• Published 10th Nov 2022
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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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The Singing Dead

Morning came, and the storm from last night subsided. The last few drops of rain dribbled down the glass panes of Luna’s balcony doors, blurring the image of the princess in her bed.

Luna had not slept at all that night. She feared to. Neither did she sleep for the rest of that day, or even leave her bed. Not to eat. Not to go to the bathroom. Not even Tiberius clawing at the carpet could get her out to stop him. And whoever came to visit her, she said barely a word to them. Even Celestia, who she didn’t dare tell what she had seen when she entered the bathroom the night before. Still, the visitors came and went, and Luna was alone for many hours.

She remembered being in that kitchen, feeling as if she were still there for some reason that she couldn’t comprehend. That scene was so real, even if she did dream it. And for much of that day, she wished that she would have said something more. If she had tried just a little hard, things might have been different that time, and she would have been a different mare. If only…

Her wing began to throb, and Luna magically fetched another glass of water. She then broke one of her pain pills in half and took that with the water. It had worked. Her pain began to fade within minutes, and even though she felt lightheaded and drowsy, the urge to sleep never came to her. On the tiny tree next to her bed, Tiberius hung from his tail, sound asleep. And that was how things continued, until Celestia rose the moon that night.

Luna was drifting in and out of light naps the whole day through, until she heard a quiet scratching at the balcony door. She gasped, knowing it was some horrible thing that had come to visit her again, trying to get in. Her horn flared up, and she rolled as carefully as she could out of bed. Her eyes scanned the floor at the bottom of the curtains, looking for any trace of the phantom intruder. When she found it, she felt she should have known.

There was Tiberius, clawing at the balcony curtains, trying his very best to get past them to the balcony beyond. The moment that he heard her, he turned his pallid face to Luna, freezing as he knew he had been caught doing something that he knew he shouldn’t have.

“Tiberius. Did we not talk about how to treat mama’s curtains?” Luna scolded the possum.

Tiberius opened his mouth, revealing his pointed teeth as he lapped his tongue over his snout. Once he was done, he let go of the curtains and trotted over to Luna, who picked him up and allowed him to ride on her shoulders.

“Very well. I can see that you’re eager to go out. It’s just as well. You’ll cause less trouble out there than you would in here,” Luna said, opening the curtains and seeing nothing outside but the landscape beyond.

The doors opened, and the cool night wind blew in. Luna’s mane drifted in the breeze as she stepped out onto the balcony. She watched every shadow that she could see from her balcony and on the land below. Just to make sure, she turned her eyes upward, and saw nothing of note there. Not even an owl or a bat out for their evening hunts.

The moment that she reached the balcony railing, Tiberius hopped off of her shoulders and walked along the length of the rails to the ivy that grew on the wall. And with the ease of a natural born climber, he was down the ivy to begin his nightly routine.

Luna didn’t wait to watch him until he was gone. Even when she stepped back into her room, she could hear the rustling of the ivy vines as her possum descended. She closed the doors and the sounds muffled into near nothingness.

“Finally, it seems I’ll have a quiet night to myself,” Luna sighed.

She wished that she hadn’t said that, as a low, droning chant echoed from the hallway beyond the bedroom door. Like a holy stallion praying to his lord, the chant droned on, drowning out any other noise of the night.

Luna watched as light filled the cracks of her bedroom door, and the surface of the door began to press inward. She tried to flare her magic, but found that it was once again inert. Unable to think of what else to do, she slowly started walking toward the door. The chanting continued as she did, making Luna’s knees shake with every step that she approached it.

She reached the door. Luna reached a hoof out to turn the doorknob as it bulged toward her. She drew her hoof back as the door drifted back to its normal shape, and the light beyond it slowly dimmed. Everything went quiet, and Luna raised a shaking hoof to catch the doorknob. She slowly turned it, and opened the door to face the horrors beyond. Another drone of the chant echoed quietly, and Luna threw the door open to do away with the phantom singer.

Nopony was there. But, the sounds of the chant continued its dreary song. Luna looked down the hall, and saw that nopony else had investigated the noise. Unable to accept that, she trotted to her sister’s bedroom door down the hall and knocked loudly.

