• Published 10th Nov 2022
  • 391 Views, 6 Comments

Beyond My Grave: Exhumed - AnnEldest



Read the remastered version of the original "Beyond My Grave" five years after it was first released

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Daydreamer

There were hurried steps from beyond Spike’s bedroom door, before it burst open to allow in Spike and Discord. Spike wasted no time making preparations, and he started by cleaning off his bed.

“Hey, fill me in already. What’s your big idea?” Discord asked.

“We gotta put you to sleep,” Spike said, as he pulled a stack of clothes off of his sheets.

“In that thing?” Discord asked, indicating the ornate basket that Spike slept in.

“You’ll fit. You squeezed into a book that was, like, a hundred times smaller than this. Now, get comfortable. I have to get some stuff,” Spike said, before rushing out of the room.

Discord looked at the bed, and thought about how to fit himself inside of it. He stepped in, and started coiling his body around and around inside the basket, until only his head peered out the top like a snake in a basket. In another few moments, Spike came back with his arms loaded.

“I got the stuff,” Spike said, dropping it all on the floor.

“For what?” Discord asked.

“For sending a dream to talk to Silver Blitz. What else?” Spike said, as he flipped through the book he had taken to the library. “Just one thing: are you sure that Silver Blitz herself wasn’t a demon?”

“Yes,” Discord answered.

“You’re sure? Because she could be the one making these things happen to you.”

“I’m…positive that she’s not the one doing this,” Discord said.

“As long as you’re totally sure. Because, it says here that if we try to contact the demon that’s doing this, both of us are gonna be in even bigger trouble.”

Discord didn’t ask how. He didn’t want to know. By his own nature, he was a risk taker. But, if things didn’t go well for him this time, he would lose big. Not just him. Silver Blitz and Spike were on the line as well.

Spike set to work, putting what looked like a brown stick in a bowl and a gravity cradle behind it. Both were placed on top of a small table, which he pushed in front of Discord. Once he did, he blew a flame onto the brown stick, making its tip glow orange and blow out a plume of fragrant smoke.

Discord sniffed the smoke, “Cinnamon?”

“Yeah. The book says it’s for communicating with the dead. The chalk,” Spike said, showing the white chalk he brought along, “Is for making a circle.”

“And the office toy?” Discord said, pointing to the gravity cradle.

“That’s for hypnosis.”

“What the hell’s in that book?” Discord doubtfully asked, looking at the book Spike had laid out on the table.

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. I’m just following the instructions that it’s giving me,” Spike said, as he read the page. When he finished, he raised a ball at the end of the gravity cradle and let go of it so that the contraption activated. “You just watch that while I do my work.”

Discord glanced down and saw Spike started drawing a circle around the bed. Figuring it best to not ask what he was doing, he did as he was instructed and watched the gravity cradle. One ball at the end raised up, then fell back down to hit the adjacent ball. The ball at the other end rose up, fell, and the cycle repeated. The gentle click of the swinging orbs repeated over and over, drifting into Discord’s mind. He focused completely on the sound and the motion, which started to slow down before his eyes.

The smell of the cinnamon grew stronger, wafting on its own into Discord’s nostrils. Spike began to say something that Discord couldn’t make out. His voice was droning on in a low hum, as if to lull a child to sleep. Once or twice, he thought that he heard Spike say Silver Blitz’s name. He wanted to ask what Spike was doing, but a dull listlessness had come over him. He could barely raise his head, let alone speak. The world faded to black, and Spike’s voice grew suddenly louder.

There was a loud crack, and a flash of lightning. Discord’s eyes burst open and he saw himself flying through a stormcloud that crackled with electricity. He flew straight through a bolt that made him shiver inside and out. Once the feeling had passed, he could see an opening at the end. There was a house there. And a porch that opened like a beast’s maw.

Discord landed on the ground before the house and shook his head. He looked up, and saw the very house he had seen in Pallin town, only now the sky had become a swirling void of red and black. The light that touched the house created harsh shadows, making the entire building glare intensely down at Discord. Just as he was about to rethink entering the house again, he heard a loud shout from above. Looking up, he saw a funnel of swirling clouds with electricity shooting through it. A dark shape appeared in the eye of the funnel, and out fell Spike, along with the book he was reading from.

“Spike!? What are you doing here!?” Discord said.

Spike stood up and dusted himself off, he looked around, bewildered at where he had ended up.

“This is bad! This is so bad! I… I stood inside the circle!” Spike said.

“What!?” Discord shouted.

“I stood inside the magic circle I made when I cast the spell! That means I cast it on me too!” Spike picked up the book and flipped through the pages. “I was supposed to end the spell on you by breaking the circle! But, that was back in the real world!”

