Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash find themselves drawn by the call of the cutie map to a jungle in the middle of nowhere. Drawn further by the knowledge of an ancient temple, they are confronted with icy cold and a sense of dread.
Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash find themselves drawn by the call of the cutie map to a jungle in the middle of nowhere. Drawn further by the knowledge of an ancient temple, they are confronted with icy cold and a sense of dread.
A Necromancer was sealed away in this temple a thousand years ago.
Now, he is waking up...
((Sequel to Necromancy for Foals. Artwork by The-Minuscule-Task on Tumblr.))
Twilight Sparkle had followed the summons of the cutie map to a jungle in the middle of nowhere. Her friend Rainbow Dash was accompanying her in this trek through the foliage and she took the opportunity to wear some of her favorite jungle-tromping attire. All of it was styled after Daring Do, of course, but the small comfort of clothing against the thicket and bramble of the jungle paled in comparison to the chilling dread that filled the senses of the two ponies.
Closer and closer they walked, their wings tired from having carried the ponies this far. The canopy was too thick to fly past, and Twilight had pointed out that it would only get worse as time went on. Now, Rainbow Dash and Twilight found themselves deep in swampy water, swatting at flies that buzzed around their ears.
"Who could have a friendship problem way out here?" Rainbow growled at a fly, intimidating it into finding somewhere else to buzz. "Maybe they don't want our help, you know?" Her tail flicked in irritation.
"This is where the Cutie Map is sending us, Rainbow. You saw the weird marking. A raven's skull? It's never done that before." Twilight was inspecting a map of the area that she had traded with a Zebra to obtain. "It has to be really important if it's sending us here."
"You say that," Rainbow flapped her wings to land next to her friend, "but maybe the skull meant for us to stay away from this place? Jungles are supposed to be really hot and humid, but the closer we get to that spot on the map, the colder I feel."
Twilight shivered, well aware of the lowering temperature. "We've been through worse, Rainbow. No reason to chicken out now."
Rainbow blinked in surprise, "I'm not scared!" She puffed up her fuzzy chest with pride and bravado, "No creepy cold jungle in the middle of nowhere is gonna send me running."
The alicorn smirked, "I know you're not scared, Rainbow. Besides, we're almost there anyway. You see the ice crystals?" She pointed to a nearby fern with her horn, her face still buried in the map as she walked half-blind through the jungle. "Those really aren't normal, but from what Celestia told me... they're a symptom of something that's probably worse than strange weather."
"What do you think is causing all of this?" Rainbow pointed at the ground ahead which had been frozen solid. "The raven skull?"
Twilight grimaced and lowered the map in her magical lavender grip in order to see properly. "I was speaking with Celestia before we headed out here, Rainbow. She said it was only legends, but if it's true... we could be confronting a necromancer."
Rainbow raised her eyebrow, "A what now?"
Twilight folded up her map and stuffed it into her saddlebag. "They're ponies whose special talent is raising the dead. Like... like skeletons and zombies and things like that."
Her eyes went wide, "You mean like that prank you played on me with the cookies where you all pretended to be sick?"
Twilight nodded, "Like that, but the zombies and skeletons eat ponies instead of cookies."
Rainbow Dash shivered. The memory of that prank was enough to set her back a step. "You're really sure we have to do this?"
A grand temple loomed in the horizon, frozen over with cold winds causing the alicorn and pegasus to bristle and ruffle their feathers. The temple looked to be made of stone, perhaps marble, but it was difficult to tell from the cliff where they stood.
"Well," Twilight stretched her wings and shook her head, fighting off the jitters of confronting something so ancient. "Here goes nothing."
The two ponies swooped down from the cliff and glided over the icy terrain, each feeling a bit under-dressed for the occasion. Celestia hadn't mentioned how cold it would be here.
When Twilight and Rainbow arrived at the temple's main door, they were confronted with a single keyhole. The ponies shared a look at one another, each expecting that they might suddenly come up with an answer. Finding that neither knew what to do, the ponies began to investigate.
A thick overgrowth of vines and ivy leaves had concealed the temple's entrance. It was a quick work of magic to pull the foliage away, though Twilight felt just a little bit queasy from using her magic on the vines.
"Are you okay?" Rainbow asked her friend, "you look like you just bit into a rotten apple."
Twilight shuddered, "I'm fine, it just... felt weird is all."
Rainbow tapped the newly cleared wall with her hoof. "Hey, doesn't this look like that door in Celestia's castle? The one with the sun emblem on it where she stuck her horn in to give us the elements of harmony?"
The alicorn nodded, "we don't have Celestia here, though."
Rainbow pointed to Twilight's horn. "You're an alicorn, remember? Why don't you try it?"
It was as good a suggestion as any, Twilight surmised. She bent her head and slid her horn into the keyhole. Nothing happened.
"Maybe it needs a bit of magic?" Rainbow shrugged, "or you could try some horn-lengthening spell."
Twilight rolled her eyes, "A horn lengthening spell? Really?"
"I don't know!" Rainbow hastily gestured to the door, "I'm freezing my feathers off out here. Just try it!"
The alicorn's horn glowed with a vibrant lavender as it was empowered by her magic. A heavy click was heard from beyond the door that caused the temple to rumble. Twilight quickly withdrew her horn and the two ponies stood close together as the temple came to life.
Heavy stone doors slid apart, grinding against the equally hard floor as it wore grooves into the stonework. Stale air and dust greeted Twilight and Rainbow Dash, causing them to cough and back away.
When the dust had finally settled, the two shared a look of mutual assurance before proceeding onward.
The two ponies had been wandering through the temple for some time now, their path illuminated by the lavender light of Twilight's horn. Their path had been slick with ice as they walked, the clacking of their hooves echoing through the temple as winds blew through the stone structure. Eerie howling mixed with chilly air, combined with the feeling of complete emptiness that the temple was soaked in.
"H-hey, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash was shivering from the cold, "I just thought of something..."
"Y-yeah?" Twilight stammered, "what's that?"
"Why did the temple need an alicorn to unlock it?" Rainbow kept an eye out for anything strange, but the temple was filled with an unnatural darkness that made seeing anything further than a few feet away rather difficult.
"It could've just needed a regular unicorn, Rainbow." Twilight redoubled the effort of her horn's glow, but the darkness remained the same. She grumbled in frustration.
Rainbow's ear twitched and she placed a hoof on Twilight's chest. "Hold on, do you hear that? The echo isn't as bad here..."
The two ponies huddled together and advanced with caution towards the lack of an echo and found themselves at the top of a staircase leading downwards into the temple.
"Or... it could just be a creepy stairway. Great." Rainbow Dash sighed and stepped forward.
Twilight followed after her friend only slightly worried about the possibility of the stairs suddenly becoming a slide. King Sombra had pulled a similar trick on her before and she was reluctant to revisit the experience.
Down and down the ponies trotted, step by step into the dark abyss. Well, less than that, as it appeared.
"Wait, there was only twelve steps?" Twilight looked behind her at the small staircase feeling cheated. "Who builds a temple with only twelve steps!"
"Uh, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash was pointing to the face of a statue, its face obscured by a hood. "Who is that?"
Twilight turned and inspected the statue along with her friend. Her horn shone brighter still, and the darkness seemed to retreat. "Well, they're a unicorn. Kind of strange, though. Look how fluffy he is!"
"Are you serious? We run into some statue at the bottom of a creepy temple and you're talking about a fluffy statue? It's made of stone!"
"Wait, look!" Twilight pointed to a golden pocket watch that was around the statue's neck. "Those engravings..." She squinted at the pocket watch to study it further.
Rainbow studied the rest of the statue and noticed something fairly important. "Twilight? This pony has a Raven Skull on their flank."
Twilight leaned away from her magical perusal of golden artifacts to get a better look. "Yep... that's the cutie mark all right." She then took a step away from the statue, "We should probably stand back. Something doesn't feel right about--"
Just then, a sharp crack of stone sounded out through the temple. The statue's face had fractured and began seeping icy cold fog.
"...This," Twilight finished. Her horn charged again with power, "Stand next to me, Rainbow."
Rainbow Dash did as her friend requested and a lavender dome protected the two ponies from what was happening. Fog continued to flow freely from the statue as it fractured more and more. It soon became clear that this was no simple statue, nor was it a golem. This was someone frozen in stone, just as Discord had been, and they were waking up.
"Is this bad? Things in stone escaping are usually bad..." Rainbow was anxious and her feathers bristled, "what if he's angry?"
Part of the statue's face broke off, revealing the icy white fur of the pony underneath. A huff of frustration came from the stallion in stone and his horn charged with light-blue energy, causing the rest of the stone to quickly crumble away.
In the statue's place stood a dust-covered stallion. His teeth were barred and he looked none too happy when he leapt from his pedestal onto the stonework below. Each of his breaths exuded cold fog and he rubbed his eyes, seeing as they were caked with stone.
"Hey," Rainbow called out, "are you okay?"
The stallion's head whipped to face the source of the noise, his horn icy-cold in its intensity. "Who said that?" His eyes narrowed on the lavender dome in front of him. "An... wait, what? An alicorn? But you're..." He rubbed his eyes again and his horn faded. "Tartarus curse this dust in my eyes!"
Twilight and Rainbow both shared a raised eyebrow with each other. He didn't seem that scary.
The stallion sneezed and shook his head, his hoof batting at his nose as he sneezed again. "Aagh!" He loudly complained, his nose stuffy. "What did she even hit me with? Rainbows!?"
This gave Twilight and Rainbow some pause. The rainbows sounded like the Elements of Harmony, and if this stallion had been locked away in a statue...
Rainbow cupped a hoof and whispered into her friend's ear."I've got a bad feeling about this, Twilight."
"Who blasts somepony with Rainbows!?" The stallion continued.
"Excuse me," Twilight called out to the pony, "what's your name?"
The stallion again looked to the magically shielded alicorn and to the pegasus in front of him. "I'm Bone Marrow. Who are you, and why are you an alicorn?"
"I'm the Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle." The alicorn stated officially. It didn't sit well with Bone Marrow. He had few rules that he kept to, and trusting strangers was never one of them.
He squinted suspiciously at Twilight and stated her name in his head. Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight shivered and took a step back. Her vision was now Bone Marrow's vision. The name was true. He watched himself nod in confirmation through Twilight's eyes and stated his own name in his mind, returning his vision to his own body.
"Alright then, Twilight Sparkle, can you tell me where in tartarus Princess Celestia sent me? I was in Canterlot a few seconds ago, and now I'm in some dark tomb with dust in my eyes."
"Wait, what did you just do?" The other pony, a pegasus by the looks of her, inquired.
The pegasus caught Bone Marrow's attention. Her fur was cyan, her eyes were magenta... similar to his friend Scenic Sights. The mane was different, but the similarities were striking.
Twilight held up a hoof. "I don't know what you just did, but could you warn me in the future?"
Alright, this was odd now. Bone Marrow knew of Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, the double-crosser that she was, but this new alicorn, Princess Twilight? She was something altogether different. She wasn't commanding him to do anything and she wasn't behaving like Celestia. Also, there wasn't an army of guards at her flank, so that was a bonus.
"Hello?" The rainbow maned pony asked, "anyone home?"
Bone Marrow shook his head. "I just burst my way out of a statue, there's dust in my eye, and I don't know either of you. Give me a minute." Icy fog lingered near his hooves. "A few seconds ago I was in Canterlot. Would you mind telling me where I am?"
"You're in a hidden temple in the middle of nowhere," Twilight succinctly replied. "The Cutie Map told us to come here, and I think that it wanted us to speak with you."
"The Cutie Map?" Bone Marrow raised an eyebrow, "what are you talking about?"
He had so many questions. Why was there a third alicorn? What was he doing in the middle of nowhere? Why was this temple so dark? Each question received an answer, more or less, and Bone Marrow was relieved to find that his golden pocket watch was still around his neck.
"So..." Rainbow Dash trailed, "what now?"
"We could go to Princess Celestia. She might have an idea of --"
"No!" Bone shouted, "I'm not going anywhere near that lying, double-crossing, back-stabbing witch!" The icy fog had grown in strength as crystals of ice began to form on the stone floor.
Rainbow and Twilight recoiled from the sudden outburst. "Right... okay, not to Celestia then." Twilight's eye was twitching. How could anyone say something like that about Princess Celestia?
"I don't need you to take me anywhere. If anything, I'd prefer to go alone than with two ponies I don't know. Especially since you're an alicorn, Twilight Sparkle."
"What's your deal with alicorns?" Rainbow Dash challenged from behind Twilight's lavender shield.
Bone Marrow growled and moved to walk past Twilight and Rainbow. "None of your business, is what."
"What's his problem?" Rainbow whispered to Twilight. "Think he was blasted by the Elements of Harmony for a reason?"
Twilight shook her head, "Discord was also frozen in stone, but he was only freed with the help of someone else." She pointed a hoof to the hooded stallion that they followed behind. "He broke out all on his own..."
Rainbow rolled her eyes, "Yeah, after a thousand years of trying."
"That's not the point, Rainbow!" Twilight hissed, drawing the attention of Bone Marrow.
"Are you two going to follow me everywhere?" The white-furred stallion grumbled. "I'm having enough trouble without you gossiping behind me."
Twilight gave a polite wave and a smile, causing Bone Marrow to grumble and continue walking where-ever he was going. She leaned over to whisper to Rainbow, "the point, is that we can't leave him alone. Who knows what damage a necromancer could do to Equestria?"
Bone Marrow stopped in his tracks and gave a weary sigh. "You know I can hear you two, right?" He turned to face Twilight and Rainbow Dash. "You're not very quiet."
The two ponies winced, "We're just trying to figure out what to do," Twilight explained, "The cutie map is usually for Friendship Problems, but..."
He raised an eyebrow. "Friendship problems? A magical map is concerned about ponies' friendships." Bone shook his head and muttered to himself, "First I find out that I've grown since Canterlot, that my voice is deeper, that I'm surrounded by jungle in the middle of who-knows where, and I find out there's a map that's dedicated to friendship."
He turned to walk off. "Where's a bandit when you need one?"
Twilight and Rainbow Dash shared a concerned look with one another and followed after the Necromancer. Something was very wrong here...
Bone Marrow had been walking for hours now. The sun had relented and given way to night, and still he was followed by Twilight and Rainbow Dash.
"Don't you ever get tired?" Rainbow complained. "You..." She huffed and pulled her wings up from the dusty ground as they had been dragging behind her, "You haven't stopped all day!"
He could've kept walking. He didn't need either of them, but Twilight was an alicorn. He already had an enemy with Celestia and he didn't need to go around making more enemies.
Bone shook his head and sighed. "Alright, I'll wait for you both to be rested." He turned to face the both of them, "Any ideas where to sit down? This jungle seems to go on forever in every direction."
"Here's good!" Twilight plopped her flank down on the ground and heaved a breath of relief. "I think my legs are numb..."
While the two ponies recovered from their long march, Bone Marrow had a moment of introspection. It had been a thousand years since he was last in Canterlot. A thousand years...
Bone Marrow giggled.
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. "What's so funny?"
"I've missed a thousand birthdays!" He held the side of his hoof to his mouth and continued giggling, "I'm a thousand and twelve!"
Rainbow Dash and Twilight looked to one another with horror on their face. "You're twelve!?"
"Apparently!" He pulled his hood down, revealing his glowing blue eyes and the small skulls in his pupils. "The oldest necromancer to ever live!" The stallion paused for a moment, "I think, at least."
"Wait... if you're twelve, then aren't you technically a colt still?" Twilight scratched her head in confusion. This wasn't at all what she had thought she was getting herself into.
"You mean you two aren't fillies?" Bone raised his eyebrow and took a few steps back. "You're small enough to be fillies..."
Rainbow Dash puffed out her chest, "I'm fully grown and a Wonder Bolt, thank you very much!"
Twilight reached into her saddlebag with her magic and pulled out several books. None of them held the title she was searching for and the alicorn grumbled. "I know I've read something about this before. Ponies didn't grow like we do a thousand years ago."
Rainbow looked to her friend as Bone Marrow continued chuckling to himself. "You mean that he's not even fully grown yet? How big is he gonna be? Big Mac sized!?"
Twilight shook her head, "From what I've read and from what Princess Celestia told me--"
Bone Marrow growled at the mention of Celestia.
"-- Is that ponies from a thousand years ago grew to be around Princess Luna's height." Twilight finished, grumpy from being interrupted.
"Then how are we so... small?" The implications soured Rainbow's tongue to even speak aloud.
"Well, a thousand years ago was just a little bit after Discord was locked away by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. There was a lot more chaotic magic swirling around during that time." Twilight gestured to Bone Marrow with her hoof. "Ponies used to be flooded with all kinds of magic from the moment they were born, just like little unicorn foals have powerful magic that they can't control."
A terrifying thought came to Bone Marrow. "Wait, if it's been a thousand years... you all still have Oatmeal Raisin cookies, don't you? Please tell me you do!"
"Uh, yeah." Rainbow Dash shook her head in disbelief, "We still have Oatmeal Raisin cookies."
Bone sat down with a sigh of relief. "Then everything isn't terrible in the future."
Twilight took out some blank pages from her saddlebag along with a quill and inkwell. "You're taking all of this pretty well..." She wrote down a few notes, "what about all of the ponies you knew?"
The necromancer held a hoof to the golden pocket watch around his neck. "I have all the ones I can help close with me. As for the others... well, I hope they had a good life before they died."
Rainbow Dash was taken aback by how casually the stallion-sized colt spoke of death. "You're... not sad or anything?"
Bone shook his head. "Before Celestia hit me with her weird rainbow-magic, I had killed thousands of ponies, griffons, minotaur and other kinds of folk in a big battle for Canterlot. That, combined with all the times I've died, it's not that big of a deal."
Twilight looked up from her notes. "Wait, what do you mean? You've died before?"
The colt scratched his chin. "There was the first time by halberds and swords... and the poleaxe that severed my spine. Then there was the bandit with a crossbow bolt through my heart..." He rested his head on his hoof. "Then I died to myself to get away from Anvil... the time that Pure Intent threw a sword from my chest and I fell from the battlements..." His expression turned sour. "Then the time that Celestia chopped my head off with a battle axe, but I'd thought she was trying to help me then."
Twilight and Rainbow Dash's mouths were wide open.
Bone noticed their expressions when he failed to remember other ways he had died. He looked between the both of them with a raised eyebrow. "What?"
"How would chopping your head off help you!?" The mares yelped.
The colt winced, "No need to shout, jeez."
Twilight's ears folded down. "Sorry, it's just... it's a lot to take in. Battles, bandits, a... well, a colt like yourself living through all of those things just sounds terrible!"
Bone shrugged, "It's all in the past now, apparently. It's been a thousand years, remember?" He smirked and pulled his hood over his head, his dark blue eyes causing the hood to glow.
The group of two mares and a big colt had spent the night resting next to a campfire they had built with the help of magic and a bit of resourcefulness. Bone Marrow didn't need to sleep as often as Rainbow Dash or Twilight, so he kept watch, wary of the bandits or wild animals that might come. Twilight had told him that there were no bandits anymore, but then again...
Never Trust Strangers was one of his rules.
Despite the short time they had conversed, Bone was very wary of Twilight and her friend. It was a thousand years into the future and to Bone Marrow, it had felt like he only blinked for that time to pass. How old was Twilight? She was an Alicorn after all, and he had no way of knowing how long ago it had been since a third alicorn had popped into existance.
At least, that's how he thought alicorns worked. Nopony had every talked about how Celestia and Princess Luna came into being, so Bone assumed they simply appeared one day. Besides, the Princess of Friendship? Please. That sounded like a lie no matter how much she tried to explain it.
What hung at the back of his mind was the changes he'd undergone while he was a statue. His voice was different and he was a bit bigger, certainly, but he couldn't be more than a teenager. Besides, what would happen if he died again? Would he become a colt just like he had been when he first died, or would he remain as physically old as he was now? He shuddered at the thought. To be a colt forever sounded horrible.
Another thought entered his mind. When he was first learning his powers, a raven had helped him learn. Enough to get him moving on his hooves, but not a whole lot beyond that. The few necromancy books he had read had no mention of a helper to guide them through their lives, but at the same time it couldn't be that hard to find another raven, could it?
He looked up at the surrounding jungle as the wind rustled the leaves of the trees. "Right... ravens don't live in the jungle, do they?" The colt frowned and pulled his hood from his head. "I can't really go looking for a raven either, can I?" He huffed at the two sleeping mares as they dozed peacefully near their campfire.
Bone wasn't really obliged to keep either of them safe during the night, but at the same time he didn't want either of them to get mauled by some magical tiger or other kind of beast. Twilight and Rainbow Dash were strangers, but they hadn't done anything against him either. They just followed him around, asked questions and complained about being tired.
The necromancer scratched his chin. He had been in a few battles before, and he had healed the wounds of ponies who would've certainly died if he didn't use his magic. Would the same magic work on making Twilight and Rainbow not tired anymore?
He grumbled. One of the books he'd read had told him that necromancer magic wouldn't work on an alicorn... yet at the same time, he was able to look through Twilight's eyes easily enough. Maybe the book was lying? Or, Bone thought, maybe the pony who wrote the book didn't want to test out their abilities on the Princess of the Sun.
"Yeah, that's more likely..." Bone sat down and stared at the two mares in thought. He could try his magic on the both of them, or he could let them sleep. Waiting for them to wake up was boring, but he didn't want to scare either of them by using his magic when they weren't expecting it. He certainly didn't want them to use strange magic on him when he wasn't prepared for it.
"Fine, have your sleep then." The colt looked around the camp to see if anything was moving, and he was pleased to find everything had remained as dreadfully boring as it had for the last few hours.
When dawn came, Bone Marrow shook Twilight and Rainbow Dash awake.
"Aww." Rainbow Dash groaned, "Come on-n-n. Five more minutes?"
Twilight yawned and moved her hair over her eyes to block out the morning sun.
The necromancer-colt rolled his eyes. "The longer we stay out here, the more likely it is that a bandit or some kind of monster is going to find us."
"There's no bandits, Bone Marrow." Twilight rubbed her eyes and used her magic to clean dirt from her body. "Nopony does that kind of thing anymore."
A deep roar sounded out through the jungle that shook the trees and caused birds to flee.
All three ponies jumped to their hooves. Rainbow and Twilight's wings expanded and they were about to take off before they realized that Bone Marrow was a unicorn and couldn't fly.
"Aw, crap." Rainbow held a hoof to her face. "How fast can you run?"
Bone Marrow's ears had perked up. "What kind of a monster roars that loudly?"
Twilight sounded nervous. "From past experiences? Probably a hydra."
The necromancer's tail flicked. "Can they do magic?"
"No?" Twilight was curious now. "What are you planning?"
"Well, if the hydra thingy can't cast magic, then it can't make a shield. Is it made of gems?"
Twilight and Rainbow Dash were now very worried that the colt had sparkles of hope in his eyes. Twilight shook her head.
"Awesome, let's go kill it!"
The two mares were dumbfounded as Bone Marrow raced off through the jungle towards the source of the hydra's roars.
"Are you insane!?" Twilight shouted after the necromancer, taking flight along with her friend to chase after him.
Bone's horn charged with magic and icy hooves hammered into the swampy water. He moved faster and faster through the forest as plants withered and turned to ash behind him.
Twilight and Rainbow couldn't believe what they were seeing. Was he moving so fast that the jungle turned to ash behind him, or was he actually killing the jungle to move faster?
The colt was smiling. He hadn't run this fast in... well, from his perspective it had been a day or so since he was speeding through the streets of Canterlot. In actuality, he had been frozen in stone for a thousand years until now, so he was technically stretching his legs after a long nap. The excuse suited him just fine and he continued speeding along the jungle. He weaved around trees and leaped over thick brush and winding rivers.
Rainbow Dash sped up enough to keep pace with Bone Marrow, but she was still impressed by how fast he ran. With a shudder, she was reminded of Pinkie Pie's ability to catch her no matter where she went or how fast she went there.
Twilight, on the other hoof, was detailing all of this in expansive notes written in her own personal code. Easier to write while on the move, or flying in this case, and still leaving out none of the details.
When Bone Marrow finally found the hydra in question, it was feasting on several slain manticores. He grinned.
"Hey!" Bone shouted, "I wanna have a word with you, Hydra!"
One of the hydra's heads turned to face the colt and tilted in curiosity.
"Die!" The necromancer shouted, and swirling bolts of icy magic shot out from his horn to head straight for the hydra.
It had barely enough time to drop the meals from its mouths before the spell struck, and the hydra tilted its other heads in confusion.
Bone Marrow raised an eyebrow at the hydra. Usually things were dead by now. "Um..." he took a step back, "please?"
The Hydra roared in defiance of the necromancer's magic and started running towards him. How dare a pony cast magic at him.
"Bone Marrow!" Twilight yelled from above, "run!"
The colt turned tail and sprinted through the forest. What had gone wrong? He had killed thousands from simply thinking or speaking that very same word. Was he weaker, somehow?
He growled as realization struck him like a rainbow-colored wave of magic, "To Tartarus with you, Celestia!"
Rainbow Dash held her hooves to her mouth and gasped. "Bone Marrow!"
Bone Marrow looked behind himself as he ran and shouted towards the hydra, "Die, you great big monster!"
The hydra didn't even seem to notice the spell.
The necromancer colt then decided that speed was clearly the key to not dying horribly yet again and ran faster through the jungle. Twilight and Rainbow Dash were far above the scene and kept track of Bone Marrow from the path of ash and rot that he carved through the foliage.
Did he need more power? Was he weakened by being in the statue for so long? Bone shook his head, this wasn't how he thought things would go at all.
The Hydra took a deep breath and shot out a torrent of fire at Bone Marrow, toasting the ends of his cloak and his hind legs. The colt shouted out in pain, his muscles tearing from being lit on fire. He tossed his cloak to the side, sad to see it go, but he also didn't want to run around with a burning cloak on his flank.
Another of the hydra's heads shot fire out at the necromancer, incinerating one of his legs.
Bone screamed out in pain and toppled head over hooves through the forest before slamming into a tree's trunk.
"Not again!" Bone hissed through clenched teeth. "Heal!"
His wounds were repairing themselves, but the icy-cold relief wasn't progressing fast enough. Bone hobbled onto his legs and tried to run, hoping that his wounds would mend before his muscles tore.
Twilight was horrified by what she was witnessing. She had encountered Hydras before, but none of them had injured her so grievously as they had Bone Marrow. Was it because she was an alicorn, or was it because she was an Element of Harmony? She shook her head; it didn't matter right now.
She started hurling bolts of lavender magic at the hydra's heads, attempting to get its attention.
"Over here, bad-breath!" Rainbow taunted from above, blowing raspberries at the hydra. "Pick on somepony your own size!"
The hydra was momentarily confused. Should it eat the flying ponies or the injured pony?
A larger bolt of magic made up the hydra's minds for it, as Twilight sent the Hydra flying with a massive blast of energy that caused a silhouette of ash behind the giant monster.
The hydra coughed, clouds of smoke coming from its many mouths.
"Twilight, look!" Rainbow pointed to the trail of death that was left behind in Bone Marrow's wake. He was far enough away now. "Let's get out of here!"
Twilight nodded and sent another bolt of magic to stagger the Hydra before following after her friend.
When Twilight and Rainbow Dash eventually caught up with Bone Marrow, he was leaning against an ashen stump. He was breathing heavily and nursing one of his legs. The fur was gone, his muscle tissue and bone exposed by the scorching fire of the hydra.
"Come on, Heal you stubborn leg!"
