Beyond My Grave: Exhumed

by AnnEldest

A Rude Awakening

There was a loud splash, and a mess of bubbles.

Discord opened his eyes and saw a swirl of mud and silt. He tried to gasp, but only got a mouthful of water. In another moment, he raised his head into the air above and coughed loudly, spitting the water from his mouth and nose. He crawled backwards and stopped on his knees, wiping the water from his dripping face.

“AW… Where’s a plumber when you need one!?” he sputtered.

By the time he cleared his vision, he saw two mismatched appendages before his eyes. A paw and a talon both flexing their digits under his will. He looked down, and saw that his body was long and serpentine once more. A touch of his face, and it had returned to its former glory. He sighed, relieved to be his old self again. Then, he noticed the world around himself. The old, wooden house was gone. With it, Silver Blitz and that horrible laughing man. For that much more, Discord was grateful. If nothing else, he never wanted to see any of those again. Instead, he found himself at the shore of a vast lake, which was half hidden by the fog. Beside him was a fallen log.

An eerie feeling came over Discord, as if he wasn’t alone in that place. Like something that he couldn’t see was watching him, even though it was right there in front of him. He squinted his eyes and peered out into the fog on the lake, where shadows drifted and swirled around like the silt beneath the surface of the water. The frogs croaked and the insects buzzed. Beneath it all, there came a new sound. One like the faint clinking of a chain.

Discord jumped back from the water. When his eyes focused again, he could see none of the shadows beyond the fog of the lake. He listened again, and heard only the sounds of the forest. Without another thought, he turned around and ran into the forest, thankful that the fog had not spread from the lake. The moment he was far enough, he looked back and saw that the lake was gone from his view, hidden away by the cover of the trees and the overgrowth of the foliage. He stopped running with his back against a tree and puffed loudly. Completely out of habit, he reached up for a pinecone and slurped it down like it was a glass of water.

A bright light suddenly turned on in Discord’s mind, and he spat out the pinecone like it was a hail of bullets from a gun. He sputtered and coughed, looking at what he had just done. He had to be sure. Discord snapped his fingers, and a flower bloomed high enough to reach Discord’s nose. The flower sniffed his face, then sneezed a sardine and marshmallow taco right onto his nose.

Discord pulled the taco off of his face and cut the flower down with a swish of his tail. He took a bite of the taco, and found it to be as delicious as he didn’t expect it to be. Everything really was back to normal. Except for one thing. He still didn’t find the source of those phantom sobs that had been disturbing him and Fluttershy for so many nights. Instead, he found even more questions that a small part of him hoped he wouldn’t have to answer.

He climbed up the tree by spiraling around the trunk like the stripe of a barber’s pole. At the very top, he sat on the tree, pondering what to do next. From that lofty perch, he was able to see more of the forest. He could see Ponyville only a few miles from where he was. And there was Fluttershy’s cottage less than a mile from there. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t see the lake he was just at, or the mist that covered it. Wherever he looked, however hard he listened, he could see nothing of what he had seen before. No old town. No burned buildings. Not even a golden gate. Discord shrugged, unable to think of how he would be able to go home to tell Fluttershy what he had been up to.

Fluttershy. The one pony who gave him a chance when everypony else had given up on him. Who was tormented by the ghostly wailing of the forest more than himself. And if she ever faced the laughing man, or even knew it existed… Discord took one last look over to Fluttershy’s distant cottage, and his mind was made up. He couldn’t go to the Canterlot library. Even in a disguise, the staff there would recognize his distinct speech and mannerisms. There had to be some other library that was open all hours. A place that was chockfull of ancient knowledge and wisdom of things that happened all around the world. Most importantly, didn’t know enough about him to rat him out to Fluttershy.

Discord’s eyes lit up, he snapped his fingers, and he was gone from that treetop.

---

The blizzard raged outside the windows of the Crystal Empire Library. At a lonely little desk at the front, a mare took another sip from her steaming cup. Nopony else was around, so she took a silver flask that she had hidden at the back of her work station and poured some into her drink. That would warm her up for sure. She sipped her drink, wondering why the library was even operating at such an hour. Nopony ever came looking for something to read that late at night. Not even the night guard. Still, it was nice to have some time to herself, even if it was at the odd hours of the night with only a window between herself and a blizzard.

The mare almost jumped at the sound of approaching hooves. Just another one of the night guards making his rounds, most likely. Still, she took the precaution of hiding her silver flask and going back to reading her book. The steps grew closer, and the mare sighed to herself as they stopped right in front of her desk. To her surprise, the arrival was no night guard. In fact, he was a complete stranger. A stallion who looked like somepony had made a pony, but without knowing what a pony actually looked like. Everything about him seemed off, but the mare greeted him anyway.

“Good evening. Welcome to–”

“The Crystal Empire Library. I know where I am,” the stranger said, shivering. “Could you turn on the heat in this place? It's colder than Princess Celestia’s huge ass in here.”

“You could always step back out,” the mare suggested.

“Oh! A dreary, smart-alecky librarian. You must be a hit with the stallions.”

The librarian answered by slapping a ‘Closed’ sign on her desk.

“‘Nuff with the small talk, sister,” the stranger said, batting the sign away, “I need help finding a place.”

“What place?” the librarian answered with a groan.

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Alright, how about this? Do you know any places where there were some serious crimes committed? I’m talking murders, arson, cannibalism, high suicide rates, and probably haunted by something that crawled right from the maw of Hell to torment the shit out of everypony for its own jollies?” the stranger asked.

The librarian stared blankly, took another sip of her drink and shrugged. “Newspaper archives are in the back. Feel free to leaf through them.”

“Alright. Sure. I got all night. Thanks for nothing,” the stranger said, as he walked away. He looked over his shoulder and gave his final word. “You know, you’re kind of a downer for somepony hittin’ the sauce so hard. Try a mint sometime!”

The librarian breathed into her hoof and sniffed it. Perhaps she poured too much of her flask into her cup?

In the back room, the stranger found drawers upon drawers of newspapers, all sorted by date, which were printed on the front of each drawer. Judging by the state of the house, the stallion guessed that it wasn’t any recent crime that had happened. From the style of the furniture, the grain of the photographs and the level of wood rot, he guessed that the crime happened some centuries ago. And that was where he started.

Peering over his shoulder, the stallion saw that nopony was nearby. His hoof morphed into a lion’s paw, and he snapped his fingers. The blinds of the room closed, and the door creaked shut. He then morphed back into the shape of Discord, only now with five heads and ten arms.

“Alright, boys. Everypony grab a paper. We’re starting here,” the center head said, pointing to one of the drawers.

The drawer opened on its own, and each pair of arms took a paper to read. Time passed as Discord’s many eyes scanned the pages carefully, finding nothing of note. The hour struck for more times than Discord could think at the moment, and the thousandth paper had been read. It was as if anything that he wanted to know was actively alluding him, always staying just ahead of his grasp.

The center right head suddenly smiled and tapped the paper it held in its arms.

“I think I got something!” it said.

“What? Show us!”

“Yeah! Show us!”

“Sh!” the center head shushed the others, reminding them of the pony in the other room. It took the paper in question into its own pair of hands and read the headline article:

‘Rock-A-Bye Killer Finally Caught’

“Rock-A-Bye Killer?”

“Sounds like a bad rock album.”

“What’s the rest say?”

The other Discord heads all peered at the article to read the news.

Apparently, there was a place far away called Pallin Town. From what the article said, it was a small, sleepy sort of town where nopony would ever have expected the kind of terror that would befall them. After a long string of foals disappearing, the evidence trail eventually led to the home of a stallion named Berry Tarts.

“Mpf! A stallion!? Named Berry Tarts!?” one of Discord’s heads guffawed.

The other heads all stifled a laugh, before they kept reading. The article went on to describe the expected behavior of the perpetrator. He was a quiet stallion who kept mostly to himself. The kind of pony who would only nod hello, then continue walking without a word. Aside from that, he seemed perfectly ordinary. It was what was found in his house that proved otherwise. Discord’s five faces all turned green, thinking they knew what was found in that house. One thing that they hadn’t noticed was something that was described in the article. Writing on the wall in what appeared to be blood, saying that somepony would rise again. In the end, several fillies’ bodies were identified to have been in that house. At least, what was left of the fillies’ bodies. Berry Tarts was arrested, and in custody he confessed to the murder of 213 different fillies. Mostly in other towns. He described in depth his method of murder, involving torture and using pieces of them to decorate his house.

“Oof… I don’t know if that guy’s parents hit him too much, or not enough,” one of Discord’s heads said.

“Hey! This other article’s starting to make sense now,” another head said.

“Which article?” the others all asked at once.

“This one that I was reading just now. It’s dated one week after that one. It says: ‘Pallin Town Falls to More Tragedy.’ Here. Take a look.”

The other heads looked at the next article shown. Apparently, after exactly one week had passed since Berry Tarts was caught, on the exact stroke of midnight, every single mare and filly in town committed suicide. Not a single one was left alive. All dead by their own hooves.

Five jaws hit the floor. The five pairs of arms reached up and pushed all of the extra heads to merge with the center one. After them, the extra arms disappeared altogether.

“That’s some bad reading right there,” Discord said, idly tossing the newspaper back onto the open drawer he retrieved it from, along with all the others he hadn’t bothered to put away.

He had a clue. Best of all, he had a lead. And he was going to follow it.

Discord stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled. A cab screeched to a halt in front of himself in the middle of the newspaper archives, driven by none other than himself. Discord squeezed his way into the backseat and pointed ahead.

“Pallin Town! Step on it!” he said.

The taxi revved up, peeled out and shot through the wall, leaving not a trace of its presence.

Author's Note:

Not going to lie, I don't like the original chapters involving Discord at this point. The story took a weird turn that I wasn't planning and it was really the start when the story staring falling apart. So hopefully, this kind of cleans it up a little. As always,

Till next Time!!!