“Swell! Because my powers don’t work here! Chances are you won’t be able to burp any messages to anypony while you’re here either!” Discord said.

“We might still have a chance,” Spike said, flipping through the book. “If we can connect to the real world from here, we might be able to break the spell that way.”

“How?” Discord asked.

“I don’t know yet. I need to read more,” Spike answered.

Reading would have to wait, as the ground in Pallin Town began to melt away. Discord and Spike watched for a moment as the ground before them started to disappear, prompting them to run as fast as they could into the house. The door of the house opened on its own, and slammed shut behind them.

Only the sounds of the wind blowing outside were heard, and the house didn’t succumb to the melting ground. Spike jumped up and peered through a boarded up window, seeing nothing but the swirling void beyond. Trapped with nowhere else to go.

“Somepony’s messing with us,” Spike said.

“And I think I know who,” Discord replied. “Come on. Silver Blitz’s room is this way.”

Spike followed Discord through the house, flipping through the pages of the book and intermittently looking around the house. It was just as Discord had described it. Old and wooden, rotted away from centuries of neglect. The air was harder to breathe in that place, clouding Spike’s concentration as he tried to work on a way to find a spell to let them escape from that place. At the top of the stairs, he followed Discord down the hall. The room at the end awaited them, and for a moment Spike hesitated to follow Discord. But, he had a conviction to see through. If he was ever going to go on an adventure, he was going to have to pull his weight. He caught up and stopped before the door, which was closed tight. Discord reached out and turned the knob, neither knowing what to expect.

The door opened a crack, and Discord and Spike peered in, seeing nothing but the dusty room he saw the first time he ended up in that house.

“Silver Blitz? It’s me. Discord,” Discord whispered.

They waited, and there was no answer.

“Maybe there’s a way to get an answer in here?” Spike said, marking his current page with his thumb and flipping through the others.

“You just focus on a way to get us out of here. I’ll lead the search for Silver Blitz,” Discord said.

There was a high pitched moan from somewhere in the house. Like a filly on the verge of tears. And it was quickly drowned out by a shrill laugh that made Spike and Discord both huddle against the wall.

“Is it the laughing man?” Spike asked.

“Sweet Celestia, I hope not!” Discord said.

The laughter faded, and the house was silent once more. Discord was the first to stand up and start walking toward the opposite end of the hall.

“Wait! Where are you going? That’s where those noises were coming from!” Spike said.

“Exactly. That’s why we have to go there,” Discord replied.

Spike watched him go to the opposite end of the hall, past the doors that housed the bedrooms. He didn't remember Discord saying anything about going down that way. Just to the dorm rooms where Silver Blitz was almost violated, the kitchen where the laughing man nearly killed Discord, and the basement where the serpent guarded the phoenix. Whatever else was in that house could only be evil. Monstrous. Dangerous. But, not as dangerous as being alone in that place. Picking the lesser of two evils, Spike went with Discord down to the other end of the hall.

They walked down the hall, the sounds of the laughter mixed with the moans faintly chorusing as they approached. Spike tried to keep his eyes on the pages, but the sounds were beginning to grow louder. He rapidly turned the pages of his book, looking for any way to escape that horrible place. So far, there was nothing that would allow them to exit a dream. The closest thing that he could find was that demons would sometimes use mirrors as windows into the waking world. But unless any of their friends were looking at a mirror at that exact instance, there was little hope of that working.

“How’s that escape plan coming?” Discord asked, as he slowly continued down the hall.

“S-S-Slow. They don’t actually tell you what to d-do for each spell,” Spike stammered over his racing heart.

Guessing how to escape was even more heart-wrenching for Spike. If nothing was done, he and Discord would be there forever. Trapped for eternity and left to the torment of the demons that haunted them.

At the end of the hall, something moved in the shadows. Something small that drifted through the air like a plastic bag caught in the wind. It floated back and forth, popping one of its sides to the right. It glowed with a silvery light for just a moment, then drifted down the right of the hall.

Discord and Spike both took the hint to follow after it. When they reached the end of the hall that it indicated, it was already gone. Spike began to look through his book for any information about what to do when following ghosts, when he stepped in something thick and wet. He looked down and nearly screamed when he saw the floor was covered in puddles of blood, as if some horrible raincloud had drifted through the hallway. Discord seemed to have noticed too, as he and Spike shuddered and pressed their backs against opposite sides of the hallway’s walls, wiping their feet off on the floor.

“Somepony’s really trying to mess with us!” Discord said.

