If I was any other person, I would still have been screaming, or lying on the ground as a sobbing mess. As it was, I was made of sterner stuff. I only imagined my face frowning, and began thinking about what had most recently happened. The last thing I remembered was walking down a street at night, and seeing a man holding something that absorbed the light… I’m dead! I thought. Panic started settling in my mind, before I shook my head, knowing that panic would not help either. Also, when I shook my head, my neck made these awful creaking sounds as the bones rubbed together. Let me tell you, it was not a nice sound to hear yourself make. Just as I did this, however, a, for lack of a better term, pony of questionable coloration walked in front of me. As in, it was less than a foot away, and was colored a neon orange. Its mane and tail were a two tone green, and it had the weirdest shape tattooed on its flank. It looked like an old fashioned record player you would find in a museum with a star as the plate. This pony just walked right by me, before turning around and widening its comically sized eyes. I swear, those eyes took up half of its face space. Its mouth opened and I jumped at the pony. I wanted to cover its mouth before it could scream, but I seemed to underestimated how quickly my new body could move. Being used to lugging around about 130 pounds of organs, muscles, and skin made me shoot towards the pony. My right hand was outstretched, reaching towards the muzzle of the pony. However, as my hand touched the pony, my now pointed fingers ripped into the mouth of the pony due to the accelerated speed I was traveling at. I also ended up tackling the pony, even with my now relatively light body weight. My eyes would have widened, if they could have, but the pony did it for me. My hand forced its mouth closed and tears sprang up in its eyes. I tried to pull my hand out of its face, but my arm wouldn’t budge. The pony thrashed, trying to get me off of it. Muffled screams came from its mouth, even as I tried to pull my hand free. Suddenly, the pony started struggling even more, as the screams reached a higher pitch. A red liquid seemed to be traveling from the wounds around the head of the pony, spreading itself all the way down its body. None of the liquid dripped off, it only encased the pony as I tried even harder to remove my hand from the now feebly struggling pony. As the red stuff reached the tip of the pony’s tail, I gave one last heave, to try and get help. I ended up flying off, landing on my back. I heard sickening cracks and snaps as I pushed myself off the ground with my elbows. The red mass was no longer recognizable as a pony, but seemed to be reshaping itself as a human. The red liquid receded back into the spot where the head wound would have been as I picked myself off the ground. However, once the red stuff had disappeared completely, my mind was assaulted with images that were most definitely not my memories. In the space of a second, I looked through the entirety of this pony’s life, from birth to “death.” I learned that its name was Star Record, and it was actually a she. She listened to music and magically, you heard that right, magically, transcribed the sounds onto a large disk of graphite. I shook my head to banish the images and slowly walked over to the now humanoid looking thing. As I observed closer, the body looked extremely close to mine. Almost exactly similar. The body was nearly six feet tall, with arms that reached down to mid-thigh. It was wearing a black cloak that looked the same as mine. What caught my attention was the now human skull that was above the neck hole of the cloak. My mouth opened in slight surprise, as red lights appeared in the sockets of the skull. They went out and came back, like a blink, before shutting off as the right arm of the body came up over its face. “Ugh…That was a weird dream,” the pony-turned-humanoid said. It sounded very feminine as it said this. It, she, brought her arm away from her face in what looked like surprise. Her eyelights appeared again as she quickly pushed herself off the ground, facing me. I got the distinct sensation that her eyebrows would be in its scalp as it studied me. She suddenly said, “Who are you and why do you look like me?” “I could ask you the same question and another one. You were a brightly colored pony/horse-thing just a couple seconds ago. Why do you now look like me?!” I said, gesturing towards my chest. Torso. Ribcage. You know what I mean. She flinched back and said, “No…the last thing I remember was accidentally clawing the mouth of a pony as I saw it try to scream. I had flown backwards as my hand was released from its face. I must have knocked myself out or something.” “No, I was the one who did that, idiot,” I said, already tired of arguing with the obviously unstable individual. “You take that back!” she said as she shot forward to grab my neck. “How about you get your hands off me?!” I said, aiming a punch to her sternum. If she had only a skull for a head, then she must have been like me as well. My fist landed and she shot backwards. Her feet dragged through the ground as she tried to stop her momentum. Instead of being winded, she got back up on her feet and said, surprise in her voice, “That didn’t hurt.” “Excuse me? Oh right, you’re just bones, like I am. You don’t have lungs to wind,” I said, facepalming. “Just like you? I would say you,” she said as she pointed a finger at me, “are just like me!” she finished, pointing her finger at herself. I would have arched an eyebrow at this, and simply said, “I just said that.” Crossing her arms, she said, “No you didn’t. You implied that you were better by saying I was like you.” Again bringing my hand to my face, I said, “You do know that this argument has no point, right?” I bet she would have been smirking so hard right now if she had skin. She said, and I could hear the smugness in her voice, “Then you give up?” As I brought my hand from my face, narrowed my eyes and said, “Who was standing up when you awoke? You? Or me?” Her eyelights seemed to brighten as she took in this piece of information. “Oh,” she said dumbly. “Have you realized that I most likely made you from the body of that pony yet?” I said, slightly irritated at this pointless argument. She seemed to deflate and said, “Fine. Whatever. But why do I have all of my, your, memories?” I tried to come up with a good answer, but simply said, “That. Is a very good question.” --Present-- Shaking my head to bring myself back to the present, I realized we were coming up on the source of tranquility. It was slightly tinged with frustration now. Two of my RS’s Shadow Eyes had gone ahead to scout it out, whatever the source was. Surprise registered in my mind’s eye where two normally neutral spots of emotion, the Eyes, should be. Now I was intrigued, if only by the slightest margin. As we reached the two Eyes, a male and female combo, they said, “The target is a zebra, but she is a very potent potion maker. We are worried that she might have some form of countermeasure for us.” “If what you say is true, I must not reveal myself. Apparently, from what I remember, my aura feels like a corrupting death. The bushes should hide it for now, but I will fall back. Five of you go, one of you appearing wounded. Call for help before you bang on the door, that should give her, if the gender diversity is still the same as before, enough time to not throw a sleeping potion in your face. Once you are in her house, assimilate her. I don’t know much about zebras, so expect anything,” I said, having taken into account any possible variable. The three Eyes that were sent to the base to bring back the kill had returned to us, providing us with some reinforcements. If she was aggressive, then we would just kill her instead. The five Eyes nodded and went to the bushes. One of them collapsed to the ground, which prompted two others to pick him up. The Eye’s hoods were up, so she would not see that their, my, faces were all the same. I pulled back and watched the emotions from a distance. Even if the zebra wasn’t a unicorn, she would be able to feel my slight aura of cloying death. Five spots of neutrality, three of whom were close together, approached the zebra’s house, hut, or whatever it was. I heard shouts for help, but their emotions never revealed themselves. There was a small amount of excitement, but nothing that would register to the conscious mind. However, my selves are great actors, like me. They should put on a convincing show. The source of tranquility, the zebra, suddenly changed to a mix of curiosity and urgency, probably after hearing the shouts and the banging on her door. It, she, moved a small amount, skirting around something before stopping. Apparently her house was either small or her work took place close to the front door. One of my selves had stopped as well, in front of the zebra, presumably with the door in between them. The zebra moved forward suddenly, passing the self at the supposed door. She approached the three clustered selves, who had moved forward a little. While she was doing that, however, the other two selves had approached from behind. The zebra moved towards the middle self, putting her in a great position for assimilation. At an unspoken signal, all five of the selves pounced. The zebra became incredibly surprised, before pure pain emanated from her. I stopped focusing on the emotions, that much pain could actually harm me. I never liked causing pain, but years of commanding an army has jaded me. As we waited for the Eyes to return with our new recruit, I looked at my RS. She had her hood up, but all of my selves could see through the shadows our hoods provided. Apparently two thousand years can cause skin to grow. I would have smirked. If I hadn’t taunted Celestia at the final moment, I probably could have survived and got stoned instead. Then I would be able to help my soldiers with the skin’s natural aura suppression. As I thought this, the Eyes walked back with the new recruit. Once I took notice of her, I looked through the acquired memories of the zebra. Potion making couldn’t even begin to describe the zebra’s, Zecora’s, craft. She knew so much about potions and brews that it almost seemed like she could perform alchemy if she wanted. Of course, she also needed incredibly rare reagents for the more interesting potions. After crushing the surprise in my head, I looked to my selves and said, “Alright, I need one of you to run ahead to get two Scalpels to catalogue the potions still in Zecora’s hut. And make sure you tell them to bring the ingredients, pot, or whatever else may be useful to us.” A single Eye nodded and started sprinting at a much faster pace than we would normally go at. I and the rest of my selves started sprinting a slower pace, to reserve our energy. As we ran, my thoughts were once more cast into the past. To a time when war was the furthest thing from my, our, mind… Boy I sure am nostalgic today.