The Thirteenth Alicorn

by Monty Python

Chapter Three

Rainbow Dash lounged on a cloud like one would lie on a sofa after a long day of work. And it was a long work day; she had helped the weather making pegasi make the snow clouds, and managed to get a sneak peek at which town would get winter first; which was sadly not Ponyville.

Secretly, Rainbow Dash thought that Cloudsdale was still upset about the whole "sabotaging the weather factory in order to stop winter" mess.

But as Rainbow leaned back on the cloud, ready to take a quick power nap, she heard a faint voice crying out: "Oh Buck it all!"

Rainbow raised one eyebrow in confusion; who in their right mind would be cursing this early in the afternoon? Heck, even some of the more, unruly pegasi didn't start cursing until well after midnight. And even then it was the sort of cursing you would hear in one of those pre-mare magazines.

Not that Rainbow had read any sort of that, but she digressed. Standing up, she shook her coat to get the mist off and swooped down to meet the stranger.

---

Erebus was tired to the point of letting the cursed Timberwolves play fetch with his bones than run any further. So that left him two options: Charge blindly towards the Timberwolves and be smashed to bits, or curse to the high heavens and hope somebeing would notice and help. He was in a small little town near a forest filled to the brim with monsters, surely some roaming band consisting of a wizard, barbarian, druid, and a ranger would come to the rescue. And of course they would have a bard; there always was one.

"Come on then ugly," he taunted as he saw one of the Timberwolf's rounded the corner of the town, it's three heads filled with explosive honey. The next time he saw Χαώδης, he was going to buck him so hard that his mismatched eyes would rattle, or he would lose that weird snaggletooth he had.

With a thundering roar, the Timberwolf lunged at him, it's maw already starting to spit out honey. Erebus was faster and managed to flip completely over it and land on it's back, his scythe already out from his pocket dimension.

The scythe flashed and embedded itself into the eye of the middle head, blinding it. The Timberwolf howled in agony and tried to buck him off. How in Mag Mell is this not attracting any attention? He thought as he raised the scythe and sent it down, again and again, blinding the wolf, and hopefully attracting the rest of the pack.

That was before he saw it.

The Poison Joke must have been angry he had used its powers as a weapon and decided that he needed to get pranked. And pranked it did. The alpha Timberwolf rose to the air, it's butterfly wings flapping with ferocious energy.

Of, course it had to have twelve legs, three scorpion tails, a lobster claw, and singing a rendition of that new pop song "Rainbow" It also was spitting seeds- actually Timberwolf eggs- all around the town. Welp, Erebus thought we're screwed.

---

Rainbow Dash's day had turned from pretty decent straight up 'are you bucking kidding me?' When she had flown down to get a closer look at who had cursed earlier, she didn' think that there would a pack of mutated Timberwolves rampaging inside Ponyville. The sad part was that this was the second time this had happened, so everypony was somewhat better prepared than last time.

Rainbow had spent the last ten minutes punching, bucking, and pretty much making sure that whatever was keeping the Timberwolves alive wish it was dead. But that was before she saw the alicorn.

He was standing on one of the bigger Timberwolves, repeatedly stapping it in the eye with a scythe. That wasn't the weirdest thing about him, even with his billowing black cloak that covered all of his body, and the hood that covered most of his face, Rainbow could clearly see one thing: the dude was a skeleton, not unhealthily skinny, he was an actual skeleton, with bones bleached white. And he. Was. Awesome! She could only watch in awe as he turned and slashed another Timberwolf across the throat, and buck it halfway across the field that separated the Everfree Forest from Ponyville. She was so busy watching his feats that she missed a Timberwolf pouncing on her.

There was a sharp crack, and a pained yelp, as an orange earth pony spun around, and glared at it.

"Go on, git lost ya filthy varmint." AJ spat as she turned back around, ready to give the wolf another taste of her famous apple bucking kick. The wolf whimpered and shot off back to the Everfree Forest.

Applejack smiled as she turned back to see a friendly face.

"Howdy Rainbow, fine day we is havin' ain't it?"

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. Even in the thick of fighting monsters from the Everfree Forest, Applejack stayed remarkably calm. The smile soon faded as she looked past Rainbow, towards the mysterious alicorn.

Applejack looked at her, and with the dedpaniest voice ever asked: "Rainbow, who th' hay is thet?"

"Truth is, I have no clue."

Applejack nodded, "Wal, we kin't leave a mysterious pony on th' lose kin we? Howsabout we work togither wif t'clear out th' ress of these varmints, an' then take him t'Twilight an' t'others, see whut we kin find out about him."

Rainbow nodded and grinned; "Sounds like a plan to me."

---

With a guttural roar, Erebus cut the head off of another Timberwolf and sank to his knees heavily, he took the lull in the fighting as an opportunity to pull out his whetstone and start resharpening his scythe. Should have gone with the bit-back guarantee of never dulling, but no you had to go with glowing in the dark ability. Granted, living in a place that only got light every year, when starved Windigos stampeded to Tarturus to feed off the hate that was formed from the prisoners, that would make anybeing wish to have any sort of light. The only downside was that Erebus, couldn't stand intensely bright light, a bright sunny day at noon would be torture for him.

"Howdy partner!" Came a friendly female voice dripping with an accent that Erebus couldn't recognize, and he knew about seventy-five languages and another three well enough to get by.

He looked up from his whetstone, he saw two mares looking down at him. One was an orange earth pony that was smiling in a caring, motherly way, while the other, a cyan pegasus with a rainbow colored mane and tail was smiling in a way that made him nervous to let her even look at a weapon.

"Er, hi?" He said as he stood up and extended his hoof out in greeting. "My name's Erebus, what's yours?"

The earth pony took off the Stenson she was wearing and inclined her head; "Mah names Applejack," she nodded her head towards her friend, "an' thet lovely mare on over thar is mah friend Rainbow Dash."

Erebus smiled and nodded; it felt nice to meet two heroes, though they were a bit late. They should have been here immediately after the first Timberwolf had charged in. Or at the very least be here the next day and ask for a sum of money in exchange for ridding the town of the rest of the Timberwolves.

It didn't occur to him that this wasn't a bad immersive RPG game that Apophis sometimes made from small dimensions.

Rainbow took the opportunity to take a closer look at him and his scythe. He had to admit his scythe was unusual, even for a weapon wielded by an alicorn. The handle was made out of the only tree that could grow in Mag Mell; the Chilling Willow, it's head was made out of onyx, which made it easy to lose everytime he accidentally turned off the "glow in the dark" feature.

"Looks pretty awesome," Rainbow told Erebus as she stepped back, "but can you use it as well as it looks?"

Erebus looked at her with half-lidded eyes before he burst out in laughter; "Sweetheart, I've been reaping souls with this bad boy before your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granny grew in her flight feathers. And I've even longer than that!" He stopped and thought for a moment.

"Actually, I think there's a chance that I reaped our granny's soul with this. Whatever. You wanna see this being used up close and personal?"

---

Applejack was terrified. No, not by the Timberwolves, she had dealt with things twice as big as them before. She was terrified by the pony that waded through the pack, killing its members and flinging them like they were ragdolls being swung by a hyperactive filly. (Which had happened once or twice with Applebloom.) And the worst part, the new pony- Erebus if she remembered correctly, he looked happy, about as happy as a grinning dog eating hornets.

Wait, what?

It occurred to her that she needed to rethink some of her countryisms, though a small part of her brain was laughing its hooves off at the thought of that. And while it slightly nauseated her to see Erebus like this, not even five minutes after meeting him, she knew that it was they had to do. But she was still waiting for the other horseshoe to drop.

"Whoooo!" Erebus hollered, "I haven't had this much fun killing stuff since the Battle of the Netherverse, 69,000 years ago! And I was only two centuries old then!"

Yeah, the other horseshoe had dropped, and it had dropped hard.

---

Erebus whooped in delight, as he beheaded another Timberwolf, then spun around and stapped another one through the mouth, he could feel the energy that kept these things alive start to wither as their physical bodies were broken apart. Their souls were all around him, coating him in a haze of kill and repeat. He wanted more, nay he needed more. It was the same intoxicating feeling he got every time he reaped a soul and wanted it never stop.

He slashed and stapped, beheaded and... other synonyms because really who had time to remember other terms for fighting with weapons?

It was all well and good, but he still remembered the alpha; Rainbow could fly, but he didn't want anyone dying because of his stupid mistake, but if they did die, then it was his duty to reap their souls. But there was nothing against the souls about-

Wait, never mind there was a rule against him returning the dead back to life. Something about Flora getting all upset about this warrior that killed her pet Elwetritsch, and the warrior's wife begging Erebus to return bring her back.

Truthfully, he didn't see what was wrong with killing the Elwetritsch; it was big, loud, and ugly as the Lords of the Nine Hells.

He suspected the only reason he did it was because the warriors wife promised to build temple in his houner. The only problem ws she died after her wife came back, and the warrior killed herself soon after.

Stupid noble warrior code.

He was so engrossed with the cycle of kill and repeat, that he almost missed a whimpering Timberwolf running away from a bout of green fire.

The telltale sign of a dragon.

Okay, he didn't want to reap a dragon, but the chance was too close to put off. But a little part of his head was telling him to not to go for it, he did not want a rehash of Queen Everfree.

Shaking off the morbid images of ponies with trees growing out of their bodies, he ran past a corner and spotted the dragon.

It was a hatchling from the look of it, maybe a couple years old, seeing as it hadn't grown in its first set of wings.

It was also currently torching a Timberwolf with its fire as it stood in front of a... purple alicorn?

Was this what Apophis disappeared for? To be the father of another great wizard, or lich if you wanted to pessimistic, but he digressed. The point was, their were only a few naturally born alicorns, unless Tia or Luna hadn't created one...

But just in case Tia or Luna were around, he decided he would the age old trick to get any being to spill.

"I'm telling Mom and Dad!"