Twilight cleared her throat. "Do you want to tell us what that was?"
"Yeah! Why'd you go after a hydra?" Rainbow added.
Bone grimaced in pain. "I thought it would die, alright?"
The mare's ears folded down. This wasn't the time for scolding. Twilight pointed to Bone's injured leg. "Are you going to be okay? You've been saying a bunch of weird words that I don't understand lately. Are they spells?"
The colt was caught off guard for a moment before remembering a passage of the necromancy book he had read. "Tell me what you heard, Twilight."
"Eh... Morietur?"
He nodded. "I was telling the Hydra to die. For some reason, it didn't die."
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. "You thought that just telling something to die would make it die?"
"Why were you even trying to kill it in the first place?" Twilight inquired.
Bone sighed and his ears flattened. "That's never happened to me before. Everything else I've told to drop dead did as I told it to. I've done it--"
"Thousands of times, yeah, we heard you." Rainbow rolled her eyes, "try not to pick fights with hydras, please?"
The colt grumbled as his leg continued to slowly heal. "F-i-i-ine."
"Is that leg going to be okay to walk on?" Twilight and Rainbow Dash had sat down near Bone Marrow as his leg slowly healed. It looked like a steady progression of his muscles and skin growing back over the bone of his leg as charred flesh peeled off and fell to the ground.
Bone nodded. "I've been through a lot worse than this... but thanks."
Twilight raised an eyebrow, "Thanks for what?"
He gestured with a quick flick of his horn, "With the hydra. I'm so used to running off and confronting threats that it was more of a reflex than anything. Check the uniform, kill or ignore."
"The uniform?" Rainbow glanced at Twilight to be sure that she was equally confused. "Hydras don't have a uniform, Bone."
The wounded colt sighed, "I know that, but from my point of view I was in a massive battle only a day or so ago. I was directing a massive battle through a thousand eyes at a time to fight off The Bright Moon's attack on Canterlot. I didn't have time to think about things in much detail. Like I said, it came down to checking a uniform-- or in this case, seeing if the hydra was immune to my magic-- before deciding to kill or ignore."
"That's..." Twilight trailed off, not having the right words for the situation.
"I didn't know that I was weaker until I tried to fight that hydra." He pointed to his still healing leg, "this should've been completely healed while I was still running away from it, but here we are, waiting for my leg to mend itself back together at a snail's pace."
"Wait, you're weaker than you used to be?" Rainbow shook her head, "I saw you barreling through the jungle like it wasn't even a problem for you. You're saying that you were even stronger a thousand years ago?"
The necromancer leaned into the ashen tree stump behind him. "Whatever Celestia did to me with those rainbows made me weaker. I'm not even sure if I could raise a skeleton at this point, but at the same time..." He paused as if searching for something. "I don't hear the void anymore, so maybe that's a trade off?"
"The void?" Twilight pulled out her notes. "What do you mean by that?"
"The more I killed, the more ponies I consumed, the more the void called to me. It would tell me to kill more and more, it would make me aware of every beating heart for miles like a constant headache. It... well, it drove me insane."
"But you don't feel that now, right?" Rainbow was smiling, "maybe the Elements of Harmony did something good?"
Bone let out a huff of annoyance. "Maybe. I still don't like being this weak. If you two hadn't distracted the hydra and given me room to escape, I think I would be endlessly digesting in its belly right now." He held a hoof to the golden pocket watch around his neck. "Though I think some things could be worse than that..."
Rainbow tilted her head, "What's with that pocket watch, by the way? You've been poking at it ever since you woke up from that statue."
He pressed the pocket watch close to his fuzzy chest. "That depends; what are you two planning to do with me?" Bone shook his head, "It's pretty clear that I can't really fight either of you if it came down to it. I can't even protect myself now."
Twilight was even more concerned than she was before. "What do you mean by 'do with you'? I was originally going to take you to Ponyville and figure out what to do next. The cutie map sent us out here for a reason, but I'm not sure what reason that was. You really don't want to see Celestia and from what you've been saying, I doubt the two of you were ever friends, so..."
"Ponyville?" Bone smirked, "You're kidding, they actually named it that?"
Rainbow let out a pained groan of annoyance. "Yes, they named a town Ponyville. I don't know how many times--"
The necromancer held up a hoof, "No, I mean The Ponyville? I was there when Rich was talking about rebuilding Galloping Glades and he put that name in as a joke!"
"Rich?" Both mares asked.
"You mean Filthy Rich?" Twilight stopped herself and shook her head, "No, that wouldn't make any sense."
"Obscenely Rich, his ancestor I think." Bone's smile continued, "That's crazy. I was talking with him about a week ago."
"A week and a thousand years ago," Rainbow pointed out.
"Would you want to see the town?" Twilight offered a hoof to help Bone Marrow stand. "I'm pretty sure nopony is going to give you any trouble there."
Bone accepted the hoof and favored his injured leg. "It's not very far, is it? You said we were out in the middle of nowhere."
"We flew here in a day, but walking will take longer." Rainbow rolled her wings to stretch them. "I think Twilight could teleport us a little bit of the way, though."
The necromancer's eyes narrowed, "Wait, teleport? That sounds like magic, right?"
Twilight nodded, "I've perfected it down to an art!"
"This pocket watch of mine is... precious to me." Bone held it up in one of his hooves. "If we teleported, the pocket watch would be left behind. I can't let that happen."
"Then walking it is! Besides, I'll get a better look of all the different kinds of plant life around here, too."
Rainbow Dash groaned and shook her head. Why couldn't Bone Marrow have been a pegasus?
"So," Twilight piped up, "About that pocket watch of yours..."
The three had been walking through the jungle until midday and had stopped for a quick meal.
"Is it magical or something?" Twilight had her notes out again and flipped to a new page. "You said that teleporting would leave it behind, but I'm not sure how that's possible."
"It was a gift to me from Obscenely Rich for saving his life, and his castle." He held the pocket watch in his hoof, the chain still wrapped around his neck. "He said it was indestructible and that nothing would ever harm it. That means magic as well, and true to his word, nothing affects it. I refuse to lose it no matter what happens."
"I know it's a gift and all, but it must be pretty important to you if you don't want to leave it behind for anything." Rainbow was resting her hooves from the long walk. She was more used to flying and she took it down as a mental note to practice more galloping when she returned home.
"Like a loved one." Bone ominously replied.
"Don't want to talk about it?" Rainbow asked while massaging one of her cramping legs.
He shook his head. "Maybe later, but not now."
"Do you know how the watch is indestructible?" Twilight had finished drawing a picture of Bone's pocket watch. "I don't think I've seen engravings like that on anything else before."
"Rich told me they were runes that were extremely expensive to carve, but he didn't really explain how they worked."
"Would you mind if I gave it a look? Just to record everything in detail-- I promise not to do anything harmful."
Bone Marrow shook his head, "Nopony is laying a hoof on it."
Twilight held up a hoof, "Okay, okay. Just curious is all."
Bone had to admit, it was nice to be able to walk with ponies for once. They didn't seem to mind the skulls in his pupils either, and Rainbow Dash had made a comment about how 'cool' his glowing eyes were. It was a pretty stark contrast from being hunted down all the time.
Aside from that, Bone was looking forward to seeing Ponyville. He wondered if there would be any other ponies that he would recognize, at least by their family's name. Did all the families survive, or maybe they changed their names?
Twilight had been asking him a lot of questions about Necromancy as well, though he was reluctant to give any details. He was already wary of alicorns after Celestia betrayed him. The thought of an alicorn with his spells was enough to dissuade him from ever letting on about what he could really do.
As the three made their way closer towards the heart of Equestria, Bone became nervous. Galloping Glades had been a short distance away from Canterlot. If Celestia knew that he was going to be in Ponyville, what would stop her from flying down to seal him away in stone again?
He shook his head. He didn't want to bring up that question with Twilight or Rainbow Dash. It would be better if he prepared himself for a conflict like that rather than let the two mares know how worried he was. Besides, what would be the point of worrying if he couldn't do anything about the outcome?
He had better things to worry about. His friend, Scenic Sights, for example. Bone held his watch close to him, promising his friend that she would be among the living again. He had sealed her soul away inside of the pocket watch to prevent anything bad from happening to her, but during the battle of Canterlot he was powerless to stop a batpony of the Bright Moon from driving a blade through her heart.
Her soul was safe, however. The watch made sure of that through his thousand-year petrification. All it would take to bring her back was enough power... and something else. The books he had read were vague on the subject.
The first thing Bone knew was that consuming meat gave him more power. Not eating it directly, but by using his magic. The meat could be from animals or from ponies, it didn't really matter too much. Everything from fur to bone could be consumed by his magic in the blink of an eye, though he worried that the void would return with the more power he gathered.
Bone Marrow didn't want to be like the necromancers that had come before him, maddened and consumed with power only to face Princess Celestia in a final battle that ended with them being thrown into a volcano to die a final death.
He idly wondered why Celestia hadn't thrown him into a volcano while he was a statue...
The damp and swampy jungle gave way to rolling fields of green grass, swaying evergreen trees and the chittering of squirrels. Bone Marrow smiled. It was a very nice break from the horrible smells of the swamp to finally breathing in a breath of fresh air.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash were tired, of course. The walk had been a long one, and Twilight was more used to flying and teleporting everywhere rather than walking. Rainbow simply loved to fly as well, so she had been skipping leg day for some time now.
"Finally," Rainbow huffed, "I'm gonna go to my house and pass out. I'll see you tomorrow, Twi." She gave a tired salute and flew off, her body drooping as her wings carried her off towards her home in the clouds.
"See you, Rainbow!" Twilight waved as her friend shrank in the distance.
"So, Ponyville." Bone briefly pointed to the town further along the road they walked. "Anypony going to freak out and wave pitchforks at me without my hood covering my eyes? I know you and Rainbow Dash don't mind, but..."
She shook her head, "I'm pretty sure most ponies are going to think that your eyes are some kind of magical cosmetic. If anything, you might get a few jokes here and there, but everypony in Ponyville is pretty welcoming. Pinkie Pie especially."
Bone raised an eyebrow. "Pie? I think I've heard that name before. Are they related to Frosty Pie?"
"Maybe?" Twilight shrugged as the two neared the outskirts of town. "I'm sure Pinkie could spend some time with her photo albums if you're really curious."
"Anypony else that you think I should know?" Bone was feeling vulnerable from his lack of a hood to conceal his face.
"Well you've already met Rainbow Dash. There's Fluttershy; she lives in a cottage on the edge of town. Applejack, who manages the family applefarm. Rarity, she runs a fashion boutique and... well, now that I think of it, she'll probably want to design something for you since you're new to town."
"I don't have any bits on me to pay her for something like that." Bone shook his head. "Maybe if I can find some, though."
"She does it for free at least once for everypony. I wouldn't worry about it too much." Twilight scratched her chin, "There's also Starlight Glimmer. She lives in my castle with myself and my friend Spike."
The name sounded somewhat familiar. He had met a dragon named Skewer while he was in Canterlot before the battle took place. She was giving one of her eggs as a 'gift' to Celestia as part of a treaty's demands. He would have to ask later when he could be more certain.
"You have a castle?" Bone decided to switch subjects, "You mean that big crystal treehouse over there?"
Twilight nodded with a proud smile. "Yep!"
The necromancer colt had some experience with castles, and the one in front of him left him feeling... disappointed. "How are you supposed to defend a castle like that? A single catapult could knock out the bottom and send the whole thing toppling over..."
Twilight grumbled but let the subject drop. She didn't feel like arguing about architecture after having walked however many miles through swamp and jungle to get home. What she really wanted was to go home, have some tea, hug Spike, and fall asleep on her bed. Bathing could come later when she didn't feel like a sack of cabbages.
"Let's just get home, okay?" Twilight picked up her pace and Bone Marrow followed along. "From everything you've told me, it's a lot to take in. Make yourself comfortable in the meantime and get to know everypony. I'll know what to do in the morning."
Bone nodded, "Alright, but I have a quick question."
"What question is that?"
"Do you have any butcher shops in Ponyville? I could help out in exchange for... bits."
Twilight paused and studied Bone's face. "Why a butcher shop specifically?"
"I'm... familiar with slaughtering things?" Bone smiled nervously.
The alicorn shuddered, her mental images of a battle happening in Canterlot coming to the front of her mind. "Yeah, alright. I can see that." Her tail flicked and she began walking once more. "I think Fluttershy should have some meat in a cooler at her cottage. She takes care of all kinds of animals, including carnivores."
Bone smirked, "I'll have to meet her sometime, then."
Things were progressing better than Bone Marrow had hoped. A place to sleep, ponies that probably wouldn't hate him for existing, and the possibility of meat in the near future. He'd get back on his hooves, gather enough power to resurrect his friend, and... well, he'd have to figure out what to do from there, but his first goal was bringing back his best friend from the dead.
Twilight Sparkle lead the way through Ponyville as Bone Marrow took in the sights. No guards, no tower or palisades, no moats or spike pits to fend off a charge...
His eyes narrowed. The ponies walking around weren't even wearing armor. Not even a cloak to shield themselves from the weather! No swords, no crossbows or cudgels... He shook his head. Either bandits were truly no longer a concern, or they didn't dare attack a town with an alicorn's castle in the middle of it.
It might've been crystalline and poorly designed, but the true threat was one of being blasted apart by an alicorn's magic. Celestia could control the power of the sun. She could call it down as a great beam to incinerate anypony who annoyed or angered her. Princess Luna, at least in the stories Bone Marrow had been read as a small foal, was able to invade the dreams of generals or leaders to kill them in their sleep. A mistress of dreams able to defeat specters of imagination and the most horrible of creations.
What, then, was Twilight capable of? She had said she was the Princess of Friendship... but should she decide to use her own powers against others, how would they manifest? Bone Marrow put the thought into the back of his mind as the town became more aware of him.
Ponies looked up from their daily tasks, their routines jostled by the appearance of a newcomer.
"Hey Twilight!" One of the ponies called out, "New friend of yours?"
The weary alicorn put on a friendly smile to offset the bags under her eyes. "Yep! Everypony, this is Bone Marrow. He'll be staying with me in the castle for a while."
A small crowd was gathering, making the necromancer colt nervous. He didn't like crowds and the threat they represented. His tail flicked and his fur bristled as he sorely wished for the small comfort of having a hood to shield his eyes. Time and again he had been ousted as a necromancer for the glowing skulls in his pupils. Now, without any protection and being weakened from the Elements of Harmony, he was put on edge.
A pony reached out a friendly hoof. "Nice to meet you, Bone Marrow! I like the eyes." The pony winked and smirked.
Alright, Bone Marrow admitted, that was not the reaction he had been expecting. He shook hooves with the pony and was startled as others joined to greet him with equal kindness.
Maybe this was Twilight's power? Forcing ponies to get along with one another...
"You look a little chilly there, Bone Marrow." Another pony, a mare this time, pointed towards one of the town's buildings in the distance. "Rarity should be able to fix you up something, being new and all."
"Hey, Applejack." Twilight smiled and stood next to the orange mare wearing a strange hat. "This is Bone Marrow. He was what the Cutie Map was worried about and he'll be staying with me for a while. I really need to get some sleep, though. We fought a hydra on the way back."
Bone Marrow briefly grimaced at the reminder of his miss-step.
"Ah, that's not a problem, Twi." She pat her friend on her side. "You go home and get some rest. I'll give your friend here a tour around the town."
"Do you have a minute, Applejack?" Twilight smiled and glanced at Bone Marrow. "Just a few things to keep in mind is all."
The colt grumbled. This was different than he had been expecting. He wasn't surprised that nopony knew who he was, given how reviled he had been a thousand years ago. Nopony would ever consider adding the name of a necromancer to a town or a town's history. Perhaps it was better that he was forgotten? More than anything else, Bone was relieved that ponies hadn't been fleeing in terror from seeing his eyes.
"How'd you get those, by the way?" Another pony asked. She was bright pink with a disheveled floofy mane. "The skulls in your eyes, I mean. They look familiar..."
Bone leaned away from the pink pony. There were enough ponies around him as it was, and it was getting to be more than overwhelming to him.
The pony's eyes widened with understanding and she put a comforting hoof around Bone's withers. "I know that look anywhere. Let's get you someplace quiet, okay?"
Never Trust Strangers.
Bone shook his head and moved out of the pony's grasp. "No thanks. I'll find my own way out of this mess while Twilight and her friend talk with each other." He then grumbled, "I'm not exactly hard to find without my cloak."
"Pinkie Pie!" Twilight called out, ushering the pink pony closer. "Come over here, I want to have a talk really quick."
Pie? Bone's wariness shifted to realization. She was still a stranger, but his alarm was eased by the familiarity of her name.
"Okie dokie!" The pink pony cheerfully replied, leaping over the crowd of ponies to effortlessly land next to her alicorn friend.
Bone's eyebrow raised and his mouth hung open. Nopony else was batting an eyelid at what had just occurred, but to Bone Marrow, the mare had just performed something he was certain only pegasus or acrobats could pull off.
When he noticed ponies were staring, he closed his mouth. It was time to get out of here, to find someplace quieter without the hustle and bustle of pastel ponies everywhere. He was no longer small enough to weave through the legs of the ponies around him, so he opted to maneuver through the crowd whenever he found an opening.
If Twilight needed to find him, she had an entire map dedicated to tracking where he was. The concept was irritating to think of, along with the lack of privacy it implied, but it also gave him some measure of freedom to wander around without being directly watched at all times.
Finally, after roughly an hour's work, Bone Marrow had managed to find a place of peace and quiet. A small house built in a tree in the outskirts of Ponyville. The house seemed to be built for even smaller ponies than the foal-sized ponies of the current age, but he was able to fit inside well enough. His eyes caused the walls to glow a soft blue as he turned in place, attempting to find a suitable area to lay down and rest. He felt like a cat for a moment as he took everything into consideration.
He might not need to take breaks or rest like a normal pony, but his mind was still as weary as any muscle. It had been several days since he broke free of his stone prison and could do with a nap. An abandoned house in a tree seemed as good a place as any other that he'd used before.
Bone Marrow ended up laying down in the center of the house's floor, his head pointed towards the front door. He sorely missed his cloak at a time like this. It had been a blanket of safety to him in more ways than one.
One last time before resting his eyes, he checked to ensure his locket was still there. That the soul of his friend was still safe. He smiled, as it still was. Nopony had stolen it when he was in the large crowd. No pickpocket had come by to steal what he truly valued.
Bone Marrow was startled awake by the soft voice of a filly. "Hey mister, are you okay?"
He immediately jumped to his hooves, his horn lighting in alarm as he noticed three fillies backing away from him. At least he assumed they were fillies. They were roughly half his size and equally alarmed.
One of them, a yellowish pony with a red mane, seemed confused at Bone's behavior. "We ain't gonna hurt you. I'm just more worried now of what'd make a grown stallion like yourself so jittery."
Another filly, an orange pegasus with a purple mane, pointed at Bone's face. "Whoa! Those eyes are cool! Do they glow like that all the time?"
The third filly, cream colored with a curled purple and pink mane, looked at Bone's flank. "Are you here for a Cutie Mark problem?"
This was entirely not what Bone Marrow had been expecting to have been woken up to. Maybe a sword at his neck or a spell that was half a second away from immolating him. "Um..."
The first filly raised her eyebrow. "Are you homeless?"
Bone smiled nervously, "It's complicated?"
She then extended a hoof. "My name's Applebloom. These two are my friends, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle."
He shook Applebloom's hoof.
"What's your name?" Sweetie Belle asked innocently.
"I'm Bone Marrow." He waited a moment to see what happened, but only one showed a hint of recognition.
Applebloom squinted at Bone Marrow to study him further. "Bone Marrow, huh?"
"Yes?" The large colt replied. "Is that a problem?"
"See, I know I've heard that name somewhere. Maybe I've seen it?" Applebloom scratched her chin. "I think I know somepony who might wanna meet you, Mister Marrow."
He already didn't like where this was going. "I'm sorry about sleeping in your house, okay? I didn't know it was occupied still and the door wasn't locked, so..."
Sweetie Belle giggled into her hoof. "Silly, this is our clubhouse! Well, technically this is where we help ponies that have cutie mark problems."
"Do you have a cutie mark problem?" Scootaloo pointed to Bone's flank. "The last cutie mark we saw that had a skull on it turned out okay."
"The archaeologist one, right?" Applebloom nodded, "Yeah, her parents were worried she was gonna be a pirate or somethin'."
Bone Marrow laughed. He had been worried for a moment, but the thought of a pirate filly caught him by surprise.
The three fillies raised eyebrows of concern at the necromancer in front of them.
He held up a hoof, "Sorry, I just wasn't expecting that answer." Bone had to admit, the fillies didn't seem as big of a threat as he had thought a few moments ago. Still, it paid to be vigilant. "Really, though, I think I should be going. The Princess of Friendship is probably sending out her guards to drag me to her castle right now."
Now the fillies were laughing.
"What? Was it something I said?"
Sweetie Belle shook her head, "Twilight doesn't have guards to drag anypony anyplace! If she wants to talk with you, she's more likely to just teleport in front of you."
Scootaloo deepened her voice to mimic an imagined gruff guard. "I am Sir Diligence and I'm here to drag you away to the dungeons of Friendship! Raah!"
In Bone Marrow's experience, the guards he had encountered behaved nothing like that. He stayed silent, however. That was over a thousand years ago and he didn't want to ruin any foalhoods. He settled for an uneasy smile as the fillies continued to play-act.
Eventually, when the fillies had settled down, Bone Marrow told them that he would be heading off to Twilight's castle. They offered to guide him there, but he smiled and said that it was very hard to miss a building that towers over the whole town.
The fillies conceded and wished him well.
Bone Marrow then headed in the opposite direction of the castle. He wasn't ready to go there, not yet. He had been told of a cottage on the outskirts of town. A place where he could find meat and bone to consume with his magic. Fuel to give himself some semblance of safety.
Of all the things that the necromancer had been expecting, a butterscotch colored pegasus with a pink mane wrestling with a grizzly bear was the last thing on his mind. Or... was it wrestling? The pegasus didn't seem to be in any trouble, though the bear was certainly not having a good time, judging from the roars.
Bone Marrow cautiously approached, his horn alight with the dark blue of his magic, just in case the worst were to happen. He didn't know if his magic was powerful enough to kill a bear from how weak he imagined himself to have become, but there was always the chance that things could work in his favor for once.
When he galloped to the scene of the noise, the pegasus had clearly won her battle with the grizzly. The bear was groaning and growling as the pegasus kneaded its back and coo'd happy noises into its ear.
"Eh... excuse me?" Bone Marrow called out. "Are you Fluttershy?"
The pony's ears perked up and her eyes were wide.
"I didn't mean to startle you!" Bone quickly added.
She leaned down and whispered something into the bear's ear before launching from its back towards Bone. With bird-like grace, she landed a few feet in front of the white colt.
"Yes, I'm Fluttershy. Do you need help with something?" Her voice was soft, like the wind whispering through the trees, and it caught Bone Marrow off guard.
"U-um... not really? I mean yes!" He coughed into his hoof, getting a hold of himself. "I was told that you might have some meat available, but I don't have any bits to pay you. Maybe I could do something in exchange?"
She pointed to the top of Bone's head with a kind smile. "Your horn is still charged."
"Oh!" The magic went out in an instant like a fire doused in water. "Sorry, I just didn't expect to see somepony wrestling with a grizzly bear."
"Mister Bear? Don't worry about him, he's a sweetheart." She looked behind herself and waved to the bear in the distance, who returned the gesture with a wave of his own. Fluttershy then spoke to Bone Marrow. "Do you have an animal that needs to eat? I know most ponies don't like the sight of blood or cut meat, but some of the animals I care for aren't able to take care of themselves."
Bone smirked, he had seen a lot worse than that in his time. "No, it's not for an animal. I need it for my magic."
Fluttershy's ears folded down. "Y-your magic? I'm sorry, did I hear that right?"
"Eh... yes?" This looked like it was going bad, Bone thought.
The pegasus sighed and shook her head. "It's not for anything bad, is it?"
Maybe not everypony had forgotten about necromancers? "Well... I can use the meat for a whole bunch of things. I can heal wounds, for example."
That got Fluttershy's attention. "You can heal injuries? You mean like a fairy tale?" She was more curious than suspicious. "How much do you need?"
"How... much are you willing to give?" Bone replied with an uneasy smile.
"Wait here for a moment, please." Fluttershy then moved away from Bone and went around the back of her cottage, presumably to a cellar.
Bone tapped his hoof to the ground. Why was he on edge? Why was he looking over his shoulder so often? All he had to do was wait for Fluttershy to return. Time and again he had seen evidence of no bandits, of no thieves or double-crossers. No knights that were hunting for him, no shrieks of horror when a pony saw his eyes. If anything, ponies seemed to think that he was a little bit strange, but nothing menacing.
Then why, he thought, do I always expect the worst?
When Fluttershy returned, she was carrying a basket that looked to be filled with a few choice cuts of meat. Some with ribs, some with bone, but all of it was uncooked. She moved over, casual and calm, to Bone Marrow. The various animals she tended to looked at the meat as if it was their feeding time, but she explained to them in some strange manner of speaking that everything was fine and that their meals weren't ready yet.
"Is this enough?" Fluttershy wondered. "I'm very curious about your healing magic."
Bone looked over the meat in front of him. It looked to be about... He stopped himself. Was he really comparing amounts of meat to the size of ponies? A stallion or a mare? The Battle of Canterlot had changed him in ways that he didn't fully understand, but if this was a symptom of it, then he worried what else had warped his mind.
He nodded with a weary smile. "This should be more than enough, thank you, Fluttershy."
Bone's horn was set alight with magic once again, and with a single word, the meat in the basket began burning away to ash with an icy blue flame.
Consume.
Fluttershy's eyes widened in fascination as the meat vanished before her eyes. It was like a silent flame. No heat, no crackling or snapping, just... an eerie whisper as meat turned to dust.
Bone Marrow closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh of relief. He felt different. More powerful, yet at the same time... empty. Not the same emptiness that the void had given him, not the hunger for blood and flesh and bone, but something else. Was it closer to actual hunger? He barely remembered what that had felt like. He didn't really need to eat, after all, not physical things like sandwiches or salads. Meat, however, had remained a constant. A thousand years and probably more to come.
"Hello?" Fluttershy calmly asked. "Are you okay?"
His eyes opened and glowed brightly. "I'm more than okay, Fluttershy," Bone smiled, "Thank you."
Fluttershy hadn't seen anything like this before in her life, but she was also wary of Bone Marrow not coming through with his part of the deal. She wasn't one to be a doormat to other ponies. Not anymore, at least.
"You said that you were going to use your magic to heal, remember?" She attempted to be as assertive as possible while not scaring Bone Marrow.
The necromancer nodded. "What do you need me to heal?"
Fluttershy and Bone Marrow shared a smile of understanding. Bone Marrow had found a pony he could trust, even if it was only for a supply of meat in exchange for services rendered.
Fluttershy opened the door for Bone Marrow to walk into her cottage. There were several kinds of birds with little sweaters on them to prevent them from flying with injured wings. Also in attendance were a few bruised squirrels, a swine with a missing leg, a raccoon with a blind eye and a snake that had lost its tongue.
The animals quickly swarmed to their caretaker and Fluttershy gave each of them a gentle embrace. "Anything you can do to help would be very appreciated, Bone Marrow." Her voice was soft and calming as ever, a far cry from the harshness that Bone was used to.
He nodded with a relaxed smile. Crowds of ponies set him on edge, but crowds of animals? He felt that he had enough magic to defend himself now if anything were to go wrong, but he was very reluctant to cause any trouble in the town with an alicorn so close by.
Fluttershy set down the animals and gave them some room. "It's just for a little bit, okay? Don't worry, Bone Marrow will help you." She glanced at the stallion-sized colt, hoping that he wouldn't make her into a liar.
His eyes glowed as brightly as his horn when he uttered the word in his mind: Heal.
The magic wrapped each of the critters in an icy blue flame that was cold to the touch. The snake rattled with annoyance at the drop in temperature and the birds fluffed up their feathers, but soon the animals came to an understanding. Their wounds were slowly mending. A chilly progression of magic like a slow-growing wave crept over their bodies. The snake yawned, its tongue growing in front of its own face as it flickered and dipped from its mouth.
The birds, now able to move their wings, struggled against the sweaters that had been so carefully crafted for them. The raccoon blinked with both eyes and chittered happily, holding its little hands close to its face to marvel at its newfound vision.
The swine stuck out its leg and oinked with cheer as it grew from a stump to a brand new appendage, just as the pig had remembered it. The squirrels hopped onto the back of the pig and played with its ears, happy to be able to move without feeling pain.
Fluttershy held her hooves to her mouth in awe of what she was witnessing. "I... I've never seen anything like this!"
When the spell ended, Bone Marrow was left feeling drained. His glowing eyes had dimmed and he felt tired. What was going on? He should've felt even more powerful from what he had just done! Yet, on the other hoof, he didn't hear the demands of the void. There was no voices in his head, no thumping of heartbeats to guide him to another source of meat.
He shook his head and took a seat on a nearby chair, resting his head in his hooves with a weary sigh. "That took a lot more out of me than I was expecting..."
"Do..." Fluttershy looked towards the entrance of her cottage, "Do you need more meat? I wouldn't want you to leave feeling tired after all the help you've just given to these poor animals."
Bone Marrow didn't want to push his luck, but he was hungry. Not the all consuming hunger of the void, but more of a rumbling in his stomach. Did he need to eat again after all?
Fluttershy smirked, "I'll take that sound as a yes. I'll be right back!"
The pegasus closed the door behind her as she went out to the cooler underneath her cottage. It gave Bone Marrow a chance to think and to breathe. What was going on? Was it the rainbow that Celestia had struck him with?
At that moment, the chair he was sitting on began speaking to him in a deep, witty tone. "Making your own moves on Fluttershy, I see."
Bone Marrow metaphorically jumped out of his own fur and leaped out of the chair, his horn glowing faintly with the little bit of energy he had left.
The chair, for its part, morphed out of its wooden confines into some massive chimera of pony, griffon, dragon, and other creatures Bone Marrow wasn't entirely familiar with.
"Oh, don't give me that look." The creature waved a hand dismissively at the necromancer in front of him. "You should know who I am without an introduction, but seeing as you're of a very rare breed, I'll make an exception." The horrid amalgamation of different animals placed a griffon's claw to his scaled and snake-like chest. "I am Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, and a close friend of Fluttershy's."
Discord bowed only briefly to Bone Marrow before his body whipped forward like a snake and coiled around him. He raised an eye to Bone Marrow in a fashion similar to a dragon staring sideways at him. "What is your business with her, Necromancer?"
The colt's throat suddenly felt dry. "I... uh, I was looking for m-meat, and--"
Discord scoffed, "So timid and meek! And here I thought the necromancer that had slain thousands of ponies and griffon would've had a stronger backbone. Though you do remind me of a certain somepony..."
Bone Marrow's eye twitched from the jab at his pride. "I'm not here to hurt anypony, Discord. If you'd unwrap yourself from my body, I'd be glad to leave."
The spirit shook a finger at the necromancer in his grip. "Ah-ah, not just yet. I want to be absolutely certain of something before I let you go..." His eyes began to swirl, spinning in his head before becoming a whirlpool of color.
Bone Marrow growled. "Discord," His vision shifted to that of the draconequiss that had coiled around him as he watched his own eyes become unfocused. "I'm not going to play this game with you, no matter who you are!"
Discord shivered, his body feeling like ice from the Necromancer's intrusion. "Oh-ho! There's the spine I remember seeing!" He gleefully clapped his mis-matched hands together, "Here I was worried that you'd lost all your inner spark when Celestia blasted you with those cursed Elements of Harmony." He practically spat the name out from holding so much disdain.
"Release me." Bone coldly demanded.
The spirit of chaos scoffed, "Please, you don't scare me, Bone Marrow." He flicked the colt's snoot and Bone saw his body flinch through Discord's eyes. "For now, try not to give into that hunger of yours. I saw what it did last time."
Discord then smacked the top of Bone's head, causing his vision to return to his own body. "Ta-ta for now, young necromancer. I'll be keeping an eye," He plucked his left eye from its socket and held it in front of Bone's face, "On you."
The draconequiss then vanished from sight in a flash of white light just as Fluttershy returned from the cooler.
"Bone Marrow? I brought your-- Oh... my." She set down two baskets of fresh meat upon seeing Bone's disturbed face. "Are you okay?"
"I... just met some thing that called itself Discord?" He shook his head, "I think that's probably the strangest thing that has ever happened to me."
Fluttershy sighed with weariness. "I'll have to talk with him later about that, whenever he decides to pop in again." She rested a comforting hoof on Bone's back and pointed to the baskets. "I brought you more meat for all the help you've given me."
Bone Marrow consumed the meat without even looking at it, his mind still spinning from his encounter with Discord.
The necromancer colt figured it was time to head to Twilight's castle, though he dreaded the thought of living under the roof of another alicorn's supposed generosity. When he had first met with Celestia, she had promised a meeting of neutrality and peace. It was only when he arrived that he learned that his rule of Never Trusting Strangers also applied to the supposed protectors of Equestria. She had subjected him to a test of the Element's design, and the failure for passing it would have been death by volcanic immolation. Thankfully, the Elements of Harmony found a few traits to spare the necromancer.
Now, however, he was wondering what kind of test Twilight would come up with in order for him to be in her castle. On top of that, his thoughts were consumed by what Discord had told him. Had he been watching the Battle of Canterlot? From where? Bone was certain he would've noticed a creature like that on the battlefield.
What was he looking for? It couldn't have been what the spirit claimed; 'his fighting spirit'. Bone had told and been told enough lies to spot one so blatant. Was he looking for the void? Maybe Discord was trying to figure out how powerful he was after being struck by the Elements?
Discord knew he was a necromancer, and he also knew Bone's name without even asking. He'd mentioned Bone's hunger as well. It was more common knowledge a thousand years ago that Necromancers were consumed with an endless need to consume flesh, blood and bone, but now?
Bone shook his head. This was worrisome, but the spirit had also claimed to be a friend of Fluttershy's. The pegasus herself had confirmed as much when she said that she was going to have a talk with him, but Bone couldn't imagine how a pony like Fluttershy would have any sway with a spirit of chaos.
When Bone Marrow finally arrived at the poorly designed crystalline castle of friendship, he was greeted by a small dragon leaving through the front door while carrying a multitude of boxes stacked three times higher than his own body. Bone briefly marveled at how the dragon was able to see, let alone the fact that it walked around so casually through the town.
"Excuse me," Bone called out to the small dragon, "Do I need to knock on the front door, or does Twilight have a butler?"
The dragon stopped and faced to look at the stallion-sized colt in front of him. "Eh? Oh! You must be the pony that Twilight was talking about. You should be able to walk right in. I'd shake your hoof, but my claws are full right now. I should be back in a couple minutes. Talk then?"
Bone Marrow nodded, "Till then, Spike."
The dragon seemed surprised. "You knew my name?"
"You're the only dragon in Ponyville that I've seen so far, and the only dragon is named Spike." Bone smirked, "I won't hold you up anymore though. Good luck with those boxes."
"Oh, right!" Spike adjusted his grip on the leaning tower of mystery, "See ya!"
Bone then watched as the dragon shuffled off around the corner of a building, his two legs carrying him faster than he would've expected. "This place is strange," Bone sighed. "Alicorns, dragons, spirits of chaos... what's next?"
The door to Twilight's castle opened to reveal another pony that Bone hadn't met. A unicorn mare with a light purple coat and a mane with deeper purple and stripes of teal. She took one look at Bone Marrow and froze in place.
"You're here for Twilight too?" Bone innocently inquired.
In the span it took to blink, the mare was gone in a cloud of smoke. He looked around for her, but she was nowhere to be found. "Eh... okay?" Bone shook his head with only a slight amount of disappointment, "That's not the worst reaction I've ever seen to someone seeing me."
He pulled the door open and stepped inside to an extravagant castle of crystal. Beautifully decorated, filled with tapestries and paintings of Twilight and her friends, as well as soft carpeting to tone down the clip-clop of his hooves on the hard floor. The castle seemed more expansive than Celestia's and he was glad to see a lack of marble and gold trim. He was worried that he would have flashbacks of that double-crosser's castle while he was here, but this place seemed more welcoming, somehow.
"Hello?" Bone called out into the castle. "I'm here, Twilight."
There was no reply. Perhaps the castle was larger than he had expected? The necromancer began wandering the halls with the slight irritation that a nearly empty stomach could bring. He very much doubted that a pony like Twilight would have any meat on hoof, given that she directed him towards Fluttershy, but a colt could dream.
He heard the approaching clacks of hooves from behind one of the doors. Soon, Twilight and the vanishing mare from before opened the doors and was confronted by Bone Marrow.
"There you are!" Twilight announced with relief. "I was worried that you got lost."
Bone gestured to the immense castle around them. "This place is hard to miss."
"Oh, right." Her ears folded for only a moment before she introduced the mare to her left. "This is Starlight Glimmer, one of my friends that lives with me in the castle. I mentioned her to you before, remember?"
The large colt nodded, "She's also very fast from what I just saw. Vanished in the blink of an eye when she saw me."
"Sorry!" Starlight loudly replied, "It's just... I've been doing a lot of reading while Twilight was away and I wasn't expecting you to be so... tall?"
Reading? Bone was intrigued. "You mean that there are stories of me?"
Starlight nodded, "They were all covered in dust and left at the, um, restricted section of Princess Celestia's library, but..."
Twilight applied hoof to face. "What did I tell you about breaking and entering?"
"Hey, I'm just trying to keep informed about the pony that the cutie map was freaking out about!"
Bone Marrow waited for the two to finish arguing.
"Maybe you could warn me next time?" Twilight sighed and lowered her hoof. "I appreciate you going out of your way for this, but I'm sure that Princess Celestia would've let you into the archives if you had asked her, rather than snuck your way in."
"I'm not on the best of terms with her, remember?" Starlight remembered that there was a necromancer in front of her and put on her biggest smile, however forced it appeared. "Hello, Bone Marrow!" Her smile faded and she presented a hoof to shake, "Nice meeting you."
Bone could tell that the gesture wasn't done out of sincerity, but out of fear. He shook her hoof anyway, huffing out a thin cloud of icy fog from annoyance. "A pleasure."
"Do you want me to show you around the castle?" Twilight offered to lead the way with a hoof that pointed down one of the halls. "I have a room picked out for you and everything."
The necromancer's glowing eyes glanced at Starlight, who shrank only the tiniest amount under his gaze. "Sure, Twilight. That'd be great."
As Bone and Twilight walked away from Starlight, the mare let out a sigh of relief. From everything she had read about Bone Marrow, she was astounded that the 'colt' hadn't done something violent yet. Maybe he was biding his time? She shut her eyes closed and shook her head. Was that what ponies thought of her? She had been stealing cutie marks from ponies little over a year ago. Maybe she shouldn't be so judgmental?
One thing was certain. She needed somepony to talk to, and only one came to her mind. Trixie Lulamoon.
Twilight opened a door and showed Bone Marrow his room. "I know it's a little sparse right now, but I'm sure you can find things to fill it up with. You've got a bed, a dresser, a mirror and a few brushes, cleaning supplies, a view of the lake through those windows, and a book in case you can't get any sleep."
Bone Marrow was reminded of the room that Celestia had given him in her castle. Well, less of a room, more of a very polished prison cell. Sure there had been double doors and the room was lined with gold, but there had been guards outside that watched his every move.
"Are there going to be guards?" Bone asked of Twilight rather abruptly.
Twilight's brow furrowed in confusion. "Guards? It's just myself, Spike and Starlight in here most of the time. Everypony else comes to visit every now and then, but that's about as full as this place gets unless it's a holiday."
No guards? Interesting. "Any curfews or forbidden areas I should know of?"
She shook her head with an amused smile. "No, Bone Marrow. Nothing like that to worry about. Make yourself at home, okay? I have to go check on Starlight to make sure she's alright. I think I was a little harsh on her."
Twilight gave Bone Marrow a pat on the back as she left.
Bone Marrow, now confronted with luxury and free time, had no idea what to do. Wander aimlessly through the castle? Explore Ponyville? He shook his head. He couldn't go back to Fluttershy's so soon after having only just left, but he remained hungry as ever. Maybe he could find a kitchen?
Bone Marrow had been wandering through the halls of Twilight's Castle for some time now. Each hallway mirrored another, making the entire place seem like an endless maze. If not for the tapestries and different carpets, he would've sworn that he had passed the same hall at least a dozen times.
Wouldn't it make sense to put a sign outside each of the doors? 'Here is the kitchen, here is the bathroom,' things like that.
The colt's stomach rumbled. He had realized that his hunger wasn't one of magical need, but of physical. Did he really need to eat again? It had been so long. His time in the Mines of Scoria where a few months had passed, his time wandering the land and from when he was killed, twice, by a bandit. Then the other times he had been too busy to sit down and have a meal if it wasn't for the maddening demands of the void.
The void... it was still curiously silent. It was like Bone Marrow was missing something, not an old friend, but the familiar comfort of knowing where it was. The silent gnawing on his mind and the unending thumps of every heartbeat for miles around. Now there was only silence in his mind. Silence and the constant demand that he actually eat something for once.
"Maybe here?" Bone Marrow opened a crystalline doorway and found another empty bedroom. He slumped with a sigh, "This place is too big for it's own good. At least Celestia's castle had guards to tell you where to go."
He closed the door and continued onward through the castle. Doorway after doorway, hall after hall, painting after painting.
The colt paused. Getting a better look at the paintings, he noticed that something about them was wrong. The detail on them alone would've been enough to give somepony a medal! The colors, the lack of a single brush stroke... the texture?
"What in Tartarus?" Bone Marrow blinked at the painting on the wall as if it would answer him. When it didn't he shook his head. "This 'thousand years' thing is creepy..."
Finally, joyously, he found a room resembling a kitchen. It felt like he had been wandering for hours, but the unending demands of hunger made time pass far more slowly in his mind's eye. In reality, it had been little more than fifteen minutes since his encounter with the detailed paintings on the wall, and now he was staring at the glorious sight of a head of lettuce on the table.
Just sitting there, waiting to be sliced up or taken. Bone Marrow paused. Was this one of Twilight's tests? To see if he was a thief? He shook his head. Twilight had told Bone to make himself at home, so why did he feel like he was being watched all of a sudden?
Bone jumped when another door to the kitchen opened with a bang. Spike had wandered through, looking as casual as ever. Maybe he could ask the dragon for some help?
The necromancer cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Spike?"
"Aah!" The dragon yelped. "Whoa! Bone Marrow? You startled me there!"
Bone held up a hoof and smiled apologetically, "I didn't mean to! Sorry."
After Spike recovered, he walked over to Bone. "Do you need something?"
He nodded, "Yes... eh, I haven't eaten in a long while. Would you mind if I ate that head of lettuce over there?"
Spike's brow raised as he looked over to the vegetable. "You just wanna eat a whole lettuce? No bread or flowers or anything?"
"Eh..." Bone didn't really know how to reply to that. Was it strange of him to simply eat some lettuce?
"Tell you what. I'll make you something to eat, and you go relax over in one of the reading rooms. Deal?" Spike was smiling.
Bone's ears folded down. "Where would that be? I've been wandering through the castle completely lost for what feels like ages now."
"Second door on your left when you leave the kitchen."
The stallion-sized colt nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Spike."
Bone found a chair that was sized correctly for him, for once. Then again, everything in this strange 'future' was scaled down. It was all foal-sized! That meant that ponies mistook him for a stallion, which he didn't mind for now.
He rested his chin on his hoof. Would he keep growing? Probably, considering that ponies now a days were different than he was. Bone paused, did he really just think that? 'Ponies now a days'? He let out a huff of amusement. He was an old pony while still being twelve years old.
"Back in my day, the paintings on the wall didn't used to look so good!" Bone told himself in the mock-accent of an old pony. "An ponies didn't used to be so small!" He giggled. Maybe this was going to be better than he thought? Nopony had tried to kill him for days now, which was a welcome break from what he was used to. No bandits, no thieves, no guards every three steps...
Though, another thought crept into his mind. Starlight Glimmer. She had given him a look that he had seen far too often a thousand years ago. One of terror and an intense desire to run. He sighed and rested his head on the table in front of him. Maybe he could have a talk with her?
He could always see what Starlight was up to, but then she would know what he was doing. The skulls that were a part of his eyes would appear in Starlight's, and she would feel terribly cold until his sight returned to his own body. If she had been reading about the past, she would know the signs.
No, it would be a terrible idea. He had done it once before on a whim to Princess Celestia, and that resulted in him being frozen in a statue for a thousand years.
With all of these thoughts, Bone Marrow was becoming impatient. Was Spike preparing a feast or something? Bone had only wanted a snack, something small, but if it was taking this long it must be something big.
Another anxious minute passed before Spike entered the reading area with a massive silver platter held on one claw above his head. There was an equally shiny silver dome over the top of the platter, but Bone Marrow could smell something that sent him back. A smell that reminded him of Canterlot and Obscenely Rich's manor.
The smell of cooked flesh.
His throat became tight as he remembered the mages that, in the panic of self preservation, had torched entire rows of their own ponies to get away from the silent charge of his many skeletal minotaur. Of the bat ponies that dropped flasks of lighted oil onto the battlements of Canterlot's walls. He remembered the Bright Moon running for their lives as a mage lost control of their own magic, exploding in a fireball that illuminated the night for the briefest of flashes and left ponies fused to their metal armor, their faces contorted and warped around the metal that was meant to protect them as scorched flesh melted from their bones.
Spike set the platter down in front of the necromancer and lifted the lid with an innocent smile. "I heard that you liked meat, so I tried to make something up for you. I spend a lot of time with griffons and other dragons lately, so I've picked up a few new skills here and there that I've been dying to try out."
There was a flower-leaf sandwich, an apple, a half-loaf of sourdough bread, and a steak that had been cooked to a bloody medium-rare.
Bone Marrow could only nod in thanks with a strained smile.
"Is something wrong?" Spike hopped up onto one of the chairs opposite Bone Marrow. "I could cook the steak more if you want."
He held up a hoof, "N-no, it's fine. Sorry." His hoof fell to the table with a clack. "Memories, is all."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Spike pulled his chair closer to the table, intending to sit down for the long haul. "I've got time."
Bone shook his head. "This isn't the kind of story you'd want to hear, Spike. I don't think anything like it happens anymore in Equestria, at least from what I've seen."
Spike looked from the food to Bone Marrow and made a connection. Bone was staring at the steak like it would come to life at any minute. "Eh... do you want me to take the steak away?"
"No!" Bone unintentionally shouted, his voice panicked. "I-I mean, no, sorry. The steak can stay, thank you." He closed his eyes and took a breath. "Better to just consume it and get rid of the smell."
The young dragon watched with wonder as the steak became ash under the icy-blue flame that dissolved it.
Bone Marrow felt slightly better now that the source of the scent of cooked flesh was gone, but his meal still sat in front of him. He was hungry as ever and rested a hoof on the top of his sandwich.
Spike patiently waited for Bone to collect himself, but he noticed that the necromancer had stopped moving. "Something wrong?"
"I'm... trying to remember the last time I ate something." He slightly shook his head at the insanity of it. "Before I was frozen in stone, I mean. Was it weeks? Months?"
The little dragon was concerned even moreso. "How are you not starving, then?"
"Maybe it was my magic, maybe it was the void?" Bone blinked and grabbed the sandwich between his hooves. "I don't know. The last thing I remember eating was an oatmeal raisin cookie before the attack on Rich's manor."
The same look of momentary confusion that was on Twilight's face had crossed Spikes. "You don't mean Filthy Rich, do you?"
"No, Obscenely Rich." He took a bite of the sandwich and had to pause. It tasted exquisite. He wanted to simply pass out and dream of a taste this good for a solid week.
"I'll give you a minute there, Bone Marrow." Spike hopped down from his chair and backpedaled out of the room. "Good luck with your sandwich!"
That pony was strange, thought Spike. He had never seen anypony react so... approvingly to a sandwich he had made.
For once in his life, Bone Marrow felt full. No hunger, no need to devour meat and bone, no endless need for more. He was sated. Stuffed, even. The horrid memories of a thousand year's past had left his mind for now, replaced with the ache of fullness that he didn't realize how much he had missed.
It was nice, Bone Marrow concluded. Nice to finally be able to have a break. To rest for once without the thought that a guard might walk through a doorway and spot him. To have a moment to himself without the threat of Celestia looming over his head like a sword held with string.
He decided it was time for another nap. Bone moved his silver platter back to the kitchen in search of a bucket to wash, but instead found some kind of... well. He didn't know what it was. It was like a bucket but it was built into the kitchen's table on the side. Where normally he would think to put ingredients or something for easy access, he found the crystal bucket. There was some kind of thin crystal pipe that jutted out from the wall and it moved on a swivel. There was a lever as well.
Having no better ideas, he pushed upwards on the lever. To his astonishment, water began rushing out of the pipe. Was it magical? It would have to be! He had never thought of using a spell to make water like this, but where did it all end up? He noticed that there was a drain beneath the water pipe but had no idea where it would lead. The cupboards below the buckets revealed that there were more crystalline pipes that lead further away from the device and out of sight.
"Having fun?"
Bone Marrow narrowly avoided banging his horn on the contraption to get a look at who had just spoken.
"It's called a sink." Starlight Glimmer explained. "You look like you've figured it out for the most part, but you should probably turn it off."
The colt closed the cupboards beneath the sink and turned off the crystalline spigot. His eyes narrowed at Starlight.
"Weren't you scared of me a few moments ago? You bolted away from me like I was going to eat you."
Starlight held out a hoof that wavered from side to side. "Eh... yeah. I've been talking with one of my friends and they convinced me that I was probably over reacting." Her hoof then was held out to be shaken. "Starlight Glimmer. I figured I should properly introduce myself."
Bone cautiously approached and shook her hoof. "Bone Marrow, though I think you already knew that."
She smiled nervously, "Yeah, just a habit of mine is all. I think I picked it up from Twilight, to be honest. I saw how the cutie map was acting and decided to get a better insight to what was going on, and... well." Her hoof dropped and she bit her lip.
"Death, destruction, carnage..." Bone sighed, "At least I'm guessing that's what the records said?"
"Not... entirely?" Starlight got a better look at Bone Marrow. "Though you look pretty tired. Do you remember where your room is? It took me months to figure out my way around this place."
The necromancer shook his head. "I have no idea where I am in this maze of a castle."
"Well come on then, we can walk and talk." She opened the door to the kitchen with her magic, gesturing for Bone to go first.
"So, a Necromancer, huh?" Starlight was more cordial now that the niceties were out of the way. "What's that like?"
Bone's voice was weary. "I've already told Twilight that I'm not going to teach her anything to do with Necromancy. The same goes for anypony, dragon, griffon, or whoever else asks me."
"Okay, okay," Starlight relented, "Just curious is all. You don't have to explain the spells, but maybe the... experience of it?"
"All of that happened a thousand years ago. You've already read some records and books. Maybe some were even written by Celestia. Isn't that enough?"
Starlight rose an eyebrow at that comment. "Not a fan of the princess, huh?"
Bone's expression was deadpan. "She blasted me with rainbows and sealed me in a statue for a thousand years after betraying me. What do you think?"
"I can understand that, I think." Starlight looked ahead as the two conversed on their journey through the halls. "I used to be a 'villain' too, you know."
"A villain?" Bone chuckled, "I was trying to be a hero when I was frozen."
"Well from what I saw, Canterlot wouldn't even exist if you didn't defeat Equestria's army by yourself. The Bright Moon, right? I read that they went around to other countries that bordered Equestria to raze them all to the ground so they couldn't fight us. You, however, fought an army of veterans and the combined armies of all the nations that survived the Bright Moon's attacks. In one night."
"I would've let them go if they didn't attack, but..." He held a hoof to the pocket watch around his neck. "After one point... I didn't have much mercy left in me. I think of all the Bright Moon I encountered during that night, I let one bat pony escape. One."
"Hey, I'm not here to judge you, Bone Marrow." Starlight gestured with her horn to the necromancer's room. "I'm just trying to say that I'm not your enemy or anything. I can sympathize with what you went through, even if I don't really understand all of it. If you want to talk about it, or if you just want somepony to vent to, I'm here."
Bone Marrow's eyes narrowed. "Why the sudden kindness?"
"Well, after what I did in my village... let's just say I'm trying to work out a few of my own problems. I figured it would help if you had someone to help you with yours?" Starlight smiled nervously, hoping that Bone would agree.
The necromancer colt grumbled. He had a policy about trusting strangers. Too many sweetened words and intentions that had come back to bite him, or in one case, trap him in stone.
"I'll think about it, Starlight." Bone pushed the door to his room open. "I think I need some sleep. It's been a long day or three."
"Of course!" Starlight backed away a few steps. "Have a nice rest, okay? We can talk more if you want in the morning."
Bone nodded. "Maybe. See you then."
The door closed behind Bone Marrow and he was once again alone in the room of pure extravagance. A soft bed, softer sheets and blankets. A pillow made from pegasus down that had been donated to Celes-- to Twilight.
Bone sighed and lifted the corner of the bed's sheets with his magic. It was too much. He crawled underneath the bed's frame and pulled the sheets with him. Better to sleep on the floor with a feeling that he knew well rather than give in to too much comfort. It didn't feel right. He had slept on a bed of straw as a... well, he was still a colt. Why did it feel like a different lifetime ago? Technically it was, Bone conceded.
All of this would take a lot of getting used to. One step at a time, though. For now, he would sleep underneath the bed in the comfort of darkness. Just as he had in done Celestia's castle. Just as he had done with Scenic Sights...
Not a single dream pestered the Necromancer. No nightmares, no dreams of pleasant hopefulness, nothing.
Bone Marrow awoke with a feeling that all of his body demanded that he go back to sleep. An aching of the bones that he wasn't familiar with. His head was foggy and his vision blurry; his limbs moved like they were made of lead. It took a monumental effort to even lift his eyelids, and when he did, he was greeted with a pillow that had a drool spot on it.
"Eugh..." He shoved the pillow away and rested his face on the carpet beneath him. "First I have to eat food again, now this?"
He took a long breath that ended with a sigh. "Living sucks."
When the colt had finally collected himself enough to be presentable to the outside world, scruffy dark-blue mane and all, he found that there had been a plate of pancakes laid out on the reading room's table. He was late to breakfast by the looks of it, and judging from a note that had been left underneath his platter.
To Bone Marrow Went out to get more supplies. Made breakfast but didn't want to wake you up. Be back in a few hours. -Spike
"Huh." Bone looked over to the plate of food. "This is going to take some getting used to..."
After what was far too long of a time spent eating, Bone Marrow headed out of the castle and into Ponyville proper. He was used to never sleeping; used to not eating. It took up so much time that he felt he was late for something, but for what?
The necromancer racked his mind for what he had been planning to do before he fell asleep. Skeletons? No, he didn't need any of them just yet. He didn't feel threatened in the town, though he was uneasy that each of the passing ponies didn't give him even a second glance.
He felt the pocket watch around his neck, the subtle weight of his friend's soul. "Oh!" He had been planning on bringing her back from the dead, but he wasn't entirely sure how to go about doing that.
The books he had read, written by the few necromancers before him, had stated that he simply needed to keep his friend's soul contained in a soul jar and then to speak their name aloud. His powers would supposedly bring her back from the dead, though it didn't say how that would be accomplished.
The enchanted pocket watch served as his friend's soul jar, but he needed to be absolutely certain that nothing would go wrong. If the spell didn't go as planned, he was afraid of losing his friend to the afterlife altogether.
Bone Marrow found a bench to sit on to ponder his situation. What could he experiment on that wouldn't get him in trouble with Twilight or the ponies around him? However welcoming they might be, he didn't think his chances of living would be very high if he was seen to be experimenting on the dead in public.
Something that nopony would notice or miss; probably small, like an animal...
Toothpick!
Bone Marrow had rushed his way to the town's cemetery. Every town had to have one, considering that ponies don't live forever unless they're an alicorn. He was surprised to find that the town didn't have nearly as many graves as he had hoped. Perhaps there were a few hundred in total, but the dates on the gravestones clustered near the town's beginning. As time went on, and the graves became newer, he realized that less and less ponies had fallen ill of something, or less had died from non-natural causes.
He shook his head. As curious as all this was, it wasn't the reason he was at the cemetery. There had to be a section for pets, didn't there? The final resting places of animal companions that were special to the families they lived with. Bone Marrow used to have a pet cat in his old hometown of Scoria, though he doubted the place existed anymore. It had been burned to the ground long ago and was along Equestria's borders near a large desert.
Grave after grave, gate after wrought-iron gate, Bone Marrow was getting impatient. Where were the pet graves? Had ponies changed in the last thousand years? Did they not care about---
He blinked. Of course! They would be near Fluttershy's cottage, the pony that took care of everypony's pets in the whole town! Bone placed a hoof onto his face and shook his head. At least he knew where the dead things were.
It was midday now, the sun bearing down overhead on Bone Marrow's unhooded head. His ears flicked in annoyance. If he had any bits, he would've sought out somepony to buy a cloak from. For now, however, he was on a mission. Find a bird skeleton, preferably a raven's, and see if he could bring back the first minion he ever had.
The pink pony had waved at Bone Marrow as he passed through the town, but Bone didn't pay her any attention. Something about her unsettled him. He also saw Applejack and Applebloom selling their wares in the town center while speaking with Twilight, but he didn't feel up for a chat about what he was going to do.
No, he needed to be certain that he had all of his abilities in full swing. It might have been paranoia, but if Celestia caught wind of him being so close to Canterlot, it was only a matter of time before she confronted him. She would probably put on all of her enchanted armor as well as that cursed battle axe of hers. Swing it around a few times, maybe lop off his head again.
Bone Marrow chuckled. Maybe he would get more powerful if he died again? Or, the necromancer thought, maybe the void would come back...
He shook his head. These were thoughts for later. For now, he was going to see how difficult it was to bring back an old friend.
Finally, after what seemed like ages, Bone Marrow arrived at Fluttershy's cottage once again. She didn't appear to be home as his knocks on her front door proved pointless. Maybe he could have a look around? It was a large area after all with many empty fields. Besides, the animals couldn't stay around here without Fluttershy being nearby, could they?
His search first went around the perimeter of the cottage. It was common for ponies to bury their pets either in the cemetery or behind their house if they were poor. He knew that his family had fit the bill, despite his father being a baker and his mother a news crier.
"Come one come all," Bone Marrow muttered to himself, "Get your undead skeletal birds here. Corpses are half-off! Get 'em before they rot!"
The stallion-sized colt giggled to himself. To imagine how his parents would've taken to him being a necromancer. Would they still have called him Bonehead, or would they have been scared of him? He shook his head, it didn't matter now. He didn't have their souls to bring them back. They were both as dead as they could be.
He raised his head in surprise. There hadn't been any graves. Was Fluttershy simply that good at taking care of animals, or did she bury their bodies further away?
Bone then blinked. Was she that good, or did Fluttershy feed the ones that died to the other animals? She had to get the meat from somewhere, didn't she? He tapped his hoof on the ground. Maybe there would be corpses in her cooler? No, not from a raven, surely. How much would that even feed? Barely a morsel; not worth the effort of plucking and cleaning.
Moving around the side of the house, he found the cellar once again. He was confronted with an iron lock that had slightly rusted over. He noticed that the cellar had an overhang as well, which probably contributed to the fact that the lock wasn't entirely sealed shut with corrosion.
Should he break into the cellar? He couldn't find much reason to, aside from morbid curiosity. The iron lock would be simple enough to get through if his abilities had been as they had in the past. Consume would work against the metal, but give him nothing in return for the spell. If he broke in and didn't take any of the meat, it would be a net loss to him.
He shook his head, maybe another time. When and if he was able to get bits, he could ask for more meat. Or he could trade his ability to heal in exchange again... but there were only so many injured critters at a time.
The colt paused to think about his next move. The forest was nearby, but the last time he had gone wandering through one he ended up with a crossbow bolt through the heart. He had been told time and again that no bandits roamed around, but in the jungle he had encountered a beast more monstrous than any he had seen previously.
Did all forests contain monsters like that? Would be even be able to kill them? Bone had no idea, but he did feel more powerful now than when he had first confronted the hydra. It couldn't hurt to look, could it?
"Great," Bone grumbled. "Why don't I just walk into the woods? That's a wonderful idea!" He kicked a rock that bounced off a cluster of tree roots in the distance. "A perfect plan, Bone Marrow. You're an absolute genius."
He had been lost for hours at this point. Animals in the forest scurried away in his presence, the wild critters not used to seeing ponies in their habitat. Birds flew away before Bone could get a chance to kill them as well. What to do, what to do...
Bone paused. Maybe if he pretended to be dead, birds would try to pick at him? No, that's dumb. A wolf or some other monster would come by to gnaw his legs off. Sure, Bone would get the last laugh as he was brought back to life, but that didn't mean he enjoyed pain.
The colt's ear twitched. He heard humming in the distance. Was it some other kind of creature, or was it another pony? He followed the source of the sound. The noise grew louder and louder, and eventually he spotted a different kind of pony.
A pony with black and white stripes on their body, a lot of golden rings, and a very strange cutie mark on their flank. His faintly glowing eyes narrowed. What kind of pony was this? They looked like an earth pony, but maybe they were from some other part of the world? Their tail, neck, hooves and practically everywhere Bone looked pointed to the pony having been from someplace else.
"It is not kind to stare, whoever is hiding over there." The curious pony announced to the trees.
Bone Marrow cursed. Had he been spotted that easily, or was she bluffing?
"Glowing eyes are quite the surprise," The pony continued, "A traveler of time, I surmise."
He accepted defeat and revealed himself from his hiding spot. "You wouldn't happen to know where a raven's corpse is, would you?" Bone then internally flinched. That wasn't the best thing to say to somepony right off the cuff, was it?
Her eyebrow raised. "The dead you seek? Why continue a journey so bleak?"
Did this pony always rhyme? "If you don't know, then could you point me to the way out of here? I didn't know this place was so weird. I tried following the way I came into this forest and the whole place seems like it shifted itself around."
She nodded sagely, "This forest is the Everfree, a place that does not like you or me."
"Then how do you get around? You seem pretty at home for a pony that... well, looks so out of place with everything." He gestured to the various jewelry that decorated the pony's body. "I don't think I've ever seen anypony like you."
"I am Zecora, and my purpose is one of flora." She winked.
Bone Marrow was getting a headache from this pony. "Do you always have to rhyme like that?"
She nodded.
His eyes narrowed. "I'm just going to try and find my own way out of here, then. It was... interesting to talk with you."
The striped pony gave a short wave and picked up a basket of flowers and other ingredients in her mouth before continuing on with her business.
"Weird." Bone Marrow muttered. His ear flicked and he turned to continue on with his journey through the forest.
When Bone had left, Zecora breathed a sigh of relief. "He returns from the dead, yet he has kept his head. No insanity plagues his mind, though maybe in time..."
"This is dumb." Bone Marrow sat against a tree's trunk. "It's almost dusk now and I still haven't found a dead bird!" He looked around, "And I haven't found a way out of this place, either."
He rubbed his eyes with the side of his leg, not wanting to get the dirt on his hoof on him. "I know ponies have said that times are more peaceful than they used to be, but this is just ridiculous! How am I supposed to do anything if almost nothing ever dies here!"
In the distance, bushes rustled. Something was drawing near.
"First, Fluttershy doesn't have any skeletons laying around. Then, I get lost in some super-forest that seems like it wants to mess with me, and then I run into some strange striped pony that talks in rhyme!"
The creature moved closer while Bone Marrow was distracted.
He rested his head against the tree trunk. "This place is like a miniature Tartarus. Keeps me trapped here even though I just want to leave it all behind."
Bone Marrow looked down at the creature that had rustled it's way through the bushes. It was some kind of cross between a bird and a... well, he wasn't entirely sure. It had wings, that was certain, but it had the head of a snake and a bird, and its torso looked like a porcupine's back. The creature's legs were misshapen, maybe broken, and looked to be fuzzy like a bunny's.
The necromancer grimaced. "What are you?"
The creature's beak opened wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. Bone Marrow leaped up from the tree trunk and his horn glowed brightly.
"Oh no, I'm not gonna get killed by some freak of nature!" His eyes glowed brightly just as the creature flapped its wings at him.
"Die!" Bone shouted. His magic went out like a pulse and slammed into the creature. It fell to the ground and coughed. The necromancer raised an eyebrow, and soon the creature began coughing up spurts of blood.
"Oh, thank my lucky stars. It worked!" He breathed a sigh of relief as the creature hacked its last. "Now we can get to the fun part."
Bone focused his magic on the creature's corpse before pausing. "Wait a minute, If I just use consume on this thing, it's going to eat all the bones too." He growled in annoyance, "Well, now that I think about it, that wasn't much of a problem in Canterlot, was it?"
"Maybe if I just focus on the flesh, the bones will be untouched?" His eyes continued to glow brightly as his horn came to life with icy blue magic. Consume.
The body began shifting as bits of flesh burned away into smokeless ash. The bones fell apart, detaching from the body as sinew and tendon dissolved. After a short time, Bone was left with only a cleaned pile of... bones.
He focused his magic on the skeleton and sent out a pulse of magic. The bones began to reform, connecting with one another into... several separate skeletons?
"What in Tartarus?" The colt was now thoroughly confused. "Wait a minute, you're not a normal bird, are you?"
The bit of skeleton with a bird's head tilted with curiosity at the question.
"Oh, don't give me that look! You're all supposed to be one critter, aren't you?"
The skeletal bunny legs tapped on the ground, suspended as if there were more of its body to be placed correctly.
"This place just gets more and more strange..." Bone closed his eyes and let the skeletons fall to pieces. "Who runs around a place like this and stitches bodies together?" His eyes widened, "Wait, who would even make a creature like this? Who could?"
He briefly considered that it might be Zecora, that strange pony he had met before. She didn't seem to be the crazy type, aside from the rhyming, but... something felt off. She had said she was there for the flowers and Zecora didn't seem like the type to lie.
Bone smirked, "If she has to think of a rhyme every time she has to speak, how hard would that make it to lie on a regular basis? Does she just come up with things to say ahead of time, or is she just really smart?"
He looked down to the piles of various bones in front of him. "Well, you're no Toothpick, but..." The necromancer shook his head, "No, If you're all different animals, I'm not going to mash your corpses together. It looked weird when you were alive and it looks even stranger when you're nothing but bones."
Several hours later, Bone Marrow eventually found himself free from the Everfree. He didn't know where he was, exactly, but he knew that it wasn't the place he had been before. No signs of weird mutated critters, no monsters, nopony.
He groaned aloud. "I'm gonna get yelled at, aren't I?"
"Out for a walk?" A matronly voice asked from behind him.
Bone nearly leaped out of his skin from being so startled. He whipped around and his face met with another pony's chest. It was deep purple and had the crest of the moon in front of it.
"Wait..." He backed up and realized he was face to face with Princess Luna. His eyes went wide. "Princess Luna!?"
She seemed cautious, but let a smirk slip. "From Princess Twilight's letters, I'm surprised that you would honor me with a title."
Bone quickly shook his head. "I-I might have problems with the other alicorns, but you? You're my favorite!" He closed his eyes and tried to get a hold of himself.
"It is alright, Bone Marrow. You are safe." Princess Luna gestured to the forest at her back. "I was curious as to the type of pony you were."
His eyes narrowed. "Wait, what? You mean you were watching me this whole time?"
The lunar princess gave a warm smile. "You've been dreaming, Bone Marrow. The day has yet to begin."
"No..." He sat down on his flank. "You're telling me that all of that was just a dream!? Come on!"
"I've sent you a gift with one of my letters. I can imagine that Princess Twilight will be eager to speak with you as soon as she wakes, considering the contents." She rested a hoof on Bone's head and ruffled his mane. "Perhaps you might visit us in Canterlot? I'm sure that a pony like you has a few things to say to my sister."
He shook his head, "No way in Tartarus am I going anywhere near Canterlot. As soon as I get my friend-- eh, nevermind. I'm not going to be in Equestria for much longer. No matter how nice it is here, at least I keep my end of a promise."
She raised her brow. "Your end?"
"I defend Canterlot from the Bright Moon, and in exchange, I go free and never return to Equestria ever again. That was the deal I made with Celestia before she betrayed me-- the backstabbing witch."
Princess Luna was troubled by this. "My sister made no mention of that deal..." She scratched her chin, "I will have to speak with her in the morning."
There was a lot of things that Bone Marrow wanted to say to Princess Luna. From all the stories he had heard of her, she had quickly become her favorite of the two sisters, especially after Celestia betrayed him.
"For now, however, I should let you sleep. No more monsters to encounter or strange zebra that rhyme." She smirked, "Though as for you, Bone Marrow, maybe you should find somepony to trust? I know what it means to be alone, and from how long both of us have lived, there are very few that can relate to what we have been through."
Bone nodded. He couldn't agree more. "I just need to figure myself out first. Then, I'll... I'll see what I can do."
He didn't want to bring up talk of resurrecting a pony from the dead in front of Princess Luna. Even though she certainly knew that he was a necromancer, the thought of saying so much to what was ultimately a stranger didn't sit well with him. Besides, even though he liked Princess Luna more than the other two alicorns didn't mean that he needed to become an open book.
There was a time to let all his hopes and ambitions pour out, but to a pony that could probably drop the moon on his face, it wasn't the best of ideas.
Princess Luna waved to Bone Marrow. "Have a good rest, necromancer. I will be watching along with my sister."
Bone's white fur paled a bit. Of course Celestia would already know that he was in Ponyville. Why was she waiting, then?
Bone Marrow awoke once again, his dream troubling him. The same spot of drool was on his pillow and just as before, he shoved it away with disgust.
Bone Marrow had lingered in his room for half an hour before he made up his mind. In his dream he had done everything he planned previously. He'd gone to the graveyard, he'd visited the Everfree Forest and run into danger, but gotten nowhere.
Was this a sign from Princess Luna that he should go about things differently, or was he overthinking?
The young necromancer shook his head and groaned. Hunger was getting to him, gnawing on his mind with the insistence to eat something. In a way, it reminded him of the Void. A different diet but with wildly different motivations.
What should be done? Bone Marrow pulled the curtains away from the window and blinded himself with the light of the early morning sun. Squinting, he looked out on the town below. Ponies were already awake. Some of them were setting up their stores in the streets and others were simply chatting with their neighbors.
The colt bit his lower lip. It was like a bird's eye view of Scoria. A simpler time before he had to worry about so many things. Before Princesses invaded his sleep, before he was raising the dead. But then again, was the change so bad in the long run? From everything he'd read from the journals of the necromancers before him, he would continue to live on. Immortal, in a way. Well, so long as he stayed away from volcanoes and lava.
Bone let the curtains fall and cloak the room in darkness once again, his glowing eyes allowing him to see and think without distraction. He needed to bring Scenic Sights back. He needed his friend to talk with; the one pony in Equestria that could look past the skulls in his eyes.
Yes, Bone had to admit, the ponies here didn't seem to bat an eyelid at him or his appearance. They also had an alicorn here to protect them from any number of disaster, like the Hydra that lurked in the forests that surrounded the town. That didn't mean their tolerance of him was the same as acceptance. He couldn't risk opening himself up to those in the town. Certainly not with Twilight Sparkle and her followers. He needed to get away from this crystalline castle, to wrap his mind around what was exactly needed to bring his friend back from the dead.
The lonely necromancer lifted the pocket watch around his neck and opened the lid. His memories came to the surface of the reflective mirror inside. Memories of Scenic and himself leading an army of disguised skeletons through the town of Galloping Glades under the guise of a national holiday in the making. He smirked and shook his head. It felt like only a few weeks ago that he'd been sneaking around in graveyards and confronting bandits, yet in truth, it had been over a thousand years since then.
A knock came to Bone Marrow's door and the colt shut his pocket watch with a click to let it hang around his neck. "Yes?" Bone called out, "Who is it?"
"It's Spike! Do you want a sandwich? I've got a few of them ready in the kitchen."
Bone's stomach growled in response. "Yeah, I'll be out in a minute."
"Are you doing okay? You sound sad."
The necromancer's eyes narrowed. "I'm fine, Spike. Thanks for the concern."
"Well alright, see you soon."
Bone Marrow waited until he was certain that the young dragon was gone. He'd known Twilight and her friends for only a few days, and now was not the time for trust. Especially if his dream was anything to go by, as well as his encounter with the hydra. He felt weaker, somehow. First with the hydra being immune to his magic, and second with that... whatever it was in his dream. Sure, the abomination of animals combined together eventually died, but he had been in genuine danger from something so small.
When he was in Canterlot a thousand years ago, a concept that he was still wrapping his mind around, he had fought entire armies with the dead of the city. Without thought, he had commanded thousands to defeat thousands. Now, however? He was concerned that those rainbows had done more harm than he originally imagined. More than just sealing him away for a millennia.
What was the solution, then? When he had been in Scoria he had recognized his special talent with the help of Toothpick, his pet raven. He'd been able to control an army, and he was still 'alive' in every sense of the word. Though, a realization came to Bone Marrow. He had been killed in Scoria by the Royal Guard. Killed twice in the forests of what was now the Everfree by a bandit's crossbow bolt, and once again by his own magic.
Each time, he drifted further and further away from himself. It was true, Bone conceded, that each death had been traumatic. On the other hoof, each death had resulted in him becoming even more powerful than before.
Another knock came to his door. "Bone Marrow?" It was Twilight's voice now. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine!" Bone snapped. He was onto something and these distractions were getting to him.
There was a brief pause before Twilight asked, "Can I come in?"
Bone closed his eyes. He'd have to find someplace else to think. Somewhere secluded. For now, he'd speak with Twilight and hopefully dissuade her from prying into his business. He walked over to the crystalline door and opened it.
Twilight blinked and peered into the room, seeing the early morning glow behind Bone's curtains and the bright blue skulls of his eyes in the darkness. "Wow. Kinda dark in here, isn't it?"
"Just getting used to waking up in the morning is all. I tried opening the curtains earlier and it burned my eyes." Bone stood to the side to allow Twilight entry to the room.
"Are you sure you want to be in there? I could find a different room for you if you wanted." Her eyebrow was raised with concern. "Have you eaten yet?"
Bone shook his head. "I just woke up. Spike told me about breakfast already."
"Oh! Right. There's still some sandwiches out if you want them." Twilight turned to leave. "You can talk with us if you want to, you know that, right?"
The necromancer nodded. "I know. Just getting used to everything is all."
"Have you met Pinkie Pie yet?" Twilight was switching subjects now. "She's been asking around about you."
"Maybe later, Twilight."
The princess could see that she wasn't getting through to Bone Marrow. Maybe she needed a different approach? Or, maybe she just needed to give him his space. It was probably a nightmare to come back after a thousand year pause to a place that you used to know, and she could sympathize with the shock that Bone must be going through.
Twilight nodded. "Well, I'll see you around, alright? I'm free to talk with you at any time."
Bone nodded in return and closed the door. He pressed his ear against the crystal to wait for Twilight's hoof steps to echo down the hall before opening the door once again. He moved in the opposite direction of the kitchen. He needed to get out of this castle, to get away from being under watch constantly. It was like the palace in Canterlot, but instead of guards watching over him, it was a princess.
The fresh morning air greeted Bone Marrow as he closed the front door of the castle behind him. A gentle breeze that carried the lighthearted chatter of the ponies in Ponyville.
"Hi!" The bright voice of a mare bleated into his ear.
Bone Marrow cringed in pain and sidestepped away from the noise, only to discover the pinkest pony he'd ever seen. Well, Bone hesitated, probably not the pinkest. For some reason, the pony in front of him reminded him of Frosty Pie. A small earth pony filly that he'd met after the town of Galloping Glades had burned down. She had the same eyes, too.
"I'm Pinkie Pie! I heard that you were a super-scary necromancer from a thousand years ago and I've been wanting to give you a 'welcome to Ponyville' party for a while, but after looking through a bunch of libraries around Equestria I decided that it probably wasn't a good idea."
Bone Marrow blinked. "You looked through libraries around Equestria? I've been here for a day. How could you have--"
Pinkie Pie placed a hoof over Bone's mouth. "Ah-ah! A party planner never divulges her secrets!" She then lowered her hoof, prompting Bone Marrow to cough and wipe his face. "So, now that we know each other, do you wanna know anything about Ponyville?"
Bone shook his head. "I'll figure it out, thanks."
"Are you suuure?" She had leaned closer to Bone with her question before rubberbanding back to her initial place. "I know everypony in Ponyville and everything about them!"
That... sounded creepy, in a way. "I'll be fine, Pinkie Pie. Thanks again."
"Okie-dokie! Just let me know if you need anything, Bone Marrow!" She gave a final wave before bounding off into the town, apparently filled up to her eyeballs with cheer and sugar.
Bone felt like he'd just walked through a whirlwind and come out with a scratch. What in Tartarus was that? First there was Rainbow Dash, a pony that reminded him of Scenic Sights but with the wrong mane color. Now there was Pinkie Pie who reminded him of Frosty Pie... wait. Pie?
He pressed a hoof to his forehead. Were they related, by chance? They both had Pie as a last name, but as pony names went, that wasn't a very good indication. His family didn't have the name of 'Marrow' after all. Maybe it was just coincidence.
Bone had decided that he needed to get away from the town. He needed his space to think before he lost track of his thoughts.
He had eventually settled for what seemed to be a park next to the lakefront near the town. There was a park bench and a cobblestone path that ran alongside it, though he felt odd that the bench was sized for foals.
Bone paused. Well, in his time it was foal-sized. He was a foal that was the size of the regular ponies here, and that served as a constant distraction and oddity. He took a deep breath. He needed to focus instead of getting distracted by everything around him. The young colt closed his eyes to concentrate. What had he been thinking about before? Right, Scenic Sights.
He was alive now, as far as he could tell. He needed sleep, food, all of that. But when he had died before, none of that mattered to him. He'd gone weeks without sleep and the food that he needed had changed from leafy greens and bread to that of meat and flesh. Well, technically it was the Void's unending nagging that told him he needed meat, but as his stomach grumbled, it was like trading one mute voice of insistence to one that he could more clearly hear in his mind. Like a hunch instead of a dull pain.
What would he need to do to bring Scenic back from the dead? He didn't want to risk attempting it now, not when he wasn't absolutely certain that he had the power to do so. When he'd read the journals of the necromancers before him, they spoke many times of dying previously. He was in a different situation now. He'd been... healed? Pulled back? He wasn't sure what the rainbows had done to him or what to call it.
Bone Marrow paused to look out onto the lakefront. He needed a moment to process all of these thoughts. He saw the reflection of the trees in the water, the reflection of clouds and the pegasus that flew between them. In an instant, he was reminded of a different lake in a different time.
A lake that was coated by a thin film of ash along the surface. One filled with the bleeding bodies of Galloping Glades' residents. The fire that glowed next to the ash, the long tendrils of flame that flickered and roared as buildings cracked and crumbled to the ground around him. Screams of the dying and terrified as bandits chased the townsfolk through narrow streets and over the corpses of neighbors they knew well.
"Excuse me," a worried voice asked, "I couldn't help but notice that you were shivering, dear."
Bone Marrow coughed to clear his suddenly dry throat before looking towards the source of the voice, and he was greeted by a cream colored mare with a purple mane. She looked like she'd just come from Canterlot with all of the makeup she was wearing.
"I'm fine, thanks."
The mare raised a perfectly styled eyebrow. "You don't look fine, dear." She used the side of her hoof to wipe away a bit of wetness from Bone's face. "I'm Rarity, and you look like you've just woken up from a terrible nightmare."
Bone pursed his lips and slid away from Rarity. "I said I'm fine."
Her eyes narrowed in thought as she considered Bone Marrow. "I know you... you're Bone Marrow, aren't you? I heard Twilight speaking about you earlier yesterday. She said that you needed a cloak?"
He was about to decline her offer before a gust of wind sent shivers down his spine. Another reminder of his 'new life'.
Rarity let out a short hum of conformation. "Right. That settles it! You're in need of a cloak, and I, Rarity, will provide you with one!"
Bone was surprised at the power of Rarity when he found himself hoisted from his bench by Rarity's magic and placed onto the ground next to her.
"Come with me, darling. I'll make you the finest cloak in all of Equestria!" She seemed very sure of herself.
The necromancer would have declined, but all things considered... he had grown attached to having a cloak. Maybe he just liked wearing the hood it had, or maybe he liked staying concealed? In any case, he ended up following after Rarity. He'd spend more time thinking about what exactly he should do at a later point. After all, until he sorted out exactly what he needed to do, he'd have a lot of time to do so. Scenic had already spent a thousand years trapped in a soul jar, oblivious to the world around her. Though it pained him, there was little he could do to change that at the moment.
The last cloak that Bone Marrow 'owned' had been stolen from a general of the Bright Moon, named 'Anvil'. Bone learned that it wasn't the real name of the pony later, but his old cloak had given him memories. It was burned to a crisp now, and Rarity insisted on making a cloak specifically for the necromancer.
"What colors would you like, Bone Marrow?" Rarity was busy measuring the young colt as she talked.
"Black and purple?" It was the same coloration as the cloak that he'd had before. Black on the inside, purple on the outside.
"Ah, regal colors! I have to admit, I too enjoy the look of purple. The black should make it pop against your white coat, too!" More measurements, and Bone was surprised to see bundles of fabric floating through the air in combination with scissors, knitting needles and other clothing-related tools.
She worked fast in her snipping and stitching. Left and right, tools and fabrics spun and moved in a dizzying display of skill and focus. Bone figured Rarity's special talent must be at least somewhat related to the diamonds on her flank, and looking at the other clothing in the store, he soon made the connection.
"Aha!" She reoriented Bone Marrow to the mirror next to him. "What do you think?"
He could see the reflection of his face and the blue skulls that hid in his eyes. Did she really not care about them?
"Hmm... maybe a bit longer on the ends. Bigger hood?"
Bone blinked and looked at Rarity. "Um, sure. Thanks for all of this, by the way. You really didn't--"
"Oh nonsense! I couldn't stand by and watch you shiver in the cold, Bone Marrow." Rarity took off Bone's cloak and went to work in making an entirely new one. Apparently she liked everything to have a uniform cohesiveness, or she said as much at least.
"So, how are you liking your time in Ponyville?" Rarity continued to chat as she worked.
"It's... interesting." Bone was doing his best to avoid revealing too much about what he thought. "Very different."
"Well I'd imagine so. A whole town filled with ponies that you don't know, in a time where things are so new!" Her work occupied much of her focus, and Bone guessed that she was only half listening.
"Yep. Very different."
Rarity bit her lip as she focused on a different section of the cloak. A bit of fabric around the neck area.
Bone took the opportunity to continue thinking. He'd experienced Princess Luna's dreamwalking first hoof, and though he liked Luna far better than the other princesses, she was still a princess. It was a rule to never trust strangers, but after Celestia betrayed him? He'd add onto that rule: Never Trust Strangers or Princesses.
"There!" Rarity backed away with a proud smile on her face. "What do you think?"
Bone was surprised when he looked in the mirror. The hood was raised over his head and it concealed much. With only his muzzle and glowing eyes visible from beneath the darkness of his hood, he grinned.
"I see that you like it! I added a bit of magic to your cloak to make it darker when the hood is up. Also, there should be a protective spot near your neckline for that watch of yours to keep it safe."
The pocket watch was indestructible as far as Bone Marrow was aware. Obscenely Rich had told him as much, saying that the watch had runes and enchantments to the Nth degree. Not even lava would destroy it.
"I was worried about that thin chain keeping the pocket watch around your neck. I have a locket of my own that's similar to yours, though I always end up misplacing it somewhere or another. With that bit of fabric, you should be able to know where it is at all times."
Bone's eyes narrowed with sudden realization. "What do I owe you? I don't have any bits on me."
Rarity held up a hood and shook her head with a smile. "No charge, dear. Think of this as a gift from me."
Bone's eyebrow raised, though it was concealed by the darkness of his new hood. "Really? No charge, no hidden fee or task that you want me to do?"
She shook her head again. "Absolutely free. I wouldn't think to offer you something and charge you for it afterwards."
The necromancer stepped down from the display surrounded by mirrors. "Well, um, thank you." He scratched the side of his neck. "I'm not used to ponies giving me things."
"Come by anytime to visit, Bone Marrow. I'd love to hear you talk about how things used to be, or to just share tea with you."
That was odd. First Twilight, then Spike, then Pinkie Pie and now Rarity? Why in Tartarus were ponies being nice to him? Why were they being so accommodating? Something was clearly wrong, but Bone couldn't place his hoof on it.
"R-right." He now had even more on his mind. "Is it alright if I leave?"
Rarity nodded. "Come by anytime, dear."
Several hours later, Bone Marrow was once again alone. He'd gone for a walk on the outskirts of Ponyville to get away from all of the ponies asking if he was alright and trying to pry into his business. Were ponies just nosy now? A thousand years ago, he would've been astonished to find that anypony gave him the time of day, let alone if anypony didn't scream and run in terror when they saw the skulls in his eyes.
Maybe Twilight had something to do with this. She was the Princess of Friendship, after all. It felt forced. Hurried. Was she trying to keep him in Ponyville? Keep him close to Canterlot?
He heard a shuffling of claws against dirt and turned around to find Spike coming towards him in a sprint, holding what looked like a bag of some kind.
"There-- there you are!" Spike was out of breath and came to a halt next to Bone Marrow. "Twilight said to give this to you," He panted, "Said it was urgent?"
Right. Princess Luna had said that there was a gift waiting for him, but in his haste, he'd forgotten. He took the offered bag from Spike with his blue magic and opened it.
"What the?" He couldn't believe what he was looking at, and dumped out the contents of the bag onto the ground.
"Eugh!" Spike recoiled in horror from the dead raven that had fallen out. "Why!?"
Bone grinned. This was a gift indeed!
"Why would Princess Luna send you a dead bird? Does she not like you or something?"
The necromancer shook his head and wrapped the dead raven in his magic. "Nope." A wave of magic pulsed out from Bone Marrow's horn, followed by a second pulse that shifted the dirt loose.
Flesh and feathers burned away from the raven's body, leaving behind only bones. Those bones assembled together quite rapidly, and when the second pulse of magic hit, the bird's eyes were illuminated by a cold blue glow.
"Toothpick?" Bone asked the skeletal raven.
In response, the bird pecked his teeth.
"Hey, it worked!" Just as it had before, when he'd originally lost his first skeleton in the Mines of Scoria, after his first death. Again, he'd lost Toothpick when his eyes had been cut out to avoid detection from the Knights of the Sun. "How've you been, Toothpick?"
The raven hopped to the side and soon stared at Spike.
The baby dragon couldn't believe what he was seeing, his face frozen in disbelief and terror. "Z-zombie bird?"
Bone lifted Toothpick onto his head. "Not a zombie, a skeleton."
"S-so it's dead?" Spike took a step back.
The necromancer nodded. "Just think of him like a silent observer, Spike. He's not going to peck your eyes out or anything."
He shook his head. "L-look, I think I hear Twilight calling my name, so I've gotta go. See you later!"
Bone Marrow sighed with disappointment as he witnessed Spike sprinting back to town. Should he be surprised? Most ponies didn't cope well with seeing dead things. It had taken a long while for he himself to get used to the idea as well.
Toothpick pecked Bone's horn, jolting him from his thoughts. "Ouch!"
The raven's skull and vertebrae hung from the lip of Bone's hood to stare at him. The glowing blue lights in his sockets seemed to wink out for a second, as if it were blinking at him.
"What?"
Bone Marrow had one leg of his experiments completed. Toothpick was back from the dead... or back to being dead? It was hard to tell with skeletons. If you bring a skeleton back from being a pile of bones, does that mean its a live again, or did you make it dead a second time? Can skeletons die?
He shook his head. Now wasn't the time for questions like that. He still needed to figure out what to do about Scenic, the one friend he could rely on understanding him. The one friend who could stare him and his skeletons in the face with a mischievous smirk.
What would he have to do?
Toothpick pecked Bone Marrow on the horn once again and hopped down to the ground. The skeletal raven motioned its head towards a nearby bush.
"Really?" Bone knew that Toothpick had a strange way of communicating, but the bird was usually right. He followed the instruction of his undead friend and stumbled upon a curious sight. Another corpse.
The raven hopped onto the body of a dead rabbit, its body covered in teeth and claw marks.
"Okay, what about it?"
Toothpick started picking away at the flesh of the rabbit.
"You want me to consume it?" Bone knew that he hadn't eaten that day, but this was a different kind of eating.
Toothpick shook its head and pecked the dead body before flying over to Bone and pecking him as well.
"You... want the rabbit to eat me?" He knew that what he was saying was probably stupid, and he earned a peck as confirmation. "Ow! Okay, what do you want from me?"
The skeletal raven ruffled its bony wings and looked around before finding a stick. Then, to Bone Marrow's amazement, it started to draw in the dirt.
"Since when could you write?" Bone paused for a moment. "Oh, right. The book said that skeletons could mimic whatever I knew, so uh... I guess you being smart makes sense in hindsight."
When the necromancer looked down, there was a very crudely drawn word in the dirt.
"Die, huh?" Bone Marrow shook his head. "You have a way with words, you know that?"
Toothpick didn't seem to care about Bone's witticism and started etching another word in the dirt next to the first, and then another.
Die For Scenic.
Bone Marrow looked over his shoulder before pondering the message. Toothpick's glowing blue eyes narrowed at the young necromancer in a glare.
"The last time I died, I nearly lost Scenic for good. I mean you weren't technically alive to know that but... er, you know." Bone gestured at Toothpick's skeletal nature. "You weren't you at the time, you were a pile of ash."
More writing, this time under the first group of words.
Stash Pocket Watch. Die. Return.
Bone Marrow put his tongue in his cheek. "You know, I probably would've stayed out of a lot of trouble if you were around more often."
Toothpick nodded his bony head in reply.
The conversation between necromancer and minion continued on until the two had come up with a somewhat workable plan. A method of death was secured, at the least. What remained, however, was a place to store the pocket watch; the soul jar for Scenic Sights.
"Hey, mister!" A curious voice called out to Bone Marrow. The stallion-sized-colt had been walking along one of the many dirt roads that lead to Ponyville when he heard the voice of a mare with a peculiar accent accompanied by trotting hooves coming closer.
He turned to see an orange mare with three red apples on her flank, her mane tied into a ponytail complete with a red ribbon, and a strange hat on her head. He tilted his head in curiosity and turned to face the newcomer.
The mare skidded to a halt with an appropriately sized dust cloud following her while she caught her breath. "Is your name Bone Marrow?"
Never Trust Strangers was a rule that had kept him more or less safe on his own, and this was no time to make an exception. Yes, the ponies of Ponyville had been far kinder to him than the ponies he remembered, but he wasn't about to break a habit that didn't need breaking.
"Who is asking?" Bone replied to the mare.
She briefly dipped her head as a sign of courtesy. "Sorry, my name's Applejack. I've been real busy with the farm lately and it only just struck me now that your name sounded kinda familiar. Same cutie mark, too."
'Applejack?' Bone Marrow thought, and he saw the mare shiver. 'Well, at least she's being honest about her name.'
"You wouldn't happen to know a pony by the name of Granny Smith, would you?" Applejack politely asked. She'd blamed the sudden cold on the wind.
This caught the necromancer's interest. Could she be the same one she'd met a few weeks ago? Well, no, that would be impossible. What was a few weeks ago to Bone Marrow was over a thousand years ago. Being frozen in a statue had a way of messing up a pony's perception of time.
Bone shook his head. "I knew a mare by that name, but she's probably long dead by now. Sorry."
Applejack's eyes sparkled as bright as her smile. "It is you!" She then quickly wrapped a hoof across Bone's withers and pulled him into a hug. "I never thought I'd get to meet you in all my days!"
Toothpick's glowing blue eyes blinked in confusion at the situation, as he was as bewildered as his master.
When Bone was finally able to free himself from Applejack's absurdly strong grip, he distanced himself a few steps from the blonde mare.
"Do you wanna meet her? She's been talkin' about you non-stop since she heard you were in Ponyville!" Applejack gestured with her head towards the opposite direction that the necromancer had been travelling.
Bone Marrow and Toothpick shared a look that amounted to a non-committal shrug.
"I don't think it's the same mare," the young necromancer cautioned, "but I'll see her."
Rolling fields of trees were all that the stallion-sized colt could see for what seemed like forever. Having been raised in a desert town on the edge of Equestria, seeing this many trees all neatly arranged row-by-row was a sight in and of itself. Toothpick had gotten bored, however, and had taken up a new hobby of pestering living birds by chasing them through the air.
When Bone Marrow finally reached Sweet Apple Acres, his eyes widened. Standing just outside of a barn looked to be twenty, no, thirty ponies. Forty? Fifty? It was difficult to count how many there were, but it made him nervous. When he stole a glance at Applejack, she just seemed more and more excited.
Bone Marrow was very glad for the hood that covered his head at the moment.
"Well I'll be!" The vaguely familiar voice of a mare called out. "It really is you! You really should write a letter 'er something more often, Bone Marrow!"
He looked up to see a face that had been warped by time, wrinkled and brittle. She had an orange scarf around her neck with little red apples, and a bit of lace for decoration. Her mane was combed backwards with a few silver stragglers escaping the hair-tie in the back, and she had the same orange eyes that Bone was familiar with.
"Hi, Bone Marrow!" The small army of ponies next to Granny Smith shouted in greeting.
The necromancer was at a loss for words, his mouth slightly open.
Granny Smith walked up to Bone, calm and confident, and closed his mouth. "You're gonna let the flies in, keepin' your mouth open like that. Come on inside and let old Granny tell you a tale."
Dumbfounded, he had little other choice but to oblige.
Granny Smith had been alive and well for over a thousand years, Bone Marrow had learned, and she still showed little signs of 'giving up the ghost' as she put it.
What had begun as a simple yet miraculous healing of a hip injury had spiraled into a continent spanning family. From Granny Smith's first husband all the way down to present, each of her offspring had inherited some of Bone Marrow's healing magic, granting them longer lives than they would've normally had.
She might've outlived every other pony that Bone Marrow had healed with his magic, but Granny Smith attributed that accomplishment to her own stubbornness. From her first four foals, the Apple Family had become one of the leading producers of apples and apple related products in all of Equestria and in the nations abroad.
Bone Marrow knew his healing was powerful, but he had no way of knowing just how powerful it had been! He'd really need to get a hold of his magic in the future... assuming everything went well.
As he was sharing dinner with the Apple Family, a question popped up.
"Granny Smith?" Applebloom asked, "How did you end up meeting Bone Marrow all those years ago? Are you really that old?"
A few of the other Apples chuckled at her innocent question.
"Well, let me see now." Granny Smith was rocking in her chair more out of habit than need. "It was about a thousand years ago, but it really just feels like yesterday to me now." She gestured casually to Bone Marrow as the colt sank into his chair from being the center of attention.
"We were all holed up in Obscenely Rich's manor, you know, the great-great-whatever of Filthy Rich's?" She nodded as if everypony understood what she was talking about. "Anyway, the walls were gettin' attacked by the Bright Moon. They were the ponies and others that wanted to overthrow Celestia when she and Luna had a fight. Well, your old granny caught a sword or a bolt or somethin' to the hip." She pointed to the hip in question for emphasis.
"I could'a sworn I was gonna be gone after that. Lots of ponies weren't doing too great either. I remember one of 'em had their horn busted off in the middle of the fight. Poor thing wouldn't stop sparking and making that stallion's head hurt." She paused to swallow some cider before continuing. "Little Bone Marrow comes up and sees all of us bein' wounded. My hip bleeding, that stallion's horn turned to dust, a few others just layin' there, bleeding out into the dirt. What's he do?"
Granny Smith smiled at Bone Marrow, and the necromancer had long since covered his face with his hood.
"He went up to me and says, 'You're sure about this? I've never healed anypony before'!" She then laughed and rocked back further than usual in her chair. "Oh, the look on everypony's face when my hip came back together again! The bone and the blood n' flesh all just weaved itself up right as I was lookin' at it and Bone here was already gone, healin' up more ponies."
Applebloom was looking a little sick from the graphic detail. Well, graphic for her at least.
"I owe you a lot, Bone Marrow." Granny Smith still had a smile on her face when her chair slowed down. "Anythin' I can do for you?"
'Never Trust Strangers... but she wasn't technically a stranger. Besides, I already know her name so It's not like she can betray me very well.' Bone huffed as he reached a difficult decision in his mind. 'She's really the only pony that isn't a princess that I know. Who else would I rely on? Twilight?' He mentally scoffed at the idea. Never again would he trust a princess after what Celestia did to him.
Taking a deep breath, his horn was alight with blue magic. The pocket watch floated off from his neck and was placed down on the table in front of him. "Granny Smith?"
"Yes, dear?" The patient mare asked.
"I need to... do something. Can you hold onto my pocket watch for me?" He paused for a moment and took off his cloak. "This as well, if it's not too much."
Granny Smith shook her head and chuckled. "Too much? You silly colt, you made me nearly gosh-darned immortal with all the magic you used to heal me and you think that me holdin' onto a few of your things is gonna be a burden?"
Bone smiled nervously. In hindsight it did seem to be a silly request. He only hoped that he wouldn't come back from his new 'goal' to find that the pocket watch or his cloak was missing. Nopony was going to stop him from bringing Scenic back.
"What are you gonna do?" Applebloom asked.
Applejack was about to tell her sister not to pry into a pony's private business before Bone Marrow answered.
"I need to go into the Everfree and get killed, and I don't want my pocket watch or cloak to get lost."
Applebloom and Applejack blinked in confusion as they looked at Bone Marrow.
Applejack smirked, thinking that this was some kind of dark humor. "Heh, yeah. You're just gonna get yourself killed really quick and be back for dinner. Perfectly normal!"
"He ain't kiddin'." Granny Smith replied, causing Applejack and Applebloom to pale. "You gonna be safe?"
Bone nodded. "I'll be alright, ma'am."
"I told ye before, I'm not old enough to be called Ma'am yet!" Granny laughed and the other Apples in the room joined in. "I don't hear anypony callin' Celestia a 'ma'am', so that means I'm still young."
The colt sighed. 'Am I going to become like Granny Smith if I don't get frozen in stone again?'
A branched snapped under the weight of Bone Marrow's hoof as he walked through the grassy underbrush of the Everfree. He'd been through here once before, though with considerably more speed. It wasn't even that long ago, all things considered. The colt had nearly been eaten by a Hydra, after all. What better way to get yourself killed than by taunting one and getting gobbled up?
Bone Marrow couldn't help but shake his head as he walked. 'This is going to be a new level of suck that has never before been experienced and survived. Getting eaten by a Hydra, suffocating, waking up in the thing's belly after being dissolved by stomach acid, getting suffocated and melted again, all while the thing keeps regenerating.'
He hopped over a bothersome rock that was in his way and landed in yet more grass and bushes.
'Oh, how did your day go, Bone Marrow? You got eaten by a Hydra? What did you taste like? I'll bet it was marshmallow!' He shuddered and tried to keep his mind on his surroundings.
The sun had already begun to set by the time he'd sprinted out here. He was near the tomb, or temple, where he had been sealed away in stone for the last thousand years. The frost and snow had long since melted away since he'd left and animals were still nowhere to be seen. The colt was tempted to start shouting out for the Hydra to come and eat him, but that would probably attract other predators.
Besides, by getting himself killed by the hydra, he'd be knocking out two problems with one necromancer. 'I get to die, and the Hydra gets to die as well. I come back, I've technically consumed an entire hydra and all of its regenerations, and then I'll probably be powerful enough to bring back Scenic. Probably. That's a lot of meat, right?'
A distant roar brought Bone Marrow out of his thoughts as it echoed through the forest. Birds scattered to the sky in terror, for once not from Toothpick, and the young colt now had a direction to travel in.
After clearing a way through the Everfree via a great deal of magic making his galloping hooves freeze the ground beneath him, Bone Marrow found his target. Well, he found three of his targets, though he really only needed one.
The necromancer bit his lip. 'Three hydras? Really?' He took a deep breath. 'Time to embrace the suck.'
"Hey!" Bone Marrow shouted. "Come and get me!"
The hydras, unfortunately, seemed more occupied with fighting one another than hearing the shouts of a colt doing his best to be noticed.
'Three hydras, nine heads, all of them very hungry and very mad.' Bone looked over to Toothpick. "Can you get their attention?"
Toothpick's blue fiery eyes winked in and out of existence as if he were blinking in disbelief at his master.
"What? Don't give me that look!" The necromancer gestured with his hoof at the Hydras before realizing his error. "Oh, uh... Right. One tiny bird against three giant fire-breathing lizard-monsters."
He didn't have enough power or bodies to raise an army of skeletons with his magic, so he'd have to do this the old fashioned way. By being a nuisance to things that were taller than he was.
The colt took a breath and sprinted down towards the hydras as they fought in swampy waters. A few trees had been set alight by the conflict and the roars of the beasts were accented by ripples in the water as their many heads clashed and snapped at each other. Clawed feet slammed into the soggy ground and splashed fetid water everywhere, thick with the stench of death and rot.
Bone Marrow was very much not liking his state of living at the moment, as the smell made him nearly lose his... what had he eaten for lunch again? Oh right, he'd forgotten. Being alive was such a pain in the first place. So much to remember!
The colt was knocked from his hooves as a Hydra slammed into its foe, causing the ground to shake and for his hoof to catch a rotten root. He fell forward and faceplanted into a cluster of moss and alligator carcass.
The hydra continued fighting on despite the coughing and hacking from below them. One hydra swept its tail with such force that a gust of wind followed in its wake. Bone's dark blue mane flowed in the breeze as the tail brushed over his head and crashed into the armored scales of its opponent. Another roar was joined by the wet chomping and gnashing of teeth from the hydras as they tried to tear each other's throats out.
'Okay, this isn't working' Bone Marrow thought as he wiped alligator intestines from his muzzle. 'Time to be more annoying.'
Die!
Bone Marrow's spell sent a lance of dark blue energy up and into the faces of the nearby hydra, causing them to sputter and cough. They regenerated so quickly that rather than their hearts rupturing or their organs melting, the hydras seemed annoyed.
'Well, um, mission accomplished?'
The hydras then started fighting one another once again, this time presumably over who would get to eat the annoying pony beneath them.
"Are you serious?" Bone rhetorically asked the hydras, not expecting a response. "Just eat me already!"
Then, the last thing Bone remembered feeling was a sharp pain on his jaw and the top of his head as a hydra snapped him up into its mouth.
Burning. Fur melting off of flesh, eyes boiling in a thick goopy sludge that stuck to everything it touched. His screams were cut short as vocal cords broke apart into meaty chunks and as he desperately tried to hold himself together. His limbs would snap off and fall into the sludge, dissolving in his blurred and pained vision before he would again succumb to his wounds.
Again and again, if suffocation or acid didn't kill Bone Marrow, then the sudden impacts to the still fighting hydras would knock him unconscious.
This continued for what seemed like eternity, and Bone Marrow didn't know how many times he had come back only to die once again.
When he awoke a final time, he was surrounded by black sludge and ash. The water of the swamp had turned into a tar-like substance that stuck to everything and bubbled with menace.
The colt pressed a hoof to his head and noticed that everywhere he looked, there was yet more swamp and more ash. Trees had fallen, rotted out to their core and splintered into shavings. Bone Marrow stood in the desolate wasteland that surrounded him. Had he killed the hydras or did they vomit him out? Either way, it wasn't an experience he wanted to have again anytime soon.
"Alright." The young necromancer said to himself. It was like the area around him couldn't carry sound, and the noise of his voice was lost as soon as it was heard. "So, time to see if this all worked."
He poured his magic into his horn and it pulsed outward in a colossal wave of blue energy. He couldn't help but have his eyes widen in awe at all the skeletons he sensed. The heartbeats of the living that had once driven him mad came back to his ears. With the heartbeats came a hunger he was all too familiar with.
He gulped and his ears folded down. He had his magic back, but the Void had come along with it.
If it meant getting his only friend back, then so be it.
Bone Marrow noticed a few things after he'd recovered from his traumatic ordeal of being eaten alive over a dozen times. The first was that Toothpick was once again a pile of ash. He'd probably been re-absorbed the first time Bone Marrow died. The second was that Bone didn't need to breathe anymore. He didn't feel fatigue or hunger, his eyes were glowing more now than they ever had before, and that he felt like he had an unlimited amount of magic to draw on.
What concerned him was what he'd overlooked. In his hurry to die with a purpose and to kill the three hydras that he'd seen earlier in the Everfree, he didn't consider what would happen on the outside of the hydra's stomach while he was being digested. The hydra hadn't remained in one place to curl up with a bad tummy ache like he'd thought. It had gone on an agony-induced rampage through the Everfree, spreading death and corruption with every bite and stomp.
The desolate wasteland wasn't just the local swamp that he had been expecting to wake up at. It stretched for miles like a scar on the world. The skeletons that he'd sensed earlier were critters and monsters that had all perished in the hydra's wake. The beating hearts of the surviving wildlife were running away as fast as they could, and to top it all off, the place was completely silent.
Aside from the beating hearts, of course. If Bone Marrow was going to return to Ponyville, he would need to find some way to lessen the unending cacophony of noise that didn't involve feeding the void any more than he had already. Killing wasn't his goal, no matter how much the void begged him to make it his priority.
Already he could imagine the look on Celestia's face when she stepped out onto her balcony in the early morning to see that half her kingdom's forests had turned ashen and black. Bone already knew that Celestia and Princess Luna were aware he was back. Princess Luna had seen him 'in person' during one of his dreams and sent him a gift, after all. Would he have to deal with Princess Twilight Sparkle as well? Maybe Celestia would come after him with an army this time, and now with two other alicorns in tow to blast him with the Elements again. Or, more likely, they'd just toss him into a volcano and be done with it.
In any case, after what had happened, Bone Marrow knew he couldn't take the risk of explaining everything and hoping it would all turn out okay. He'd tried that once before and that's what got him into this mess. Celestia couldn't be trusted no matter what she did or what words came from her mouth. If Princess Luna was back, then that probably meant they were seeing eye-to-eye again. As for Princess Twilight, well, he never really trusted her to begin with. She was too friendly and too accommodating for what he was used to.
Still, Bone decided that he'd need someplace to get a hold of his powers. He'd need to figure out how to control the void if he was going to have any hope of leading a normal life and resurrecting his friend, and that meant that he couldn't be anywhere near Equestria or the countries that bordered it.
Though... Bone Marrow realized he'd never actually been to another country. Where would he even go?
The first thing he would need to do if he wanted to leave would be to get his cloak and Scenic's soul jar back. That was the top priority, but that meant he'd need to go back to Sweet Apple Acres.
That meant Heartbeats. That meant Alicorns. That also meant that he'd have to explain to everypony why so much of the Everfree was an ashen wasteland now. He'd have to do the thing that he really didn't want to do.
Bone shook his head. He was not looking forward to explaining all of this. What would he tell them? 'Oh hey everypony. Yeah, I thought it would be a swell idea to walk out into the Everfree to find a hydra to eat me. Silly me!'
The necromancer let out a sigh. He needed to get better at planning ahead, that was for sure.
Grass swished underneath his hooves for the first time in a while, bringing him out of his melancholy state. Well, at least not all of the forest had died, right? Looking around, Bone noted that there weren't any birds or other animals around. There were no chimeras or manticores or timber wolves and everything else he'd been warned about. Wasn't the Everfree supposed to be more dangerous than this?
His eyes widened. He'd seen this before but it slipped his mind. When Galloping Glades had been set on fire by bandits, all of the animals had run away from the area. They'd invaded the other areas of Equestria that weren't normally where they'd nest and ponies didn't have any idea how to handle the change in monsters for their area.
If he'd just caused half of the Everfree to be reduced to rot and ash, then that meant the monsters of the Everfree would be going for anywhere but this place.
Bone Marrow dipped into his magic reserves to speed himself along. He wasn't about to have another Galloping Glades. Not another town burned to ash. Not if he had anything to say about it. No messing around, no sparing anything that meant to harm ponies. No chances. If the monster wasn't supposed to be there, it was as good as dead.
When the young necromancer was on the hills overlooking Sweet Apple Acres, he overheard animalistic screaming coming from the farm itself. He had to be sure that the Apples were safe. That he didn't end up killing Granny Smith or her descendants from not thinking ahead.
Granny Smith.
His view changed, switching from his own sight to that of the ancient grandmother. She was with Applebloom in their family's barn. Big Mac and Applejack were bracing the barn door with everything they could find while something tried to batter its way through.
Bone Marrow.
No time to wait. He had to act now before anypony got hurt. He was responsible for this and he wasn't going to have more dead ponies on his mind.
The necromancer sped down the hill, his hooves leaving icy prints in the grass beneath his galloping tread. When he rounded the main home of the Apple Family, he saw a dozen wolves made of wood and grass that were gnawing and clawing their way through the barn door of the Apple's farm.
Die!
Twelve wisps of blue magic shot out from Bone Marrow's horn, striking each of the wolves in their chests. The grass and moss of their bodies blackened and withered, their timber limbs splintered and rotted, and they collapsed in a heap of decayed lumber.
Bone let out a sigh of relief and checked the rest of the area to make sure nothing else was lurking around. He found four more groups of timber wolves and dealt with them in similar fashion. He wasn't going to give the monsters a chance to fight or to harm him.
When he returned to the barn, he knocked on the large doors with his hoof. "Granny Smith? Applejack, Applebloom, Big Mac, are you alright?"
There were sounds of things being tossed around and shoved to the side for a minute before the door opened to Applejack's surprised expression. "Bone Marrow? Well I'll be, I didn't think I'd be seein' you again!"
"He's a necromancer, dearie." Granny Smith cheerfully called out from further in the barn. "Nothin' can kill that colt that I know of."
'Yeah, well there aren't any volcanoes around to huck me into, are there?' Bone mentally quipped.
"Did you get a little shorter, Bone Marrow?" Applebloom asked. "You look like you lost an inch or two..."
"I'm fine, Applebloom." Bone replied with a smirk. "What about my necklace and my cloak?"
Big Mac looked away for a moment before offering the items with a hoof and a nod. Bone Marrow used his magic to slip the pocket watch over his neck and fix the cloak and to finally have his hood over his head again.
Applebloom shivered. "You know, you look a lot scarier with that hood on. Your eyes are all glowy, too."
"Do you know if there's anything in Ponyville happening?" Bone asked Granny Smith. He didn't really have time for talking about the changes that death had given him at the moment.
"I heard some awful critter yellin' a few minutes before them timberwolves showed up. Maybe you could go over an' kill it?"
"Granny!" Applejack was aghast. "Don't you think we could just run the critters off instead of killing them?"
"Thanks, Granny Smith." Bone dipped his head before sprinting off, leaving ice in his wake once again.
Scenic was safe. That was what mattered to Bone Marrow the most right now. Well if he was being truly honest with himself he really didn't want anypony to be hurt or killed by his mistake. At least he wouldn't have to be eaten again, right? He had all the power he needed.
Bone Marrow slowed down a bit when he saw a pillar of smoke in the distance. Memories of Galloping Glades burning to the ground flooded his mind, along with screams of terror being cut short by a bandit's sword.
'Nope, that's not happening again if I have anything to say about it! Bone picked up his pace, pushing himself faster than before.
When he arrived to Ponyville, there was an explosion of lavender magic that originated from the town's square. A manticore was sent flying off to some distant land from the blast, having been catapulted by a pony's magic. Bone Marrow had a pretty good idea of which pony in this town was capable of doing something like that.
'This is going to end badly if I run into Twilight. She's probably going to think I did this on purpose!' Bone scowled, his distrust of others flaring up once again.
The scream of a filly brought him back to reality as a nearby door splintered out onto the streets nearby. The little pony came running out of her home with tears in her eyes and galloped right past Bone Marrow, too filled with fear to explain what was going on.
From the doorway of the filly's home stood a manticore that looked starved. Blood was on its claws and dripping from its mouth, probably from having just eaten somepony. The necromancer hissed through his teeth. "Die!"
The beast's eyes widened as a wisp of blue magic struck its chest, and a moment later a glob of blood came from its mouth and it fell forward onto the street, stone dead.
Bone Marrow rushed into the house and past the manticore's corpse. There was a colt, a stallion and a mare inside, each of them with a limb or two missing and with bite and claw marks all over their bodies. Bone was frozen for a moment as his mind brought back similarities between this and Galloping Glades.
He shut his eyes with a grimace. Now wasn't the time to panic, he'd seen worse during the assault on Canterlot, after all. "Please be alive," Bone asked the bodies. "At least one of you be alive!"
Heal!
The colt with a missing front leg gasped as magic glowed around his entire body. His eyes widened in panic when he saw that his limb was missing, but that quickly became confusion as he saw it grow back right in front of him. The two parents, however, weren't so lucky.
Bone Marrow didn't have time to sooth the colt's fears. If this had already happened to one home, then more were just as likely to be as dead as this colt's parents.
"Good luck." Bone wished to the orphan. He was willfully deaf to the colt's pleas for help when he sprinted out of the destroyed home, leaving the young pony with nothing but his life.
Beast after beast, Bone Marrow kept killing. One after the other, the Void grew stronger yet again. It was like the void fed off of misery and destruction, and although Bone Marrow was doing his best to help, bit by bit he felt himself becoming more detached from what was going on. He saved who he could, he killed everything causing destruction, and then he went to the next street or house to do it all over again.
In was like he was back in Canterlot, but without skeletons to back him up. With Twilight around, he didn't want to give any hint that he was in Ponyville. Turning the things he'd killed into his minions would tip her off and cause her to come searching for him. Not to mention the fact that he didn't know if this was a large enough emergency for Celestia and Princess Luna to be called down, or at least the Royal Guard.
"Hey!" Bone Marrow heard the familiar voice of Rainbow Dash yell at him. "Where do you think you're going?!"
She was keeping pace alongside him fairly easily with her wings despite how fast he was travelling.
"I'm helping ponies here, and then I'm leaving." Bone coldly explained. He needed to save Ponyville and leave as soon as possible. He needed to get away if he was going to have any chance of being in control of the Void inside of him.
"You're leaving!?" Rainbow Dash seemed offended. "You're the one who caused all of this mess in the first place!"
"I know that!" Bone shouted at the pegasus. The one who looked eerily similar to Scenic Sights. "I'm fixing it, then I'm leaving!"
"You need to speak with Twilight first! She's in the town center." Rainbow Dash flipped around to speak with Bone Marrow on his other side. "If you try running, then I'll just follow you, got it?"
Bone vented cold fog in a huff. "Fine. When I'm done killing all these monsters, I'll be there."
He didn't want another pony getting dragged into his mess. If Rainbow Dash was just going to follow him, then he wouldn't be able to work things out on his own. Even worse, Rainbow Dash's stubbornness was reminding him of Scenic.
Rainbow gave the hoof motion that signaled that she'd be watching Bone with a close eye before veering off into the sky to rejoin her friends at the town's center.
It was another thirty minutes before the creatures attacking Ponyville had either been catapulted by magic, beaten into submission, or killed by Bone Marrow. Rainbow Dash had watched him like a hawk, reappearing every few minutes to check on where he was before she rejoined her friends.
Now was coming the part that Bone was dreading the most. Speaking with a Princess about his necromancy. Worse yet were the casualties. Could he explain what had happened? Yes. Should he lie about the cause of everything? Well... he might just have to. He wasn't going to spend another thousand years in stone or die again, that was for certain.
Bone Marrow had managed to save around twenty ponies from death, but a quarter of the village had been killed. He passed by weeping ponies as they mourned the losses of their loved ones. Overall, Bone had to admit that the outcome was better than Galloping Glades.
He healed who he could, and he consumed the corpses of the monsters that were left out rather than let them rot or be buried pointlessly. Bone thought of it as sparing the survivors any more work than they'd already have. The ponies of Ponyville would need to rebuild and continue on with their lives after everything that had happened.
When Bone arrived at the town's center, he bore witness to a sleeping giant. It had collapsed backwards onto a building and reduced it to splinters, but the giant seemed no worse for the experience. He decided that stepping around the thing and giving it a wide berth would be the best choice at the moment.
The necromancer became nervous when he saw the face of a Princess glaring at him from the town hall. It was Princess Twilight, so not all hope was lost, but she had a magical barrier around herself and her friends. No matter what Bone tried, his magic wouldn't be able to go through a barrier of any kind, nor was crystal affected by it.
Then again, Twilight wouldn't be able to kill Bone Marrow without risking the void spreading out to consume the nearby ponies to revive him, so they were at a draw.
"What happened?" Twilight asked, her tone sharp and bitter. "I noticed you were gone one day without telling anypony, then Rainbow saw that the Everfree was dying, and now this?" She gestured to the scorched and ruined buildings around the town hall. "What did you do?"
This was bad. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Spike and Starlight were all in a line facing him. From Bone's perspective, they all looked ready to tear him apart if he said the wrong word.
'What should I say?' Bone bit his tongue and looked down at the cobblestone street beneath him. His eyes caused the stone to faintly glow with blue light while he thought. 'I'm terrible at lying and I can only imagine what will happen if they find out that I wasn't telling the truth.'
"I killed myself."
Anger was replaced with shock almost in an instant. Ears folded back and confusion set in, so Bone Marrow spoke up before the group could claim that he was lying. He was standing right in front of them, after all.
"I went to the Everfree forest to find the Hydra that we had run from earlier, and I let it eat me." Bone remained where he was and stood as still as possible, not wanting his movements to cause a fight if they interpreted him wrong. "I died, I came back, and I died again and again until the Hydra couldn't regenerate. I don't know how long it took, but I woke up in a wasteland of ash and rotten wood."
"Y-you... came back?" Fluttershy asked in confusion.
"He's a Necromancer," Starlight explained. "From what I've read, the only way they stay dead is if you use Lava."
Bone sighed. 'Thank you for giving everypony the idea, Starlight. You're ever so helpful.'
"Listen," The necromancer colt spoke up,"I didn't mean for any of this to happen. If I had known it would cause this much destruction, then I would've found some other way to die."
"Why kill yourself to begin with?" Spike questioned. "You could've talked with us if it was that bad!"
Bone shook his head. "That wasn't why I killed myself, Spike. I need to bring my friend back from the dead, and the only way to do that is if I had enough power. I get more powerful each time I die, so..."
Twilight put a hoof to her face. "Why didn't I see something like this coming?" She then pointed to Bone Marrow. "That Pocket watch around your neck. That's a Soul Jar, isn't it?"
Bone couldn't remember if he'd already told Twilight about the soul jar, but she'd guessed correctly. He nodded in reply.
"Look, all this is great and everything, but that doesn't get rid of the fact that ponies died today!" Rainbow Dash was livid. "The flower ponies, The Cakes, Bon Bon--"
The mention of the cakes dying brought Pinkie Pie to tears and she fell to the floor, sobbing.
Rainbow growled. "This isn't some small mess up! This guy is worse than Tirek!"
The other ponies shied away at that remark. She was right. While Tirek had sucked out the souls of nearly every pony in Equestria, when he was sealed away again, all their souls were returned. Nopony died because of Tirek, but because of Bone Marrow?
"So what do we do, Rainbow?" Twilight asked her friend. "Do we throw him in a volcano for it? Do we seal him away in stone?"
Rainbow's ears flattened. She didn't really know what the best thing to do would be. She also didn't want to stoop down to Bone Marrow's level and kill him either. Rainbow didn't know if she was capable of even doing something like that.
"I'm leaving." Bone Marrow spoke up. "I'm never coming back to Equestria."
"Then won't stuff like this happen in other places?" Spike countered. "Just because you want to leave doesn't mean that you won't cause all of this to happen to somepony else!"
"I'm not going to anyplace with a pony. No people of any kind." Bone explained. He was feeling very cold inside at the moment and he chalked it up to past experiences making him numb to death in general. "I need to get control of myself and I can't do that around anything that has a heartbeat. I can't kill the sand or rocks, Spike."
"So where are you going to go?" Rarity asked. Bone noted that she didn't call him 'dear' this time, but that was understandable.
"Do you have any suggestions, or maybe a map?" The necromancer questioned.
"I think I know of a place..." Starlight ominously replied.
The air was primed to ignite from the tension in the air as Twilight and her friends gathered around the Cutie Map. Bone Marrow was also present, but the other ponies stood well away from him.
Starlight Glimmer pointed to a spot on the map of Equestria and the surrounding lands. "Here should be the one place in the planet where Bone Marrow can't hurt anypony. The Crystal Empire."
Bone hummed. It made sense, seeing as crystal ponies weren't affected by his magic. "There's one problem with that, Starlight. There are ponies there. I don't want to be anywhere close to anyone else until I can get myself under control."
"Yeah, because you work so well unsupervised." Twilight rolled her eyes and shook her head. "We can't let you wander around all of Equis, Bone Marrow. You're too dangerous for that."
The young necromancer dipped his head, letting his hood shield his face from the others. 'She reminds me of Celestia...'
"A better place to send him, I think, would be the old hive of Queen Chrysalis." Twilight pointed to the spot on the map. "Since the reformed changelings have moved in near Ponyville, they aren't using their old home anymore. Without the changelings there, their hive doesn't have the same magic that it used to when all of us were last there."
"The shifting walls?" Rarity shuddered at the memory. "I don't know if that was worse, or the echoes of chittering."
"The point is that there won't be anypony there for Bone Marrow to run into." Twilight continued her idea. "Aside from Appleoosa which is way outside of walking distance."
"You want to put him near Braeburn?" Pinkie Pie put her hooves on the edge of the cutie map. "The buffalo, too?"
The alicorn's lip scrunched. "Eh... right. Sorry Pinkie, it's been a long while since we were there last."
"Maybe we could go visit them?" The party pony was trying her best to avoid thinking about the recent deaths in Ponyville; especially the Cakes.
Bone Marrow continued to sit quietly and listen as he warred with the voices in his head that whispered hideous things to him.
Fluttershy's ears perked up and she looked towards one of the large double-doors that lead into the room. "I think somepony is coming!"
Sure enough, the doors opened to reveal not one, but two alicorn princesses. Celestia and Luna had arrived, along with a few members of the royal guard.
Bone Marrow's fur stood on end and he bristled with anger from seeing the pony who he had once looked up to. The Princess that had betrayed him and who had frozen him in stone for a thousand years. Cold fog radiated from his body and ice began to form at his hooves, but still, he restrained himself.
After Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had been brought up to speed on everything that had happened, Celestia told her guards to leave the room and close the doors behind them.
She shook her head as the doors closed. "Bone Marrow?"
The colt's glowing blue eyes looked up, shrouded by his hood.
The other ponies were very interested in what Princess Celestia would say as they waited with held breath.
The Alicorn's pause was long as she marshaled her thoughts. "I, Princess Celestia of the nation of Equestria, hereby banish you from these lands. You are exiled from this moment on, and you are never to return on penalty of death by volcano."
Twilight and her friends gasped. They'd never heard such a harsh punishment before, nor would they have ever expected those words to have come from the kind-hearted mother-figure that they had all come to know and appreciate.
"Sister, you--" Luna caught herself in her outburst, swallowing her protest and clearing her throat. There were things that were befitting of a Princess, and disputing a ruling right in front of everypony was not the correct thing to do at any point. Instead, she looked to Bone Marrow and nodded. "I second the decree."
Twilight was uncertain if she was included in this banishment process, but when the two Princesses looked expectantly at her, she knew what she had to do. "As witness to this banishment, you, Bone Marrow, have one week to leave the borders of Equestria."
Bone Marrow had remained silent through all of this, and though he seethed from being in the presence of Celestia, he knew an opportunity when he saw it. 'Banishment? I wanted to leave Equestria anyway!' The young Necromancer nodded, turned, and quickly walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving frost on the handle.
The ponies looked expectantly to Princess Celestia for answers or some kind of explanation as to why she had been so hasty and direct with her verdict.
Celestia waited a few more moments for Bone Marrow to fully leave down the hallway before she spoke. "I... have some explaining to do."
"I'll say!" Came a voice from the walls that everypony was very familiar with. The Chimera-like head of Discord phased up from the Cutie Map along with the rest of his body. "Stabbing a colt in the back after he saved Equestria, then banishing him a thousand years later?" Discord sucked air through his teeth. "That's harsh, Princess."
"Yes, yes, a single town and miles of countryside were turned to ash and swamp." He held up two of his fingers, prepared to snap. "It was interesting to see how all of you reacted to him, though. Worse than Tirek, I believe you said?"
With a snap and a flash of white light... nothing really seemed to happen.
"Discord, what did you do?" Luna didn't trust the Spirit of Chaos for a second.
"It's rewind time, everypony." Discord chuckled to himself as reality began to distort.
Canterlot, One Thousand Years Ago...
Snow and ash fell from the sky like a morbid winter's night. The cobblestone streets of Canterlot were paved with blood, ice and the bodies of so many griffons, ponies, minotaur and others that it was hard to navigate. Spells of immense destruction were hurled in the distance and the cries of agony sounded out like the notes to a morbid musician's final piece.
Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Starlight Glimmer, Celestia and Luna all stood just a few steps above this bloody battleground with Discord laying on a shimmering lawn chair nearby. Each were ghostly in their appearance, both transparent and ethereal.
The ponies aside from Celestia and Luna huddled together, not being accustomed to the level of violence on display. Princess Celestia became stony-faced, and Luna's eyes widened at the carnage.
"You like the view?" Discord munched on some popcorn that he had tossed into his draconic mouth. "I got to see everything a few thousand years ago from my comfortable little stone prison in your garden, Princess."
"Why have you brought us here, Discord?" Celestia's eyes narrowed at the floating Draconequis.
"He should be coming around the corner any--" Discord paused and pointed at a rapidly approaching icy blur in the distance. "There he is!"
The blur zipped past, leaving a trail of snow and ice in his wake.
"That would be Bone Marrow, fillies. Up until this point, he's been doing fairly well with all of the maddening power in his hooves." This elicited a little chuckle from Discord. "Very soon, however, he is about to experience the worst day of his life."
The view of the ponies shifted to the Canterlot Palace. There, on the golden-trimmed steps, was an important scene unfolding right before everypony's eyes.
"Scenic!" Bone Marrow shouted with a smile on his face. He was surrounded by a maelstrom of icy wind and the ground froze like an iceberg underneath his hooves.
"Bone, look around you!" A filly very similar in appearance to Rainbow Dash called out, though her mane and tail were more of a soft purple in color. "Look what's happening to you!"
Bone Marrow shook his head, "It doesn't matter any more Scenic, you're alive! If you stay with me, I can keep you alive long enough so we can find your Soul Jar together!"
"Find my Soul Jar?" Scenic's eyes shot open, "Oh no!"
"It's fine, Scenic! We can find it together!"
The group would watch, almost as if in slow motion, the practiced descent of a bat pony with a dagger in his mouth. The stallion was aiming directly for Scenic's heart.
Fluttershy covered her eyes with her hooves, being unable to watch. Applejack used her stetson as a kind of screen to block out what she knew was coming. Rarity looked on with one eye open, Rainbow Dash's eyes were wide with the sudden realization of what was going to happen, and Twilight grimaced as she braced for the inevitable clash.
Bone Marrow saw only too late as the Bat Pony swooped towards Scenic. His heart nearly stopped as the Stallion collided with his friend, sending both ponies tumbling down the steps of the palace in a mass of feathers and blood and down onto the cobblestone streets.
"No!" Bone shouted, and time paused.
The munching of Discord's popcorn could be heard again. "Did you catch that bit?" Reality distorted a bit and rewound to the moment that the bat pony's dagger plunged into Scenic's heart. Discord held his lion-hand to his ears. "That's the sound of a pony's mind breaking."
Celestia was barring her teeth at the sight. "I already know this, Discord. I was there!"
Discord held up a claw. "Ah-ah, you weren't here. You saw the aftermath of this."
"What's your point?" Rainbow Dash scowled. "Why show us any of this?"
Discord skipped past the brutal slaying of the Bat Pony that had killed Scenic and showed Bone Marrow desperately trying to heal the wounds of his friend to no success. Soon after, time skipped forward yet again to a point that Celestia would be familiar with.
"This is what I wanted to show you, Princess." He tossed a single piece of popcorn onto the streets of Canterlot where Bone Marrow, Celestia, and a stallion were at a stand off. "After you chopped off Bone Marrow's head, you went on a rant about who the real villain was while he was coming back to life."
Twilight was both disgusted and fascinated by what she saw, though she stowed the analytical and scientific part of her mind away for the moment as she focused on the things happening in front of her.
"Yes, I realize that, Discord." Celestia looked to her sister to find her opinion, but Luna was more interested in the scene in front of her. By this point in time, she had been banished to the moon and was privy to none of this information.
"Did you ever speak with Bone Marrow about what happened while he was dead?" Discord jabbed a thumb in the direction of the paused standoff below the group. "Did you speak with him the moment he was unfrozen from stone?"
Celestia was supremely suspicious. This seemed a bit out of character for a Spirit of Chaos to be lecturing her about anything, let alone this.
Discord grinned. "I love seeing that face on you, Tia." He then waved a dismissive hand and time progressed to where Bone Marrow was being sealed in stone by the rainbow-energies of the Elements of Harmony. "You want to know what the point of this is?"
Time paused and Discord snapped his fingers, bringing everypony to the tomb that Bone Marrow had been sealed away in. Stone chipped away as Twilight and Rainbow Dash saw themselves carefully exploring the icy-cold underground where they had originally found the necromancer.
"My point is that you don't learn, Celestia." He cracked his knuckles and dusted his hands. "You might not wage wars anymore, but you control your ponies all the same. Not through fear or some kind of religious zeal, but through friendship and harmony. Really, how hard would it have been for you to leave a golden plate with a detailed apology note on the wall of the hole you stuffed your shame into?" He pointed over his shoulder at the frozen scene of Bone Marrow's return. "Even just that teeny tiny little bit would've been enough."
"Enough for what?" Applejack set her stetson back onto her head, seeing as the horrifying past had been put on hold for now.
Discord grumbled and crossed his arms, his body slithering over to the group as he rested his head on top of Applejack's hat. "I really have to spell it out for you? Bah, you were all a lot more fun in the maze if I recall." He lifted his head and cleared his throat. "I, the Spirit of Chaos, find your lack of change disturbing. In my own way, I want to see you change sometime in the next, oh I don't know, few months of time?"
"I'm not here to entertain you, Discord." Celestia was more than done with the Draconequis' shenanigans.
"Oh no, I wouldn't dare dream of you entertaining me. Guess how the last thousand years felt while conscious? Yikes. Not even so much as an afternoon hello!"
Starlight was feeling very jealous about the fact that Discord could so casually travel through time, and so precisely, too!
"How do you want to see Princess Celestia change, and more importantly, why?" Twilight was having a bit of difficulty wrapping her head around the thought process of the Spirit of Chaos.
"Also, how come we were able to beat you if you can meddle with all of this time stuff?" Applejack helpfully pointed out.
Discord patted the apple farmer on the head. "I can't defeat you in every timeline, can I? That would be far too boring and predictable of me." He then swiped Applejack's hat and wore it on one of his ears. "I don't really care how Celestia changes. The reason I want her to change is that if she doesn't, we're all going to get a new necromancer in the future that is going to do far worse things than simply destroy miles of land and damage a village or two."
He swiped his hand across time itself to glimpse and image of the far future. A future where the world was ice and death, where no living thing walked, and where there was only two glowing lights in the darkness.
A snap of his fingers later, and the group returned to Twilight's crystal treehouse-castle as if they'd never left. It took a moment for everypony to get reoriented and for their minds to stop spinning.
"W-wait, let me get this straight." Rainbow Dash placed her hooves on the Cutie Map. "You want to save the world by having Princess Celestia do things differently?"
Discord shrugged. "It's up to the Princess, really. How she goes about changing is no concern of mine, though it's probably a big concern for all of you." He then looked to Celestia with a smirk on his face. "Well then, Tia, what will it be?"
Bone Marrow had made good on his banishment. He had hurled himself into his running and left behind a trail of ice and hoof-prints in his wake. Where he would go was up to him, what he would do with himself was his choice, and he had a map thanks to one of the dutiful Royal Guard on his way out of the castle in Ponyville.
There was one stop that he needed to make before he did anything else, however. He wanted to see if his old home town of Scoria had been rebuilt, or at the very least if there was even a single piece of it left. Since it had been over a thousand years since he saw the scorched remains of his home, he very much doubted it.
Once he had someplace private, even if it was the same mines that he had been lost in for months, he would bring back his friend. He needed to see Scenic Sights after everything that had happened and he wouldn't forgive himself until he kept his promise. With the void happily gnawing on the little bits of sanity that he had left, Bone smirked at the morbid thought of losing himself before he would be able to figure out how resurrection worked. Would he just scream at the sun every time he saw it, eventually going blind?
Bone shook his head. This wasn't the time to get distracted and he'd managed to leave Equestria without being thrown into a volcano. Things were looking up, aside from his blunder with the Hydra. One of his cardinal rules that he'd forgotten returned to his mind. Expect the Unexpected.
Now, alone and on his own in a world he had no familiarity with, he needed at least one thing to keep him sane. Scenic could be that thing, but he worried that he'd only be pulling yet another pony into the mess that was his unsortable life. He could bring back Toothpick, that was clear, but on the other hoof, Toothpick's advice had gotten him into this mess in the first place.
'Well, that's not exactly fair. I just followed the advice of a reanimated skeletal bird without even thinking it through first.' Bone shook his head. 'Does that make me dumber than a bag of bones? Really?' He sighed at himself. 'I need to think more, that's for certain.'
"So... are we just going to let Bone Marrow wander around the world?" Starlight spoke up when Celestia, Luna and Discord had left. "That seems like a bad idea no matter how it's put."
Twilight tapped her hoof on the Cutie Map. "We still have his cutie mark showing up here, so we'll have an idea of where he's heading."
"But that doesn't tell us what he's doing, does it?" Starlight's lip scrunched with uncertainty as she looked at the map. "I don't like that Celestia was quick to banish Bone Marrow..."
Twilight shook her head. "I don't either, but he didn't seem to be too bothered by it."
"Why would he be bothered?" Rainbow Dash chimed in. "He got a get out of jail free card from it!"
"I don't think that's how it works, Rainbow." Applejack set her hat down next to her. "He can't come back to Equestria, right? That's a pretty terrible punishment if you ask me."
"Oh yeah, and why is that?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow at her friend.
"Well, um, don't you remember what the world is like outside of Equestria?" Fluttershy shifted the Cutie Map's focus away from the Raven Skull that noted Bone Marrow. Everywhere outside of Equestria was a desert wasteland or an icy wasteland. "There's really nopony else around that's doing well. Remember when we met Capper?"
The others blinked at Fluttershy.
"He was the cat-person that stood on two legs and who had his coat fixed by Rarity?"
Realization dawned on the group and Rarity spoke up. "We should really send him a letter, shouldn't we?"
"Anyway," Fluttershy refocused, "Anyplace that isn't Equestria is either sand, ice or lava. I'm... I'm worried that being Banished might have been a worse sentence than death."
Starlight grimaced in sympathy. The worst punishment that she'd received was training in how to be friendly to other ponies. Then a fact came to mind. "I don't think Bone Marrow can die unless it's by lava, so as long as he stays out of the Dragon Lands, he'll be alright."
Fluttershy set her hooves on the crystal floor. "It still seems like a harsh punishment; especially after what happened to him in Canterlot all those years ago."
Rainbow shook her head. "He killed our friends, Fluttershy. Our family. I can't forgive something like that no matter what a pony's life was like before they met us."
She was silent after that, as she couldn't help but agree with Rainbow's sentiment even if she was unable to bring voice to her thoughts.
"Oh no, is this the right place?" Bone Marrow had been sprinting for an hour by his best estimate and found himself in a forested clearing on a patch of icy grass. "What do you think, Toothpick?" He asked the skeletal bird atop his head.
It had been an act born out of unconscious need rather than will, but the young necromancer had returned his no-longer-feathery companion from the obscurity of ash to the form of a Robin's skeleton. So long as it was a bird, the magic appeared to work the same.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Bone tapped his hoof on the icy ground and stepped forward, leaving his frigid method of acceleration behind. "It looks completely different from last time..."
Toothpick flew from Bone Marrow's head and fluttered to the ground to peck at seeds. They immediately fell through the bird's ribcage of course, but the instinct was still there.
"A thousand years can change a place, I guess." The foal pulled his hood back with a brief glow of blue magic to look up at the rocky red mountain in the distance. "Scoria... but now with grass and trees instead of desert."
"The buildings have all rotted away or turned to dust by now." Bone Marrow surveyed the area while speaking to himself. "There's no streets, no piles of bodies, no dust or debris of any kind. Nothing." He shook his head. "This used to be the town hall, remember?"
Toothpick's head tilted to the side, his empty eye sockets glowing with Bone Marrow's magic.
"There used to be a heaping pile of bodies over there. Ponies, griffons, dogs." It seemed so recent, but in actuality, it had been a thousand years since Bone Marrow had last visited his home village of Scoria. "Do you think the mines are still around?"
Again, Toothpick gave no reply.
The young foal closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm going crazy, aren't I? I mean I know that you know everything I know, but shouldn't you be able to talk at least?"
An idea came to the necromancer. "Actually... I learned how to raise skeletons from you, didn't I?"
Toothpick's head tilted in curiosity.
"Yeah. Right here is where I raised you from the dead, wasn't it?" A slight smile came to Bone Marrow's face. "So the first wave or pulse or whatever of power I sent out made your body move, the second made your eyes glow. What if..."
He sent out a first wave of blue magic, then a second, and finally a third. The first two waves seemed to do nothing to Toothpick, but the third forced the skeletal robin to hop backwards and shake his head.
"Hey, that's something different!" Bone Marrow's smile grew.
Toothpick shook his head and squawked.
"W-wait. That actually did something!?" The foal let out a happy noise, the first he'd made in months (or thousands of years depending on who you ask). "Yes! Hey, hey, Toothpick, can you talk now?"
The skeletal bird's glowing eyes narrowed as he looked up at Bone Marrow. He let out an annoyed squawk from a throat that didn't exist. It sounded eerie, like what one would expect from a campfire story about spooky ghosts that haunted the forest at night.
"Should I try four blasts of magic?" The excited foal suggested.
Toothpick replied with what could only be interpreted as an uncertain chirp.
"Okay, ten has to be the limit, right? Ten sounds... I dunno, important? Official?" Bone Marrow had more energy than he knew what to do with, and for the first time since he had discovered his cutie mark, he was able to spend some time to discover how his magic worked without worrying about bandits or monsters trying to eat him. Besides, Bone reasoned, If he had time before he needed to be out of Equestria, he wanted to Expect the Unexpected if he was going into what he assumed to be dangerous lands.
The young necromancer had been chasing this line of curiosity like a child in a candy store without a budget. Experimenting with his skeletal assistant was the first thing that Bone Marrow had considered to be 'fun' since he'd last been to Scoria. Toothpick, however, seemed to have other ideas.
The skeleton held up a single wing, suggesting that he needed a moment before ten waves of magic struck him.
"Okay, okay, I'll give you five minutes." Bone Marrow sat down in the grass next to his companion with a contented sigh. "It's just... it's nice to be able to have a moment, you know?"
Toothpick could only squawk in a grumbly manner.
As the two waited in the grass, one thinking and the other recovering, the smile on Bone's face slowly drifted. His mind wandered towards what had happened with himself and the hydras. The ponies that had been hurt without his intending to. The banishment that Celestia had given, and though while he had been expecting worse, he wasn't exactly shocked either. He was still keeping a hold on the void inside of him. The unnatural need to keep going, to keep consuming things. To kill his problems, to die and come back, to act rather than think about what needed to happen.
The foal bit his lip in thought. Something needed to change about how he was behaving. He'd done it before, after all. Never Trust Strangers had become a mantra of his. Expect the Unexpected had become a mantra on its own. Maybe he needed another to remind himself? Don't be rash? Think things through? He took a deep breath and rested his chin on his hoof as he exhaled. Maybe something simpler? Maybe just... Think.
He nodded. Never Trust Strangers, Expect the Unexpected, and Think. That covered a lot, didn't it? If he'd had the patience to sit down and Think about what would happen if that hydra hadn't just gotten sick and laid down, then he could've avoided being banished. If he'd stopped to Think about what would happen if he said Celestia's name and possessed her vision, then she wouldn't have known about him so personally. She wouldn't have doubled her suspicion.
Responsibility, then, was another thing he decided to work on. The foal's white hoof moved from his chin to the golden pocket watch around his neck. Scenic Sights, his friend from what was now a thousand years ago. She trusted her soul to him without more than a second thought, and now she wasn't able to die. She was unconsciously trapped in a little piece of indestructible jewelry with only one way out, and that way was Bone Marrow.
Should he bring her back? Bone Marrow observed the forest around him and shook his head. Not yet, at least. While he could survive things like hydras and being killed, she wouldn't be able to. That and he had no idea how many times a normal pony or person could be returned from the dead. Maybe it was once and that was it? Maybe it was infinite. Either way, Bone Marrow didn't want to take that chance with the only other pony that had looked past the glowing skulls in his eyes and given him a chance. At least initially. He should be fair to the others that had helped him. Obscenely Rich, Frosty Pie, Bright Idea, Scenic's mother... who he felt bad for not remembering her name. Did he ever ask what her name was? Bone shook his head. More things to worry about later. Scenic would definitely know her mother's name and he could make a gravestone for her.
A pair of glowing eyes interrupted Bone Marrow's thoughts as Toothpick moved in front of the foal's face.
"Oh, right." Bone pushed himself from the grass and looked at his skeletal friend. "You're ready for ten?"
The bird nodded and hopped a few paces back.
The necromancer concentrated and one after the other, pulses of blue energy washed over the clearing as a flood of energy. The first pulse caused Bone Marrow to be aware of all the skeletons and corpses in the area, from desiccated squirrels and the like to the shells of bugs and the carapaces of things that crawled. The second gave him the choice to return a being's instincts to their corpse. The third through ninth had done something that Bone wasn't exactly familiar with, but it seemed that each pulse after the second gave more... self awareness to a skeleton of his. Toothpick had understood what he was saying less on an emotional level, and more in the capacity of language combined with intent. This tenth pulse, however, was untested. There was a part of him that was certain it was something important, and until now, he simply never had the time to sit still and practice.
The tenth wave of magic slammed into Toothpick like a crashing wave against a rock, sending the skeletal bird flying backwards to tumble into the soft grass behind him.
"Whoa, uh, sorry!" Bone quickly came running up to his companion. "Are you alright?"
Toothpick's head spun for a moment while he tried to stand upright, though the effort made him dizzy.
"Take it easy there, okay?" Bone offered a hoof for his friend to lean against. "Feel any different?"
Toothpick's glowing eyes blinked once, then twice, and he looked up at Bone Marrow. "Quite different."
The foal's eyes widened with wonder and a grin spread across his face. "You can talk! Toothpick can talk!"
The skeleton rubbed his beak with the bones of his wing. "Yes, yes, please don't get too excited."
"Of course I'm going to be excited! I finally have someone to talk to!" Bone lowered himself to be eye level with Toothpick. "Have you always been able to talk? Could you understand me this whole time? What's it like being a skeleton?"
"Bone Marrow, please." The bird raised his wing. "Give me a moment, would you?"
"Right, sorry!" Bone sat upright in the grass, his grin reduced to an excited smile. "You know, your voice kinda reminds me of Obscenely Rich. Is that intentional? Are you Obscenely Rich in spirit form?"
"Bone Marrow, I know exactly as much as you do about what is going on. That is to say, I know jack-all about any of this." The bird continued to rub his posh head. "Seeing as you are the necromancer and I am the skeleton, I'd say that you hold authority about what in the blue-necromantic-blazes is going on."
"Right..." Bone Marrow paused for a moment. The last and only book he'd read on Necromancy had been in Canterlot when he was under Celestia's watch. The book had told him a great many things that had been helpful, like how to make and use a Soul Jar and the fact that Skeletons relied on everything that a necromancer knew in order to be useful to a necromancer. There was also the side note that Skeletons couldn't use magic even if the necromancer themself could, and that by using any kind of magic unrelated to necromancy through a skeleton, the skeleton would become ash. For example, if a fireball was something that Bone Marrow knew how to use, he couldn't get a skeleton to do the same. If he knew how to use a sword or how to make a cake, though, the skeleton would be able to do that.
"So, seeing as I know what you know and that we're functionally the same person with different... erm... outlooks on life and death, perhaps we should get to understand one another?" Toothpick suggested.
"Yeah, that makes sense." The foal nodded and lowered himself down to eye level with Toothpick in the grass, his front hooves providing a resting place for his head. "So your voice reminds me of Obscenely Rich. Is that just because it's a voice I recognize?"
Toothpick nodded. "I think it's related to the sense of familiarity. A... Familiar, I think the term would be."
"So if you know all the stuff I know, then that means...?" Bone Marrow's head leaned to the side as he trailed off.
"Perhaps you are the conscious part of your mind concerned with the immediate, and I am the unconscious, concerned with things that wait in the background of your thoughts?"
The necromancer's eyes widened in awe. "That sounds really smart, Toothpick."
"Technically it's coming from you, but a different part of you." The skeleton explained.
"Wait, so I'm still talking with myself?" Bone's eyebrow raised. "Doesn't that make me crazy?"
"Yes." Toothpick nodded. "Though the fact that other ponies and people will see you talking to a bird that has been brought back to life might be their immediate concern, rather than thinking you're speaking to yourself. To them, I appear as what I am. A talking bag of animated bird carcass with eyes of magic and the accent of a noble that's been dead for over a thousand years."
"It's kind of weird when you put it like that, Toothpick." Bone's lip twitched with uncertainty. "Hold on, if I do this with regular skeletons, will they have the same voice?"
Toothpick shook his head and performed the best approximation of a shrug that a skeletal robin could give. "I know as much as you do, remember?"
"Right..." Bone raised his head and looked to the mountains. "You know, if me messing around in a forest for an hour got me a friend, then... what if I practice the other abilities I have? Like Consume, maybe? I've used that to eat locks and to eat ponies and people, so... what if I try making it more... selective?"
"Like eating an arm, perhaps?"
"Yeah, something close to that." Bone looked to his companion. "I don't want to have to kill anymore, Toothpick. I've caused enough pain and death and harm as it is, and that stuff with the Hydras and the forests in Equestria? That's not something I ever want to repeat. So if I can get a hold of my magic and I can tone it down a bit, then maybe I'll only need to use Consume to magically eat someone's leg or muzzle off instead of their entire body at once, and then I could heal it when they get the point."
Toothpick's beak lowered mischievously. "To quote yourself, 'It's kind of weird when you put it like that'."
Bone Marrow couldn't help but laugh.
"Okay, so the mines are collapsed." Bone Marrow and Toothpick had wanted to go to the last place he'd seen any of his townsfolk or family, but there was a problem in the way.
"This is as good a time as any to practice your ability to 'Consume', I'd gather." Toothpick had remained atop Bone Marrow's hooded head, as was tradition.
"Do you think it will be the same as the last time I was there?" Bone Marrow's horn and eyes glowed, the rock in front of him quickly breaking apart into chunks and then into sand as magic poured from the ever-hungry void within him.
"It's anyone's guess, but I remind you that I only know as much as you do, Bone Marrow." Toothpick rested his skeletal beak on the top of Bone Marrow's horn.
"Yeah yeah, my bad." Bone's eyes narrowed as he tried to focus his magic less on the pile of boulders and more on a specific section of rock. "If I got really good with this, do you think we could find a cave someplace and carve it out? Maybe we could live in it, too."
"I doubt you would be happy living alone." Toothpick pointed out.
"I mean... I wouldn't be hurting anypony." His focus narrowed once again, attempting to make a cube out of a rock.
"You would also be miserable and lonely. Before your cutie mark appeared, you had only your mother and father to rely on. Now you're speaking with the skeletal carcass of a bird you killed that projects your own thoughts with a different filter. Do you see where the insanity begins?"
"I mean you're me, so yeah, I get it." Bone sighed as the rock he'd been working on crumbled into dust. "I used too much, I think."
"Try focusing on the end goal from the onset, then. Imagine the steps you need to take and complete them in order."
"How to make rock cubes, as told by my subconscious." Bone replied in amusement. "Talk about taking my own advice, right?"
"It seems to be working, at least. I think we've heard the saying 'practice what you preach' more than a few times during arguments between the mayor and the guard captain in Scoria?" Toothpick rubbed the side of his face on Bone Marrow's cloak.
"Do you need to do that, or is it because you're a bird skeleton?" Bone paused his experiment to check on Toothpick.
"I had an itch." The skeleton grumbled.
"You don't have flesh to itch, Toothpick. You don't have feathers, either."
"So? You don't need to breathe but here you are, breathing."
"Yeah, fair point." Bone shook his head and continued with his practice.
"Finally!" Both Toothpick and Bone Marrow rejoiced in unison as the last boulder was moved to the side; reduced to small cubes by the Consume ability and made manageable.
"Eugh!" Bone's nose wrinkled at the smell of the mines in front of him. "How did I only notice that smell just now?"
"You were occupied with making a tower out of boulders, Bone Marrow. To be fair, you've done a decent enough job, though it's nothing like the walls in Canterlot." Toothpick flew from the small wall over to Bone's head.
"Do you hear that?" Bone's voice became a whisper. "It sounds like something's alive. There's a bunch of scratching, like claws on stone."
"Diamond Dogs, maybe?" The skeleton suggested. "They were here last time we went to the mines, but then again, that dog was split into two meaty chunks connected by intestines."
"I don't think I ever figured out what happened to that one, did I?"
Toothpick shook his head.
Bone Marrow shrugged. "Eh, maybe I'll figure it out. For now, though... I want to give a final goodbye before I leave Equestria for good."
With Toothpick on Bone Marrow's head, the young necromancer walked through the dark tunnels of the Mines of Scoria. His hooves clacked against the stone and his glowing eyes illuminated the path ahead of him. The things that scurried in the dark were well aware of the pony in their midst, though none moved to confront the intruder.
For his part, Bone Marrow didn't feel threatened. He'd died multiple times after all, so why would he be frightened of noises? Yes, pain hurt and was bothersome, but he could heal that injury without much fuss. There was the Unexpected to consider, which gave him momentary pause as he came to a halt.
"So..." The necromancer's voice echoed through the tunnels, "The last time I was here, I got lost for months and starved. Do we know where we walked, or are we already lost?"
"I have a very vague idea of where we've been and where we need to go." Toothpick admitted. "It hadn't crossed my mind because it didn't cross your mind until now."
"And that means we're lost again?" Bone Marrow groaned. "Great."
"Hold on just a moment. Think. How do we get out of here?"
"Eh... oh!" A smile came to the necromancer's head. "I've been practicing making things into cubes, so every time we reach an intersection I can use the Consume thing to carve out little lines on the walls. It's not exactly a cube, but it's still practice."
"Selective destruction in place of chalk?" Toothpick nodded. "A good idea."
"Well of course you'd say that." Bone smirked, "We're the ones that thought of it."
Three hours passed before Bone Marrow found another line that he'd carved out on a wall.
"Are you kidding me?" The young foal shook his head in exasperation. "No wonder I got lost! This place is like a maze!"
"We do have a beginning, however. We know that nothing in that direction is something we want."
Bone Marrow turned towards the lines he'd made and marked a vertical slash of rock through the line to signify that the area was a dead end. As he etched into the stonework, he heard faint breathing behind him.
Toothpick was the first to turn, followed by Bone Marrow. They both caught just a glint of metal and the scratching of claws on the stone floor.
"Who's there?" Bone called out. "Come on, I'm asking nicely!"
"He doesn't do that for everyone." Toothpick pointed out.
The face of a small dragon, or rather something dragon-like, poked its head from around the corner of a wooden support pillar in the darkness. The blue glow of the necromancer's eyes provided the only illumination this far into the mine. The thing had red scales, yellow eyes, a small swishy tail and stood about half as tall as a pony.
"D-death!" The thing spoke in a trembling voice. "Y-you are death!"
"Huh?" Bone Marrow's face contorted in confusion before he realized what was being said. "Oh, right. Yeah, I'm a Necromancer. What about it?"
It's face shook from side to side. "N-no! You are Death, the pale pony cold as ice! Spare me your wrath!"
The foal blinked as his mouth slowly fell open. "What the... no, okay, listen." He held up a hoof and the dragon-thing flinched. "My name is Bone Marrow, alright? I'm not here to bring death or to kill you or anything. I'm just here to visit a grave, say a few words, and then leave. Who and what are you?"
"I-I'm Gravel! Kobold!" The not-a-dragon replied. "This is home!"
Bone Marrow and Toothpick shared a look, and Toothpick fluttered down to the ground, causing Gravel to back away in terror.
"Listen, Gravel." Toothpick spoke in his unusually eerie yet soothing voice. "A thousand years ago, this mineshaft was part of our home as well. We'll only be here for--"
"W-we invade home of Death!?" The kobold's eyes widened in fear. "N-no! We leave!"
"Hold on!" Bone shouted, his eyes becoming brighter as his impatience came to a head. "Just listen to what we're saying, alright?"
With his mouth shut, the kobold quickly gave a terrified nod.
"There should be a pit or a circle of some kind in the mines, so let's have a trade. Do kobolds like trading?" Bone shook his head. "Nevermind. Okay, here's the deal. You take me to the pit that I'm looking for, and if any of your kobold friends have injuries, I'll heal them. Got it?"
The kobold nodded, not daring to say a word.
Bone let out a sigh of relief. "Great. Glad we got that sorted out. After the deal is done, you can lead me back to the entrance of the mines and then we'll be on our way."
The kobold nodded once again.
Both the necromancer and the skeleton groaned in unison. "You can speak, Gravel."
"Yes! Yes I take you! We use pit for eggs!" The kobold quickly explained.
"Eggs?" A mental image of a dragon's egg came to Bone Marrow's mind. "Oh, erm..." He briefly grimaced at the idea of a place where his entire town's bodies had been thrown being turned into a birthing place for reptiles, but then again, it had been a thousand years since he was here last. Was it reasonable to get angry at nature for growing vines?
"Take us there." Toothpick suggested to the kobold paralyzed with fear.
As Gravel lead Bone Marrow and Toothpick to his home, the young necromancer became more and more thankful of the fact that he didn't need to breathe. The few times he made the attempt, he nearly vomited from how bad the place smelled. He guessed that part of the reason was from the lack of air flow in the mineshaft, or from cramped living conditions judging from all the holes in the tunnel walls that he'd passed, but again, breathing was a detriment in a place like this. He didn't have to smell if he didn't need to breathe.
"Dreadful." Toothpick commented from his perch on Bone Marrow's head. "Absolutely dreadful."
"S-sorry!" Gravel spoke up, "Never mean to make Death's home bad for Death!"
"For the last time, Gravel, I'm not death. Stop calling me that." The necromancer grumbled.
"He's not wrong, you know."
"Yes, Toothpick, I know that you know that I know. We're in the same mind. I just don't want to be seen as death incarnate all the time. I can be more than the pony that raises things from the dead or the pony that kills armies."
"I understand that as well as you do, but the rest of the world won't." Toothpick pointed out. "There may be more 'Celestia's' in the world than the one in Equestria, if you get my meaning."
"Yeah, but I'm hoping that she's the only one. I'll just say what I need to say to mom and dad, then I'll fix up these kobolds or whatever, then I'll figure myself out." Bone Marrow sighed as another kobold shrieked in fear at the sight of him. "Maybe I'll just avoid people for a few years while I screw my head on straight."
"H-here!" Gravel abruptly mentioned, pointing to a pit filled with eggs. "Here is place that Death seeks!"
Bone Marrow's sour mood shifted to shock as he took stock of his surroundings. An entire village had been carved out of the stone in the area where he had first died along with the rest of his village. Small holes had been filled with straw beds, piles of rocks, dirty baskets woven from grass and crude spears had been piled up in different sections. There was little in the way of decoration, but it seemed functional enough.
The pit, however, was a different story. There was no sign of anything but eggs and hay having ever been in the pit, but Bone Marrow's mind was having trouble dealing with the flashbacks of memory and the reality in front of him. He needed to shut his eyes to avoid the mental flickering between images of everypony he'd ever known being dead in the pit and the eggs that now took up residence in the same space.
The kobolds backed away from the visage of death in their midst, some of them pressed their backs to the walls while others ran for the tunnels nearby. Ice was beginning to form around Bone Marrow's hooves as he wrestled with his past and the fact that he had once died in this very room.
"Bone Marrow?" Toothpick cautiously inquired. "You're going to ruin the eggs if you don't get a hold of yourself. Step back if you need a moment, but you wanted to avoid killing, yes? Don't be careless."
The young foal turned and walked a few paces away from the edge of the pit to take a moment to gather himself. After a while, he shook his head. "It doesn't feel right, Toothpick. I want to say goodbye, but..." His gaze fell upon the pit where his family and friends had died. "If I can bring Scenic back, why not them?"
"They weren't protected by a Soul Jar when they died, Bone Marrow." Toothpick hopped down to look into the necromancer's eyes. "You know what the book told us."
"Yeah? Well it didn't say that I could carve out lines on a wall, either. Maybe that book doesn't know everything a necromancer can do because nobody ever had the time to think about more than survival!" The ice continued to grow around the Necromancer as it formed crystals around his hooves.
"Then in that case, Bone Marrow, we should leave before we frighten these Kobolds to death." Toothpick briefly glanced at Gravel who cowered nearby.
The foal looked to Gravel, then to the other kobolds and finally the pit before taking a deep breath and exhaling fog. "Alright. Let's get out of here. I'll come back when I'm ready for this." Bone gestured to the pit. "I'm not ready to say goodbye just yet."
"Then we leave Equestria?" Toothpick's head tilted with curiosity.
The necromancer nodded. "We're leaving Equestria... for now."
From Gravel's explanation, there were twenty injured kobolds. Some had crushed legs, broken bones or shredded limbs from rocks caving in after an unexpected earthquake. Much like mine's walls, Bone Marrow took this opportunity to experiment.
What if he focused on only the wounded part of a kobold's body? Well, that came with complications of its own. He learned that he needed to use his magic to 'feel' the body of what he was healing, in this case a kobold, and to figure out what was wrong. For that, he needed a reference point.
Gravel was none too pleased at being used as the example in this case, but he obediently shivered in place while Bone Marrow compared and contrasted the various injuries with Gravel's wellbeing. Before this time, the young necromancer never had the time or the clarity of mind to sit down and be this thorough. In the assault on Obscenely Rich's manor, the attack on Galloping Glades and the siege of Canterlot, he had simply focused his magic to heal every aspect of a person. Perhaps that was why Granny Smith was still alive?
All in all, his experiments resulted in twenty healthy but confused and scared kobolds. Old injuries had been repaired, scars had healed and each little bipedal 'lowercase dragon' was able to move of their own accord. Muscle degredation from being bedridden was a thing of the past, though some kobolds stumbled around as they attempted to become accustomed to their restored bodies.
Standing at the entrance to the Mines of Scoria, which a thousand years later had become a den of kobolds, Bone Marrow looked into the smelly darkness one more time. He would return when he was ready. Once he had figured himself out, once he was certain of his abilities and as soon as he could hold his head high. The last time he had seen his parents was when Diamond Dogs had made his village into slave labor. He decided that should he discover how to bring back his village that such a thing would never happen again as long as he could help it.
Beyond the forests of Equestria was an expansive desert that stretched far beyond the horizon. The sun was setting in the distance and causing a golden glow from the sands that covered the land ahead of him.
"Well." Bone Marrow took a deep breath and vented out the cold fog of stress. "Time to see what the rest of the world is like."
Toothpick landed on the necromancer's hooded head, hopping once to adjust his talons. "Do you think there will be scorpions? Perhaps massive snakes?"
The adult-sized colt lifted his head, though his hood prevented him from looking directly at his skeletal companion. "Why are you asking for trouble?"
"We didn't encounter anything in our trip through the supposedly 'horrible and dangerous' Everfree Forest, did we?" Toothpick countered. "Not one monster, manticore or beastie tried to eat you."
"So you're hoping we do run into something that wants to eat me?" Bone grumbled.
"Would you rather run into people?" The skeleton's head tilted to the side. "At least with a beast you have a higher chance of just killing it and being done with the problem. Perhaps you could even turn the beast into a skeleton to do the walking for you?"
Bone shook his head. "At what point are conversations like these going to become normal?"
Toothpick seemed to laugh. "Isn't this already normal for us?"
Unrelenting heat, savage winds with each grain of sand flying in high enough density to make breathing a nigh impossible hurdle and no food or water for days. This would be enough to kill most anyone else. Toothpick took refuge in Bone Marrow's cloak, finding a comfortable pocket for himself that slowly filled with sand.
A storm had shredded the necromancer's plan. From a high place he had plotted a course through the desert to reach another mountain, but now, he couldn't open his eyes for the risk presented by the sandstorm. His eyes caked shut from tears and sand, his hood blown back by the wind and having given up on breathing, there was little else that the young colt could do other than walk on and endure the winds that peeled away at his fur and skin.
It was a good thing that Bone Marrow was accustomed to pain or he would've been buried by the sands that confronted his progress. Each step threatened to fling him into the dunes behind him, erasing minutes of progress should he be careless. He had no idea how long this storm would last, but it had already felt like years. With his eyes shut and Toothpick hidden, neither could tell time. It was a miracle in and of itself that Bone's cloak hadn't been ripped from his neck to be launched into the desert behind him.
Banishment. He understood now why other ponies would think that this would be a punishment. Any other pony would've died if they had been sent into this kind of environment. He imagined someone like Bright Idea or even Scenic in this kind of place and how they would do. Bright Idea, with his armor and weapons, would have fallen in the first few hours. There was no shelter nearby, no refuge or shield against the sand. Let alone the risk of suffocation, the heat would have baked him in his golden armor. His weapons would've been discarded almost immediately from the fatigue and without water, he would fall to the ground and become buried.
Scenic, though he thought highly of her, would have done no better. Though she was a pegasus and could fly, the wall of sand that had confronted Bone Marrow before the storm struck was high enough to challenge the clouds above. Did it go further than the clouds? Was there some kind of barrier to prevent Equestria from being swallowed up by this madness? Knowing Celestia there probably was. With Twilight Sparkle also being in the picture along with Princess Luna, there were three Alicorns to fight back against this kind of calamity.
Bone Marrow was brought back to reality by a sharp pain in his right leg. He grimaced and stepped away as he couldn't open his eyes. Toothpick was doing all he could by being huddled up in the necromancer's cloak pocket. They were both blind, the roar of the sand made hearing pointless, and smell was a joke to even mention. The colt didn't dare to breathe or sand would fill his lungs. The only reason he hadn't been ripped to shreds was due to his magic constantly healing and repairing his body. The focused effort kept his mind off of the constant pain of his body being ripped apart granule by granule, and he hoped that this misery would end sooner rather than later.
The colt's eyes were so caked with sand by the time his hearing returned that he felt like a wall of mud had adhered to his face. Pushing his hoof against the sand brought pain as it tugged on his fur. Like his healing, this was as good a time as any to focus once again on his abilities. If he could 'consume' the hairs on his face, then the sand would fall free. That was the theory, at least. After several tens of minutes of effort, he grumbled in annoyance. His control was improving, that much was certain, but his impatience was getting the better of him. He wanted to see! The colt instead focused on consuming the sand itself rather than his hair, and soon enough, he was free.
His once dark vision slowly gained specks of reddish-white light through his eyelids. As more and more sand was carefully dissolved into nothing, his eyelashes tugged at the sand that held his eyes shut. Deciding he'd rather see than have eyelashes, he dissolved those fine hairs as well. When he finally took stock of his surroundings, he was blinded by the light of the rising sun.