The point was driven home when that same moan from before wailed through the hallway, along with a gust of wind that blew the pages Spike was reading over one another.

“I don’t think they like that we’re here,” Spike said, clutching his book to his chest.

To the dragon’s surprise, he saw Discord’s face lighten ever so slightly.

“That just means we’re close to something they don’t want us to see,” Discord said. “Nothing to do now but follow the blood.”

Spike kept one eye on the book and another on the floor, keeping sure to not step in any more blood. He looked at the index in the back of the book and flipped to the page that talked about blood magic. His eyes skimmed the page, finding that blood was a dangerous, yet powerful medium for casting spells. It was then that it occurred to Spike: who had written that book? He looked at the front, but found no author. And any title still eluded him. Whatever that book was, he was glad Twilight hadn’t found it before he did. She might have hidden it, thinking that it was too dangerous to even learn about such magic.

The blood on the floor led to one of the doors on the side of the hall, where it disappeared beneath the cracks of the door frame. Discord grabbed the doorknob, not about to let whatever they were about to face have the satisfaction of opening the door by its own power. He threw the door open, and found another grisly sight.

His suspicions about the building once being a schoolhouse were true. Many ancient school desks were set out with broken chairs set on top of them in a vast, decrepit classroom. The walls were smeared with blood, the words ‘It shall rise again’ written from ceiling to floor. The chalkboard at the front was scribbled on over and over with the same message in chalk. And from the ceiling, dozens of hooks hung from chains, each with a piece of what must have been a hundred different fillies still stuck to it.

Spike retched loudly, but managed to keep his bile down. The sight alone nearly made him drop the book he was carrying. After a moment, he was able to collect himself, but he kept his eyes on the pages of the book. Although he could do nothing about the smell of rotting flesh that still lingered there.

“Wait by the desk,” Discord said, indicating the instructor’s desk at the front of the room.

Spike did as he was told and waited there, reading more and more about the nature of demons and the spells associated with them.

Discord followed the trail of blood, which shone fresher against the old, dried blood beneath the hooks. He walked with his head low, afraid to touch any of the hanging hooks. Next to him, a hook with an eye stuck on the end slowly rotated on its own, following Discord’s steps. Discord flinched at the sight, and watched as it stopped moving and hung idle once more. Putting the image out of his mind, he kept following the trail all the way to a cabinet in the back of the classroom.

He looked at the cabinet. This was where whatever was there wanted him to be. Whatever it was up to, there was no point in not playing its game. Discord grabbed the handles of the cabinet, and pulled them open as fast as he could.

Spike ducked in cover beneath his book when Discord’s scream rang through the room. “What is it!?” he shouted.

Discord’s heavy breaths filled the room next, until Spike heard him finally speak, “It’s okay. I just, er… scared myself.”

The reflection of Discord in the mirror behind the cabinet doors breathed in cadence with his heaving. Since all was well, Spike went back to reading his book. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the chalkboard and all of the writing on it. Something was very strange about it. Beneath it all, he could see something else that was written there. He squinted, trying to make out what it was.

At the back, Discord wondered what the idea of keeping a mirror in the cabinet was, but dismissed it when he noticed what else was in there. There was a raised pedestal, and what looked like a bowl of dried blood placed before it. Behind it, there were a dozen candles which were melted all the way down. A closer look, and Discord saw that the candles had a greasy look to them. Touching a finger to one, he found that they were made from fat. And he didn’t expect that it came from frying bacon. The cushion on the pedestal was the most suspect of all. There was a relief of a golden phoenix stitched onto it, with symbols burned into the fabric as if by a match that had been freshly snuffed out. In the middle of the cushion was an indentation that looked big enough to house a small vase. Or a figurine of some sort.

Along with all of that, Discord looked at the rest of the shelves in the cabinet, and found that they were filled with other objects. Things like smithing tongs and a cast that looked like a bird spreading its wings. At the front of the room, Spike was still trying to make sense of the hidden message on the blackboard, when his eyes lit up. He looked at the pages of his book, then back at the blackboard.

“Discord? I think you’d better see this,” Spike said.

Before Discord could answer, another moan shook the entire room, making the chains from the ceiling rattle violently. More violently than they should have, as if to raise an alarm to all the living present. The classroom door slammed shut. And from the hall beyond it, there was the sound of two shuffling steps followed by the clack of wood on wood. Two more steps and one more clack. And they were closer that time.

Author's Note:

Nothing much to say about this one. Just trying to fix the whole 'Discord and Spike' part of the story as this was when things fell apart in the original. As Always...

Till Next Time!!!:pinkiehappy: