//------------------------------// // 8: Auxiliary // Story: Diary of the Dead // by AppleTank //------------------------------// I looked over my notes. From what I could tell upon having an actual extended conversation with Agatha for the first time, she carried herself on an air of arrogance around her. I suppose its somewhat deserved, seeing as she tended to plan her entire day days or more in advance. Though her few twitches and side glances she sent gave me the impression that she was either barely keeping her own path straight, or the world’s best actor. Afterwards I went searching for Dimitri on Agatha’s recommendation. I left my room and wandered down the stairs and through the halls. The small Bar the Club stocked was dark. The kitchen and main room was quiet too. I eventually found Dimitri sitting alone in the Fireplace Room. We didn’t really have central heating back then, a massive fireplace was all we had for cooking and boiling. She looked up from a bottle she was gently swirling. “I’m next, huh?” I blinked in surprise. “Hey, are you alright?” “Nah,” she said, dismissively waving me off. “This is honestly what I spend a lot of my time doing once I’ve delivered whatever Agatha wants me to deliver.” “But ... bwaahh?” “Thinking about the time we first met? Yeah, sorry about that.” Dimitri propped her elbow on the table and slumped her face into her talon. “Agatha needed a way to quickly get you onboard. I’m the only one who can keep a straight face when selling some story I didn’t really believe in.” sigh “This wasn’t what I expected when I tried to go into journalism.” I followed her example and collapsed onto a chair, staring blankly into the flames. “So ... you guys don’t ... need ... me?” “Eh, it was probably something that needed to be done eventually.” She shrugged. “Personally, I’m just here because I vowed to keep an eye on Wally’s back, among other nebulous things Agatha told me to ‘wait’ for. Apparently, she has a job for me ... in a few centuries, if things go well.” “Oh. And me?” She gestured at the writing implements in my bag. “Well, you’re doing good work, and you have a goal, as the result of Agatha’s machinations. She’s the only one who really has a long term idea of what she wants to do, so we just ... follow her lead. It’s worked for you, hasn’t it?” I picked my scrolls and quills out of my bag with my lips, dropped them into my hooves, and stared at them. “...yeah, I guess it has.” “Most of us here are like that,” Dimitri said, taking a sip. “We’re wanted criminals in our homelands, and we got nowhere to go. How much is it was caused by her hand is anyone’s guess, but there’s really no point speculating now, other than to make the best of it. You get?” I took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. “If she has need of me ... alright, fine, I’ll do the same.” I flipped open the scrolls. “And her lead leads me here. What did Agatha drag you here for?” Dimitri lifted her drink and chugged half the bottle. She blindly dropped the bottle back onto the table and wiped her beak with the back of her talon. “Yeah, I wasn’t planning on joining the Honeycomb Club, but well, you know how Agatha is. If she has her sights on you, and she gives you a choice? Reject her. Live a boring life and fade away. Otherwise, she grabs hold of you and never lets go.” Dimi laughed humorlessly. ”Yet even then, she didn’t really give me a choice. Just like your rejection at that moment was unfathomable to you.” She looked into my eyes, just the slightest bit unfocused and hollow. “This is how Dimitri Heneken made her last mistake.” As you know, I was born Dimitri, of the Heneken vineyards family, roughly hundred and fifty years ago. I knew Wally when we were kids, both of us ending up together due to our ... relatively frailty. We stuck together, originally out of necessity to make it harder for bullies to go after us. Wally was the one who went trying to ‘guard’ me, probably from real or imagined pressure from his family.  Eventually, we grew up. I went to help my family's wine business, while Wally ... had a mental break. I even went looking for his family, but they too had no idea where he disappeared to. After a year or so, he showed up at the bar I worked at. He walked in with little fanfare, greeting me like an old friend despite that tang of dried blood cloaking him and clean open wounds dotting his figure. The red glow I could only barely see under his breast told me enough, however. As I know Wally had already told you, a cult of dark magic users was recruiting, and Wally had been one of them to answer the call. He already had the skills, but he was always too frail to execute them.  Now he was finally be able to apply them, and made a name for himself in the cult’s ranks for almost casually tearing through their training courses. I could see that confidence in the way he held himself. I was happy that he had found his purpose ... but I feared that the companion I once knew would soon be lost. I started investigating. I’m not sure what I wanted to achieve, but at the very least I wanted to know what my friend was looking for, and maybe ... maybe if I knew what he wanted, I would also know what I could do to save him. I asked around, I observed, I recorded. I stubbornly clung to whatever scraps of information I could find on the cult. Where they went, what they did, what they wanted. I ran dangerously close to their attacks, so I could glean their rhetoric. What they believed in, what they strove towards. Eventually, I figured I learned enough to pretend to be an eager learner. I would work to get them to take me in, and maybe I could get ahold of Wally in a private place. Whether by cursed luck, or by design, the day I chose was the day the Seer burned it all to the ground. I’m not sure if death would be a mercy. Maybe that’s why she knew I had no choice to begin with. “Here, laddie,” the large, old, and weathered looking griffon said as he handed me a glowing magenta crystal. “Keep it safe at all costs, as this is you from now on.” I carefully clutched it between my claws. If I squeezed it, I could almost feel an ethereal pressure pushing on me from all directions. I gulped. I couldn’t back away now. I shook talons with the doctor, thinking about what to say to Wally when I tracked him down, when the facility shook violently. I nearly fell to the floor, and winced when the crystal, my soul, bounced off the floor. I grabbed a bracelet from a rack on the wall and fastened my soul onto it. I put it on as the doctor poked his head out the door. He hastily pulled his head back and slammed the door shut, a few slivers of splinters and smoke escaping anyways. “I think it be best if we stay inside,” he said, wiping sweat off his brow. “W-what’s happening?” “I don’t know how, but someone has invaded our home.” He sent a worried look at the door. “And winning.” Fear fell like lead into my stomach. Some rotten luck I had, where the one day I entered into something illegal was the day I died for it. I didn’t even get to find where my friend went. I collapsed into a corner of the room as the doctor barred the door with chairs and tables. Then even he ran out of things to prepare for. Instead, he paced back and forth, sending worried glances at the sounds of silenced screams and muffled explosions. Time passed. Bits of blood leaked through the doorframe. I wondered if it was a gang war or a Royally mandated raid, and who would be more likely to spare me.  Then a buzzing red blade pierced the door. Three more pushed through, and with quick swipes carved the obstructions into wood scrap.  The doctor could barely take a step forward before a blood-soaked griffon leapt through the gap and plunged his blade into the doctor’s stomach. Orange shards flew out of the doctor’s back, and then he dropped like a sack of rocks. Flame lit eyesockets turned towards me as the bloody griffon summoned the buzzing blade out of the corpse. His next step took him over me, one talon wrapped around my neck and the other wrapped around my soul. Despite the blood, despite missing half his face, despite wood embedded in the other half, I saw Wally’s eyes staring blankly into me. “W-wally?” I wheezed. The stabbing motion Wally’s blade made jerked off to the side. The flames in his eyesockets flashed once. He slowly backed away, limbs shaking, before his eyes went dark and fell down onto his haunches, head bowed.  Suddenly, there was silence. The explosions seems to have ended after a continuous fifteen minutes of chaos. There were no groans or shouts of pain outside, only a heavy, fatal silence. The only things I could hear were my own raspy breath and the drip of blood falling off Wally’s head. Then ... there was the soft taps of wrapped paws on wood. A talon waved away some of the smoke from the door, and I got my first glimpse of Agatha as she pushed up her mask. She looked much the same as she did now, but a century younger in mind. She doesn’t use a phylactery, claimed that the energies blinded her personal magic. Time and a flawed rejuvenation spell stole her effortless grace in the present day, but here, she seemed to always move exactly where she wanted. She barely looked as if she just wandered through a bloodbath. She tossed a bloodied sword to the ground; the only sign Wally heard was the tiniest of twitches. “This is one heck of a mess here, chick,” she snarked, leaning against a broken door frame, casually missing every single jagged plank. She turned her piercing purple gaze onto me. “And what are you here for?” “I-I-I was l-looking for Wallace,” I managed. She rolled her eyes. “Congratulations, you found him. Hello. Goodbye.” She straightened, turning away. “Come, chick, we have places to raid, guards to evade.” Wally shifted to his feet, quietly stepping after her. “Wait, no!” I cried. I quickly stood up, and nearly fell over from vertigo. “Wally, what happened to you.” “There is no Wally here,” he rasped. "There's only a monster left wearing his skin." “That monster let me live, despite everything,” I shot back. “That same ‘monster’ befriended a nobody. You’re not a killer--” “But I am!” Wally said, his teeth gritted. “This is what I’m good at. What I’m only good at.”  “Yet here you are, despite everything,” I pleaded. “You’re still you.” “Wally is dead! What do you see in this?” he asked, pointing at his ... utter mess of a face. “I see someone in regret. If you can’t see it in yourself, then let me help you,” I pleaded. “If Wally really is dead, then let me honor his memory, and watch over his grave.” "Oh?" The Seer looked up frow her casual looting. Wally tensed as Agatha turned to peer over her shoulder straight into Wally’s eyes, a smirk dancing over her beak. “Oh! Well, guess you better hurry. The guards are coming soon after all.” She stepped away. “Now come along now. The library needs raiding, and there’s some scrolls I want to collect before we leave.” I look worriedly at Wally, who was digging his claws into the floor. I stumbled unsteadily towards him, almost falling before his arm shot out and caught my shoulder. “You alright?” I asked. He didn’t turn to look at me, he just lifted my bracelet, my soul, glittering in the gloom. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Cold fingers wrapped around me, and my mind went blank. Agatha glanced back as Wally loped in. “Where’s your girlfriend?” Wally glared. “Retrieving the cart.” “She knows where it is?” Wally raised the glittering gem. “Its within 100 meters.” “Ah, of course.” Agatha walked through the smoky ruins of the library, plucking scrolls out of fallen bookshelves and broken talons. With a clatter, Dimitri glided down through a tear in the ceiling, the cart behind her, and her eyes blank and unfocused. Wally stepped besides Agatha and helped stack all the scrolls into the covered cart.  “Right, we’re nearing the wire,” Agatha said, looking up. “Let’s go, there’s one more place I want to investigate before we leave the city.” I gasped and fell to the floor, scrambling back. “What was that!?” Wally tossed my bracelet to my feet. “Secure it at all costs. Sacrifice limbs if you must, for losing it means your life is forfeit.” He peeled back a bit of skin on his chest, letting the dark red light of Wally’s own soul to spill into the snow.  “Didn’t seem to inhibit either of you too much,” I snarked, tying the gem back onto my wrist. I’d need to get suggestions on where to hide it after this. “Indeed,” Wally sighed, his head drooping again. “Not much you can do when The Seer sets her eyes upon you.” I looked around. “Where are we? And where’s ... uh, what’s her name? Its not just ‘Seer,’ is it?” “Agatha,” Wally grumbled. “Told me that she was tracking Lich movement last year. Followed individuals leaving secret bases with hidden equipment. One of them is an underground lab...” [1 year before] Agatha chatted with a seller in the marketplace, quietly watching the convoy out of the corner of her eye under the shadow of her traveling cloak. Every so often, she briefly ducked her head as a her eyes flashed with magic to check her emotional state in the next five minutes. Nothing. Normal parameters. She exhaled quietly. As useful as getting a phylactery would be, the blinding of her best skills was completely not worth it. It also made tracking them a hell of a lot more dangerous, since it still started affecting her even from a distance. The convoy went wide around the town, and towards the less populated areas of the town. Which wasn’t surprising really. The past few wars had left a few coastal cities abandoned, to be rebuilt when the economy improved. This left several warehouses uninhabited. Once they left the city, she was forced to rely on pure stealth and distance, to her displeasure. Though it had been a long time since, but the lessons from a life long past stuck despite herself. A few hours of traveling led her to climb onto a rooftop and sneak in through the rafters, tying a scarf over her face to keep the dust on the beams from getting into her nostrils. She watched the group she was trailing walk among abandoned shipments and then ... paused. They tapped the ground, and waited as a trapdoor slowly opened. She hummed quietly, watching them disappear. She snacked on smoked meat waiting, and a few hours later the ponies left again. She waited a little longer before dropping to the floor and investigating the trapdoor, but was almost immediately beset by invisible spears of hate and pain lancing behind her eyelids. Agatha growled, stepping back and blinking her stinging eyes. Intentional or not, whatever research they were doing here made it near impossible for her own magic to see anything of use.  With a frustrated sigh, she focused on whether she saw herself running out.  Nothing. Well, either everything would be fine, or she got captured. Might as well hurry, before they came back from their lunch break and complete confidence in not needing a guard.  Agatha slipped pins out of her bag, and quickly lockpicked it. They didn’t bother with a serious lock either, not that it would it stop her, though she admitted to herself that whatever they hid in here did a lot to limit her options. She carefully lifted the trapdoor and slid down the dark stairwell, her skin crawling. There was no natural light, no windows, forcing her to unwrap a small lantern to light it. She barely suppressed a flinch. Rows and rows of cages, labeled and sorted for a library of unconsenting biological experimentation. She stepped through a walkway surrounded by chimeras, hissing and clawing and prowling mindlessly.  Ahead lay burning eyes from sparking fur. “Elementals,” she muttered. “How did they amass such power and do nothing with it? What are they waiting for?”  She reached the end of the room, and saw another locked door, this time actually heavily protected. She groaned, knowing that this time she would have to figure out how to open it manually, while dodging magical traps and against a time limit. Apparently there were something so secret the grunts weren’t allowed to see.  Before she could even begin planning a plan of action, she felt a piercing pressure smashing between her eyes. Garbled voices and noises briefly blasted into her brain without passing through eardrums. “You ... are not ... like the others,” a halting, telepathic voice forced into her mind.  Agatha wheezed, dagger in paling talon. “What? Who?” ”You are not ... one of them. Yet still, heartless” Agatha dramatically clutched at her chest, forcing an unsteady grin onto her face through the pounding adrenaline. “Oh, you wound me.” She shrugged, and nodded, “Though I will ... admit I have some ... serious personality problems I need to fix before it gets me killed. Apologies. ”  She glanced at her white-knuckled grip on her dagger. “So ...” You have need of something within the ... vault?. I do believe we have a common interest. Turn right, and walk. Agatha nodded, carefully stepping through the dark corridors. Labels loomed in her lamplight, marking off a row’s research focus. Elements, Anti-dragon, Infiltration--. Anti-Seer. Agatha froze at the entrance. Stop. This way. And keep. Going. The mental pressure intensified, pushing her ever heeper through the aisle. It was quite obvious when she got to her mental voice's abode. Amidst countless prisons of deteriorating sanity and mindless rage, one cage sat quietly, waiting patiently for its prey. Agatha’s smile came out as more of a grimace. “Hello there. May I ... have the honor of knowing the name of my host?” The red eyes tilted its head. ”No name ... but my experiment designation was Stuart. Fifth variation. My host, like many of the others here, were hunted down or stolen for testing. Agatha nodded, “So that’s how this arrangement works. Well, I’m Agatha--” The Seer, yes. We know. The one the Dead would very dearly hope to eliminate from this plane. The one we were designed to kill. “Ahh...” Agatha twitched under its gaze. “I assume from my current living status, that that mission is postponed?” For now, though not necessarily indefinitely. Agatha gulped. “So .... can I leave now?” ”I’d like to know WHY I shouldn’t kill you. From here, you seem poised to be just as dangerous to ME "Ooh, yeah, my manipulation streak," Agatha said with a wince. "If its that obvious, I clearly haven't learned my lesson the first time around. Ok, let me start over." Agatha closed her eyes and breathed in. When she opened them again, her eyes briefly flashed poison-yellow. "Look, right now the walking corpses are pissing the both of us off. Would they fall without me? Probably. But they've been a thorn in my side long enough that I want to piss on their ashes rob 'em blind. Plagiarize their legacy.” She shrugged. “Plus, I have a personal affinity for preserving any sort of knowledge.” The shade considered her for a moment. “Why now?” it asked. “Ah, my associate ...” Agatha paused as Stuart’s glare intensified. “Ah, see! I’m learning! Sorry. I found a turncoat and got him to feed me information to get through the blackout they created to counter me.” “... The Vault. If you can free the geas on our minds through them, we will be in your debt.” “Just make sure I don’t go off the deep end. If we can go a century without me trying to eat an energy field bigger than my head, we’re even. Also, we?” ”I am not the only one with their minds intact.” “... I see. I’ll see what I can do, assuming I survive long enough to understand it” The spirit sagged, suddenly tired. Alright. What will you do now? “Finish up my preparations,” Agatha said, sitting on her haunches. “They’re gonna have a big meetup soon. Get ‘em all in one spot.” ”Good,” Stuart said, claws digging into the detritus inside his cage. Agatha perked an eyebrow as she got up to leave. “Say ... you want revenge?” “This lab in particular is specialized in animal experimentation. Most of them have, unfortunately, completely lost their sanity. Three managed to avoid that fate. Stuart-5, Anti-Seer, Weapon Fusion Experiment. Hellcat-18, Anti-Seer, Lightning Element mixing. Wildcat-36, Manticore fusion experimental, close air support. They really don't like their captors," Wally finished blandly. "Uh." I glanced at the bracelet symbolizing my affiliation. "They have been told of our arrival. Now come, the Seer should have finished toying with them." I followed Wally into the warehouse, and through the hidden trapdoor. I was greeted by what he had described: a dimly lit bunker-library, if it contained screaming pet cages. "G-get off me!" a voice screamed. A griffon backed into view, frantically trying to pry a miniature manticore off his wing. His efforts stumbled as a smoke-trailing pitch-black cat clamped onto a forearm, leaving him stumbling. A flash of steel heralded the arrival of a heavily stitched up rat, its tail more resembling a scorpian’s with its long, segmented joints, and a gleaming blade on the end. It bursted onto the panicking lich’s face and slammed its tail blade through the griffon’s neck. Yellow shards of crystal burst out the griffon’s back an instant before he bonelessly collapsed to his side.  Almost in unison, the three wraiths locked their eyes upon me and Wally. ”I recognize the red eyed one, even if he lost both eyes,” the rat hissed haltingly, its voice seeming to have no echo, ”but the little one ...” In a blur, the rat had smashed into my chest and knocked me flat on my back, its scorpion tail-blade pointed right in my eyes. I faintly noticed felt jaws clamp around my wrist. ”You. Aren’t. Familiar. I gulped. “Hmm?” Agatha strolled over the lich corpse, brushing flakes of crystal dust off her fur. “Oh her. Wrong place, wrong time. Got stuck in the same place as us while we were blowing the liches back to their grave. Terrible luck, honestly.” ”Luck?” the rat asked, staring at Agatha. Said griffon blinked, but after a moment she winced and held up a talon. “Woah, I didn’t even know who she was until I met them. She volunteered to join us, since, well, anyone bearing a soul gem is probably going to be hunted down by the end of the week, especially if they have no idea what they’re doing.” Frankly, it made me question my life choices all over again, but I nodded frantically since I really had no idea what to do with my giant weakness literally hanging off my wrist. The rat thought in silence before mutely acknowledging Agatha’s reasoning. “Now what?” “Now I loot everything I can carry, and bury the rest for later retrieval. Come on you two. Chop chop.” I blinked as the animals stepped off me. “What?” Agatha sighed. “You young chicks.” The next thirty minutes was a scramble as Agatha broke into the vault with the three’s, tentatively nicknamed the Antibodies, help, and hauled out anything that looked important back to the cart left outside. Pretty soon the authorities would start a city wide comb for necromantic aligned safehouses. We couldn’t be found here, and we couldn’t let this place be found until we plundered everything.  “This place is the only one I hit personally,” Agatha explained when I asked if the Enlightened had made others. "Made a deal with the little guys." I glanced at cages we passed as we crawled out the trapdoor. "And those guys?" Agatha looked at where I was pointing. "What about them?" "Can't we save them, or, or do anything about it?" Agatha shook her head. “They’re gone, chick.” She pulled a tarp over the scrolls. “That’s what Wally is staying behind for.” “What?” She sighed. “They’re already dead. He’s making sure they’re reminded of that.” Wally stood in the middle of the room. “Anyone else?” he asked, his shout barely able to carry over the few thousand screaming micro-monsters. Said creatures continued screaming. He sighed, his head bowed and his talons clasped together. “Forgive me. May you find peace.” After a moment of (personal) silence, he raised his head, his glowing eyes buzzing with power. Motes of light fan out from his form, buzzing inaudible over the noise. Within seconds, they filled the whole room, sparks of energy arcing between them in a barely visible grid. They formed a mental observatory of stars, each point in the grid known to him. He focused, and grasped them as a whole, then twisted his body in a spiral. The grid followed suit. A moment later, a thousand cages sheared into pieces, spraying a wave of poisoned blood covering Wally’s feet. The room’s supports cracked, creaked, and crumbled. Wally turned and ran. I jumped back slightly when Wally jumped out of the trapdoor, barely overtaking a cloud of dust. “The deed is done,” he rasped. “Excellent!” Agatha cheered. She grabbed a few scrolls from her side and flipped it into the shallow sinkhole the trapdoor now led to. “That’ll make it seem like a hiding spot rather than a bunker. With hope they won’t dig any deeper. Now come on, let’s get out of here.” ..... ... .. “And now we’re here,” Dimitri explains. “Plan P. Obfuscation over obfuscation, because all of us were wanted, and we have nowhere near the power required to defend ourselves.” “How’s it been?” I asked. “Thankfully, quiet.” She takes a swig. “Honeycomb keeps itself quiet, we really only have relations with the town a few minutes away. Appleton, its a place I knew from my brewery training. Agatha was pretty impressed I could locate an escape route so quickly.” She pauses. “Agatha does find time for me to visit my home though.” I blinked. “Is it safe?” “It was months after we left. My parents were thinking of retirement soon, Agatha helped arrange a disguise and a new identity so my parents could ‘hire’ me in order to take over the business. There’s a few guys there who manages the on site details, I work management and transport to reduce the time I stay there.” She shrugged. “I buried my parents by now, so, not really anything keeping me there.” I placed a hoof over her talon. Dimitri gave me a tired grin.  “Anything else?” she asked. I glance at the notes strewn all over the table. “I think I’m good. If I need to clarify something, I’ll go ask for you.” “Alright,” Dimitri stood up and patted my shoulder as she left. “Good luck. I’m going to check the mail, if you need me.” “Thanks!” I called. I had just stumbled out of cross-referencing history books and comparing them to the interviews when Gladas found me. I entered the main room, grimacing at the plate of water-boiled greens I had set out for myself. Hours earlier.  I sighed at my inability to keep track of time, instead I smashed a hoof into the middle of the pile. Motes of green light bounced off my hoof and into the food. They hissed as they melted the leaves, turning it all into a mushy brown sludge. I picked up the plate and drank it with a slight wince. It tasted kinda muddy, with weird overlapping flavors and texture of wet powder. Needed more water, I thought, if I wanted to do that again. I turned to go back to the basement library, but instead ate a faceful of down. I jerked back, blinking away feathers.  “How did you do that?” Gladas hissed.  I paused in the brushing of feathers off my tongue. “The whaf?” “That plate,” Gladas repeated, with a strange intensity to her voice. “What did you do?” I looked back to the table. “I ... reduced it.” “I thought you were limited to compost.” “Nooo? At least, I don’t think so.” “Then figure it out.” Gladas motioned to her rear with a wing. “Honeycomb has cordial relations with Appleton, but without Marks of our own, our knowledge of them is limited. Until now. Understand it. Maybe you can fix something. Someone.” I stared at my hoof. “O... kay.” Gladas turned away, and set forth for the basement trapdoor. “If you find anything interesting, or need my help, you know where to find me.” A moment passed. “What secrets do you hide?” I mused. Cutie Marks? Yes. It is such an ingrained fact of our lives, that we never questioned what’s given to us beyond its immediate. Never broadened our horizons. You came with a horizon that’s already unimaginably broad. I ... I see. What did you find? For myself? The manipulation of entropy itself.