“Celestia! Sister, wake up!” Luna called.

There was no answer. Not even a sleepy moan or a rustling of sheets. Instead, the chants continued and the hall began to darken.

“Celestia! Come out here now!”

The shadows of the hall crept ever closer, until the entire passage was swallowed by its darkness. With it, the chanting grew louder. They were coming for her.

Luna backed away from the approaching dark, and ran down the hall away from it. She tried her best to use any of her magic, but it was all for naught. Soon, the shadows began to move all on their own. From them, Luna could make out the shape of something tall, upright and swathed in black. There was no face to them. Only the deep, dark shadows of the abyss which leered out at her from some unknowable depth. And the chanting grew louder.

“No…No! This isn’t real! You aren’t here!” Luna yelled.

The shadows droned another chant as they drifted toward Luna. Along the walls and across the floor they came, ready to drag Luna into their darkness.

She ran, not knowing where to. Wherever she would try to go, the shadows would find her. They would creep out from wherever they could to take her away. The sounds of the chant grew fainter, but the darkness did not abate. There was no escape that Luna could find. She was going to disappear.

The sounds of sobbing reached Luna, who quickly looked in the direction that they came from. Right across the hall, Luna saw a door that she hadn’t opened in weeks. One of the castle lounges was being renovated, so there was no reason for anypony to be there. But, that’s where the sobs were coming from. Not sure which she would rather face, the chanting shadows or the phantom weeping, Luna took her chances with what she deemed the lesser of two evils and charged into the lounge.

The door was slammed behind her with an echoing boom. As if the sound had swallowed it up, the chanting stopped. But the sounds of the filly crying were as loud as the chanting had been.

Luna didn’t dare call out to whoever was crying, for fear of calling those devilish shadows to her. When she looked at the room, she saw that it was filled with white sheets that covered everything that could have been in there. She reached out and pulled the sheet from where she knew the couch to be. Nopony was there.

The sounds of the crying filly were coming from somewhere in that room, so Luna decided to try again. She pulled away a sheet that covered one of the decorative statues, and found only the sculpture of Gusty the Great walking on a cloud. But, there was still no filly to be found. Her attention was drawn to a great, tall sheet that stood at the end of the room. She didn’t know how, but she knew that was where she would find the filly.

Luna crept across the room, careful not to even make a floorboard creak, until she was standing before the towering sheet. She gripped it in her teeth and pulled it down to find that it covered a large mirror. Curiously, she looked at the glass, seeing that it was not the room behind her that was reflected. Instead, she saw a foggy lake where a filly sat on a log all alone in the middle of the night. And she was crying.

Even though it was the first time she had ever seen the filly, Luna felt as if she knew that she was sitting there every night of her life, crying. Hoping that somepony would stop to console her. A hope that was never fulfilled. She was without a friend in the world, unable to free herself from the torment she felt. Just as it was in the phantom kitchen, there was no way that Luna could help the filly. No way to change what could have once been.

“Don’t cry. I’ll help you home,” Luna whispered to the filly in the mirror.

For just a second, she thought that the filly might be turning to look at her, before the image faded into shadows. And the chanting started again.

Luna stepped sharply backward as a darkened hand reached out of the glass. And it kept reaching. Further than what would have been natural. The fingers of the thing wrapped around her neck, filling Luna with their chill embrace. Just then, the sounds of a rooster crowing sounded off somewhere in the distance.

The grip of the hand loosened, and the entire appendage retracted back into the glass of the mirror. Slowly, the image of Luna standing alone in the lounge faded into being, and the sun began to rise on the distant horizon.

“How…?” Luna wondered. She had let Tiberius out to do his nightly rounds not even an hour ago. And now, the sun was rising as if the night had passed its entire course in that whole time.

There had to be an answer to these things. But, Luna had no idea where to begin.

Author's Note:

Another chapter or chapters I was glad to fix. This story is already so much better and I am proud of that. And as always:

Till Next Time!!:pinkiehappy: