[Displaced Story] A man, forced into the role of a Displaced after attending a Dark Souls convention, is sent to the land of Equestria by the Merchant. His fate, and possibly that of Equestria, is now in his hands.
Emptiness. Pain. Death. Insanity. Hunger. Nameless. All words that describe the cursed existence of the Undead and the Hollow in the Dark Souls universe, now used to define one unfortunate man's life as a new Displaced.
Attending a Dark Souls convention was supposed to be a fun experience for those involved, including the man once known as Richter Douglas, but fate is never that kind. A meeting with a shady figure selling various weapons and apparel from the Souls series sends Richter into a world and body that are not his own.
Now cursed with the Darksign, alone, and unable to return to everything he knew, the new Displaced is forced to adapt and confront the dangers of both the world and his existence as an Undead.
That was all the being knew and felt as it floated in an endless void of pitch-blackness. Time, as the entity knew it, seemed to have forsaken its role in this plane; while it had floated for what felt like eons, in reality the being could have been in this place for only a few seconds or minutes. At one point, it tried to see what kind of body it had, only to see the same nothingness that it had started to grow accustomed to.
Where this place was or why the being was here, it could not think of an answer. It's mind was bereft of anything and everything, save for the fact that it knew that it simply was. Frustration and despair filled every fiber of its being as its thoughts wandered towards darker, madness-inducing paths. Was it a prisoner, exiled to this empty realm as some form of punishment? Had it died in some previous life or existence, and this was what had awaited it from the moment it first came to be? Did some higher power place him here for its own sadistic amusement?
A faint, almost unnoticeable sensation appeared in the back of its consciousness, a feeling of uneasiness that made the entity feel as if it was being observed. Dismissing it as nothing more than the beginning of its inevitable descent into madness, the being turned its focus back to doing the only thing it could really do in this vacant, isolated space: think.
For a while, it entertained itself with thoughts of how it could escape this realm and what it would do afterward. It imagined what kind of places or other beings could possibly exist outside of the void that it was trapped in. Eventually, though, it grew tired of that and wracked its mind for something else it could do to pass the time.
After some time, it finally decided that it needed a name, because at least then it would have an identity to use if it ever escaped from this empty place. As it went down the list of names from what little that it could recall, it had almost reached a decision when that same sensation of uneasiness resurfaced, much to the being's annoyance.
When it turned its "head" to subdue that damnable feeling of being watched, for a split-second the being could have sworn that it had seen a flicker of...something appear in the corner of its vision. Thinking that it had been only a hallucination born from the desperate need of its own psyche for some form of stimulus input, it returned its attention to where the anomaly had supposedly been, expecting there to be nothing there.
If the being actually had a physical form, it would have let out a primal scream of pure fear as its vision was suddenly taken up by a nightmarish figure that seemed to fill the void around it. What seemed like horns or antlers the color of tarnished silver stretched high above the rest of its body from its shoulders, their surface dotted by blood-red eyes that glared at the being and seemed to pierce into its soul. The rest of its body was a shade of black just light enough to be distinguishable from the dark emptiness around it, but it made very little difference. It's left hand was grotesquely oversized, and what appeared to be enormous grey teeth covered every inch of its palm, like a second gaping maw. Clutched in its right hand was a jet-black weapon of some sort, perhaps a halberd or an axe, that looked to be made of bone or some chitinous material.
As the being gazed at the abomination, terrified and unable to look away, many smaller figures slowly began to appear from behind the massive horror. Whatever these things were, their bodies had almost certainly been twisted or corrupted in some way: the joints of their arms were bent backwards and articulated at awkward angles, every movement eliciting a low shriek of either rage, agony, or both from the creatures. A massive domed head sat upon their shoulders with varying amounts of glowing red eyes scattered across the surface of their "faces" that seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at once. Behind these twisted mockeries of life floated large torso-shaped clouds of black mist, a shimmering white outline surrounding their bodies and two small pinpricks of white light marking where their eyes were.
Whispers echoed endlessly from all directions, the unintelligible sounds filling the being's mind and threatening to consume its sanity until nothing but a husk was left. The massive horror reach out towards the being with its horrific left hand, a grating shriek that filled the entirety of the abyss escaping its mouth as the tooth-filled palm inched closer and closer to the being; with every inch that the hand approached, the whispers rapidly grew louder and incoherent until all that could be heard was a cacophany of monstrous shrieks and roars.
No matter how hard it tried to look away, to move out of reach, to do something, the being was frozen in place as absolute terror radiated off of it in waves. It could do nothing but watch as its certain demise approached it slowly and torturously, feelings of helplessness and desperation filling its thoughts as it braced itself for whatever fate awaited it.
Just before the abomination's hand made contact, something deep within the being roared to life as a sudden warmth spread throughout its form and a brilliant orange glow flared around it. The numerous smaller horrors recoiled in pain and fear as the fierce light burned away their bodies, frantically scrambling over each other to get away from the deadly glow. Within seconds, only the largest monstrosity remained where it stood, ignoring how entire patches of its flesh were burnt to ashes by the blinding light in favor of letting out a roar of intense hatred and fury before everything around the being disappeared in a flash of white.
---{}---
The being was momentarily blinded by the sudden flash of white after so long of being suspended in an endless black void, a wave of throbbing pain sweeping through its mind as its vision slowly came back.
When the being's vision finally returned, though it was still fairly blurry, the first thing that it noticed was that it was no longer in the emptiness of the dark void. Although it was simply in a white void instead of a black one, it was by no means empty: countless black outlines of various shapes and sizes covered the landscape and cast light shadows on the ground, and high above the white horizon were the outlines of...clouds, if it remembered correctly, that floated through the sky through some unseen and unfelt wind.
The scenery was quite a welcome change for the being, its vision taking in everything it could with almost childish glee as its instinctual need for interaction between itself and its environment was finally sated. It shifted its position towards the silhouette of what it recalled was a tree, and gently reached out its hand to feel the tree's rough surface.
It took a moment for the being's mind to register that it had a hand, and by extension a physical body, for the first time that it could remember. It brought both of its new hands up to its eyes, noting that much like the trees and the rest of its surroundings, its hands and arms were little more than black outlines. As the being continued to examine its new body, it saw that on the back of its right hand was a black ring that seemed to slowly send spirals of black mist or smoke outwards from the center.
For a brief moment, nothing else existed but the being and the marking on its hand. It was mesmerized by the mark, by the thick tendrils of mist that it constantly spewed forth from, by the strange warmth and cold that it caused, by the endless depth that the mark seemed to possess...
The being was torn from its trance when it sensed...something deeper within this tree-filled area; something that was ancient yet new, something weak yet powerful...and most of all, something that felt so familiar and inviting. Whatever this was, it was making its presence known to the being and calling out to it like an old friend.
Drawn towards the silent calling, the being walked further into the trees and watched as earth and trees eventually gave way to a small clearing, where an old wooden bridge connected two sides of an almost bottomless ravine. From where it stood, it could see the very top of a structure nestled behind the treeline on the opposite side of the ravine. With no other visible option in sight, the being let out a silent sigh within its mind and somewhat nervously crossed the bridge. Each creak and groan of the planks beneath its feet elicited a wince and a pause in its advance towards its destination, not wanting to accidentally make the bridge collapse beneath it. As it approached the halfway mark of the bridge, a plank suddenly gave out beneath it and gravity almost dragged the being's left leg down into the newly-created gap. Unwilling to risk the same thing happening twice, it sprinted the rest of the way across the bridge.
When the being reached the other side of the ravine, it cast a single loathing glare at the deathtrap of a bridge before it continued on its way. Very quickly, forest and nature gave way to stone and brick as the being climbed a ruined stone path up a hill. As the structure that it saw earlier came into view, the calling that had been resonating in the depths of its mind rapidly grew louder and louder until it became a dull roar. The only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of the being's footsteps as it walked through the halls of the...castle, it supposed the structure could be called, and took in its surroundings.
After what seemed like an hour of aimlessly exploring the castle in search of the source of the strange calling, the being eventually came upon a half-collapsed passage that was partially blocked by debris from the ceiling above. Assuming that it was just going to be a dead-end, it was about to continue walking when the calling suddenly shifted from a broad area around it to a single point down the hall. The being stared at the collapsed passage, uncertain of whether it should proceed or not until finally, with a mental sigh, it ducked below a chunk of stone leaning hazardously against the wall and continued on.
As the being advanced further and further down the hall, the abundant rubble that had nearly blocked the path gradually disappeared until only a few small stones remained strewn across the floor. At the end of the hall, it could see a set of decaying doors that lay slightly ajar; it took little effort for the doors to be pushed wide open, the ancient doors letting out a screeching groan as their hinges ground together after many years of disuse.
Almost immediately, the being's eyes were drawn to the most prominent feature of an almost completely empty room: a small, flickering fire that rested in front of a tall broken window. A thin sword protruded from a pile of ash that seemed to feed the fire, though how the ash acted as fuel, it did not know. What it did know was that the calling was undoubtedly coming from the fire, the presence in his mind all but screaming in confirmation.
The being was overcome with a sudden, burning desire to lay its hand against the fire, as if it was always meant to do so. Walking forward until it stood almost directly in front of the fire, it reached its hand out towards the flames, a soothing warmth spreading throughout the being's body as its hand approached.
When its hand made contact with the flames, the being's mind and body were overwhelmed by a multitude of new, indescribable sensations. As the world around it transformed, the being suddenly remembered everything that it had unknowingly lost.
Its -- no, HIS -- name was Richter Douglas. He was a human, he was 27 years old, and he had been attending a convention for the Souls series in North Carolina when he was approached by a eerie old man dressed as the Merchant from Resident Evil. The Merchant had offered Richter almost perfect replicas of various items from Demon's Souls, Darks Souls, and even Bloodborne. He...he had bought the Elite Knight set from Dark Souls, the Astora's Straight Sword, the Defender's Shield, and even the seemingly useless pendant from the first Dark Souls game.
After he had bought the gear and shook hands with the Merchant to seal the deal...he found himself in that black Abyss.
Richter looked down at his hands and saw them clad in the Elite Knight Gauntlets, the once-polished metal now scratched and worn as if ages had passed; burned through the back of his right glove was the Darksign, marking him as an Undead. The rest of the Elite Knight set covered his body from head to toe in bradden steel, and attached to his back was his sword and shield.
While he gazed in disbelief at himself, the world around him became clear and whole compared to the purgatory-like world that he had been in minutes prior. From below the horizon, a fierce orange glow emerged as the sun rose into view and began a new day.
---{}---
From a balcony overlooking the rest of Canterlot, Princess Luna gazed out at the Everfree Forest with a concerned frown etched on her face. She had woken up after she felt a strong disturbance coming from that accursed forest, something that was entirely unknown to her despite her millennia of experience.
Her sister had not yet woken up, which Luna guessed was for the best. While she loved her sister to death and appreciated her help with various matters after her thousand years of imprisonment in the moon, the Lunar Princess felt that it would be more advantageous if only herself and maybe the Elements of Harmony were to investigate. If the ponies were to see their Princesses flying towards the Everfree, the skittish populace would likely start an unwarranted panic.
Luna walked back into her room and levitated an old quill laying on her desk, dipping it in fresh ink and quickly writing out a letter to her sister's pupil, Twilight Sparkle, before rolling it up and sending it to the intended recipient with a flash of light. With luck, young Sparkle would be able to show some discretion and gather her friends together without alerting the entirety of Ponyville to the situation.
Luna returned to her balcony and spread her wings, giving them a few powerful flaps and then lifting herself a few feet off the ground before flying full-speed towards Ponyville and the Everfree Forest.
---{}---
Somewhere far away, beneath a sea of sand, an ancient and powerful evil arose from its slumber.
With his memories now recovered, Richter sat in front of the bonfire like the Undead he so loved to play as. He always wondered how the bonfires in the game felt to be near, and now he knew; they weren't hot so much as they were warm, filling his his body with an ever-soothing feeling as shadows danced all around the room from the flickering flames.
The Undead brought his hand up to his eyes to gaze at the Darksign once again, taking in the sight of the ring that was branded into the back of his hand. He understood what it meant for him to have this damned mark, and it utterly terrified him. Richter didn't know if he would come back at the bonfire after death, nor did he know whether or not he would eventually go Hollow from dying too much. He also didn't know where the hell he was, or if he was even still on Earth. Without any knowledge of the area or its possible inhabitants, the poor man had no clue where to go from here.
Should he try to find the "First Flame" or its equivalent in this world, if it even existed? Or should he just try to make the most of his new existence as an Undead? He didn't know the answers to either question, and he doubted that he'd know any time soon. He let his hand drop to his side and brought his focus back to the bonfire, simply watching its flames rise and fall haphazardly. A few minutes later, a thought occurred to him and raised his right hand, which he often used for pyromancies when he played the games. With a bit of effort, a small ember lit up in his palm and quickly grew in size and temperature until a small flame stood comfortably in his hand.
Good, he had a pyromancy flame that he could use for protection in addition to his sword, though that was assuming that he had any pyromancies that he could actually use. If not, then at least he had a very convenient fire-starter. Richter clenched his hand to dissipate the flame, then got to his feet and arched his back in a stretch. He couldn't sit around and do nothing for very long; if he was going to survive, then he had to scout the area and see if there were any potential threats that he would have to deal with.
The Undead grabbed his sword and shield from beside the doorway and quickly put them on, fumbling slightly at both the weight and unfamiliarity with the motions. After making sure everything was in order, he left the bonfire room and started retracing his steps in search of the entrance. Richter could only hope that he'd remember how to get back, since he did not want to have to die just to get back without getting lost.
---{}---
"Come on, girls, the Princess is waiting for us!"
Twilight's attempt at encouraging her friends to move quickly was met with a chorus of groans as the other mares lagged behind, still half-asleep from being woken up only thirty minutes ago. The purple alicorn had woken her friends up at six in the morning when they -- save for Applejack, who was used to waking up early in the morning for farm work -- were still dead asleep. Their friend hadn't even waited for them to get breakfast before she had practically dragged them all towards the outskirts of the Everfree Forest.
"Come on, egghead! Slow down, will ya?! Not all of us can wake up instantly like you can, let alone be so dang eager to go into the Everfree," Rainbow Dash grumbled from above her friends, her wings keeping her at a steady hover as she tiredly rubbed her eyes with a hoof.
Rarity piped up from behind Applejack, her mane wild and unkempt, "Rainbow's right, Twilight. I haven't even groomed my mane yet this morning, and my fur is going to get absolutely filthy when we get into the Everfree!"
Pinkie Pie didn't really care whether or not she was woken up early in the morning. Her Pinkie Sense was tingling and telling her a doozy was coming, so how could she possibly miss this?
The shy butter-yellow pegasus that was Fluttershy simply let out a tired yawn from her spot next to Pinkie Pie, her normal sleep schedule thrown completely out of wack by Twilight's sudden visit.
"Did th' Princess even say what exactly we were gonna be doin' here, Twi? If it was somethin' important, then why didn't she just come 'n get us herself?" Applejack questioned while she readjusted her Stetson for the fifth time that morning, the slightly uneven ground of the Everfree Forest causing her hat to shift around on her head.
Twilight looked back at her tired friends and gave a sheepish smile, "Sorry, girls. When I got Princess Luna's letter, all she said that was she needed to meet us near the old castle. I didn't want to keep her waiting or risk something bad happening if we got there too late, so I just rushed to wake you all up."
The other Elements of Harmony just gave Twilight tired sighs and grumbles in response as they neared the bridge leading to the Princesses' old castle. Waiting on their side of the bridge was Princess Luna, her eyes focused in a light glare on the ruins while her hair waved in the gentle morning breeze. The sound of multiple hoofsteps approaching drew Luna's attention towards her friends, a smile gracing the Lunar Diarch's face for a brief moment before she changed back into a serious expression, "Thank you for coming so quickly, my little ponies. I hope that you all are not too tired from waking up this late?"
The purple alicorn shrank beneath the annoyed glares of her friends, then recovered and cleared her throat, "Umm, just a little, Princess Luna. Now that we're here, could you tell us why you wanted us to come here?"
Luna looked at each of the Elements, then turned to look at the castle, "Just before sunrise, I sensed a large surge of an unknown power coming from the my sister and I's old castle. Normally, I would investigate this either by myself or with my sister, but because I could not identify what the source of this power was, I felt it would be prudent to bring the Elements of Harmony if the worst came to happen. I shall not skirt around the issue: We do not know what awaits us in the castle, and because of the high probability of danger, I will understand if any or all of you do not wish to continue."
For a few moments after Luna finished speaking, the six mares looked at each other as if deciding their course of action. To the Lunar Princess's hidden relief, the Elements looked back at their ruler with determination in their eyes. "You can count on us, Princess Luna," Twilight spoke up from her spot directly in front of the midnight-blue alicorn.
Luna gave them a grateful smile, then changed back to her serious expression and nodded, "Then let us move on. Make sure to stay together and be alert. We can not afford to lose any of you."
---{}---
For what felt like the third time in the past hour, Richter passed the same damned tapestry that he had seen earlier when he had left the bonfire room. Every room and every hallway looked exactly the same, and it didn't seem like he would manage to find his way out anytime soon. It was like trying to navigate the dreaded Blighttown from the first game, only there weren't any deadly drops or constant barrages of poison.
The occasional sound of rocks falling from the upper floors didn't help to soothe his nerves. He was starting to worry that the ceiling was going to collapse at some point; or maybe the entire castle would finally give in and collapse on top of him. Being crushed by countless tons of stone would not be a good way to die, let alone a good time to test if he was indeed incapable of dying like an Undead.
Richter drew his gaze up to the one of the many torn and moth-eaten tapestries that hung from the walls and ceiling of the castle. Almost all of them depicted two horse-like figures with both horns and wings alongside the sun and moon, though some of them simply depicted the two figures in majestic or regal poses. These two beings obviously had some sort of significance to those who built the castle, since he saw them almost everywhere he went in the castle. While the mythology nerd in him wanted to try and figure out what they were, he still had to find his way out of the ruins and see where he could go next.
As he rounded a corner, he saw a wide open space where a room used to be with a massive stone pedestal in the center. The pedestal itself was shaped like the model of a solar system, with a large orb in the center and six arms where smaller orbs were likely held. Vines and other plants grew from various spots all over the room, including the pedestal. This was most likely what was left of the main entrance after years of time and weather wore down the stone structure.
The Undead placed his hand on the base, half-expecting something to happen like in most of the fantasy games that he played. When nothing happened, he took a step back and looked to the sides. Trees stretched as far as he could see to the horizon, though in the far distance he could he see a snow-peaked mountain range and what seemed like an odd cluster of clouds in the sky that were frozen in place.
He sighed and sat down against one of the walls, his legs and feet screaming in pain from the hour or so of non-stop walking on stone. He had always had problems with walking long distances on foot, something about his arches being too high or whatever it was that the doctors had told him. He had hoped that as an Undead he'd be rid of that little problem, since he was likely to be walking everywhere he needed to go. But alas, luck was not on his side, it would seem.
He rested against the wall for several minutes, then dragged himself to his feet and walked back inside. He needed to find that bonfire again and just sit next to it. It was soothing, and just like in the games, it healed most of his pain and injuries. He could only hope that he wouldn't have to deal with anything that would cause injury.
As Richter walked off in search of the bonfire, he did not notice the seven figures that had just made it up the stairs and entered the ruined entrance.
---{}---
Twilight paused a few hoofsteps away from the doors leading to the pedestal room. She could have sworn that she had seen something shiny disappear down a corridor...
The sound of Rainbow Dash hovering right beside her shook her from her thoughts, "Why are you just standing there, egghead? Come on, let's get inside already!" The blue pegasus was getting a bit restless; she couldn't handle being in one place for too long nor did she have the patience to just idly when there was the potential for showing off or saving her friends. She was the Element of Loyalty, after all.
"R-right, sorry, Rainbow. Just...thought I saw something, is all," Twilight gave her friend a halfhearted apology as the group entered what was left of the room and quickly advanced down the corridor. The castle was just as old and decrepit as it was when she and her friend were there the first time. Now, however, there was something...different in the air. Something completely alien to the young alicorn.
With Princess Luna leading the group at the front, they made their way through the maze-like castle, the occasional sounds of stone shifting or falling causing the less-courageous members of the group to jump slightly. Although they had steeled themselves for their task, they still felt uneasy walking through the halls of the abandoned castle.
Princess Luna stopped for a brief moment as they passed a half-collapsed hallway that the six mares vaguely remembered was the path to the room where they had fought and defeated Luna's alter-ego, Nightmare Moon. The passage must have collapsed sometime after the end of the Summer Sun Celebration. The Lunar diarch narrowed her eyes in a glare as she gazed down the hall, "...What we seek is down this hall, there is no doubt about it. Be on your hooves, but do not act rashly."
A quick spell from Luna's horn shoved the massive slabs of stone aside as the mares continued onward. As they approached, they quickly noticed that there was an orange glow coming from the room ahead, which was growing brighter with every few steps.
When they finally reached the half-open double doors, the mares saw that there was a strange fire in the middle of the room with a sword stabbed into the ash pile. They pushed the other door open with a loud creaking sound, then froze in fear at what they saw beside the odd fire.
A two-legged creature, similar to a minotaur, that was covered from head to toe in thick armor with a sword and shield set on the floor beside it. Its gaze was firmly set on the fire in front of it, almost paying no heed whatsoever to the seven intruding equines.
A moment later, the creature seemed to snap out of its daze and slowly turned its head to face the Princes and the Elements, its face hidden behind a fluted helmet and armor. The two parties stared at each other, frozen in place as if they were afraid of what would happen if they were to move. Princess Luna's horn glowed softly as she prepared a spell if the thing turned violent.
Nearly a minute passed before the creature turned its gaze back to the fire, but not before giving an absent-minded wave of its hand in greeting and a raspy grunt of acknowledgement.
Trying to take a diplomatic approach, Princess Luna stepped forward as if to speak to the creature, but was cut off when the Element of Laughter zoomed right next to the armored entity and stared right at its helmet, her mouth contorted into a wide grin and her voice running a mile a minute, "Hey, how are you? Who are you? What are you? Do you like cupcakes, because I like cupcakes! They're just so sweet and tasty, maybe you should try some when you get into Ponyville? WAIT! I forgot that we've just met! That means that you need a 'Welcome to Ponyville party!' Oh, it'll be so FUN! There'll be games and snacks and lots of new ponies to hang out with! What do you say?!"
Princess Luna tensed as the creature flinched, its hands moving in the direction of its gear when the pink pony suddenly filled its field of vision and barraged it with a constant stream of near-gibberish.
This could end very badly, and if there wasn't enough time to get Pinkie Pie away from it if it turned hostile...
"...Hey?"
...Never mind. The situation had resolved itself almost instantly. Now, the only problem was where to go from here...
The pink equine that was currently obscuring his entire field of vision would not stop talking, despite the fact that it - or maybe she, based on the sound of her voice - should have stopped roughly fifteen seconds ago to breathe. When Richter gave her a reluctant 'hello' to her barrage of questions, he didn't expect her to start running her mouth again, nor did he expect for his throat and vocal cords to feel like they'd been on the receiving end of an industrial sander. Luckily, he didn't express any physical reaction to the pain, probably due to the fact that he was an Undead...or whatever he was now.
If that was what his characters went through whenever they tried to talk to an NPC in the games, then he felt sympathy for them.
It was not even two seconds later that a new realization struck him: His head was trying to fucking kill itself with one of - no, the - worst migraine he'd ever experienced in his life. It felt like every last neuron in his brain was burning to ash at the atomic or even subatomic level, and it was seemingly growing in intensity as the seconds passed.
What was even worse was that it was so damn sudden; prior to his current predicament, he'd felt no pain or any kind of sign that a skull-splitting migraine was on its way. It was only a few seconds after the seven technicolor equines arrived in the room that the pain started.
Unless it was a severely delayed reaction from his body in response to being an Undead, the result of an immune response (if his Undead body even had an immune system anymore) to some foreign pathogen that this alien world was exposing him to, or something else he had no knowledge of, he had no idea why his head would suddenly feel like suicide was a good course of action.
The fact that the pink equine that was bouncing in circles around him just wouldn't stop talking certainly wasn't helping the situation.
Richter brought a hand to one of his temples in a half-vain attempt to nurse his migraine, accompanied by a distinctly frustrated/pained groan that sent another lance of burning pain through his throat, though he idly noticed that the pain was slightly weaker than the first time.
"Shut. Up," he managed to squeeze out through clenched teeth, something that he immediately regretted as pain once again consumed his throat.
To his utter joy and relief, the orange equine seemed to pick up on the fact that he was in pain; it reached out with a hoof and grabbed the Pink One by the tail, then yanked her over to the group before bopping her on the nose.
Richter made a mental note to thank the orange one later, assuming that they didn't kill him or something.
It was at that point that the largest equine in the group cleared its throat, then spoke in an undoubtedly female and regal tone of voice that almost demanded his complete and undivided attention, "Greetings! We are sorry if we've alarmed you or caused you any discomfort in some way. We also hope that you can forgive our friend for her...'energetic' antics."
The mare's wings flared out to her sides, causing the other equines around her to yelp and jump away from her to avoid getting hit by her rather large wingspan as she proclaimed with a hoof bent at an unnatural angle to point at her chest, "I am Princess Luna, the lunar diarch of Equestria! The mares that you see beside me are the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and both the Protectors and Saviors of Equestria-"
The mare's booming voice was cut off when Richter suddenly turned his entire body to face her and let out an audibly pain-filled shout, "SHUT UP!"
The other equines were about to leap to the Lunar Diarch's defense against the the potentially-hostile Undead when they noticed that he'd actually taken several steps back and was clutching desperately at his head.
The butter-yellow mare tried to approach, but was held back by the pure white mare's outstretched hoof, the latter's gaze fixed squarely on Richter's hands, "Fluttershy, darling, just give the poor thing some space and don't speak loudly. Judging by how he's rubbing his head, his head must be hurting him. Perhaps a headache, or a migraine of some sort. Princess Luna's, erm...enthusiastic use of the 'Royal Canterlot Voice' likely made it worse...no offense, Princess."
"Mi...grai...ne," Richter managed to grind out through clenched teeth and in spite of the agonizing sensation of his vocal cords burning from use, not even daring to move his head from where it was cradled between his hands.
"O-o-oh...F-forgive me for my conduct, I did not mean to cause you any harm," Princess Luna apologized in a much softer voice, one that was on the same volume as that of the other mares.
Richter waved his hand in the general direction of Princess Luna's voice, since he damn well couldn't even begin to move his head without his brain seemingly slamming itself against the side of his skull.
"He didn't seem to be in pain before, when we first came into the room..." the purple-furred winged unicorn...pegacorn, he supposed it would be called, mumbled to herself.
It was at that point that Richter remembered there was a Bonfire in the middle of the room, and unsteadily stumbled towards it, grabbing onto the upwards-pointing hilt with both hands for support, the Bonfire's warmth flowing through him and flooding the room as he slumped to the ground with an almost euphoric sigh.
What he didn't notice was the pulse of orange mist that washed over the entire room, bathing both it and its occupants in an ethereal orange glow that captivated the equines present.
"What...the hay is this?" the cyan pegasus asked no one in particular, looking around at the wisps of...what looked like orange, not-burning fire that floated around the room for a few moments, before ultimately flickering out moments later.
"Bonfire," Richter replied with a small cough of pain, drawing the attention of his quote-unquote guests back to him. "Special."
"A bonfire? That don't look like no bonfire Ah've evah seen. I mean, lookit that thang! It's a goshdarned sword stickin' outta a bunch a'...ashes, or somethin'," the orange mare wearing a cowboy hat replied with confusion written all across her face.
He shook his head with a sigh, wincing under his helmet at the small burst of pain in his head that the head movements caused, "Like...said. Special. Heals."
Richter couldn't wait until he found a way to talk without his damned throat feeling like someone ran a cheese grater over his vocal cords.
"Wait, this...Bonfire is capable of healing? How?! What kind of magic does it use?! How does the fire keep going even though there's no wood or fuel to sustain it?!" the purple pegacorn suddenly looked alarmingly interested in the Bonfire Richter was resting at.
The armor-clad Undead grunted in displeasure at how damn inquisitive these equines were, "No...magic. Just...works."
"That can't be it, though! If there isn't any magic involved in this 'Bonfire', then how did it cause the flames to dance around the room when you sat down at it?!" the purple pegacorn asked once more, her tone growing either annoyed or even more excited - Richter couldn't really tell which was which.
"Can't. Explain," Richter responded, immediately holding up a hand the moment that the mare opened her muzzle to speak again. "Speaking...hurts. Throat...burns. Bonfire...heals...m...me. But...not...throat. D...Don't...f...f-fffooorce me...t-tooo...speeEAAK!"
The longest sentence he'd spoken since arriving in this strange new land ended in a pained growl as his throat punished him yet again.
"Oh...oh, I-I-I'm sorry! I'm just e-excited about new and...interesting things like this," the mare apologized, a tinge of red showing through her purple fur.
"...Forgiven," Richter told her after a moment's pause. "Name...Richter...Douglas. You?"
The mare's eyes lit up with excitement, "My name is Twilight Sparkle, and it's nice to meet you, Mr. Douglas!"
"No. Just...'Richter,'" the Undead corrected Twilight.
"Oh...well, then it's nice to meet you, Richter. Girls, why don't you introduce yourselves?" Twilight replied, looking back at her friends with a meaningful look.
The orange hat-wearing mare waved a hoof at Richter at an angle that should have been anatomically impossible for her, "M' name's Applejack, sugarcube. Nice t' meetcha."
"My name is Rarity, and it is a pleasure to meet you...even if I wish it were under better, cleaner circumstances," the white mare with the styled purple mane gave a little...curtsy, Richter supposed it was. "I must say, even though your armor is...far too worn for my tastes, the quality of the fabric used in your armor is outstanding!"
"...Thanks?" Richter said, not knowing whether to take her words as an insult or a compliment to his armor.
"Umm, I'm...Fluttershy," the demure butter-yellow pegasus mare said in so soft a whisper that the crackling of the Bonfire almost drowned it out completely, her face hidden behind her own pink mane.
"...Fluttershy...Nice...name," Richter complimented, earning a small blush and a squeak from the mare before she buried her face even deeper into her own mane.
"HI,MYNAME'S-" The Pink One opened her mouth to speak, only for Applejack to plug her mouth with a hoof.
"Her name's Pinkie Pie, sugarcube. Considerin' how y' acted th' last time she went off on 'er usual ramblin', Ah think that it'd be fer th' best if'n Pinkie here could slow down a little. Don't wanna git on yer nerves or anythin', y'know," Applejack mercifully supplied the Pink One's name and a warning to said brightly-colored, hyperactive demon from the depths of Hell.
Smart girl...or, mare, in this case.
"And my name's Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer in all of Equestria! Nice to meet ya, big guy!" the cyan Pegasus - the last of the six normal-sized mares - introduced herself...by flying uncomfortably close to Richter and puffing out her chest in obvious pride or arrogance.
Richter took a small scooch back away from Rainbow, not feeling all that comfortable with the pegasus being so close to him and violating his personal space.
"And, as I stated previously, I am Princess Luna. Together with my sister, Princess Celestia, we rule over Equestria and all of our little ponies within it. These six mares are the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and they have saved the land of Equestria many times over," Princess Luna introduced herself last, bowing her head in greeting to Richter.
Richter slowly stood up and folded an arm across his chest such that his palm was facing upwards and pressed against thr opposite shoulder, then gave Princess Luna a polite, respectful bow at the hip to the royalty before him. If he was gonna be decked out in Elite Knight Armor, he might as well act the part of a knight.
"A...pleasure...Princess," Richter said, returning his arm and upper torso to their normal positions. "So...what now?"
The equines - ponies, he corrected himself internally - blinked, as if they hadn't thought that far ahead.
"...Well. Not leaving," Richter spoke up after a few moments of silence, noting with some relief that his vocal cords were already getting used to speaking again. "Bonfire...too important. Need it. Heals...me. Heals...all damage. Can't stray...far. Too risky."
"Oh...well, I...guess we'll come visit, then?" Princess Luna suggested somewhat awkwardly, clearly not having much experience with such a situation.
"Sounds good. Give warning, though. Hate surprises," Richter agreed, adding on the last bit with a pointed look in Pinkie's direction.
A gasp escaped the Pink One's mouth as she defied physics by floating upwards for the duration of said gasp, before falling back down to the ground, "How can you not like surprises?! Surprises make life so fun and exciting!"
"...Hate surprises. Of all kinds. Bad experiences," Richter reiterated with a firmer tone.
"Very well, then. We shall take our leave for now. We shall see you in the morning, once we've all had a good night's rest," Princess Luna spoke up before anything else could be said, turning around with a gesture to the Elements of Harmony to follow.
And one by one, they did, with Twilight being the last to go, giving Richter and the Bonfire he'd once again sat down at ome last glance before following after her friends.
Now alone once again, Richter was left with his thoughts and the crackling of the Bonfire.
And to be honest...he preferred it that way, at least for the time being.
And so it was that beneath an ocean of sand, the remnant of something ancient finally returned to consciousness.
It moved, and the desert above quivered ever so slightly, but refused to yield its grip on the thing buried underneath its vast weight.
Undeterred, the thing below continued to move, from small twitches of its muscles to miniscule flexes of a digit or an eyelid. It would not be contained in yet another tomb, in another world that had not yet known its touch or its domain.
Its senses pushed through the sand that buried it, and spread in every direction upon breaching the surface, searching for what had awakened it from its forced slumber. It was small, a tiny, pitiful thing, that was barely even a spark or an ember...
But it had, somehow, entered the thing's dreams and the iteration of its domain within those dreams.
And this mere excuse for an ember had been able to resist the thing's influence, had managed to hurt it with the flame within, and above all else, had managed to escape its domain, its dreams, the one place where it had ultimate authority over all that existed within it.
This pitiful little spark had piqued its interest and earned its ire, and it would find that spark again, and consume it.
Even if it had to wait yet another eternity, it would have what it desired. It would have that spark, that light and power and darkness within it. It would be free.
It would see its domain - its HOME - take back its rightful place in this world, and all of the worlds that it had touched in past, present and future alike.
It would not allow another failure, like that of the pawn it had touched and bound a mere fragment of itself to over a millennia ago, when the hate and hunger and rage and darkness and NEGATIVITY in the world had been enough to briefly wake it up.
It would succeed.
Starting with the creature that was burrowing towards it, attracted by its movements and the possibilities that movement posed.
When the creature came close enough, it effortlessly peered into the creature's mind and searched for the information within.
A tribe, a dysfunctional and tumultuous facsimile of a family kept together only by the strength and intimidation and fear of the leader, the king, the chieftain, the alpha male.
This particular tribe member left after an argument, displeased with its - no, his - place in his tribe. A mere digger, one miner amongst many others in the tribe, just another drop in the pond. He wanted more, his kin were content, they disagreed, and argued, and he ran out in anger.
Then he felt its movement, felt something that wasn't a predator beneath the sands. It felt something POWERFUL.
Possibly powerful enough to become the leader of his tribe.
And so he dug down, down and down below, towards where it was trapped.
He wanted power, did he? It pushed this question into his mind, malleable and simple as it was, to which he answered eagerly, greedily 'yes.'
Then he could have power, beyond anything he could imagine. All he had to do...was bear its mark and a fragment of itself, and it would become more powerful than his 'leader' could ever be.
He accepted, blinded by his greed and ambition, and was summarily Taken by it.
It broke off a piece of its finite yet endless self, and placed it deep within his heart, against the dormant fire within.
The fire was instantly caged, surrounded by its Fragment as his body was contorted and twisted to suit the needs of his 'boon.' Sandy-colored fur gave way to coarse, dense hair the color of the darkest black, paws evolved for digging now lengthening and reshaping into clawed hands that could rip through solid rock. Dull brown eyes were reborn sharper and the color of pure blood. Bones and muscles tore themselves apart and put themselves back together, larger and much strongee than before.
A new pawn was born, and this time around, the Fragment it planted in him would not affect only its host. It would affect, influence, corrupt, seduce and ensnare all those in his presence.
From small beginnings, it would grow stronger and its domain would begin to take form once more.
It would possess what its pawn possessed.
The pawn's thralls and servants would be its thralls.
The pawn's power would be its power.
The pawn's seed and the offspring sired by that seed would be its own.
And soon...everything in this world would belong to it, would be one with it.
As it was meant to be so long ago, in the world it once called home.
Alone with his thoughts, Richter Douglas sighed as the last echoes of the seven mares' hoof-steps died out among the empty stone halls of the decaying castle.
As if to accentuate that last point, a chunk of stone fell from the ceiling and bounced off of the pauldron on his left shoulder, resulting in a loud 'CLANG' that would have startled anyone else.
After being turned into an Undead against his will and ending up in a world of technicolor ponies, however, Richter was not 'anyone else' and thus could not give less of a damn about the sudden loud noise.
What he did give a damn about was the fact that the castle was beginning to decay to the point of collapse, with potentially the only Bonfire in this world at risk if the castle DID collapse. That just wouldn't do, no sir; not for Richter, who wasn't sure if he was one death away or one kill's worth of souls away from going down the path of a Hollow.
So, despite the dull pounding in his head caused by simply moving his head, the Undead got off his armored ass and grabbed the rock that fell on him. He inspected it for a few moments, then looked up to find the spot in the ceiling where said rock had fallen from. Once he found it, he grabbed a handful of ash from the cooler outer perimeter of the Bonfire's ash pile and formed an X beneath the hole, placed the rock on top of it, and then left the room after securing his sword and shield to their respective spots on his person.
Renovations were in order, and if he was going to be stuck living in the same area as the (potentially) sole Bonfire in the entire world, then he was going to make sure that his damned home wasn't going to fall apart on him.
---{}---
Richter was very glad that he watched that Primitive Technology channel on YouTube so damn often prior to the convention, otherwise he'd never have known how to do half the stuff he was doing.
Shame that the videos never told him how to treat itchiness caused by some weird blue powder that had managed to fall through the gaps in his armor's joints and touch his skin. He wished that he'd just avoided that cluster of blue flowers he'd walked through, since the powder that was kicked up from the flowers was getting really distracting. Worse, he didn't know if it was the powder, the air or the fog in the air or what, but he'd been feeling weird since then. For some reason, he was feeling annoyed by some kind of resistance to something that he was doing, but he hadn't actually been having any problems with the stuff he'd been doing.
He'd knapped and put together a simple stone axe to chop some wood for a...more conventional and less powered-by-souls fire for creating a simple kiln made of mud. Once the kiln was done and the fire was restoked, he started cooking some limestone he found in a cave nearby, as well as a bunch of empty snail shells from around the forest, to a high enough heat to "activate" the lime/calcium carbonate in the respective materials.
All he had to do was wait for all of the shells and limestone to heat up, and once they cooled down and were completely white, he could throw some water on them in a bowl or something to turn them into lime putty, then mix the putty with some other crap to make the mortar that was used to glue bricks together.
He'd use that mortar to start repairing the stonework in and around the bonfire room, along with making some wooden structural reinforcements to keep the ceiling where it was - above him, and not crushing him into a meat pancake while he slept or something.
Since all of that was working out, he had no idea why the hell he was feeling so annoyed by what he felt was a lack of progress of some kind. If anything, he'd just been feeling like his body was fluctuating between feeling hot or cold as it...adapted to the new, alien environment he was currently in, he guessed. That was normal, since there was bound to be stuff in the air and his surroundings that he'd never been exposed to before, and as such his body would have to acclimatize.
He could easily ignore that, and so he did. It was actually easier than he thought it would be.
---{}---
Four hours of gathering limestone and other materials for making the lime putty and mortar, then making the putty/mortar, and then actually applying the mortar to the crumbling stonemasonry later...
The Bonfire Room was back in good condition. All the holes were plugged up, all the stonework was put back and reinforced with some logs that were acting as a grid of struts to keep the ceiling aloft, and he even boarded up one of the broken stained glass windows to keep any unwanted visitors from just coming in as they pleased.
In theory, at least. Magic or non-corporeal beings would be able to get in as easily as breathing, most likely, but he preferred not to think about that possibility.
With the ceiling no longer a hazard to his health, Richter...had nothing to do.
...That wasn't good, considering how restless humans could get when they had nothing to occupy themselves with.
Richter paced around the Bonfire, contemplating what to do to avoid going stir-crazy as he idly twirled his Broadsword in his right hand.
...Bed.
He'd need a bed if he was going to be practically living in that damned room for any considerable length of time, and sleeping on cold, hard stone while decked out in full Elite Knight armor was out of the question.
But then that meant he'd have to do even more work...
But sleeping on a somewhat decent bed...
But more tedious work...
But kinda comfortable sleeping place...
But physical exertion...
Ugh. Sometimes, he wondered how he had even survived up 'til then when the thought of doing work was as repulsive to him as the idea of sleeping on a bed was wonderful. He was at least thankful that he'd managed to hide his rather strong propensity for laziness from everyone else in his life by acting the exact opposite, otherwise he'd have never been able to trick himself into getting as far in life as he had.
Decisions, decisions...which seemed more palatable to Richter and his innate sense of laziness?
...Wait. He figured it out!
Making a bed meant he could sleep in as much as he wanted, when he didn't have to do stuff!
It was the perfect compromise!
With all of that in mind, Richter turned on his heels and marched back through the ruined castle, and made his way into the surrounding forest once more. As he trudged through dense and barely-illuminated undergrowth, he idly wondered why the forest was so dark. The castle’s roof - decayed, precarious and death trap as it was - had seen broad daylight not even a few hours before, and his internal clock told him it was roughly 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
Yet it was as dark as night-time less than five minutes away from the castle.
Magic? Curse? Some bullcrap reason only comprehensible to dolphins?
Whatever the case, he had no idea.
Regardless of his possession of an idea or lack thereof, the Undead had a mission: Making himself a damn bed, because sleeping on a stone floor sucked ass.
Wood, lashings, bedding, etcetera etcetera.
And perhaps burning all of those blue powder flowers in the forest, because that odd feeling of annoyance that started up after being exposed to it earlier today was starting to grate on him to the point he wanted to bash his own head in with the rather sharp tips of his sword’s hand guard.
Cross-guard.
Whatever the hell it was.
Richter shook his head and gave the side of his helmet a solid whack to see if that’d fix his irrational and unwanted annoyance.
The ringing in his ears and the resulting headache certainly succeeded in distracting him, at any rate.
---{}---
Wood: Chopped.
Lashings: Acquired.
Bedding: Gathered from a massive pile of discarded fur and fuzz outside of some cave.
Purge and fiery cleansing of all powdery blue flower: No dice, because he didn’t have a flamethrower to burn the whole forest down out of spite.
Eh, three out of four wasn’t bad.
As the Undead dropped the massive bundle of fur on his back to the floor in his little room, he arched his back with his hands pushing on the small of said back. The sensation and sounds of joints popping and vertebrae snapping back into place was music to his ears.
Now all he had to do was make the bed.
Simple enough.
Rectangular frame, lash it together...add support for his weight with wood bars and ‘cross beams’ and other carpentry/construction jargon...cover with bedding...
Aaand that was it. Bed done.
...Except he didn’t feel sleepy, and now (A) he had nothing to do again and (B) he was still feeling lazy and somehow even more irritated for whatever god/gods-forsaken reason.
“UuuugggGGGGHHHHH...” Richter let out an exasperated groan, which only intensified when his vocal cords burned an reminded him that speaking was a rather bad idea at this juncture.
So, that left him with some options.
Find the weird and garishly-colored equines from before, go out and find something else of interest, or go on a bit of a genocide of the local wildlife.
Considering his lack of actual combat experience, he doubted the third option would end in any way but tears, terror and/or death.
Which left consorting with the locals, or wandering around like an idiot in some dark forest containing gods-knew-what.
Hmm...
...Eh. Exercise was exercise, and it wouldn’t hurt to start making a map or whatever of the locale.
Plus if he found something cool on the way, all the more power to him.
The walk out of the ruins was so uneventful and as same as the other times that he didn’t even register he was out of the castle until he was halfway across the rickety-ass bridge across a seemingly bottomless ravine and noticed a rather large winged lion with a massive scorpion tail staring at him from the other side of the bridge with a gaze that suggested it was thinking of making fillets out of his torso.
Welp. That thing was too big and almost certainly too heavy for its wings to lift off of the ground, so Richter decided that the best course of action was to turn around and go back inside the castle where it was nice, warm, only partially falling apart, and didn’t have a giant lion-scorpion with wings that wanted to munch on him.
The Undead swiftly turned on his heel and calmly walked back in the direction of the castle.
He was a quarter of the way along the path up to the weird not-constellation sculpture-thing room - also known as the entrance foyer thing to the castle - when he heard wings flapping behind him, and then the sound of something landing roughly twenty meters behind him.
Richter did the sensible thing and hauled ass as fast as his legs could carry him, with the giant forest predator roaring loud enough to rattle his bones and hot on his heels.
A quick crunching of the numbers yielded the horrifying realization that the thing would catch up to him before he could reach the entrance to the ruins.
So, with the ‘Leoscorpius’ or whatever it was supposed to be called rapidly closing the distance and safe haven too far away to reach in time, the man had to make a decision.
His decision?
Turn around again and charge towards the hangry Leoscorpius in the hopes that he’d be able to pull off a classic Dark Souls dodge under whatever attack it chose to make.
Apparently, the damned thing wasn’t expecting its prey to suddenly run at it, as it missed a step and tripped over its own paws. Mometum carried it tumbling head over heels, and the Undead only just had enough time to roll rather clumsily out of the way before he was crushed under several tons of angry animal.
With an opportunity to run the fuck away so generously presented to him, Richter took it and booked it towards the bridge with the clankety-clank of decently heavy armor moving at a dead sprint.
The Undead then glanced behind him to see if the Leoscorpius had recovered from its little tumble.
It had.
It was not even ten meters behind him and getting closer by the second.
Shit.
He made it to the bridge and crossed five slats of wood when he felt something big, heavy and deadly just barely nick the back of his neck.
Good news, he wasn’t a head tumbling down into the ravine after been knocked clean off his shoulders.
Bad news, the asshole’s swipe apparently destroyed the moorings keeping the bridge secured to the castle side of the ravine, since the sound of splintering wood rang out a second before he experienced a rather unwanted and unneeded sense of vertigo and weightlessness that could only mean he was plummetting to a rather messy death.
‘Not like this. I don’t want to die like this,’ Richter thought to himself as wind rushed past his head with a dull roar, and as he fell through copiuous amounts of fog or whatever the hell it was.
If he had to guess, based on what his gut was telling him? Maybe twenty-five seconds until he hit the bottom and popped like an overripe melon in a rather large tin can.
Worst of all, he didn’t know if he’d respawn at the Bonfire like Undead did in the games. For all he knew, Bonfires in this world worked completely differently and only healed him rather than full-on bringing him back to life upon death.
Actually, no, scratch that, the worst gods-damned thing about this was that now he was itching like a motherfucker where that blue powder flower shit got on his flesh.
‘Oh, RUB IT IN, why don’t you?! Make me get the worst itch of my life as I’m falling to my death! WHY DON’T WE MAKE IT EVEN MORE INTERESTING BY THROWING ME INTO YET ANOTHER FUCKING WORLD LIKE SOME SHITTY ANIME?! That’d be greeeat!’ Richter shouted in his head, feeling rather cross with the universe fucking him over like this.
Then his Darksign ignited, he ignited, the fog ignited like it was methane, everything was burning-
And then he was on top of something, and - mercifully - not on fire anymore.
Something soft, warm...
Fuzzy?
And...also...breathing.
He glanced down.
A raccoon-looking woman with one silver and one icy blue eye was staring up at him in alarm, anger and a fair bit of mortification.
The furred girl stared up in shock at the figure on top of her, warm water cascading down on them both. A massive blush soon overtook her face, and with a scream she Force Pushed him off of her and scrambled out of the bathroom, still naked as she was when she walked into the shower.
“MAAAAAAAAAASTEEEEEEEERRRR!” she cried as she ran out.
‘...The fuck just happened?’ the figure - Richter Douglas, fledgling Undead - thought blankly to himself as he got back up on his armored boots and looked around the bathroom as the adrenaline from his frankly terrifying near-death experience wore off and left him rather numb and lethargic.
The best he could describe said bathroom was minimalistic and very futuristic. The shower wasn’t tiled or anything like most, and was instead solid metal. Silver, metal, at that. There was no curtain, only a sliding door of some kind of glass that hopefully managed to just obscure any naked forms that would be within the shower.
The sink beyond the shower was also made of metal, and overall very simplistic. The toilet next to it was honestly the more intriguing bit of plumbing, oddly enough, as it had no lid and instead a bunch of pipes leading from it to the ceiling, along with some strange, rubbery seal of a seat.
The ceiling and walls bore simple floodlights that glowed with cyan light. All in all, he was not sure where exactly he was besides some weird futuristic house.
‘Huh. Not a ship; no swaying. Also not a building, feels...cramped. Bunker?’ Richter wondered, stepping out of the shower with as much care as a wet floor deserved and then making his way out of the room.
As soon as he made it out of the room, he saw that he was in, at the very least, a lengthwise building, with a few other rooms hanging off to the sides. The entire hall was styled similarly to the bathroom; futuristic, made of silver metal, and with those same cyan floodlights. To his left, from the entrance of the bathroom, was what seemed to be two small rooms, the doors bearing no handles or knobs. It was likely they were pneumatic, or hydraulic, and opened via some other input.
Beyond those doors, further down the hall and at the end, was three other doors, the one in the middle painted with a familiar symbol - the symbol of a Tearstone, specifically the Blue Tearstone.
Off to the left wall, there was a final door beyond the other door on that wall. He had no idea where any of those doors went.
‘Oookay, Tearstone door is a point of interest. Goody,’ Richter mused as he eyed the door for a few moments.
Then he turned his head to the right.
And was met with a veritable wall of hulking futuristic armor. Familiar, armor. In fact, it looked like the Faraam set now that he looked at it- Suddenly, his throat was being constricted, and he was lifted off the floor.
“How did you get on my ship?” the armor spoke, voice tinny and utterly unidentifiable as either male or female, hand outstretched toward him like it was trying to squeeze him.
Richter shrugged with his hands held palms-up and violently shook his head in the universal way of saying ‘I have no fucking clue.’
The armor looked to the girl behind it, who looked very much so like some kind of anthropomorphised animal. Brown fur with darker brown splotches over her eyes and torso, a short but very bushy tail with a darker brown base and lighter brown tip, dark brown furred hands, and dirty blonde, short hair with a style similar to pageboy cuts, but with two much more prominent ‘tail’ like fronts that ended with brown fringes. Her left eye was silver, and her right was an icy blue.
The girl was shaking, still nude, and still wet.
“I-I-I don’t know either, M-Master, but he just...he was just o-o-on top of me out of nowhere and his hands w-w-were, were…!” She blushed and looked away, hugging tighter to her apparent Master.
The ‘Master’ looked back to the Undead they were still strangling with some unknown power. “...” Then, Richter was released from the grip and dropped down to his hands and knees, gasping for breath. “Then there are only a few explanations. He is either an assassin of the Equusi Union, trained in long range spatial teleportation, or,” The Master stared down at him, their visor seeming to bore into his own with a coldness he’d never felt before. “He is a Displaced, like Hamin.”
Richter just cocked his head to the side, arms slumped at his sides and his body language basically saying ‘The fuck are you talking about?’
“Hm. So you are as new to it as I was. I see.” The Master sighed and looked back at their apparent apprentice. “Emica, go get changed. You don’t need to be naked right now. Let me deal with him.”
Emica nodded rapidly, and scurried off past them and into the room with the Tearstone symbol on it’s door, the door opening like he thought - hydraulically, and soon closing afterwards.
The Master crossed their arms over their chest as they looked down at Richter. “Displaced are humans or in some cases random individuals from other worlds or Earths that are dimensionally misplaced into either an Equestria, or in my case, a universe with one. Typically, they are brought there by some third party known as a Void Dweller, and most often by one called The Merchant. Do you follow so far?”
Richter stared at them for a few moments as his brain registered their words, then he mimics someone reaching into a cloak and then opening it up, and then gestured to his armor and the Darksign with a black vortex swirling around it that had been burned into his right hand, and finally points at her.
They shook their head. “No. I was brought here by a different Void Dweller.”
Richter slumped with a sigh, immediately regretting it when his throat caught fire (metaphorically) and he started hacking and coughing, which only made it even worse.
“I can only assume that you are an Undead, yet, I sense you do not have an Estus Flask,” The Master began marching towards the second door on the left of the hall, past him. “Remain there. I will return shortly.”
Seeing as how his coughing fit had yet to let up and had brought him to his knees, the Undead wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Thankfully, after only a minute, the Master returned from the room they’d gone into, holding a familiar emerald flask, but one that was filled with green liquid and not the fires of a Bonfire. “The liquid inside is Kolto, and should do well enough for your throat as Estus would. However,” they offered it to him. “It will not restore itself like Estus. The flask should still be serviceable as an Estus Flask in the future, however.”
The man snatched the flask from her hand and downed the ‘Kolto’ shit like it was going out of style, then stopped with less than a quarter left and let out a sigh of relief that his vocal cords were no longer dousing themselves in lye.
“Haaaaah...thanks. Needed thaaaa- oooh, damn, it feels weird to hear my voice after so long. Did...Did I always sound like this?” Richter said and promptly went off on a tangent as he rubbed his throat. “Cuz...shit, I sound several octaves lower than before.”
“I expect you to repay me for this service, understood?” the Master stated, crossing their arms again.
“Fuckin’ name it! For the world’s fastest-acting liquid throat lozenge, I owe you an entire damn planet!” Richter replied, rising to his feet and rolling his neck to get some of the pain and tension from his brief bout with strangulation out.
The Master seemed to snort at this. “I have no interest in owning a planet. That is something only the Sith and the Republic wish for.”
“...Thought that hand gesture and sensation of asphyxiation looked familiar. So, uh...whaddya want in return?” he asked, right as he felt two vertebrae that had slipped out of alignment audibly snap back in. “AGH, thaaaat smaaaarts, but it feels sooo gooood.”
Ignoring his latter remark, the Master replied, “Simple,” they pulled out a disc-like object, pressed a button on it, and a hologram of what looked like a wanted listing appeared, with a picture of an alien of sorts on it. “You will help me with my next bounty.”
Richter nodded, “Then I’ll die as a meat shield, cuz I have precisely negative combat experience. It’s...barely been a day, since I ended up in Equus Triad or whatever, and I was a lazy schmuck that tricked himself into being a functional member of society, aside from playing videogames. And shooting some guns with my father.”
The Master stared down at him, then sighed deeply and pushed the button again, hologram disappearing. “Then it seems I am doomed to be a teacher again.” They shook their head as Emica came back out of the room, dressed in a set of robes not unlike those that Richter recalled Obi-Wan wearing in the movies. “Emica, as of now you have a fellow apprentice. Show him around while I bring us to a favorable planet for training.” The Master then walked away, towards what Richter assumed was the bridge.
“B-But-!” But they were already gone. Emica groaned, slumping her shoulders. “Ugh...She never asks me what I think…” Sighing, Emica straightened and walked over to Richter. “So...uh…” She blushed a bit, rubbing her arm. “I’m uh, Emica Hiroto.”
“Richter Douglas. Sorry. I was falling to my death when I dared the universe to send me to yet another world, and my Darksign and I and the fog burst into flames, it hurt, and then I was on top of you. Don’t know even a quarter of what the hell is going on, so...uh...yeah,” he replied, with an apologetic shrug. “If it makes you feel any better, I...literally didn’t even notice you were naked until your, uh, Master said it.”
Emica blinked, looking down at him in surprise. “Y-You had your hands on my boobs, th-though.”
“...” Richter stares at her and holds up his gauntlet-clad hands. “Metal. Lethal levels of adrenaline from falling into a roughly 200-meter-deep ravine. I didn’t even notice I was in a shower until thirty seconds after you ran out screaming.”
“O-Oh, w-well,” She offered her hand. “It’s good to meet a new appren-”
“Brace for hyperspace jump,” the Master’s voice crackled over the intercom, and without warning the ship lurched forward, thus causing Emica to yelp and tumble...right on top of Richter. Whose hands were on her breasts again. Emica blushed a furious crimson at this as she stared down at Richter through his visor.
Richter stared back, thoroughly bewildered by how the same situation had played out twice in the span of...five, six minutes? How the hell had his hands even ended up at her chest? They were at his sides right before the jump and he sure as hell didn’t move his hands in the 0.817 seconds it had taken to end up on the floor.
Regardless, he realized he’d been staring at her for longer than socially acceptable and decided the best course of action was conversation, “I get the feeling the universe is gonna torment me by having us end up like this a lot, or in even more compromising situations.”
Emica immediately pushed herself off of him and into a sitting position, stammering away. “I-I-I-I-I-! Y-You, I, uh, um-!” She looked away, playing with a strand of her hair as she looked away, unsure what to say as her face seemed to literally steam with her embarrassment. “S-Sorry for...f-f-falling on you…” She squeaked out eventually.
“I fell on you, you fell on me. I’d say we’re even. Though, come to think of it, I was roughly at terminal velocity at the time I spontaneously combusted, so how did my weight and the weight of my armor coupled with my velocity not carry through and turn you into a fresh coat of paint all over the bathroom when I landed on you…?” Richter waved her off, then chased a mental rabbit all the way to its den, ignoring or not noticing the look Emica was giving him.
Emica then looked away, still playing with a strand of her hair. “T-Tanuki are...very durable. Royal Tanuki like me e-e-even more so…”
“Even so, that means I would have still turned into a rather off-color crimson coat of paint all over the bathroom from the impact. Did the mechanism that brought me here cancel out all my momentum, or did it just shove it onto some other poor, unsuspecting asshole somewhere?” Richter continued with his hypothesizing, completely disregarding how casually he described himself popping like a zit on impact while going at terminal velocity.
Emica blinked, finally looking at him and tilting her head. “M-Maybe you weren’t actually going at, um, terminal velocity?” At his look, she continued. “It takes a little bit to gain that kind of velocity, doesn’t it? Are you sure you actually hit that speed?”
“Roughly two hundred meters above the ground based on 9.8 meters per second of gravitational acceleration and the time it took me to fall for about...what, thirteen seconds? Only saw the bottom for about a third of a second, so probably wasn’t at terminal velocity. But even so, I should have gone splat from the speed I was going when I landed on you. So that means however I was sent here, all momentum was just canceled out harmlessly. If I can replicate this more than once, I could have a way of quick escapes from imminent death or hopeless odds,” Richter replied with a half shrug of one of his shoulders.
Emica stared at him for a moment, before giggling. “You’re a funny guy, you know that?” She stood up, brushing herself off and offering him a hand up. “Come on, I’ll show you around the ship.”
The Undead took the offered hand and was summarily pulled to his feet, “I fail to see how I’m funny, but, uh...thanks, Emica.”
Emica only giggled again. “You’re welcome. Now follow me.” She turned around after letting go of his hand, walking towards the second door on the left of the hall. As they reached it, she stopped by it. “This is where the ammunition for the guns on this side of the ship is stored and loaded. According to Master Gladfield, her guns use different systems than most in the galaxy, so she has to actually change or refill on ammo a lot. She tells me it’s very effective, though.”
“Projectile-based weapons, as I assume hers are, do tend to pack more punch when you get them big enough. Lasers attenuate in air and get weaker, plasma loses heat and mass as it travels, and both require power sources. Ballistic weapons just need gunpowder, rifling and you’re good to go,” Richter nodded in understanding. “What does she use for her guns, by the way? High-Explosive Armor-Piercing, Hollow-Point Incendiary, what?”
Emica smiled and shook her head. “Carbonized lead rounds, actually.”
“...You telling me this is a ship from EVE?” Richter asked blankly, staring at the door.
Emica tilted her head at him. “‘Eve’? What’s that?”
“...A sector of the universe known as New Eden, hence ‘EVE’, the mother of humanity. They use carbonized lead as cheap ballistic weapon ammunition, usually in railguns,” the Undead explained after wracking his head for any information he still remembered of the game.
Fuckin’ grindfest and JRPG status effects level of complicated skill mechanics, that one.
Emica blinked a few times. “That’s...really interesting, actually. Master just told me she doesn’t know how humanity started in the galaxy, but if there’s a sector of the universe named after their mother…” She hummed, cupping her chin. “Maybe I should ask her about it later…”
“Well, anyways, on with the tour?” he suggested before she started thinking too much into it and problems started arising because he was a nerd.
Emica blinked, then giggled nervously and scratched the back of her head. “O-Oh, right.” She turned around, walking towards the third door of the left wall. “This is the way out of the ship,” she then gestured to the two doors on either side of the Tearstone door. “Those doors lead to the engine room and cargo bay, and the one in the middle is the bedroom.”
“Wait, there’s only one bedroom?” the Undead asked, looking between Emica, the bedroom and the direction her Master went off in. “How does THAT work?”
Emica giggled again, rubbing her neck once more. “Very awkwardly, I’ll admit. Master never really expected she’d ever get someone living with her on the ship, so she’s always had just the one bedroom.”
A thought popped into Richter’s head.
He didn’t like where it led.
“I think I’m just going to use the cargo bay and some crates as a bed. Far less chance of what’s happened twice now happening again, and even less of a chance of me ending up dead,” Richter wisely decided with a sage nod to himself.
Emica nodded slowly. “Yeeeah, probably a good idea.” She then shook her head, and pointed to the direction of the bridge, specifically toward one of the walls where a table lay below a strange, hole-like device. “Over there is where our food is made, but aside from that, there’s just the bridge,” she pointed to the stairs leading up to another door. “The other ammunition room,” she pointed to the one door on the right side of the hall. “And the bathroom, which you’ve already, um, seen.” She pointed to the door he’d originally come out of, then looked away with a small blush.
“It is a very nice bathroom,” Richter said, not knowing what else to say about the incident. “Very sleek and well-designed.”
Emica nodded slowly. “Y-Yeah, it is.” A silence fell over them for a moment, both unsure what to say, before Emica seemed to gain the courage to speak. “S-So! Um, uh,” She started to play with her hair again. “What’s, um, what’s a Darksign? You said something about it earlier, but never explained. Is it something to do with some Dark Side tattoo, or…?”
“It’s the ring thing on the back of my right hand with all the swirly darkness. It’s a physical manifestation and representation of the Undead Curse that afflicts me, and is supposed to bring me back from death whenever I die at the nearest Bonfire - a fire made of the bones and ashes of another Undead with a spiral sword sticking out of it. The bonfire heals me, replenishes strength, and so on. To make a long explanation somewhat shorter: I’m a walking, talking corpse that absorbs the souls of those I kill and use them to grow stronger, all the while cursed to never be able to die for good until I go Hollow and lose all semblance of consciousness and sanity,” Richter ‘helpfully’ supplied.
Emica stared at him, eyes wide and shocked. She gulped. “Y-You...you’re a zombie th-that...eats souls?” She took a step back.
“Yyyeaah, I am, but since I haven’t killed a single thing aside from some trees and because I’m not an asshole or a Hollow, you don’t have to worry. Besides, you and your Master could kick my ass, and I’m not even sure if the Bonfire I last rested at can resurrect me,” Richter replied with a quick reassurance that he didn’t really feel was that reassuring.
“Y-You promise you won’t, ya know, kill me a-a-and, st-steal my soul?” Emica asked fearfully, dreading the answer.
“Of course, as I said, I’m not an asshole or Hollow,” Richter quickly promised the rather terrified racoon woman. “And, again, you and/or your Master could easily kill me or kick my ass and toss me out the airlock if I tried anything.”
Emica watched him closely for a moment, studying him as she took in his words. Then, she slowly, shakily nodded. “O-Okay. I’ll trust you. B-But I’m watching you, okay?”
“That...was obvious long before you even said it. Your Master is gonna be watching me like a damn hawk,” the Undead stated flatly with a stare that was just as flat. “Besides. I have exactly...zero combat experience. Shot a few guns and stuff, but never been in a fight before, so you could just flip me onto my back and stomp on my neck to kill me, to be perfectly blunt.”
Emica stared at him with a clear measure of horror at that. “I don’t want to kill you though!” she looked away. “I-I mean, yeah, you’re scary, and if you do g-go all, um, crazy, then...I guess I’d have to, but still!”
“...You lived a rather awkward, somewhat sheltered life before your Master took you in, didn’t you?” Richter asked with a slight adjustment to his right gauntlet. A small puff of blue powder fell out of it at the movement.
Emica blinked, previous fear forgotten at his words as she looked back at him. “How did you know?” Her eyes widened. “Can you use the Force like Master?”
“Nnnooo, (A) you act like someone who was never really let out of the house because there were peasants out there or something, and (B) you just told me,” Richter denied with a slow shake of his head.
Emica blinked, then blushed lightly. “O-Oh. I guess I am pretty obvious, huh?”
“As obvious as I am dead,” the Undead said with zero regard for her feelings.
“Now coming out of hyperspace,” the Master’s voice rang out from the intercom again, and the ship once more lurched. Thankfully, though, this time the two simply fell against the wall.
The impact dislodged and dispersed the remaining blue powder that he despised and that had clung to his armor into the air, leading Richter to suppress a frustrated growl as his skin got itchy again and he felt that same fuckin’ annoyance pop right back up.
“The moment I get back home, I’m burning all of those fucking blue flowers. I hate them. I hate them with every fiber of my being,” he grumbled, but nonetheless got back to his feet and popped a vertebra back into place.
That was starting to become somewhat worryingly common.
“Um, is something wrong?” Emica asked as she stood up herself, looking to him worriedly.
“See the blue powder shit? It comes from some blue flowers that were all over the forest I ended up in and they kept releasing this blue powder. The few animals I saw seem to avoid it like the plague given the absence of tracks in the area, but all I know is that they make me itch like I’ve got turbo fleas and I feel inexplicably annoyed after a minute or so,” the Undead scowled beneath his helmet, then raised his Pyromancy Flame-
The Undead stopped and stared at the flame on his right palm, “...How the hell did I forget that I have a Pyromancy Flame? How did I forget that I have instant fire on speed dial? How did I forget that I have my own personal soul-fueled flamethrower? Am I just stupid, or does being an Undead make it hard to remember shiiii- I realize that was a dumb question. Uh, wait, what did you say again?”
Emica just blinked at him a few times. “...Are you normally this weird and forgetful, or is that all Undead?”
“Not sure. The Undead Curse does make you forget everything about who you were prior to death, but since I wasn’t always Undead and still remember my life before ending up in this situation, I guess it just makes my memory somewhat worse than before. As for being weird...eh, we’re all weird in our own ways,” Richter said, holding his Pyromancy Flame up to one of the lingering clouds of blue and grinning with vengeful delight under his helmet when the cloud went up in a flash of light and a puff of smoke.
Emica frowned, ears drooping. “I’m...sorry to hear that. Losing your memory like that doesn’t sound very fun at all…”
“Agaaain, I still have all my memories because I wasn’t made an Undead the normal way,” the Undead reminded her with a soft poke to her forehead.
Emica went adorably cross-eyed at this, but nonetheless kept her frown as she gently pushed his finger away. “But you could still lose your memories is the point I’m trying to make. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Richter nodded, “Obviously, but I haven’t died yet and thus I haven’t tested whether or not I forget stuff with every death. So why worry about it if it’s not been proven yet?”
Emica’s frown deepened. “But-”
“Both of you come to the bridge and get ready for landing,” the intercom crackled again, interrupting Emica.
Emica looked to the speaker that emitted the voice, then sighed deeply and started to walk towards the bridge as told. “...Come on, we should do what she says or she’ll make our training a lot worse.”
The Undead needed no further incentive, already marching himself to the bridge with the soft clanking of chainmail and plate.
When they reached the bridge, they saw outside the viewport a fairly massive planet that only grew larger as they sped towards it. Said planet was verdant and green by and large, with only a few pockets of blue on its surface. Hopefully that blue was water, and not something else.
Emica’s Master flipped a few extra switches as they sat in the pilot’s seat. “Welcome to AH-649.”
“...Looks like a high-gravity world that my sorry armored ass is going to suffer on,” he deduced after a few moments of examining the planet.
“It is,” Emica’s Master replied bluntly.
The man sighed in resignation, “Oh, that’s nice. Here’s hoping I don’t break my neck or spine falling off the ship.”
“You’ll break both in the end anyway,” they said with even more bluntness. “Forossa Gladfield, by the way.”
“I’ll be seeing and hearing your name in my nightmares, then. And you know I’m Richter Douglas. Well, let’s get this over with.”
Forossa said nothing as they piloted the ship into the planet’s atmosphere, the entire vessel trembling mightily as it entered. Emica, to keep herself from falling over again, held onto the co-pilot’s seat. Richter, meanwhile, just pressed himself against the wall and hoped for the rest.
Thankfully, entering the atmosphere was quick, and soon enough Forossa angled them up to avoid crashing into the earth, soon soaring over a sea of trees that stretched as far as the eye could see. As they sped through the sky of the massive planet, Forossa searched for a good landing spot. Then, Emica, Richter and Forossa saw what called these skies home.
Massive creatures seemed to swim in the air around them, all of them looking like literal slugs of the air, twisting and swerving and turning in the sky with their cloud-white bodies. Lines on said bodies seemed to glow with bioluminescent light.
Emica’s eyes widened as she looked on in awe. “Woah…”
“Eh. Lemme know when we land,” their sole male passenger said from his little section of wall, back still pressed flush against it.
Emica shot her head to him. “You don’t think this is cool? Look at all of them! They’re beautiful!” She gestured to the strange sky slugs.
He shrugged in response, “Meh. They just look like giant sky slugs to me.”
“Exactly! Slugs don’t fly in the air! And these things are doing it so beautifully, and they’re glowing and so shiny and white and-!” Emica started to ramble, gesturing wildly to the native animals.
“Landing,” Forossa interrupted as they tapped a monitor on their console, veering the ship towards- Richter and Emica’s eyes both widened as they saw where they were now headed. A massive island...in the sky. With crystals making up its lower half that glowed a bright green, water cascading down a number of its sides and onto whatever lay below. The island itself looked to be an entire continent on its own, just sitting in the sky and taking up the entire view of the horizon. Mountains, forests, and more covered the island’s surface, and as they reached an open field on the island, Forossa angled the ship for a landing.
“I hate this planet already,” Richter said with a bizarre amount of cheerfulness. “Giant floating continent suspended thousands of feet above the surface, and a terrifying fall to my demise. Have I mentioned that I hate heights yet?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Richter! I’m sure the island isn’t gonna fall or anything! Just chill out and enjoy the view!” Emica said, trying to reassure the man.
“You just jinxed us,” the man looked at her in something akin to betrayal. “You have sealed our doom. Watch as the island plummets to spite you.”
Emica rolled her eyes. “You’re so paranoid.”
As the ship finally touched down, Forossa flipped a few more switches before standing up from their seat.
“Enough, both of you.” They ordered, turning and marching out of the bridge. “Follow me, and keep quiet.”
‘Easy enough, given I was a self-imposed mute until recently,’ Richter thought to himself while following Forossa a short distance behind them.
...The silence only lasted a second or two before Richter started feeling antsy and broke it with the subtlety of a club to the temple, “So, why are you named after a nation from my neck of the woods, and why are you wearing a power armor version of the Faraam armor?”
Forossa stopped by the third door on the left of the hall, Emica stopping behind Richter, looking worriedly at her master.
“...Because of choices you needn’t know about,” Forossa replied, before pressing a button, the door opening and a ramp lowering from it as the now open portal revealed the outside world. Without any other words, she stepped out of the ship.
Emica sighed. “She doesn’t like talking about herself much. It’s best to just leave her personal information a secret.”
“...Wait, Forossa is a woman?” Richter asked as if he’d...no, wait, scratch that, he had actually just registered that.
Emica nodded. “She is, yeah. She’s also the same race as me.” Emica blinked, then waved her hands frantically. “Don’t tell her I told you that though, okay?! She’ll kill me if she finds out!”
“Uh...ooo-kay, then?” Richter agreed somewhat with some hesitation as he slowly returned to trailing Forossa.
“I know it’s weird,” Emica said as she followed after him. “But she’s just...very protective of her secrets.”
Any response Richter had was cut off when he took a step that he shouldn’t have over a two-foot drop and found himself eating dirt in the time it took to blink.
“...Oh right, higher gravity. Ow,” the Undead said, pushing himself back onto his feet with more effort than normal.
Emica giggled at him. “You really are a funny guy.”
“Uhh.”
“Clumsy and uncoordinated,” Forossa corrected, having turned to face them both, arms crossed over her armored chest.
“I’m on a planet at 4.8 times normal Earth gravity, I’m in heavy armor and I’m technically a walking corpse. Not entirely my fault,” Richter countered, counting off his ‘excuses’ on his left hand.
“Excuses will get you nowhere,” Forossa replied sharply. “200 hundred push ups. Now.”
The Undead fell flat (almost) on his face with his arms in the required positions, then began the push-ups.
To no one’s surprise, he fell short.
To his own surprise, he fell short by one. The last push-up failed because he genuinely had no energy left after 199 push-ups under almost 5 G’s of gravity.
Forossa hummed as Emica came to stand by her. “Hm. It seems you do have the strength and endurance I expected. Not quite the same as our level, but...acceptable.” She motioned for him to stand. “Now, stand. It’s time for the first lesson.”
“Forossa. Gladfield. Madam. Why do you think I haven’t gotten up already? I. Am out. Of energy. My muscles refuse to work. Watch,” Richter said as she could see the faint outlines of his biceps twitching and flexing in ways that should have lifted him...but didn’t.
“Then make them work. No warrior worth his weight in gold lets his body decide when he is done. Only his will and mind say when he is done,” Forossa said simply, seeming to not care what he thought.
Richter’s head snapped upwards to stare her in the eyes.
“...Yeeeah, no, you’re not understanding. I have no calories in my-”
“Forget your science, boy,” Forossa said coldly. “I understand quite well how bodies work, as well as human bodies. But I also understand that willpower is and can be far greater than our bodies themselves.” She sighed, walking over and hoisting him up roughly. “Though I can see now you lack the insight and experience to understand even that much.” After hoisting him up, she stepped back a few paces. “So, we shall start with the very basics. Hit me. As hard as you can.”
“You’ll stand there and take it, or is this the classic ‘hit me, but I’m going to dodge everything and make you feel weak, insignificant and further fuel your growing depression by forcing you to realize your inadequacy’ shtick?” Richter asked without a hint of amusement.
“You shall see. Now, attack,” she ordered.
“...Fine,” Richter sighed, taking a step forward...and then another, and another.
He wasn’t sure how that was happening since he’d just burned every calorie of his energy, but he had a feeling it had something to do with his Darksign burning and an emptiness in his gut.
Then, after calmly walking up to her, he reared his right fist back.
“If I hit thin air I’m just going to feel sad.”
Then he thrust his arm forward, and made contact with her chest.
The hit actually stung her a little beneath the armor, at the cost of his gauntlet crumpling in on his own hand and every bone in his forearm, hand and wrist shattering.
The Undead didn’t know if it was the higher gravity and thus higher acceleration, his newfound Undead strength or if her armor was just that durable, but he did know he was in too much pain to actually scream.
Forossa hummed at this. “Hm. Seems you still have some energy.” She looked to his now limp arm for a moment. “But you are not used to that energy and your own power.” She looked back up to his helmeted face, then raised her fist at him, where a small compartment on the gauntlet soon shot out a dart at him. As it sunk into his broken arm, he felt it start to heal. Not as rapidly as his throat did earlier, but certainly faster than it would have been with the modern medicine he knew of from Earth. “Give the arm about ten minutes to heal, and then twenty to rest, and you should be fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “For now, your form.”
Forossa pulled a fist back, then snapped it forward, but with a twist, stopping her blow right before his visor. “Simply punching straight on creates less of an impact than twisting and snapping your arm forward.” She then pointed to his feet. “Furthermore, your stance is too lax. You need to have your feet wider and lower to the ground.”
Richter abruptly hopped backwards and landed in roughly the right stance, though it was a bit off. His head was tilted slightly to the right and his upper body was slumped forward an inch or two.
Forossa shook her head. “Head straight, and stop slouching.”
“Best...I can do...when my body...is on zero energy. That hop...was all I had left.”
Forossa looked him over for a moment or two. “...You said you’d been an Undead for only a day, correct?”
“Yes, I did,” Richter confirmed a bit forcefully.
Forossa sighed.
“What is it, Master?” Emica asked, walking over.
“It would seem the boy is far less ready for training than expected. Obviously when he was Displaced he was left with little energy,” Forossa started to walk off, towards the nearby forest. “Come with me, boy. We are going to have to sate your hunger. Both of them.”
Emica tilted her head. “What should I do, then?”
“Stay with the ship. Meditate. Practice your forms,” Forossa replied, still walking away.
“Keep looking cute,” Richter said offhandedly as he forced himself to follow after her, his body probably breaking down muscle for energy by this point.
Emica’s cheeks heated up at those words. “Wh-What?”
Forossa said nothing as she and Richter disappeared into the brush, but she had a smile under her helm.
Emica was thus left alone to stew on the fact she had just been called cute. Naturally, her flushed cheeks only grew more red and warm.
Forossa led Richter through the forest, following some path that only she knew yet did not show upon the earth itself. Brush, foliage and trees surrounded them, the sounds of alien wildlife all around. The trees themselves were similar to what Richter knew of from Earth, but at the same time not.
It had been roughly ten minutes of trudging through and hacking at plants to clear a path, and Richter was only feeling weaker and weaker, and more exhausted, the pressure of the increased gravity weighing on him.
At that point, he hardly had the energy to so much as talk, instead devoting all he had left to following the probably sadistic Forossa wherever she was heading.
Then, thankfully, Forossa finally stopped and pulled the sniper rifle off her back, the dual barreled weapon’s steel-gray metal glinting in the light of the planet’s sun. Slowly, she laid prone, looking through the scope of the weapon at something only she could see.
“Keep quiet, and don’t move,” she ordered as she adjusted the scope a few times.
Considering his body had just locked up on him and refused to budge, he couldn’t have moved or made a peep if he wanted to.
Roughly three seconds later, Forossa squeezed the trigger and the rifle made its report, a white blaster bolt connecting with something in the distance, followed by a roar of pain that swiftly petered out, and was then accompanied by a soft thud.
His body was abruptly filled with warmth, fullness and vitality as he felt something enter him.
“Oh...oooh that feels gooood,” Richter said breathlessly, now moving his limbs with ease and vigor. “So...thank you, Forossa.”
Forossa stood up, placing the rifle back where it belonged, the weapon clamping magnetically to her jetpack. “We’re not done yet. We need to make sure you get as much energy as possible.” She pulled a knife from a hidden sheath under her faulds, walking through the brush in the direction of the kill she’d made. “We also need to secure food for myself and Emica, as well as you. The rations my ship gives are nutritious, but getting actual food is nice now and again.”
“I think I might have an idea for the food bit, if we need any more,” Richter said as he followed after her, not really knowing what else to do.
“Appreciated, but this kill should serve us well enough, at least for a week or two,” Forossa explained as they reached the kill. Richter’s eyes widened as he understood why it would serve so well.
The beast was massive, easily twelve feet long and, while it was standing, probably ten feet tall. It was covered in green fur that bore splotches of black, it had at least five eyes, with one looking like it had been not only melted but cauterised through to the skull. Six legs were crumpled under its now dead weight, and a scorpion’s tail stretched from it’s back. Its mouth, however, looked to have mandibles as the teeth. There were literal rows of mandibles inside the mouth like teeth, instead of like, well, mandibles.
“Uglier than Jabba’s inbred mother, this one,” Richter remarked with a wince at the thing’s mouth.
Forossa ignored him as she knelt down to the creature and started to carve into its hide with her knife. “It will be feeding us for the next two weeks.”
“I can definitely see that...but, uh, does this thing have any predators? Or will its corpse attract anything else?”
“It is likely to attract others, yes, and it does have predators, just not many,” Forossa explained, pulling out a very viscous looking slab of meat, likely some type of organ. “Which is why you,” She pulled another knife out from under her faulds and offered it to him. “Will help me gut it so that we can get done more quickly.”
“Oh, this I can do,” Richter took the knife and, after looking over the corpse a bit, stuck it in a softer spot and started separating the hide from the flesh with surprising finesse and speed.
Forossa hummed at this as she pulled out another organ, this one as solid as stone. “Exaci have a variety of extra hearts, livers, and lungs, so keep that in mind.”
Richter yanked three large masses - two of which were still beating - from their home, “Two hearts and a...lung, I think?”
Forossa looked them over for a moment. “That would be a spleen, actually, not a lung.” She turned back to her work. “If you find a kidney, you’ll know because it’s as solid as stone. A spleen, on the other hand...” She glanced at the spleen in his hand. “...Let’s just say it’s good for making entrances.” She turned back to her work. “Lungs can be identified by the viscosity of the chlorine that they excrete.”
“Oh. Oooh,” the Undead said simply, treating that spleen with all the care one would give to an armed nuclear warhead and setting it down as gently as possible. “Good thing I probably don’t need to breathe.”
“Considering you can choke and cough, I’d disagree,” Forossa said flatly, pulling out another lung, ironically.
Richter grumbled and just kept gutting the thing, taking two or three organs out at a time while avoiding the instant-death ones like the plague and leaving them in for someone more experienced - read: Forossa - to handle them.
Eventually, they finished their work, and Forossa stood up, looking at their work. “Can you carry the meat?” She asked. Richter looked at the meat, then grabbed it all in a bear hug and threw it onto his back. She nodded. “Good. Bring it back to the ship, but don’t cook it until I return.” She stretched a hand out, using the Force to pick up all the other gore. “I will dispose of the refuse.”
“I’ll yell if anything tries to steal this or eat my intestines on the way there,” Richter remarked, then headed off in the direction of the ship.
Forossa simply nodded, then started to walk further off into the brush, disappearing soon after in the shadow the plant life provided, gore following her.
The trip back to the ship was uneventful, thankfully.
He was half-worried he’d have to toss a spleen as a damned grenade.
“Emica? Mind helping out?” Richter called out, looking for the tanuki so he could get some help loading all of it onto the ship.
He saw Emica sitting cross-legged in front of the ramp, eyes closed. If she heard him, she made no move to show it.
“...I have explosive spleens and poison gas-filled lungs that I can quite easily just drop to the floor if ya really want me to,” the Undead deadpanned at the apprentice.
“Huh?” Emica opened her eyes, and immediately noticed Richter and what he was carrying. “Oh!” Swiftly she got on her feet and rushed over. “Sorry! I tend to get lost in my meditation a lot!” Carefully, she took some of the meat from his arms, then winced as she noticed what they were. “Ugh, Exaci meat. Only good thing on them is their hearts and spleens, if you ask me.”
“I also have this one’s explosive spleens. Please grab them before one falls off and we- wait, no, you’re a Force user- before one falls off and I die.”
“No problem,” she closed her eyes a moment, before the spleens started to float out of his hands and into the air, towards the ship. Opening her eyes, she smiled as she saw the spleens floating through the air, then walked towards the ship. “Come on, there should be room for all this in the cargo hold.” Her tail swished from side to side. “Much as I hate the other meats that come from Exaci, their spleens are frikkin’ great for eating. Really spicy.”
“Is it weird that I wanna touch and cuddle your tail?” Richter asked suddenly, eyes fixated on the pendulous appendage before him. “Always wanted to say I touched Fluffy Tail.”
At those words, said tail fluffed up and Emica tensed. “Wh-What?!” She immediately grabbed her tail with one hand, looking back at him and holding it protectively. “N-No way! You can’t! I-I mean we just met and I barely know you a-and-!”
“Are you actually fucking telling me your tails are erogenous zones only mates and spouses are supposed to touch, or that touching one’s tail is a sign of courtship? This is a thing that’s happening. Okay, yep, I’m just gonna shut up before the universe decides to spite me again and makes us end up in some weird situation again,” Richter said more to himself than to her, hurrying past her with the meat in tow.
Emica slowly, nervously nodded. “Y-Yeah, probably for the b-best…” She agreed, following.
In a matter of minutes, the meat and organs were set down in the cargo bay and their work was done.
Which left Richter with nothing to do. Again.
“...Well. I’m bored. Probably gonna go try and see if I can use some shit around here to make a bed. If I start yelling, don’t come and get me, it’ll probably already be too late,” Richter gave the tanuki a wave, then marched off in the direction of the tree line.
“W- Richter, hang on!” Emica started, rushing after him. “You don’t even know what’s on the island, and you said yourself you don’t have any combat experience!” She glanced back at the ship. “Hang on, I’ll be right back! Don’t you go into the forest until I’m back, or you don’t get any food!”
Richter watched Emica run into the ship and kept his gaze on the last spot he’d seen her, then slowly swiveled his head to gaze at the forest.
Stay and get food...or go out and make a bed?
Food...or bed?
Sustenance, or slumber?
Were he insane, he’d probably be hearing the forest call out to him like a siren call.
Thankfully, before he could decide, he was interrupted. Not by Emica, though, but by Forossa coming back out of the trees, smelling of ash and chemicals.
“You smell nice,” Richter said genuinely, though his brain may have short circuited at the smell of ash and associating it with a lovely campfire smell.
As Forossa stared at him blankly, Emica soon came out of the ship carrying a pistol. “Here, you can use guns, right? This should-” Emica stopped cold as she saw her master standing behind richter.
“This isn’t suspiciously mutinous at all,” the Undead stated rather unnecessarily, looking between the two. “Nope. Nooot one bit.”
“...” Forossa marched past Richter, towards Emica, silent as the grave as she did.
“M-Master, I swear, I wasn’t going to-!” Emica started, but Forossa, to both her and Richter’s surprise, simply walked past her and into the ship.
“Just ask for permission next time,” she said bluntly.
Emica blinked, turning to look at her master. “You...aren’t mad?”
Forossa didn’t stop walking, yet her voice still carried through to them both. “I was planning on giving him a blaster at some point either way.” Thankfully, she finally paused in her steps. “Oh, and Richter? Kill only the prey in the forest.” Then, she was gone within the bowels of the ship.
“...She’s definitely trying to hide all her baggage behind a blunt and uncaring persona, or something like that,” was all Richter said as he turned away from Emica and headed towards the forest.
“W-Wait! You’re just going to forget about the blaster I have for you?!” Emica seemed to almost whine.
“Slugthrowers for life,” the Undead said without looking back, disappearing into the trees.
“Whu, but I-!” Emica fell to her knees with a groan. “After all that you just leave me here?! Whyyyy?!?!”
Richter pulled back and looked at his crude stone axe with some pride.
“Axe complete, time for deforestation,” he said, twirling it in his hand and walking over to the nearest tree before starting to hack away at it like some slasher movie killer.
The tree died a gruesome death in short order.
Another followed suit, just to be sure that he’d have enough for the bed.
Also because it was the same shade of blue as those fucking flowers and he felt like venting a little.
“Alright, wood acquired, now for lashings aaaand some bedding. Vines all around for lashings, so just have to get bedding...where could I find something soft and not all that stuffy or hot?”
A small, furry creature that looked like a mushroom with legs was unfortunate enough to wander into view.
The two locked eyes.
Richter slowly raised his axe with malicious intent.
The future bedding ran away.
...Or, at least, it tried to before an axe was lodged in its skull.
The Undead blinked with his axe hand still outstretched, “I...wasn’t expecting that to work, in all honesty.”
Nonetheless, he approached the still-twitching corpse and yanked the axe out with a squelch.
“Well, at the very least, you’ll make a good pillow. Wonder if there are more of you around here, or any bigger ones,” he wondered as he picked up the little thing’s body.
That was when some kind of gas seemed to leak out of the creature’s small, lifeless body, making him feel a fair bit tired, eyes already drooping.
“...I hate my li-”
Blackness.
He regained consciousness to the sensation of being dragged.
Blearily, Richter opened his eyes to see what looked like giant mantis talons dragging him by the leg. When he looked up, he saw what seemed to be a wolf...with a chitinous exoskeleton, praying mantis eyes, four legs, and two mantis claws, both currently dragging him towards a dark cave.
‘Nope. Nuh-uh,’ the Undead thought to himself, his Pyromancy Flame igniting in his right hand a moment before he gently prodded one of the talons with his hand.
It looked down at him in confusion, then surprise when it saw him looking right back at it with a flaming hand.
“Hello, there,” Richter gave it a wave with his flaming dominant hand, then chucked a fireball at its face.
Naturally, it screeched in pain, dropping him as it rolled around on the ground, trying to put the flames out. It’s screeches were like the pained howls of a dog mixed with Xenomorphs from the Alien movies, making it all the more horrifying as it continued to let its pain be known.
Richter kicked himself up from the ground, checked if he still had his axe, felt relieved that his unconscious body had the decency to keep a death grip on it, then walked up to the thing and slammed the blade down onto the thing’s neck.
To his surprise, the axe only bounced off the chitinous, burning hide, but, he heard a resounding, sickening crack at the impact, and heard the thing shriek even louder, swiping at him with one of its claws in retaliation.
Without thinking, he swept his axe in the opposite direction the claw was coming from in a parry. To his surprise, it worked...sort of. The claw was bounced back, but the axe broke in half from the impact and the force behind it.
Stone Axe #2’s sacrifice was worthwhile, given that he plunged his flaming fist right into its eye socket and tried ‘flicking’ a fireball into its brain pan.
It succeeded, and with an earthly shudder and shriek of pain and agony, it soon went limp, corpse still burning away and occasionally twitching.
Richter quickly started kicking dirt onto it to try to put the fire out before he lost anything useful. Once the fire was out, he gave his fallen axe a salute, then looked for his future pillow, assuming the damn thing hadn’t eaten it.
After what felt like ten solid minutes of looking, he found nothing but what might’ve been the bones of other creatures in the back of the cave, all piled up in numerous corners.
“...Welp, time to drag this fucker back,” he sighed, grabbing the mantis wolf by a talon and dragging it behind him as he followed the furrow in the ground his armored ass had left behind.
He managed to find...some bits of his once-future pillow scattered around, while the wood and vines were still there.
At least he got a bunch of souvenirs out of it in the form of a dead alien insect-dog thing.
Bundling up his spoils, the Undead dragged it all back in the direction of the ship.
Richter looked around frantically, eyes scanning the tree line as he picked up the pace with his corpse-and-materials-dragging.
To his relief, nothing attacked him on his way back. In fact...the forest was silent. Dead silent.
“...Silence is a bad sign, usually. So, universe, what are you going to throw at me now? Cuz I kinda recognize that roar from somewhere and the setting I heard it in frankly has me terrified of what you’ll drop on my head,” Richter asked the silent forest without a hint of sarcasm or irony in the fact he was talking to the universe itself.
“But ya know what? Bring it on, bitch.”
Yet, nothing came after him even after that declaration. So, with high-strung nerves he made it to the ship, only to find Forossa there, arms crossed, and even with her helmet on, he knew she was glaring at him.
“You killed it.” She stated.
“Yes, after I was trying to make a pillow out of a little furry thing and got gassed, this thing was dragging me off to its den. I wasn’t about to test my mortality and/or immortality in such a painful way, so I shoved my Pyromancy Flame in its head and cooked its skull,” Richter nodded in confirmation and gestured with a lift of the dead mantis-dog’s leg. “Lemme guess, I fucked up so royally that I invited an apex organism to come find and kill me.”
Forossa shook her head. “No. It’ll be here for me.” She pushed past him roughly. “Expect even harsher training after this,” She unclipped her strange, runic blade from her back. “Stay in the ship with Emica. Whatever happens, whatever you see or hear, do not come out to help. You’ll simply die your first death, followed by many more. Xeneth does not like outsiders.”
Richter blinked beneath his helm, “That’s enough incentive to stay inside. But if Emica comes out to help, I make no promises on still staying inside the ship-”
A sharp glare from Forossa stopped him cold. “If she even tries to get out of the ship, you WILL stop her. If you don’t, expect me to toss you off the planet and into space to die as many times as it takes for you to go Hollow.” She said nothing else as she turned her head back around and marched off into the darkness of the forest.
Richter wisely went inside the ship.
Emica was right next to the door, giving him a sad look. Her small ears were drooping, and her tail was in a similar state. “Wh-Where’s Master going, Richter?”
“To deal with some apex organism named Xeneth out there. If you leave the ship, Forossa will space me and leave me in the void to Hollow after who-knows-how-many deaths,” Richter replied with an unseen appraising look at Emica. “...Typical parental or maternal protectiveness, really. So please don’t leave the ship.”
Emica’s eyes widened. “What?! She’s going out there alone to face Xeneth?!?” Emica immediately started to run for the armory. “We have to help her! Xeneth is as dangerous as the Tunnelers back home!”
“Emica, let me explain somethi- oh shit,” Richter said as he caught up to her and grabbed her by the tail instead of the intended scruff of her neck when he lost his balance a little.
He IMMEDIATELY let go, and stepped back, “Shit, sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to, I just- I lost my balance, and-”
Emica’s tail had fluffed up immensely, and in that brief moment he’d grabbed it, he swore he felt some kind of electrical surge go through his body. He saw her body go extremely tense as well, and she turned to him with wide eyes, and the heaviest yet cutest blush he’d seen on her. Her previous fear for her master had immediately vanished.
Richter was too mortified to care at the moment that he’d at least distracted her.
“Did...I just do something so forbidden that the Force or whatever is going to smite me?” Richter asked with the first bit of genuine nervousness she’d heard out of him.
Emica slowly shook her head, looking away and squirming as she played with a lock of her hair, another hand hugging her tail. “N-No...um,” She, somehow, flushed a brighter shade of red. “U-Um...T-Tanuki have...cultural, values on touching tails. We uh...we consider it to be like an instant declaration of love… And, well...Royal Tanuki like me are…” She gulped. “W-We have more values based on tail t-t-t-touching…”
“...I’m just going to find the nearest edge of this landmass and jump off so that Forossa doesn’t get to kill me and so that we don’t have to force ourselves to go through the embarrassment,” the Undead Knight said and turned on his heel to go back to the airlock.
“N-No!” Emica suddenly latched onto his waist, holding him back.
“Please let go before you somehow get hurt and Forossa murders me thrice over for it,” Richter pretty much pleaded with her, trying to pry her off without damaging a single hair on her.
She shook her head fiercely. “I don’t care! If you go out and kill yourself I’ll get hurt anyway!”
“...Please don’t tell me touching the fluffy tail metaphysically linked our beings together such that my injuries affect your health. Please,” he full-on begged the tanuki, looking at her with desperation clear in his body language.
Emica blushed and looked away, still holding him. “M-More like if you die...I could.”
“...” Richter stared at her, unblinking and uncomprehending, until he looked up at the ceiling, “I take it back, universe. I hate you with every fiber of my being for forcibly tying her and I’s fates together in the most dickish way possible, but I take back my bravado from earlier. I don’t want Emica to suffer because I suck at life and because you want to see me suffer. Don’t drag others into this; I don’t want that kind of guilt haunting me.”
Emica only hugged him tighter. “Stop talking like that, you vreka…”
Richter squirmed in her grip, “Uhhhhm…c-could you let go, if I promise to, uh, not run to my death?”
“O-Only if you also promise to stop being so casually pessimistic too,” she said, burying her head in his back.
Richter looked down at her, then glanced aside as he contemplated whether or not he could go about the rest of his life with a cute and fluffy tanuki pseudoparasite clinging to his back instead of casting aside his casual pessimism.
In the end, the idea of a sad tanuki was too much for him to bear and he let out an immense sigh of defeat, “F-fine, I promise I’ll stop, just let go before this gets any more awkward for me, okay?!”
To his embarrassment, she didn’t let go. “...little longer. I...need something to hold until Master gets back. I’m worried for her.”
“Have I mentioned I’ve never been hugged by or even been in physical contact with a woman for this long that wasn’t my mother, sister or family members?” Richter said rather urgently as he tried to think of a way to pry her off without making things worse.
Emica blinked, looking up at him for a moment. Then, slowly, she buried her head in his back again, tail swishing from side to side cutely. “Don’ care,” she said, muffled as her voice was with her head being, well, buried in his back.
“Please let go,” Richter pleaded with her, now actively trying to pry her off him with his hands.
Emica only tightened her grip. “Jus’ lemme have this.”
“...I’m very uncomfortable right now, but fine, I’ll let you have this,” he finally conceded, grumbling as he walked to the cargo bay, dragging over a hundred pounds of clingy tanuki with him.
‘Uncomfortable’ was a rather broad term to describe his utter embarrassment at having an adorable tanuki girl clinging to him with her head buried in his armored back, when he’d never been in an actual relationship before. Plus, his mind was starting to conjure rather bad and inappropriate thoughts he’d much prefer not having given the situation.
When they stopped inside the cargo bay, he noticed that the meat he and Forossa had previously gathered was cooked and made into a stew and was sitting on what looked to be a makeshift stove.
“...I’m sorry I’m making you uncomfortable,” Emica said, breaking him out of his observation. She blushed a bit. “...And th-though...um...I’m flattered you think I’m...attractive, I don’t think I’m...or, either of u-us are ready for that.” Before he could interject with the obvious reply, she added, “I won’t fault you for the thoughts, though. I...don’t mind that much.”
Richter’s head was promptly filled with his internal screaming as he realized not even his mind was private anymore.
“I’m eating now. Where are the bowls and utensils?” he asked, pointedly suppressing his thoughts so that he wouldn’t have to internally scream any louder.
Thankfully, this was when she let go of him with an, “Oh! Hang on!” He turned around just in time to see the girl rummaging through the surprisingly large valley of her furry cleavage.
The screaming went full-blast.
“Never mind I’ll just starve, but thanks for being considerate,” the male immediately backpedaled, purposefully turning away from her before anything else happened.
Emica looked up at this, then looked down at herself. Then back to him. She blushed, yet still pulled out the items she needed. “S-Sorry, I’m uh...used to being alone with Master and just...doing that.” She shook her head, then closed her fist around the objects. A short moment later, and she opened her fist, revealing a new set of forks and spoons. “I, um, made sure to try and get rid of any fur in their makeup. I-Is that a bit better?” She asked, offering the newly made utensils to him.
“...No. But it’s the best I’m going to get,” the Undead deflated and took the utensils from her with the same grip one would give a bag containing something one wouldn’t want to touch directly.
Emica’s ears drooped as the man found a bowl near the pot - how he missed it was anyone's guess - and started to portion out his share of the food. “D...Do you think my boobs are that gross?”
“More like I don’t want to get an erection from the thought that these were between your breasts and that I’m indirectly touching them right now,” Richter replied stiffly, then proceeded to lift his visor and basically pour the stew into his mouth.
“E-E-E-E-E-Erection?!?” Emica stuttered out, hands going to her breasts. “Y-You, I, um, I-!” She looked away, squirming as she frantically fanned her face. “I-I’m uh, going to go and um, sit in the cockp-pit!” She squeaked, before rushing out and doing just that.
“My reaction exactly, except internalized,” Richter called out after her, still basically binge-drinking his food.
Thankfully, the food managed to distract him from his thoughts not long after. It was honestly just like Emica described. The meat was explosively spicy, but had been expertly tamed with some obviously very practiced techniques and masterfully added seasonings. Said seasonings added hints of creaminess to the broth and even the meat, but not to anything close to overwhelming. Some white flakes in the broth, he found, were even sweet, yet also surprisingly bitter.
Yet, everything was balanced carefully.
Forossa definitely knew how to cook, it seemed.
“Delicious. Could use some more salt though,” he shrugged and got another spoonful of stew in his bowl.
“Is there a reason I now sense a Force Bond between you and my padawan?” came Forossa’s voice from the door, sounding unamused.
“Accident born of the universe fucking with me. You know how that is, surely,” Richter replied without looking back, too afraid that making eye contact would be tantamount to having a staring contest with Medusa.
“I deserve a far better explanation than that, boy. Especially after I almost had a very physical argume with a very old friend of mine,” Forossa intoned darkly. “And you should know to look a woman in the eyes when she wants an answer.”
“Accidental touching of the fluffy tail when I tried to stop her from going to the armory to go out and help you. Meant to grab the scruff of her neck, I lost my balance and ended up touching her tail,” Richter explained as he turned to stare her in the eyes. “Ya wanna call bullshit and murder me, fine, whatever, but remember that this Force Bond or whatever the hell it is will hurt Emica too.”
Forossa looked back at him for a time, arms crossed over her armored chest. “I am far more aware of how a Force Bond works than either of you are, boy. Do not even attempt to lecture me.” She sighed, shaking her head. “But regardless, the Bond has been made. And I do not plan on severing it.” She turned around. “If you wish to sever it yourself, however, there are only two known ways. Let one of you die and survive the backlash, or change your relationship to the point the Bond becomes too weak to sustain itself. Food for thought I figured a fool like you would like.” She walked out after that.
“...I fucking hate today,” the sole male on the ship said after a few moments of being alone in the silent cargo bay.
His bed was rather...flat and basic without a pillow or soft ‘mattress’ analogue, but it served its purpose well.
That purpose at present being to let him think on how much he hated life at the moment, how much he hated the universe, how much he hated Forossa, and so much more.
Oh, and how much he hated this damn bed because it was so uncomfortable.
But first let’s count the reasons why he was so frustrated.
First, he ended up in another reality with some tanuki and a Grey Jedi bounty hunter, who really didn’t like him.
Second, he was an Undead in a world full of technicolor ponies before ending up in his current situation, all because he was unfortunate enough to be at the wrong convention at the wrong time.
Third, he was so far from his old life and had no idea if he’d ever be able to go back, which just made his low-key anxiety start to flare up.
FOURTH, he was now linked by the damned Force to a ‘royal tanuki’ who’d suffer and/or die whenever he did, which just made him feel like shit and terrified to do anything, wherever he went and whatever he did.
And finally, he just wanted to go home and pretend none of this ever happened, but the universe just loooved to FUCK WITH HIM.
In short, he was an angry Undead who knew that Emica would be feeling bits of what he felt and that just made him even more livid at life.
The door to the cargo bay opened, and he looked there to see Emica in a pair of loose pajamas, hands behind her back and a sad smile on her face. “...Can I come in?”
“Not like I can stop you,” Richter huffed, gesturing to a nearby crate of roughly chair height.
She frowned, but walked over and sat down on it nonetheless. There was silence for a moment or two, before she finally spoke up. “I kinda know what you’re going through, you know.”
“Uhhh, yeah, only kinda. So it doesn’t really help the peptalk you want to give that much,” he scoffed, glaring up at the ceiling as if it were the source of his problems.
Emica flinched at that, then turned her gaze downward. “...I didn’t mean to drag you into this… I just...want to help...”
“Can you send me back home and sever this link without killing us, making us enemies or leaving each other on a sour note?”
Emica’s ears drooped at this. “N-No, but…” She looked to him. “I...I know your situation is still a lot like mine. My home...me and Master aren’t even sure it’s in this universe…” She looked away. “And even if it is, there’s no guarantee I can go back. From what I know, Force Storms surround it at all times. It could be in a pocket dimension for all I know.” She clenched her fists. “I used to hate everything for it, too. My father, for keeping the throne for too long and causing Force Storms to ravage my home...to bring me to that...hellhole. I hated this galaxy, for all the thieves and murderers and…” She clutched her chest and shivered. “...perverts that just wanted to take advantage of me, one way or another. I hated fate for giving me a lot in life where I’m stuck with a woman who has a five hundred million credit bounty on her head, I hated the Force…” A few tears ran down her cheeks.
“You at least have someone. When I go back to my little ‘isekai’ bullshit, or wherever I end up after this, I’ll be all alone. So yaaay,” Richter pointed out, still glaring a hole in the ceiling.
Emica bared her teeth as she shot up, tears whipping from her eyes as she glared at him. “Just shut up and let me finish you asshole!” She shouted. To his surprise, he felt the utter pain in her voice, in her mind. Felt the pain of...rejection? No, discernment. But it also felt deeper than that. He felt the pain she’d had at being denied help, or even ogled and lusted after. He felt the pain of losing a home and family and friends all over again, from her perspective. He felt the pain she was feeling now, towards him, at being brushed off.
He was hugging her before he knew what was happening.
“...Sorry. I’m just...I’m not…good at emotions. I’ve always been bad at telling people how I feel, bad at dealing with them, bad at understanding them...and with this damned Bond going on, I’m subjecting you to them without you deserving it. I hate it. I wish I could go back and stop myself from Bonding us and spare you the agony you’ll probably be feeling every time I die, assuming I’m capable of that,” Richter let it all spil out, his hug tightening as he feels her tears drop on him while she looks up at him.
“J-Just…J-Just don’t push me out…” She furiously wiped at her tears. “Y-You don’t need to be good at emotions to...t-t-to talk about them, you d-d-dummy,” She weakly pounded a fist into his chest as she cried, “And it doesn’t give you the right to b-b-brush off someone who just wants to help!”
“I also suck at talking about emotions because I just end up frustrated when I can’t put exactly how I’m feeling into words. I’m sorry for brushing you off, but I just don’t think it’d be a good idea to open up when I barely understand my own feelings beyond the basic gist,” his hug only grows tighter and he starts softly rubbing up and down her back, trying to calm her down.
She growled, glaring up at him. “Then get frustrated! Just don’t push someone who’s trying to help away!”
“...I...fine,” the Undead sighs, still hugging her and rubbing her back because...well, he didn’t know what else the hell to do.
After that, she simply sobbed and held onto him. As she did, and as she soothed, he finally understood why that pain of hers felt so deep. He could feel what felt like a freshly reopened wound of hers in his mind, one of loss. One of what he knew was now definitely desertion. He felt the pangs of longing for a mother’s love, the pain of being dropped like some plate of uninteresting food by some haughty noble, the grief of being considered worthless, and he understood.
His helmeted forehead pressed gently against hers, a simple but meaningful gesture of solidarity and comfort.
It took what felt like hours for her to calm down, but when she did, she still hadn’t let go of him. Slowly, she looked up at him, sniffling a bit still. “S-So?” She started.
“...Maybe when we get to know each other better, I’ll be comfortable discussing this. Until then, uh...just know that, erm…I-I-I dunno, really, what to say,” Richter replied, sounding rather awkward and flustered.
Emica frowned at him, then sighed, wiped the last of her tears, and buried her head in his chest. “Just...take a breath and take your time. I’m not exactly an impatient Tanuki. I don’t mind waiting.” She gained a smile, and though he couldn’t see it, he felt it. “The fact you take your time just means you chose the words after careful consideration. That’s a special trait.”
“You’re adorable and I would pat your head,” Richter immediately invalidated her statement, his mind a bit fried from all the talk of emotions and the emotions shared through the Force Bond.
Emica blinked at this, blushing like a rose of passion in full bloom. “I, um,” She looked away, still blushing. “Th-Thank you…” She tentatively looked back to him. “C...Can we...uhm, c-c-cuddle?”
The Undead blinked, but nodded slowly - if she wanted to cuddle, then...well, he owed her that much, at least.
The first thing he noticed when she settled into him on the cot was that she was beyond soft. She was like a body pillow with more fluff than he’d ever felt, and he could feel it even through his armor. The second thing he noticed, and rather quickly after the first, was she was very warm. Not to an outrageous degree, but pleasant. It made him feel...comfortable, to a degree.
“...Soft,” he said rather simply, his arms wrapped around her belly and buried in her plush tummy fluff. “Very soft.”
She giggled, the sound like a music box’s melodic notes. “And you’re cold.” She smiled and snuggled deeper. “I like that.”
“Considering I’m a corpse, that’s to be expected,” Richter replied.
They sat in silence for a time, simply getting used to each other in comfortable silence, before Emica spoke up again. “Hey...are you really comfortable sleeping in just armor? I could get you some actual clothes, if you want…”
“Nah, I feel safer in the armor,” he declined politely, unconsciously beginning to rub her belly.
To his surprise, she seemed to not purr, nor even yip like he was hoping, but she instead whined lowly and pressed into his rubs, a smile on her face.
His belly rubbing begins to intensify, adding his fingers with small scritches to the flesh beneath her fur while the other hand gently squeezes whatever chub she might have on her stomach.
To his surprise once again, she had a fair amount of it. Not anywhere near enough to worry about, but certainly enough to rub and give some attention.
“Nnnooooo~” she whined, wagging tail betraying her words. “That’s my leftover hibernation faaaaat~”
“I call it plushness or slight chubbiness, perfect for belly rubs,” he countered, now firmly scritching and rubbing her belly.
“Nnnoooooooo~! Stoooooop~!” she whined, the noise now a bit higher pitched. He even felt her leg twitching.
“Never.”
The belly rubbing doubled, if not tripled, in strength and speed.
“Riiichteeeeer~!” Emica whined, face aflush as she gave him an utterly adorable and flustered look.
Then he migrated one of his hands up to her ears and started rubbing along the ‘spine’ of each.
To his delight, she was panting now. “R-Richter, pl-please, stoooop~!”
“...You tanuki are more like raccoon dogs than I ever realized,” her cuddle buddy remarked a moment after he stopped rubbing her ears...to pull his helmet off and begin nibbling the tips of her ears.
“Ah!” She cried, shuddering at this. She placed a hand on his chest. “R-Richter...pl-please, stop, I-I mean it...you’re...making me...too...excited…!”
He immediately stopped and would have flung himself off the bed were it not for his fear of how she’d take it.
“Duly noted,” Richter almost squeaked, promptly returning his helm atop his head and just...laying there on the bed.
Emica panted for a bit longer, catching her breath as she lay on him. “I...really appreciate the affection...but us...Tanuki...eventually get...excited...when pet for too long...it’s a thing...close couples...do…”
“Okay,” Richter acknowledged, feeling rather awkward now.
She let out a breath. “Just...hold me for now. It’s all I need.” She said, nudging her head under his arm.
So he did, and held her as close as they were physically comfortable with.
She smiled at this, tail wapping happily yet steadily against the bed as she closed her eyes.
While she slowly fell asleep, her Undead snuggle buddy could not.
He tried, certainly. He closed his eyes, breathing evenly. He counted sheep. He did everything he could.
But his body just wouldn’t do it.
So instead, he just held Emica close, and focused on his own memories.
He was snapped out of reliving his 8th or so year of life when he felt Emica stir in his arms, snuggling just that tiny bit closer.
He looked down at her and gently brushed a lock of her hair out of her eyes.
There was an internal debate over whether or not to wake her up when she looked so peaceful like this.
Even more so when he could feel how peaceful she was right now. Heck, he swore that as he watched he saw a scene of her on the edge of a dock before a tropical sunset, but the image dispersed swiftly.
He blinked at the oddity of this little visual hallucination, but shook it off as he proceeded to stroke her head like one would a dog or cat.
She chuffed in her sleep, tail wapping against the bed just a bit as she nuzzled into his hand.
‘Adorable,’ the Undead mused in the safety of his own head, his other hand now moving down to rub her belly once again.
She started to whine as he did this, tail wapping harder and louder as she squirmed, as if trying to get as close to him and the petting as possible.
He tried to chuckle as quietly as possible as his ministrations continued, then he stopped for the coup de grace: A solid stroke of the fluffy tail.
As soon as he did this, he felt yet another surge go through him like yesterday, only this time he started to feel things much more than when the Bond began. He felt how at peace Emica was, how happy she now was, saw that scene of her on docks...but now with the added image of himself, with her leaning against him.
Curious and feeling experimentative, Richter focused on that image...and had the other him boop her nose.
Instantly he heard her giggle, and say, “Mmm...don’ do dat…” in her sleep.
In response, he had the other him start furiously fluffing the Fluffy Tail.
He saw the image of her laugh and squeal, while she herself said, “Riiichyyy…” in a whine.
His brain froze and groaned at the fact that his childhood nickname - the one he’d been teased mercilessly about - still haunted him as an adult. At that point, he felt that it was time to wake her up.
So he booped her nose while trying to imitate the sound of a certain killer robot bear’s squeaky nose.
“Wha…?” Emica’s eyes fluttered open slowly, and she wiggled her cute, black little nose as she looked around, then noticed him. “Richter…?” She rubbed her eye with a paw. “Why’d you wake me up…?” She yawned.
“Never call me ‘Richy.’ Even in your dreams. Hate that nickname,” Richter replied, gently flicking her forehead.
Emica blinked, rubbing her forehead as she looked up at him. “Why…?”
The Undead sighed, “Teased endlessly with it. Got compared to some kid in a movie about an eldritch child-eating monster that preferred the form of a clown.”
“Oh…” Emica’s ears drooped, and she looked down for a moment. “Gomen nasai, I didn’t know…”
“A tanuki that also speaks Japanese? Too fucking cute,” Richter said, abruptly hugging her like a teddy bear.
Emica squeaked at this, looking up at him in surprise. “Wh-What do you mean? That was Tanik.”
“Back home an entire nation of people who had legends about tanukis and all that spoke the exact same language, which was called Japanese after the nation itself, Japan. Lots of tentacle hentai and other weird cultural stuff they had going on.”
Emica blinked at this. “Hentai?” She tilted her head at him. “They had those monsters too?”
“Fictionalized. And hentai in that context refers to pornography. So lots of tentacles in vaginas and other places,” Richter ‘helpfully’ explained to the poor, innocent tanuki girl.
Emica blushed at this. “O-Oh. I-I mean, the Hentai back home are just tentacle monsters that feed on seminal or vaginal fluids, b-but...p-p-p-pornography being named after them k-kinda fits...I guess…”
“...Your nation sounds terrifying if it has actual tentacle hentai monsters. You should burn them all,” Richter said with the utmost seriousness, unwilling to imagine just how many adorable tanukis had been violated by those things. “But on a different note, when’s breakfast?”
Emica frowned, brows furrowing. “I don’t know. Master normally wakes me up herself to let me know. I wonder why she hasn’t come in to do so?”
“Maybe she’s masturbating or something? Meditating? Whatever the word is. My brain’s low on calories,” he shrugged...and started rubbing her belly again.
“Mm...I doubt she’s haitrik, she’s not like that. Meditation I could see though,” Emica replied, leaning into the rubbing. “Do that more, please...Your hands feel good~.”
“Tummy slut. And I mean that affectionately and/or playfully, not offensively,” the Undead chuckled, his fingers now curling inwards to cup and massage her plush belly.
“St-Still, oooooh, that’s good, meeeeean!” she said, pouting up at him despite her blush and wagging tail.
He leans down and whispers in her ear, “If it’s mean, then why is your tail wagging, hmm? I think you liiike iiit!”
“N-Noooo, stoooop~!” she whined, tail still wagging and starting to pant.
“Please tell me that panting isn’t arousal or else I fear Forossa will kill me,” Richter said, stopping his rubbing of the tanuki tummy to await her answer.
She let out a breath, but still pouted at him. “I...told you that...excessive petting...eventually makes Tanuki excited...silly.” She managed to get out between pants.
“...I don’t like how you tanuki get horny so easily,” he shook his head and removed his hands from her body. “Also sorry for touching the tail again. That’s basically mental peeping, what I did. Imagine if I’d seen you in more...compromising circumstances in your head.”
She blushed at this, burying her head in his chest, as if to hide her flushed features.
“I really should stop talking before I make your brain melt because my mouth refuses to have any filter.”
The door to the cargo hold opened, revealing Forossa there, in her armor. “I see you and my padawan have grown close.”
Emica simply whined and buried herself further in Richter’s chest.
“Kinda hard not to when our minds and souls and what not are linked by the damned Force,” Richter replied, softly patting Emica’s head as he kept his gaze on Forossa.
“Hard, yes. Impossible? No,” she turned around. “Come. It’s time we start your training proper, boy. Emica, you will assist.”
“My name is Richter,” the Undead grumbled, but followed after her nonetheless.
Emica slowly did the same, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart along with trying to hide her flushed face.
They soon walked out of the ship, and Forossa stopped them just a few hundred feet away from it and turned to face them. “First, we must evaluate to see just how much combat skill you have.” She looked to Emica. “Emica, I want you to spar with him. No mercy is to be given until he or yourself are spent. Am I understood?”
Emica looked briefly to Richter, then back to her master, before nodding slowly. “Y-Yes Master.”
“Understood,” Richter nodded, pulling his Astora Straight Sword and Defender’s Shield from his back and holding them at the ready - sword in the right hand and shield in the left.
Forossa nodded. “Good. Emica, I trust you know what to do.” She stepped back a few feet.
Emica nodded, turning and walking a few feet away before turning back to face Richter, getting into a fighting stance despite only being in pajamas and having no weapon on her. “I do, Master.”
“Good. Richter, are you ready?” Forossa asked, looking to the Undead.
Feeling rather surprised and inexplicably happy that she used his actual name, Richter nodded, “Ready as I’ll ever be to have my ass kicked.”
“Hmph,” She waved a hand down. “Begin.”
In an instant, Emica was on him. She grabbed the wrist holding his sword and pulled, hauling him over her head and slamming him to the ground. When he opened his eyes again, he saw her fist hovering just over his visor.
To her surprise and even his own, his body moved for him. A sweep of his leg into hers would at least put her off-balance long enough for him to use a hand to flip himself back on his feet and smack the Defender Shield into her chest as he pushed off the ground.
She cried out in surprise, stumbling back at this but not falling over, before shaking her head and furrowing her brows at him and pouting adorably.
“...How the fuck did I do that?” Richter asked in genuine confusion, even as he started circling around her - this time of his own accord.
“Instincts, boy,” Forossa told him. “It seems you have at least some.”
Emica didn’t wait much longer, zooming towards him again, but stopping right in front of him and roundhouse kicking into his sword hand.
His sword was dropped to the ground to grab her ankle, at which point his Pyromancy Flame formed on his palm and engulfed her ankle and foot...paw...thing in flames and searing heat.
“Gaah!” Emica cried, using her burning foot to slam him to the ground with a downward motion before she stomped on his hand with the other foot to release herself, followed by stomping and patting the burning one to get the flames out. She growled down at him. “You jerk! This is my only pair of pajamas!”
“No mercy,” Richter reminded her a moment before he slammed the mildly pointed bottom of the Defender’s Shield down on her other paw with a sickening crunch, followed by a flaming fist to her gut before he kicked himself back up on his feet.
Emica screamed in pain at this, stumbling back with a now bleeding paw. Then, her eyes gleamed. “ENOUGH!” She roared, a Force Scream ripping out of her throat and tossing Richter back hundreds of feet.
As he tumbled and landed, he was suddenly lifted up, then stretched out by unseen forces, Emica walking towards him slowly and menacingly with a snarl. A flick of her wrist and his shield flew out of his hand, followed by several cracks as his arm twisted and popped out of its socket.
Unfortunately for them both, a metal armpiece bending like that so quickly and so forcefully tends to make it shear.
The resulting sharp, jagged metal bent inward and sliced his forearm off, which fell twitching to the ground.
Richter couldn’t even scream.
But Emica could.
“RICHTER!” She cried, releasing him immediately and rushing over, gleam in her eyes gone. “Oh by the Ancients, what have I done?!” She looked him over frantically, trying her best to stop the bleeding. “Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap! Richter I’m so sorry!”
Richter shoved her off and, trembling like a crack addict going through withdrawal, scrambled for his arm. He snatched his arm off the ground and pressed it hard against his stump, moving his hand to hold the pieces of his arm together long enough for his Pyromancy Flame to roar to life and melt some of the chainmail beneath the bradden steel of the Elite Knight armor, effectively welding his arm back on.
Didn’t stop the internal bleeding that was probably happening, nor did it do anything to make the unfathomable pain stop, but at least he wouldn’t bleed out.
“R-Richter, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! I just, you stabbed me, and my anger took over and I-!” Emic was frantic, but Forossa walked over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Your anger has always been a weak point, Emica. Go. Meditate. Leave me with him,” she said sternly.
“B-But-!”
“Now.”
Emica looked between them both, grit her teeth, then ran off, trying and failing to hide the sobs she was choking back as she ran into the ship.
“...So…” Richter managed to get out after about half a minute of getting his breathing back to normal.
Forossa didn’t look at him, staring off at where Emica had gone. “I apologize.” She began.
“Oh, no, it...it’s fiiine. Shit happens, gotta just...roll with it. I’ll be...okay, I guess?” he said, sounding like he was in shock.
She snapped her head to him. “Do not even try to hide your pain and anger.” She sighed, looking away once more. “I should not have pushed for this. Emica is far too attached now, and it would be...remiss, of me to try and break that attachment like I have.” She shook her head. “So I apologize. For that…and for what I must now do, for your own sake.”
“Touch me and I melt your face,” Richter snapped at her with a light growl and a step away from her.
“I have no need for touching you. And regardless, if I do nothing, then you will simply die of blood loss, or die much more gruesomely at the hands of those in your own world,” she raised a hand, lifting him off the ground, his throat constricted. “I truly am sorry. I wish I knew another way to acquaint and teach you how best to survive...but I do not. I apologize.” Then, with a sickening snap and intense but thankfully brief pain, Richter knew nothing else but darkness.
He was back there again.
The Abyss.
Richter was already ‘running’ by the time he realized this, even if he didn’t really have a physical form or surface to ‘run’ on.
After a while, he stopped and looked around to see if Manus or whatever it was was following him or something.
Nothing all around.
He hesitantly sighed in relief. Nothing trying to kill him meant that he just had to...wait, he guessed, until he came back...if he even did.
A few minutes (or maybe hours; his sense of time in a place of pitch black darkness was rather off, as one would expect) of waiting and thinking about how hard he was going to punch Forossa in the ovaries, he heard something behind him.
He whirled around.
Nothing...save for a glimpse of lighter, glistening black vanishing from his range of vision just as he finished turning around.
“...Please hurry up,” Richter pleaded with…his body, he supposed, to wake up or revive or whatever it was gonna do, if anything.
He turned back around to put some distance between himself and that...whatever it was, but the moment he did he caught a glimpse of two black somethings.
He turned ‘right’ and bolted as fast as he could away from that general area.
Didn’t do jack shit, since he could FEEL an increasing number of presences behind him, following him.
Including a BIG one that was picking up speed.
Then he tripped, and he was immediately ‘pinned down’ by the deformed and mutated denizens of Oolacile or some other Abyss-warped place.
Then, He stepped from the black void and slowly approached him, dozens of glowing red eyes glaring balefully at him.
He struggled as much as he could as a disembodied consciousness, but to no avail.
Manus drew closer, massive tooth-covered hands slamming into the ‘ground’ beneath him as unspeakable growls left his twisted form.
“Wake up, wake up, revive, resurrect, reincarnate, DO SOMETHING, ME!” Richter ‘shouted’ in a frenzy, ‘thrashing’ furiously as Manus drew closer and closer, slowly extending a hand out to the Undead.
Richter actually managed to throw one of the abominations pinning him down off him as he screamed in primal terror at whatever the fuck the Father of the Abyss was about to do to him, but three more fell on him to keep him restrained.
Manus’s toothed hand was mere centimeters from his ‘head’ when the blackness gave way in a flash of fiery orange and Manus roared out, enraged at having been denied again.
When he came to, his hands were around Emica’s throat and he was squeezing hard.
He instantly let go and scrambled backwards from her, hyperventilating and enough adrenaline in his veins to kill two men.
“I-I-I-I d-d-didn’t m-mean to d-d-do that, E-E-Emica! Y-you gotta b-believe me!” the Undead stammered, shaking his head furiously. “I-I...I w-went somewhere when Forossa killed me, a-and there were fucking THINGS chasing me, a-and I- just- I didn’t mean to!”
Emica gasped for air, coughing a few times and waving him off. “I-I-It’s-” she coughed a few more times. “-f-fine, I did...cut your arm off, after all.” She shook her head. “I...came out here...because I felt your fear…and then knew...you were alive...” She smiled up at him, tears brimming in them. “I’m so glad…”
He managed to get his breathing under control with a few deep if unsteady breaths, then raised his left arm, which looked...good as new, even the armor.
“...Where is Forossa?” Richter asked, looking around.
“What? Fuck no, I’d just die again and I’m NOT going back there again if I can help it. I just want to have a chat with her.”
Emica sighed in relief. “She’s meditating in Xeneth’s lake.” Slowly, Emica stood up, brushing her pajamas off. He noticed the still burnt portion of it, and her fur.
“...Sorry about that. But, hey, if it scars...uh...could put a wedding bangle on it- I MEAN, UMM-!” Richter verbally backpedaled, waving his hands in front of him to try to defuse the situation his mouth just instigated.
Emica blushed at this, looking away and playing with her hair. “I-I don’t think I’m ready for that yet...a-a-and besides, it’d be on my tail, n-n-not my ankle.” She shook her head. “But like I said, it’s...fine. Master admitted she should’ve been more descriptive with the rules and not let us go shedding one another’s blood.”
“...Al...Alright. Let me know when she gets back,” Richter said, walking up to and gently hugging the tanuki for a few moments before he breaks away and makes his way back to the ship and his little home in the cargo bay.
Emica blinked, looking back to him. “I thought you were gonna go find her?”
“Not gonna bother wasting the energy on her,” the Undead replied flatly as he entered the ship and made his way back to cargo.
Emica frowned at this, then sighed deeply. “Today’s going to be a long day, isn’t it…”
Hours later, Emica walked into the cargo bay where Richter was. “Richter?” She asked timidly. “Master’s back.”
“Alright,” he acknowledged with a nod, but didn’t move from where his spot was, lying on his bed. “If she deigns to come back here to talk, I’ll be here.”
“I do,” came Forossa’s voice from behind Emica. “Come.” She turned around with no other words, walking off.
He didn’t follow, and instead stayed right where he was without a word in response.
Forossa sighed, stopping where she was. “If you wish to talk things out, I will not allow it to be in my own ship.”
“Tough shit. You fucking killed me, so I’m not exactly keen on going somewhere alone with you any time soon,” the Undead snorted with just a hint of venom.
Forossa sighed again, turning around and crossing her arms. “Yes. And-”
“Manus almost got me,” Richter cut her off, finally bringing his gaze around to lock onto her. “I apparently end up in the Abyss every time I die, and he’s there with all his little corrupted ‘children’, hunting me down.”
Emica frowned. “I don’t know what the Abyss is, but…” She looked to her master. “...I could feel his fear, Master, even though he was dead. I could feel something like the Dark Side, too, but...our Bond didn’t let me feel much else.”
Forossa said nothing, meeting Richter’s gaze with her own.
“I don’t know what he wanted with me, but considering how I felt my soul start to wither when he started reaching for me? I’d say he was going to snuff out my very soul. Take that and add onto it the fact that Force Bonds do some weird shit, Emica could have just dropped dead had Manus had the time to actually finish whatever he was doing. You almost killed your own padawan, Forossa. Let that sink in,” the Undead said coldly, his glare almost armor-melting.
Forossa continued to stare him down. “...” Finally, the Jedi relented, sighing deeply. “It sank in shortly after my padawan suffered a wound in response to your death. Gloat if you must.” Forossa met his gaze again. “But if you would have let me finish my previous statement, I was going to say that I am...sorry.”
“...I don’t gloat. But I forgive you. Just...just don’t take risks like that when you don’t fully grasp the mechanics behind what happens when I, specifically, die,” Richter sighed in apparent exhaustion.
He could almost imagine the wince Forossa made at his words. “Yes...Xeneth’s Pool allowed me to realize the difference between you and other Undead that I knew from so long ago.” She sighed. “As such, your training will have to be much less brutal than I originally planned.”
“Good for Emica and I, then,” he smirked in amusement beneath his helm.
Emica giggled behind a hand at the obvious predicament her master was in.
Said master loudly cleared her throat. “Anyway, that was all I wished to say. You two should rest and recuperate…” She glanced at Emica. “And you two should talk about the effects of your bond on one another. Specifically that wound, Emica.” With that, Forossa left the room.
The displaced former human swiveled his head to look at the younger Tanuki, “...So, I’m guessing the neck thing there wasn’t just from me strangling you?”
Emica winced. “No…” Sighing, she lowered the collar of her pajamas, showing a harsh scar that looked like it had just healed from being split. She avoided looking at him as she showed her shame.
“...Why are you looking like you stole from the cookie jar when it’s not even your fault?” her Bond mate asked, gently bopping her on the head. “I’m just...disappointed and sad that this happened to you, more than anything.”
Emica blinked, rubbing her head as she looked up at him. “Yeah, but… It’s still my fault you lost your arm, and because you did, Master killed you, so-”
“Nope. None of that. Not your fault. If anything, it’s my fault for the burning and trying to shatter your leg,” the Undead shook his head resolutely, arms crossed over his chestplate.
Emica frowned. “But-!”
“I will rub your belly with both hands if you don’t give up the self-blame game.”
Emica’s face bloomed into a blush, staring at him for a long moment, before she pouted, looked away and, to his surprise, stood up straight and lifted her shirt just enough to expose her belly. “...Just do it and get it over with, you p-p-pervert…”
Her tail was wagging.
“You’re enjoying this, you tummy-rub slu- I mean, belly-rub-loving goof,” he responded with an audible roll of the eyes, gauntlets running across the plush tanuki tummy with soft rubs and squeezes.
A few minutes passed that way with her biting her lip and trying to not whine and failing, before eventually she slowly pulled away from him. “R-Right. Let’s get you to the shower, then.” She began walking away from him with a spring in her step. Then, she blinked and stopped. “Oh! That’s right!” She put her finger to her chin. “Hmm...but what kind of scent to use...hmmm…”
Richter slowly blinked at her, still in the same position she left him in, “Wait, when did I agree to taking a shower?”
Emica turned to face him, paws at her hips as she gave him an admonishing glare. “Richter, I know you’re an Undead and a knight and all, but you shouldn’t abandon your civility and responsibility to yourself. So go clean up. Much as I love your smell, being dirty isn’t pleasant, especially when it coincides with such a nice smell.” She clapped her paws together. “So, chop chop, mister!”
The man just stood there for a few moments, then shrugged with his palms facing up as his feet carried him towards the ship and the sole bathroom aboard, “I...o-okay, then!”
Then he blinked and found himself in the shower with the water running and washing over his bare flesh.
Even though he didn’t have any memory of removing his armor or entering the bathroom, he supposed that wasn’t as important when he could see the water that touched his body visibly darkened to a brownish-red as accumulated muck and blood and whatever else was carried with it down the drain.
So today he had an arm severed, he died by a Force-snapped neck, found out that dying equals an ‘avoid the scary monster’ chase sequence in the Abyss until he revived or didn’t, and that he apparently was a good-smelling Undead.
Things were weird.
But at least they weren’t terrible.
When he exited the shower and found himself back in his armor again in the blink of an eye, his legs were carrying him back to the cargo bay since...well, he supposed he had nothing else better to do.
He was greeted with incense smoke and the smell of citrus.
Emica looked to him from the special incense burner in her hand, then smiled widely as she quickly put the diamond-shaped burner down and walked over to him almost giddily.
“Do you like it? I made it just now!” She stepped closer to him, right in his bubble. “Smell familiar?” She asked, still smiling widely up at him.
“Uh…” Richter looked down at her in confusion, nostrils flaring experimentally to figure out what the heck he was supposed to be smelling. He soon smelled a much more fresh scent of citrus coming from her, less smoky yet also just as rich.
“Oh...citrus. Uh...not exactly the biggest fan of it, but you do smell really nice, Emica,” the man finally said, gently patting the tanuki’s head even as her scent curled up into his nostrils and stayed there.
Emica beamed up at him. “Thanks!” Her tail wagged behind her as she hopped back out of his personal bubble. “Sorry if this is so sudden, but it’s customary among Bondmates to share scented items with their Bondmate, usually of their own scent. If the Bondmates wish to be just close friends, they typically make incense for one another. Otherwise...well,” she blushed a little, squirming. “They uh...make shampoo.”
“...From?” was all he could ask with a sudden sensation of impending embarrassment welling up in his gut.
She blushed a bit more. “W-Well, most of the same stuff for the incense.” She giggled nervously, twirling a lock of her hair. “I-I mean, to add your scent when transmuting, you add some of your fur, or sweat. Shampoo typically agrees more with sweat than fur, but incense agrees more with fur, so…”
“...So I’m breathing in...you, right now.”
Emica nodded slowly. “Is...that bad? It’s always been a normal thing back home.”
Richter shook his head after a few moments, “Nnno, just...cultural differences, let’s say. It’s not as...well, never really happens that we transmute our...fluids or skin into incense or shampoo; in fact that’s usually seen as a sign of obsession or mental disturbance because of how...weird it is for people back home. But if it’s how your people do it, then it’s not a bad thing, no.”
Emica blinked a few times, then smiled. “Oh, good!” She giggled happily. “I’ll be sure to make more for you so you can bring some with you when you eventually leave!”
“S-sure, if ya really want to. Thanks,” he rubbed the back of his head while the hand that had been patting her head this entire time continued doing so unabated.
A few hours later, Forossa walked into the cargo bay, crossing her arms over her armoured chest - which he was reminded of how said armour showed no sign of just how her chest actually looked - and staring down at where he was on his bed.
“What do you need, Forossa?”
“Come.” She said, turning and walking out again. “It is time for more training.”
Wordlessly, the Undead swung himself off the bed and followed the Gray Jedi, even if he dreaded what she was going to put him through.
As they reached the outside of the ship, she turned around to face him. “For this exercise, you will be against me. However, since we now know you have at least a modicum of fighting prowess, I will instead be teaching you something a fair bit more valuable - how to tap into the Force to sense disturbances and danger.” She poked him in the chest, right where his heart would be. “As you made a Bond with my padawan, it is obvious you can access the Force, thus, all we need do is teach you to use it more consciously.” She retracted her finger. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be. So, what do I need to do?” the Undead inquired with a slight tilt of his helm.
Forossa tapped the spot of grass in front of her with the tip of her boot. “Sit here. Meditate.”
He did as specified and sat down with his greaves crossed in the lotus position to the best of his ability, eyes closed under his helmet while he got his breathing to a more relaxed rhythm.
“Focus on what’s around you. Hear it. Feel it. Smell it. Then...reach out. With your senses. Not your hands, but your senses, your feelings.”
“I’ve seen the movies, even clips of that...abysmal sequel trilogy one,” Richter said as calmly as possible, reaching out with his hearing, smell, taste and more as his focus went outwards from his body. He made every effort to tune out distracting thoughts and sounds so that he wouldn’t lose whatever progress to a meditative state he was making.
“What do you see?” Forossa asked, a smirk obvious in her voice.
“A giant dragon thing off in the distance that’s looking back at me, Emica off in her room or something brushing her hair...” he answered, brows furrowing in time with the frown forming on his lips. “I can also see that you’re fucking blindingly bright like a nuke just went off.”
Forossa chuckled for once. “Good, but you’re not digging deep enough. Reach out further than just attachments or people or creatures. Reach out to the island, the planet, and, if you can, further.”
“You mean like the giant nebulous masses of dark and white kinda looking at us but not really looking at us?” he asked with a flick of his pinky finger to point at something way off into the atmosphere just a bit to Forossa’s left and behind her.
Forossa rolled her eyes. “That’s one way of looking at them, yes. Now, what do you feel? What do you feel in those masses? Don’t dig too deep on either side, but feel each of them.”
“I mean the Dark Side is kinda already looking at me like a sirloin and the Light Side is just...assessing me. Oh and there’s some weird grey area between ‘em, but that could just be a trick of the eyes.”
Forossa’s eyes gleamed. “That grey is what you should always aim for, Richter. Never too much either Side, but balance between both. One can never exist without the other; that is the fact of all thinking life.”
“Mhm, I get all that. Balance and that kinda jazz,” Richter hummed in response...and experimentally ‘poked’ the grey with his senses.
The grey, in response, seemed to not react itself...but an utter waterfall of a flow of information raced through his mind. He saw two people, one an older woman with greying hair with a single braid, and one a masked man in armor that looked to be made of spikes and cords who screamed Sith Lord. He saw a man in white armor with a broad-brimmed hat, ghostly in form, appear between them. He saw two others, both identical, with shaved heads and pale skin, yet one wore black, and the other in white had a severely scarred face, and a cybernetic hand. This figure turned back to look at him, and narrowed his eyes.
’You probe too deeply, young one.’ Then, the vision was shut off, and he was left with a stinging headache.
“Had a guy with scars, a robohand and dressed in white glare at me, told me I dug too deep and shoved me the fuck out. Did I fuck up and summon some Force demon in the process?”
Forossa was silent, staring up at the sky. “...I will need to move, swiftly.” She looked back down to him. “It was no demon, I can assure you of that. But a foe nonetheless. We...did not meet on good terms.” She strode past him, towards the ship. “Displacer! I know you can hear me! Send him back! He needs not be part of this chase!”
A voice behind him spoke up. “Aren’t you forgetting something, dear?” said a sickeningly sweet british voice.
Forossa stopped short, then sighed. “For once, you make an actually good point.” She pulled a strange device out of her armor’s faulds, and tossed it back at Richter. “Find a way to attach that to your armor. It will give you a brief energy shield.”
The moment the device touched his armor (because he was never really that good at playing catch with his eyes closed), there was a sudden roar like the air itself was being torn asunder that the Undead was quite familiar with just as he felt...heard…sensed something akin to “Boon Acquired” before it all went silent once more, and Richter found that the shoulders and the collarguard of his chestplate were a bit heavier. He opened his eyes to see that he had two pauldrons on either side of him, rather than just the one on his left to protect his off-side, with faint ember or flame-like patterns rising up from the bottom of each pauldron’s curve. His collarguard was a bit thicker and rose up to two small nubs at the top of where his shoulder blades met, one at each cap.
“...That was different,” he finally said after some poking and adjusting of his armor’s new additions.
“Well, now that you’re done with that noisy fanfare,” continued the voice behind him. “Time you had another fall through the Void, hm?” A snap was heard, and Richter fell backwards just in time to see a bald man in an orange tunic with various satchels full of parchment in them wave at him with a far too friendly smile.
"-IIIT!" was what broke the silence that had fallen over the abandoned castle Richter had taken over as said individual fell out of a rift some five or ten feet off the ground, and landed rather hard on his back. It would have been enough to knock the wind right out of him, were it not for the thin layer of some kind of shield that burst into existence on his dorsal side just before impact. It mitigated some of the momentum from his fall, but it still hurt like hell and left him stunned on impact, a slight wheeze vacating his helm as his lungs reflexively sucked in fresh air to avoid asphyxiation.
"Fu...cking...hate...heights. Falling...even more so, now," Richter grumbled, weakly pushing himself onto his knees to catch his breath and his bearings.
He was back where he'd been, of course, but he was more concerned about whether or not the giant mutant asshole wa- aaaAAND IT WAS RIGHT THERE, LOOKING AT HIM AGAIN AND LOOKING QUITE PISSED OFF, OH JOOOY!
This time, however, Richter had an advantage that the mix-and-match monstrosity didn't - something Richter realized when he instinctively turned around to run away from it.
Namely, he'd been dropped right next to the entrance of the castle, and that thing was still by the bridge - and looking rather shocked that he was alive and not at the bottom of the chasm.
The man didn't waste any more time with thinking and just let his legs and rather average cardio bring him inside the castle while the giant cat-scorpion thing was busy gawking. The sound of a frustrated roar was music to his ears, but he didn't even consider stopping for a second; he had no idea if that thing could Kool-aid Man through an old stone wall or fifteen, and he had no intention of finding out.
He didn't stop until he was back inside his Bonfire room and sitting down at it, a flurry of wispy orange pseudo-flames filling the room for a few moments then fading away as he felt his vitality return to him with an almost welcoming surge of warmth. And now that he was safely behind several thousand or so tons of crumbling stone castle and masonry, he could take stock of things.
For one, he'd somehow gotten hitched to a furry's wet dream and gotten a minor connection to the Force - a Star Wars nerd's wet dream - as a result.
Two, he'd gotten a basic 'kinetic barrier' upgrade to his armor that might actually take a swipe from that animalistic abomination without dying instantly.
And three, he was still squatting in a ruined stone castle with no perceivable way to civilization now that the bridge had been cut by his fuzzy homicidal nemesis.
So, basically, not much different from how it was before: No clue what to do, not much of any inclination to do anything but chill as an immortal Undead who doesn't need to eat or drink or even sleep, and just as alone as before unless one of the Equestrians or someone else came along.
...Except the asshole outside had wings, like the pegasi and the pegasi with horns, and again, the bridge had been cut by the chimera thing so the ground-bound ones had no way in unless they did some magical or MacGyvering shenanigans.
Yeah, that might cause some issues with having guests around, and as much as he liked his solitude, he was still mentally a human and thus needed social interaction to maintain a healthy psychological state...aka not go completely insane from isolation.
"U-um-" was all that he managed to hear from the doorway juuust outside his peripheral vision before flailing like the startled man he was and flinging himself behind his makeshift bed as if it would protect him. It was only when he recognized the voice two seconds later that he felt like a complete idiot and slowly rose back into the view of...Fluttershy, if he recalled her name right.
The butter-yellow pegasus was staring at him in concern, and perhaps a little nervously given his rather intense reaction.
"S-s-sorry for st-startling you! I-I can come a-at a later time, i-if you'd like," Fluttershy stammered, already hiding her face behind her pink mane as he stared wordlessly at her, completely at a loss for words at the fact that she'd gotten in here without that fuzzy monster outside devouring and/or maiming her.
"...No, it's fine, uh, Fluttershy," Richter reassured her the best he could given the awkward circumstances and gestured for her to sit down by the ethereal flames of the Bonfire. "Take a seat, if you'd like. So...how'd you get past the vicious lion-faced, scorpion-tailed monstrosity out there?"
She blinked in utter confusion, "Monstrosity...you mean Manny?"
"...It has a name?" the Undead asked incredulously, voice but a whisper as if fearful that saying it any louder would invite disaster upon him...which he had no doubt was an actual possibility.
"He, and he's not a monster! He's just...very excitable, and doesn't really know how to make friends with others," Fluttershy corrected him with a bit of a stern tone that melted back down into her usual timid voice seconds later as she shyly took a seat on her hindquarters on his left. "H-He told me you ran away from him when he tried to introduce himself, a-and then charged at him, slid between his legs and tried to cross the bridge. He didn't know why you were running like you were s-scared of him, so he tried to grab you and reassure you that h-he wasn't going to hurt you...b-b-but then the b-bridge collapse because he hit one of the moors and...and you fell into the ravine."
Richter just stared silently, internally screaming at the fact that the panic and running and ensuing misadventure in another world was literally because he'd judged a creature by its appearance and just assumed it wanted to kill him. He just knew his friends back home would be laughing at or scolding him for that, if they knew about it.
It seemed that she took his silence as a sign to go on, since she kept talking, "Manny was so worried when you fell below the fog! A-and he tried to see if he could f-find where you fell, b-but then he said you fell from thin air back where he first saw you standing a few moments later, yelling something-"
Wait, moments?
It had been about a day or two with Emica and Forossa, he could feel his internal clock - or what remained of it in his current Displaced state (and what a thought that was, to know he'd actually been isekai'd by some interdimensional entity as an Undead like in the anime industry) telling him that at LEAST a day had gone by.
Did time pass as nonsensically relative to 'his timeline' like in the Dark Souls games, or was this some more fuckery by the Merchant guy or some other entity/entities?
"-then I talked to him, he explained everything, and I-I-I came in here to see you just staring at the B-Bonfire like when my friends and I first met you," Fluttershy's voice snapped him out of his internal musings, reminding him that she'd been talking and he'd all but ignored what she'd been saying.
"...And then I got startled - and no worries there, so don't even think about making that apology on your tongue," he told her with a preemptive 'order' (request, really) when he...well, felt remorse and apologetic sentiment welling up in her through whatever Force malarkey was letting him sense that...which just begged the question of whether or not these ponies and/or this world actually HAD any Force presence or if the Force even existed here.
Wait, no, mental bunny chasing can wait, focus on mediocre socialization skills.
"O...o-okay, um..." the pegasus reluctantly did as he asked, looking away with an expression that suggested she didn't know what to say, now.
Which meant he had to pick up the slack, there. Joy.
"So, Fluttershy, I spaced out a little while you were talking, and I didn't catch everything you said. But that's alright, don't worry! I can get the gist of it...but that still leaves one question I have to ask...why are you here? Not trying to sound rude, but I don't suppose you came here because you have a telepathic connection to animals that lets you know when they're in distress and knew Manny was worried about me," he asked after quickly mulling his options in his head.
The mare's muzzle opened in a soft (and admittedly adorable) 'ah' and her yellow cheeks turned slightly pink as she...prooobably did the pony equivalent of poking her pointer fingers together sheepishly, but with hooves, "Ah...w-well, Princess Luna d-detected some kind of...magical a-a-anomaly around here, like when we first met you, and then she f-felt another one only a few seconds l-later. I-I was closest to the Everfree, s-so she asked me to see what was going on. I-I'm friends with most of the animals in the Forest, so I-I wasn't scared about being hurt by whatever the P-Princess sensed."
"...I wish I had your ability to communicate with animals; it sounds rather useful," the man in knight's armor dryly remarked.
"W-well, I, u-u-um, I-I-I've had practice over m-many years tending to a-and raising animals, so...umm...yes, a-anyways, I h-hope I answered your q-question," the pegasus stammered, finally looking away from me with her eyes hid behind her mane yet again.
She made him want to headpat her, but he wasn't sure that if that constituted some kind of felonious assault in this world or harassment or if it'd mean his soul would be tied to hers like it did with Emica.
"It did, thank you. As for the anomalies...well, I can safely say that both times were partially to do with me. While I was falling some kind of...space-time thing happened that sent me somewhere else, then another one that sent me back to where...Manny, first laid eyes on me. Don't know why or how, but they happened. Which...actually leads to me to why I wasn't actually listening to most of what you said the first time. From my perspective, it's been at least a day or two since I fell into the ravine, and as you can tell...some stuff happened, and my armor got fancier," Richter explained with a finger pointing at the new flame-like additions to the neck area of his armor, which she apparently didn't notice if the widening of her eyes at the sight was any indication. "Then I ended up back here, and learn from you that it'd only been a few seconds between me falling into a ravine and landing back on the path to these ruins. So...yeah. I think there might be some weird stuff going on regarding my connection to time in this world."
She nodded, but it didn't seem like she really understood one hundred percent. Then again, neither did he, so who was he to judge?
"O-oh my...w-well, I think T-Twilight could, um, help you with learning about...w-why that is. M-Manny helped me fix the bridge, so we can safely c-cross and go to Ponyville to see her...i-if that's okay with you," she whispered at the end, clearly very nervous or embarrassed or...maybe she was just that damn timid of a creature.
He pitied her, in that regard.
"I wouldn't mind. Besides, I have nothing else to do here besides fix the place up slowly, staring at the Bonfire, and...whatever else I'd end up doing. Might as well see the locals, the sights, find something else to do," he shrugged, earning a tiny smile from Fluttershy that almost made his heart skip a beat from just how sweet and innocent it was.
"...I-I'm glad. So...s-shall we, um, g-get going?" she asked, looking back at the entrance to the room and then turning her eyes back onto him. "O-oh! Um, y-y-you might want to leave your, uh...sword and shield behind, t-the ponies get very skittish w-when there's someone they d-don't know, and e-e-even more so when there's, uh, weapons involved."
He very much didn't want to leave his only means of protection save Pyromancy Flame and his new kinetic shields behind, but given her explanation he did not want to make these 'Ponyville' folks run away screaming from him or something.
That likely would only end in tragedy or aggravation.
Luckily for him, he remembered something pretty important about Dark Souls.
Namely, the frankly ridiculous amount of items that could be stored in one's inventory. Even if this wasn't the game and was instead a world of technicolor mythical creatures, he figured that he might as well try to see how far his 'Undead' state went...in a very limited, mechanical capacity. He wasn't about to go and kill anything any time soon, if he could help it.
"I...think I might have a solution to that. One second," he held up a finger and picked up his sword and shield, then focused his thoughts on making them...well, vanish, turn to mist, undergo molecular disassembly - whatever happened to one's equipment when not equipped in the Souls games.
He wasn't expecting it to actually work, nor was Fluttershy, given the sudden disintegration of his sword and shield into short-lived clouds of black-and-white ash that made her squeak in surprise and flinch backwards. Despite the disappearance of his only offensive and defensive equipment, he could still feel their 'weight' somewhere both inside of him and...where they'd normally go when he wasn't actively holding them in the games.
So, magical Undead hammerspace inventory: Confirmed.
"I put them away in...let's call it a pocket dimension, because I have no idea what else to call it," Richter explained to the pegasus, who looked at him in a mix of cautious awe and her usual skittishness.
Then an idea popped into his head.
"I'll meet you at the entrance when I'm ready to go with you, I'll be a minute; got to finish some preparations before I go," he told her, earning a nod as Fluttershy left the room with the flapping of wings.