Magnus was a simple stallion in his own mind. A simple stallion with simple needs who had a simple duty and lived a simple life.
He got up before dawn, washed, ate a small meal of millet, oats, milk and honey, and prepared for his shift. The first hour of his day would be taken with such preparations as checking his gear, visiting the barracks, and making the required stop at the armory for any repairs or shift changes that might be required.
Nine days ago, he had been reassigned from parapet duty to 'The Plot.'
He hadn't understood the change at the time, and had asked the question any sensible stallion would: "What the heck is 'The Plot'?" Unsurprisingly, at least in retrospect, the officer had responded with a simple "Don't ask questions, do your job."
So, for the first three days, he had stood stoically beside a small garden bench, next to a birdbath, in a patch of carefully trimmed ivy, precisely one and one half meters from a patch of freshly turned soil littered with small flowers. He stood ready, tirelessly guarding a patch of flowers against any that might do it harm. He stood, a silent sentinel, because it was his duty.
For three days, he guarded the patch of flowers. For three days, he held his spear at exactly the right angle, facing exactly the right direction, blinking at exactly the proper interval, and turning to leave exactly when the shift change officer relieved him. He watched as ponies strolled by, ignoring him as most were wont to do. He saw a strange pattern start to form: almost nopony noticed him, but an unusual number of guards visited the patch of ground... silently at that.
On the forth day, Mistral, one of Princess Luna's personal guard, wandered by and stopped at the flowers. Her wings, tucked tightly to her sides and her pitch colored mane pulled in a braid reminiscent of the scroll work that decorated a number of palace tapestries.
She was a quiet one, he recalled, prone to long droughts of silence during the mixed shifts every guard was required to participate in on occasion, but she had a life to her that he found endearing. While she might not be chatty and rarely spoke to anyone save the Princesses, she had a disarming smile and would often smirk out a laugh so quiet it resembled a soft pant more than proper laughter. And while he found her slitted pupils a bit distracting, overall, he quite enjoyed her company.
Mistral had approached the plot with a care that confused Magnus. While most of the ponies that visited remained quiet, none had shown quite the reluctance that Mistral had. Her first steps toward the plot had halted abruptly, indecision apparent on her face. When, after a moment, she had resumed her approach, her wings tightened around her sides in an clearly unintended display of nervous protection.
It had confused him to see the normally relaxed, though quiet, mare acting so guarded. It was almost as if she had some kind of personal aversion to the subject of his protection.
It took a moment for him to realize she had spoken, and a moment more to process that she had been addressing him.
"Do you know if it was a mare or stallion, Magnus?"
Breaking his stoic facade to look at her, he weighed his response. He actually knew nothing of his assignment other than he was supposed to stand guard over a patch of flowers for a decent number of hours every day. Any questions he had thought to ask had been summed up in the officer's response already... namely, he only needed to do his job.
"I'm sorry Mistral, I'm just here to guard the flowers. They're apparently very important for some reason."
The look the mare gave him was a mix of confusion followed quickly by understanding. "Ah. So they never told you what you're guarding.... and knowing you, you didn't need to know to do your job."
It was more than she had spoken to him in the four months they had shared shifts.
Mistral apparently took his silence as permission to explain. Gesturing over towards the patch of slightly wilted flowers, she nodded, "Something happened a few days ago. Nopony's saying much about what exactly went on, but word is that all the Princesses, except Cadance, rushed off to do something. Celestia closed the Day Court and even Luna was rushing around in the middle of the day. Sparkle showed up from Ponyville and the three of them disappeared somewhere into the castle to do something. The Day Guard's being pretty tight lipped about the whole thing, even though they were stationed well into the night, but next thing you know, Gentry's quit the guard, the entire unit set to 'help' clams up, and the Princesses are ordering a funeral for a war hero."
She looked quietly towards his face, as neutral an expression as her little fanged mouth could muster. "You're guarding a grave Magnus - a grave for somepony the Princesses don't want to ever forget."
-~oOo~-
She awoke to the uncomfortable pressure of something crushing atop her. It was dark and damp, pinning her solidly to whatever it was she was resting upon, so much so that she couldn't draw a breath. Panic began to flood her mind.
Somebody! Anybody! Help me!
And then, almost as quickly as it came, the panic was gone. She knew where she was, what had happened. Some 'hero' had finally come back home, likely at the King's command, and had laid waste to her little farm. Her husband and child had both acted, striking out at the interloper, while she had fumbled with the lock to the cabin. She had heard the wet squelching and the dull thumps as her family had fallen. She had known, vaguely, what it had meant, but at the time, it hadn't mattered.
What did matter was that there was someone alive out there. There was someone living and her master had made it perfectly clear that the living were to be undone.
How else could the undead come to be?
And so, she had fumbled with the lock, rotting flesh peeling back or falling off in great ichorous gobs, until the lock had slipped from her sticky, skeletonized fingers, and alerted the living to her presence.
It hadn't even been a fight. One moment, she was scraping at the locked door, confused why the lock on her side wouldn't open, and the next, a shadow darkened her window and the world erupted in reds and yellows.
As she toppled, she heard the door being kicked in and struggled to reach the heavy boots of the invader. Before she could touch it though, a heavy axe had become inexplicably lodged in her ribcage.
The 'hero' must have been a pious one; he had taken the time to bury the dead. It hadn't mattered that they had risen once already.
Somewhere in her shattered mind, she hoped that she would have done the same.
-~oOo~-
"I suppose something like this should have been expected," the Princess remarked upon reading the royal gardener's request for even more flowers. Her little ponies, it seemed, while polite and dignified in her presence, were not above sneaking snacks while the Guard weren't looking.
It had become almost a game in the two weeks since the ceremony; she would wake, raise the sun, see her sister for breakfast/dinner, open the Hall for Day Court, break for lunch, and receive yet another request for more flowers.
Princess Celestia chuckled quietly to herself, causing Kibitz to raise an inquisitive brow.
"Kibitz, please see to it that the royal gardener is instructed to place a bowl of ...oh let's say elderberries next to the plot and to plant a few day lilies and request that he be creative in choosing another bitter flower for our disrespectful visitors."
Kibitz nodded politely before trotting off to carry the message.
-~oOo~-
Darkness again. Always the darkness. At least it wasn't cold this time, or hot for that matter.
She had woken some time ago into the dark damp press of soil. It was a sensation she had become intimately familiar with, albeit under perpetually unpleasant circumstances. It was a comfort in only one sense - she knew she was no longer in the endless abyss of the lost Draenor.
That she was buried again meant that she was on some planet, likely with some form of sapient life. That she had been buried meant that she would likely be thought dead and left forgotten once interred. That she had been dead before going off to save the timeways was immaterial. Such things were of little import where the Forsaken were involved.
What did confuse her, however, was the apparent loss of time between her screaming agony and being dumped, no doubt unceremoniously, into what was likely some horrendously overcrowded mass grave.
Normally when she had been cut down, she at least had a vague recollection of movement or the odd flashes of awareness that would lead her spirit back to her body. Yet, there had been no faded world or spirit healer to guide her back. There had been.... nothing.
Instead, she could only recall horrendous agony that finally overwhelmed her ability to remain conscious. Sometime after, she assumed, whatever had decided to kill her had apparently disposed of her in the most efficient manner possible: throwing her in some hole.
Not that she was complaining really. After all, being thought dead meant that she could escape and potentially find a way back or, failing that, at least sneak off until she could figure out where she was.
Her musings were interrupted by a strange, though not unknown, sensation. Somewhere, down near the bottom of her ribcage, there was the sense of movement - of sliding and creeping. Something was trying to make a home in the remains of her organs.... again. Probably a worm or a collection of maggots. Weevils or earwigs.... much less pleasant, but still tolerable. With a relaxed and breathless huff, she resolved to wait it out.
After all, the living didn't stay long that way around a Forsaken - even the good ones felt the touch of the grave eventually.