Bone Marrow raised his hoof to shield his eyes as Toothpick poked his skeletal head from the sandy pocket that had become his mobile tomb. The bird then used his talons to pick at the holes where his eyes would be to claw sand from his skull.
The two had sand just about everywhere a person could imagine, and none of it was pleasant. Through select use of his magic, Bone Marrow did his best to clean himself and Toothpick. Once they had taken a breather, meaning that Bone Marrow was actually able to take a breath for the first time in days, he coughed up yet more sand in a wet and dirty mucus with the color of clay.
"Eugh!" Bone managed to blurt out before hacking out more disgusting mud.
"Hmm..." Toothpick hopped out of his pocket and landed on the sand in front of Bone Marrow. "Well, that is strange. I think you've had a makeover, Bone Marrow."
The young necromancer was still coughing and sputtering so it took him a while to reply. "What are you talking about?"
"I think I remember someone in town talking about this once." Toothpick pointed the bones if his wing at Bone Marrow. "Your hair has streaks of white and blonde in it, and your fur is a yellow-ish white."
"My what?" Bone spat more sand from his mouth before having a closer look at his foreleg. Indeed, his previously marshmallow-white fur had become a sandy tan. "What happened?"
"My guess is that this is 'sun bleaching'. We must have been out in the desert for so long that the sun and sand, with all of the damage it dealt, caused your fur and hair to change colors." Toothpick's head tilted to the side as he looked closer. "I can still see that the roots of your hair are the same blue as they've always been, however. Very interesting."
"Yeah? Well your bones look a little tan, too." The colt gestured to his skeletal friend. "They used to be pearly white but now you look a little tan. Kind of like a skull that's sat in the sun for ages?"
"How long have we been walking in the desert?" Toothpick's voice had a hint of worry to it.
"Probably not more than a month? A little more than that?" Bone risked taking a deeper breath and immediately regretted it. He spent a few more minutes coughing up sand and gunk.
"And in that time, it's entirely possible that we've wandered in circles..." Toothpick flew up to sit on Bone Marrow's back to get a look around the area while the colt coughed his lungs out. "Ah! Look what I've seen!"
In the distance was what seemed like buildings that came from the dunes. There was a large windmill as well, accompanied by multi-story structures with smaller ones that surrounded them. Smoke was rising from the buildings, and only now did Toothpick realise that these structures seemed to be barely held together. Some looked like they were at risk of collapsing at any moment while others were leaning against one another for support.
"It seems like ruins..." Toothpick gave a ghostly sigh. "Though the rising smoke means that other people are living there. Any chance that the citizens might be ponies?"
Bone scoffed and looked at the scene with his own eyes. "I'd be happy to see anypony that isn't Celestia or the ones from Ponyville, excluding Granny Smith."
"If we remember correctly, didn't the Diamond Dogs, the Griffons and those bandits originate from the deserts around Scoria?"
"That was a thousand years ago, Toothpick. There could be anything out in that town over there." Bone Marrow lifted his hood over his head, only to find that his cloak had become a white tattered mess. The dyes had been bleached out of his cloak and it had become shredded by the sandstorm that the two had walked through.
"Hah, hey, Toothpick." He turned his head and looked to the friend on his back with a smile. "I look like a mummy without all the bandages. Sandy-white hair and fur, a white cloak that's all ragged and..." His smile faded. "Right... erm, I think you'll need to hide, Toothpick."
"In what pocket?" The bird countered. "I think it would be better for you to retake the energy you've spent on me, Bone Marrow. Though it isn't like you can shield the skulls in your eyes, you can at least claim that you're not actively controlling an army of the dead if I'm not perched on your head."
"You're sure? I'd be all alone then."
"Bone Marrow, you've been talking to yourself for months." His minion tilted his head. "I'm your subconcious, remember?"
The necromancer grimaced. That was a fair point. Did he remember how to speak to people? It couldn't be more different than the mental conversations he'd had with Toothpick while walking in the sandstorm. Without those, Bone was certain that he would've lost his mind.
"I'll see about getting you another body as soon as I can, Toothpick." Bone promised.
The skeleton nodded. "Do try to get me something other than a bird, would you? I'm not limited to just being the size of a raven, you know. Maybe a minotaur for example?"
As Bone Marrow moved closer to the town, accompanied by nothing but the tattered remains of his cloak and the cold metal of Scenic's soul jar around his neck, he noted the howling winds through the alleyways of the buildings. There was no one to be seen. Doors were locked tight, barred and sealed against the sand. No building had a window that wasn't boarded up and covered with cloth. Wooden pillars that were once storefronts were half buried in the sand and signs that noted businesses had the lettering worn off. The smoke that had been rising in the distance was due to wood burning from the intensity of the sun. A kind of slow smouldering that could last ages if it went unnoticed.
"Well, um, that's not good."
Bone was answered by silence.
The young unicorn grumbled and pulled his tattered cloak closer to his body. Moving deeper into the town resulted in more of the same. Boarded up houses, destroyed storefronts, wisps of sunbleached cloth that were once territorial flags and sand-covered remnants of what used to be signs of life.
"Really?" Bone looked around at the desolation that surrounded him. "That's all?" He kicked sand with his hoof, sending a spray of dust and disappointment into the air. "Come on! Come out here!"
Nothing but the howling wind and the echo of his voice replied.
The necromancer closed his eyes and tried to gain control of his breath. Come on. Think. Don't freak out now that I'm alone. What can I do?
He was in the middle of a desolate town. After double checking, there were no heartbeats. Everything here was dead or gone. That... was a good starting point. If things were dead, he could use that to his advantage. Dead things meant he could have skeletons. He could use his magic to eat away at the barricaded doors to raise the skeletons, but what then? What was his plan?
He could use the dead citizens of the town for... what purpose? To rebuild the town, certainly, but for who? He had no reason to live here. If he thought about it, nobody else had a reason to live here either. If they did, they wouldn't have left. Did he need to find out the reason people had left this place, or did it not matter?
"Couldn't hurt." Bone Marrow sighed to himself before closing his eyes. "I could use some help, though."
He sent out nine pulses of energy from the center of the town outwards. In rapid succession, nine waves of blue light emitted outward like a massive hemisphere of energy and the once silent town began to make noise. Skeletons began clawing at the boarded up windows of the town, planks were broken and tossed to the side and doors were busted clear of their hinges.
The necromancer jumped from a door that had nearly slammed into him, and the offending skeleton covered their mouth in apology. Bone's face twisted in confusion at the figure he was looking at. Was it a minotaur? Well, there were no horns, so that wasn't correct. Perhaps it was some kind of thing that he hadn't seen before? He didn't recognise it from the many species that had attacked Canterlot long ago, either.
The skeleton had holes in the sides of it's skull and a long tail. The teeth had fangs, the fingers on its hands had claws, and the bones themselves seemed slim and light. After a while, he likened the skeleton to that of a cat and a minotaur combined. As if the two legs of a minotaur along with the hands had somehow been combined with that of a cat. There wasn't really a word for this kind of thing, but he wasn't a scientist either. He decided to call it a 'Cat person skeleton' and moved on with his life.
As more and more skeletons came from their houses, he noted with a pang of sympathy that not every skeleton had been an adult when the owner died. There were children, elderly, ones with busted bones or broken hips and ribs, some with missing teeth and others that looked like they'd rotted from the inside out.
Air hissed through his teeth in sympathy and he used his magic to restore the skeletons to their full potential. He knew that the owners of these bodies had probably long since passed on and that they probably didn't care a single bit what happened to their bones, but he felt it was the least he could offer.
The young necromancer cleared his mind by shaking his head. "Alright, everyone." He raised his head to look up at the skeletons that stood tall over him. They were twice his height in some cases, while for most his eyes came up to their sternums. "I need you all to figure out what happened to this town. Why did the people here leave? Why are all the windows boarded up? Where did they all go?"
The skeletons nodded in unison and paused for a moment, each of them looking to one another before they all dispersed.
"Hold on, you." Bone pointed to the cat-person skeleton. "Come on over here."
The skeleton did as asked, and Bone emitted ten directed pulses at the skeleton.
"Ooh..." The skeleton looked at its hands and turned his head. "This is quite the upgrade!"
"Hey again, Toothpick."
"Hello, Bone Marrow." The skeleton opened his fanged mouth when he spoke each word and his tail moved from side to side. "This is certainly strange. I'm happy for the new body, though. I'll miss flying..."
"Do you have any ideas about this place?" Bone gestured to the town around them.
"I have little more ideas than you do, of course. For now, let's wait and see what the others come up with in their search."
Hours had passed since Bone dispersed the 'surviving' members of the town to figure out what happened. With the energy he'd put into the skeletons of the town, Bone Marrow learned that they had about the same level of intelligence that he did though they didn't share his ability to speak or any piece of his mind. He understood them more on an instinctual, unspoken level than he did on a verbal one.
The skeletons had recovered various journals, each of which had been worn away by heat and sand, and in some cases turned to dust from the ravages of time. That gave the necromancer an idea. Could he 'heal' a book?
In short, the answer was no. No he could not heal a book. This disappointed him, but it wasn't entirely unexpected either. In any case, the attempt was made. It wasn't that it didn't work, it was more that he couldn't restore the ink to its original shape. He didn't have a reference point. Much like Gravel, if he didn't know what the contents of the book was, he couldn't rearrange everything to become that. He supposed that his healing efforts had worked in the past because he had only healed other ponies. Yes, others had been Bat ponies, earth ponies and pegasus, but they were ponies in one way or another. He'd never encountered a Kobold before he'd met Gravel, and once he had the hang of it, healing the other kobolds was as simple as healing ponies.
With these books, part of the 'healing' in this case would be where each dot of ink or each stroke of the quill would have been made. With his magic, the only thing he had was a blank yet pristine book in his hooves. Staring at the pages for a long while, an idea came to mind. There was a book he'd read about Necromancy when he was in Canterlot, but the pages were assembled by those who had no time to actually study their magic. Perhaps with this, he could write his own tome. He certainly had enough dessicated pages laying around for him to write with. The only problems that faced him was the lack of writing materials and the ability to carry all of this with him.
Looking out of a freshly unbarred window to the dusty streets outside, Bone bit his lip. He could take the skeletons of this town with him, but once he reached a civilized place they would only cause others to be frightened and scared. He thought longer about his circumstances. He had a cloak on his back, didn't he? He knew what it had looked like before, so in theory...
Bone Marrow attempted to 'heal' his cloak, and much to his surprise, it flowed back into repair and color. It was a faded purple now, but still, it was able to be used. With this... couldn't he have his army of skeletons that wore cloaks? Hmm, that would still freak others out. But, if he made clothing out of the cloak....
He tore off a square of his cloak and decided to test his theory. If he healed this square, would it form another cloak? In short, the answer was a negative. The square itself was perfectly restored but it couldn't clone itself. He supposed that it wouldn't make sense if he could create an army of skeletons out of a finger bone, much like he couldn't create infinite clothing out of a single thread.
Well, in either case, he was learning more about his powers. It could repair or bring something to life, but it couldn't fully restore things that were parts to a greater whole. He supposed it made sense, seeing as dead things don't grow skeletons. Only living people could grow a skeleton, so it stood to reason that a... wait a minute, what?
Bone Marrow sat down and scratched his sandy head. "Alright, so if I'm sitting here and I can bring a skeleton to life with my magic, why can't I bring a book or some cloth to life? I mean there's nothing left of it to be 'alive', right? The skeleton can't grow anymore than it could before it died, so being alive isn't some kind of, erm," He rubbed his face. "I mean if the thing's already dead, can't I just make it undead?"
The necromancer's cold eyes looked to the book on the table in front of him, and he released two pulses of magic towards the book. It appeared to have done nothing, but when he thought about opening the book to the middle, the book opened itself to the page that Bone Marrow had thought about.
He hopped out of his seat with joy. "Yes! I did it! Hah!" Bone considered briefly that he was unreasonably happy, but he let the doubt slide. He had discovered something else that he hadn't read in the previous books. First had come healing, then had come the revelation about different amounts of power for his minions, and now, he'd discovered that he could make inanimate objects into animate objects. The possibilities were endless!
Well, not entirely endless. In all of his uses of large pulses of magic, he hadn't turned each individual grain of sand in the desert into a minion. Was it for lack of trying? Experimentation on the matter determined that no, it wasn't due to a lack of trying. No matter what he tried, all that seemed to happen was that the sand would vibrate and shuffle around. After more experimentation, he learned that if a skeleton was standing in the shaking sand, it would very quickly be buried up to its shoulders. In effect, 'Quicker Sand'.
There was a smile on the Necromancer's face. He may be in the desert with nothing but skeletons and the husks of forgotten buldings as his company, but here, he could figure out his magic. He could have a safe haven away from everyone and everything that might want to harm him. He didn't feel a limit to his power after his mistake with the Hydras in Equestria. He had someone to talk to since Toothpick was here, and for now, there was no concern other than food and sleep.
Then again, food was more of a comfort to him than a requirement. Looking at his body, he noticed that he was already skin and bones. Healing himself with a bit more effort restored his body to what he remembered it being, but he kept the sunbleached hair and fur. It was nice to have a change, and with his fur being lighter, the oppressive sun overhead made him just slightly less overheated. This was a place he could rest. If he found ink, he could write down his findings. If someone came by... well, he certainly had an army to defend himself with.
Maybe banishment would be better than he was expecting?
Another sunrise interrupted Bone Marrow's experimentation with his magic. How many had it been? Weeks, that is. He'd spent so long talking only to himself -- or Toothpick if he was going to be overly specific -- that he'd long forgotten what a normal conversation was like. Maybe it had been months since he broke out of this rut?
As he took stock of himself, he realised that he'd let himself go. He saw that his legs and hooves had become little more than skin that stretched over bone. His throat had holes in it from disuse and there were even patches on his body where he could see his own ribcage. At one point had he become used to this? Did he stop caring once he realised that he didn't feel pain once his flesh had died? Since when did he think of himself like this?
This wasn't normal, that was for certain. Looking back, he realised that his body had begun dying when he stopped regularly breathing. He'd used his magic to heal his body while walking through the sandstorms that had lead him to this forgotten city; this safe haven without food or water in the middle of nowhere, where anything but a necromancer like himself would surely die within days.
Could he consider himself a pony at this point? He rolled his neck and heard bones pop with alarming volume. Scratching his face revealed that his skin was paper thin and that it peeled off without much effort. He was almost indistinguishable from the skeletons that he controlled.
"You should get help." Toothpick suggested. "We should, that is."
As Bone Marrow willed his body to be mended, for flesh to grow and for blood to return, he took in a deep breath and coughed for several minutes as he got used to the feeling of saliva and moisture.
"We can't keep talking to ourself forever. This is how people go insane, right?" Toothpick crossed his skeletal arms, his clawed fingers clacking against bone.
"Yep," The foal coughed. "I know that I'm gonna go crazy out here. I've been feeling off for a few weeks now, but I just noticed what was wrong."
"Loneliness," Toothpick agreed.
"There's over seven thousand skeletons in this city and I can't hold a conversation with a single one of them, aside from you, which is actually a different version of me." Bone Marrow shook his head and rubbed his watery eyes. That was a feeling he'd forgotten as well. "Where should I even go? I don't know anything about the desert around here or what's beyond it."
"Take a look around? Maybe have the skeletons do it for you."
They both considered the idea for a moment before disagreeing in unison. "Seven thousand skeletons wandering the dunes is going to get us in trouble."
"What if we tried giving them flesh and blood?" Toothpick suggested as he raised his hand. "Nobody will bat an eyelid at regular people, will they?"
Bone Marrow raised an eyebrow at that. "You're sure we can be considered 'regular' at any point in time? I'm talking to myself while arguing with myself. Just a moment ago I was a skeleton draped in ragged fur and skin, and now I'm fine. Like nothing ever happened. There's no way that's going to be considered 'normal' by anyone or anything that exists."
The Necromancer hopped onto a chair that had been mended by his magic a dozen times. It was made from wood, and through his experiments, he'd discovered an ability to repair certain structures to a limited degree. Stone was off the table, as was metal and crystals. Wood, however, was something that his magic could affect. He had no idea what the distinction was, but it was beneficial even if he didn't know the specifics.
"So what do we do about this?" Bone looked to Toothpick. "I'm not going to sit out here in the middle of the desert playing with sand and dead bodies until the end of time. I'm really not gonna keep Scenic waiting much longer to return to life, either. I just don't want her to come back and immediately starve to death, die of thirst, bake in the desert sun, choke on sand--"
Toothpick held up his hand. "Easy, Bone Marrow. I know and you know that I know."
The foal rolled his eyes. "I'm talking with myself. That's it. Me, talking to me, about my own plans while pretending that I don't know what I already know! Maybe I'm already crazy. How am I supposed to survive out here as some kind of unkillable and unfath... unflappa... strange thing that controls the dead!?"
"Erm... deal with it?" Toothpick shrugged. "You're going to keep living no matter what -- short of throwing yourself into a volcano or stuffing your soul into a container."
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Bone leaned into his chair and covered his eyes with his hooves. "I just want... something. I don't know what. Maybe if I get Scenic back then everything will be fine? Maybe not."
"You've learned everything you can here, Bone Marrow. What else is there to study? Just a moment ago you were dead, and now you're not." Toothpick hopped up and sat on the table, his skeletal cat tail swishing with the irritation that both of them felt. "Try giving me some flesh and blood and we'll go from there, yeah? Maybe some clothing, too. Most of the other skeletons at least have some tattered rags."
"How am I supposed to do that, again? I've only seen the bones of a cat-person." He set his hooves on the table. "You know we've never even seen one of these things in the flesh before, let alone healed one. Am I supposed to just slap flesh together and hope it looks right? I practiced on dozens of kobolds to learn how they worked."
"And you've thousands of cat-people skeletons to work with. Diamond dogs, minotaur, and other creatures skeletons too." Toothpick sprawled out on the table like the subject of a painting. "Come on, Bone Marrow. Who is going to complain about a few horrors out here in the desert? You can always turn them into dust when you're finished experimenting."
"This is how the insanity starts, you know." Bone shook his head and hopped off of his chair to head for the door. "The bad guy in all the folk tales? They start experimenting on their own in the middle of nowhere and then when the heroes show up, the bad guy is surrounded by things that shouldn't exist."
"Have you killed anyone you're experimenting on? Is their soul even here to complain?"
Bone shook his head. "Guess not..."
"Then lets get to experimenting, shall we?"
It was a good thing that Bone Marrow didn't need to sleep very often, because every time he did during the last twelve days he was plagued by nightmares.
His experimentation with unfamiliar bodies and species had lead to horrifying abberations. Muscles that were too tightly packed and that contorted in the wrong direction. Bones that were given tendons too limp or too strong, either resulting in the skeleton falling apart or being snapped into pieces from a simple wave of the hand. At one point, even a jaw was given too much and a test-bite shattered the teeth of a diamond dog skeleton into dust.
The young necromancer was very relieved that he had so many dead people to help him learn more about his powers, but it also unnerved him. He had taken to creating skin and fur over the muscles and tendons, leading to horrifically warped appearances that bordered on the unseen works of a painter who had lost their mind years ago and fallen into insanity. Lips would twist and curl at odd angles, eyelashes that would snap like a whip, ears that would droop from a lack of cartilage and noses that were half finished or forgotten entirely.
After hundreds of frustrating attempts and failures, Bone Marrow had developed a method. Starting from the feet and working his way up, he discovered that by referring to his own exposed muscles he could learn how they worked. Pain, blood and hard work had accumulated to the point that he could now guess with some degree of appreciable precision that whatever he was doing was close enough to avoid scrutiny.
He made a silent vow that as soon as he was able to get a proper amount of practice healing still-living cat-people and similar that he would revise his methods of skeletons being given flesh and blood, but for now, this was all he had to work with.
"It's coming along nicely." The still skeletal Toothpick summarised.
Bone Marrow rubbed his parched throat. It was so much easier to study without taking care of his body. Parts of him had fallen off once again -- a habit that he'd need to seriously look after if he was going to have any chance of making friends with regular people. A quick burst of healing took care of this in the short term, but things like eating and breathing and drinking needed to be higher on his priority list.
"Are you ready for your turn?" The little necromancer inquired.
Toothpick nodded. "I know you're ready, so let's see how this turns out."
The skeleton stood a few feet away from Bone Marrow so the foal could see what he was doing.
"It's strange," Bone commented. "I never thought that I'd be doing something like this, you know? When I was in Scoria I was planning on using skeletons to help. To harvest fields, to repair buildings, to chop down trees... and here I am, putting flesh onto bones in order to have a normal life."
"As normal as we're going to get, that is." Toothpick spoke while his body was slowly growing muscle and tendons from the feet upwards. The march was slow and steady, the magic spreading over his skeleton like fog rolling across ice.
"How do you feel about tan fur?" Bone focused his attention to aesthetics once he had a proper layer of skin over Toothpick's flesh and blood. "Maybe a poofy tail, a spot of white on your left cheek..."
The furless cat-person nodded. "Maybe some clothes?"
"Oh, right." Bone motioned with his head and a few rag-covered skeletons marched over to hand over what passed for clothing to Toothpick.
"And... teal eyes." The necromancer smirked. "That should work fine. It's a shame that you have skulls in your pupils like me, though."
Toothpick took the time to get dressed, his voice shifting from an eerie version of Obscenely Rich to one that was more normal, though higher in pitch.
"Huh." Bone Marrow finished his work on Toothpick and circled around him, having a better look at his handiwork. "I think this is the best attempt yet!"
"I'd hope so." Toothpick commented while pulling rags over his head as a shirt. "It's going to be my body after all."
"Don't you miss the flying from when you were a raven?"
The cat-person examined himself, noting his ears that swiveled towards sound and his now poofy tail. "Mm... there's upsides and downsides, I'd say."
"You're taking the lack of water pretty well, Toothpick." Bone rubbed his own throat in sympathy. "No pain or scratchyness?"
Toothpick shook his head. "Not as far as I can tell. My heart's beating at least, so that's working." He took in and exhaled a few deep breaths, ending with a cough. "Yep, that's fine as well. Blood is pumping, air is flowing, head is... surprisingly heavier than I thought it would be, and my body is very fuzzy."
"Success?" Bone raised an eyebrow, his eye glinting with hope.
Toothpick gave a thumbs up. "Success!"
"So..."
"So."
Toothpick and Bone Marrow nodded at one another. They had a small group of 'people'. Three cat-people, four diamond dogs, a minotaur, and Bone Marrow. Each member of this group had small skulls in their pupils, though the only ones that spoke were Toothpick and Bone Marrow.
"What now?" Bone asked the group, though he wasn't really expecting an answer. All of them were dressed in rags that had been dyed a sandy tan by the necromancer's magic. Since he could change the color of fur, he discovered he could change the tint of cloth.
"I suppose we head out into the desert to find new people and meet new faces." Toothpick rubbed his face with both hands. "Is flesh supposed to slide around like this?"
Bone nodded. "Yeah, I forget about it sometimes. Try not to slide the meat on your bones around too much or you'll look weird to others."
"It's like I'm in control of a suit of meat that's powered by blood."
The neromancer sighed. "Yeah, there's no way we're fitting in at this point."
"Where shall we head to? North? East?"
Bone Marrow shrugged. "I don't think I ever learned how to tell which way was which. Maybe we just pick one and go that way?"
"It couldn't hurt, I suppose. We'll either run into Equestria or the sea, or something else." Toothpick tugged at the rags around his chest. "Maybe we'll find some clothes that are as fancy as that cloak of ours?"
The foal looked over his withers at the cloak on his back. The gift from Rarity that he didn't really want to be reminded of.
The cat-person grimaced. "Right, nevermind. We'll find or think of something else."
Toothpick and Bone Marrow took in a deep breath at the same time, and the 'people' behind them mirrored the action. As they exhaled as a group, the foal pointed at the rising sun. "Okay! Time to find someplace or repeatedly die trying."
Bone Marrow's head hung low with his hood blocking out the sun overhead.
"The flesh is weaaak." He complained. "It's sore and it's so heavy to carry around! Skeletons are so much better..."
"You're doing it again, Bone Marrow." Toothpick flicked the foal's ear, causing it to twitch.
"Ow!" He raised his head to glare at the cat-person. "You're one to talk, mister 'I'm a part of your subconcious'."
"Then stop flicking yourself." Toothpick once again flicked one of Bone's ears.
With half-lidded eyes of irritation, the foal grumbled and continued onward.
"Are we there yet?" Bone whined.
"No." Toothpick chided.
"What if we run? We could get where we're going so much faster if we run."
"And if someone sees us leaving a trail of ice across the desert while running faster than a flying griffon?"
"Then they'll talk with us?" Bone looked up at Toothpick with a hopeful smile that was born out of desperation.
"They'll run in terror from the nightmare in front of their eyes."
His head lowered and his ears drooped.
"How long has it been?" Bone Marrow looked up at the starry night sky as the group of nine continued their march across the sandy dunes. "A week?"
"I think so. The sun has come and gone enough times for it to have been a week." Toothpick carried himself extremely well despite needing to be healed every few hours. His hands were held at the small of his back and he walked like he was a nobleman.
"How long do we keep looking?"
"How long do you want to be lonely?" Toothpick countered.
The foal could only offer a grumble in reply.
"Finally!" Bone couldn't help but jump for joy, kicking up tufts of sand everywhere as he hopped and skipped. "Finally! We found something!"
Toothpick squinted to get a better look at what was in the distance. There were sandy walls, some wooden towers, a few buildings, and maybe even people walking in and out of the camp ahead of them. Or was it a town? A village? There was no real way to tell at this extreme distance.
"Ooh I'm so excited! We'll get to talk with people! I don't care if they're strangers, at least it won't be me talking to myself!"
Toothpick raised an eyebrow at such an exclamation.
"Yeah yeah, I know, I'm not going to trust them, I'm just going to talk with them. Besides, what's the worst they can do? Kill me?" Bone giggled at the thought. "I'm pretty sure the whole 'eating everything as soon as I die' only happens when my body gets messed up to the point I can't heal myself anymore. At least I've jumped off buildings enough in that abandoned city to guess that it's how it works."
"Who are you explaining this to?" Toothpick questioned the excited foal.
"Practice!"
"For what, exactly?"
"For um..." Bone Marrow came to a halt. "Oh, right... I can't really tell anyone, can I?"
"We never really thought about what we would talk about with others, did we?"
The unicorn sat in the sand as a heavy dose of reality slammed into his awareness. "Oooh... oh no." He scratched the side of his face with his hoof. "We could talk about... the weather? The sand? Anything?" He nodded. "Yeah, talking about anything sounds good."
Toothpick sighed and sat down next to Bone Marrow. The other seven 'people' in the group followed suit.
"Bone Marrow, all we've known the last half year have been running, being eaten by hydras, being killed in various horrible ways, fearing for our lives due to Celestia, and regrets from accidentally destroying a third of Ponyville."
"Hey," Bone raised a hoof, "We've also met Scenic, Bright Ideas, Obscenely Rich, Frosty Pie, Shy Sprint, Scenic's mom... and um..." He was losing track. There were more, weren't there? He was certain of it. Why couldn't he remember?
"We've been away from people too long." Toothpick patted Bone Marrow on the head. It was strange, considering this was like he was patting himself on the head given the circumstances. "I think at this point we need to focus on getting ourselves together; to becoming not so crazy."
"Am I crazy, though? I mean yeah I'm not normal, but I'm not marching an army on Canterlot either, right?"
"Bone Marrow, you're having a conversation with yourself while being surrounded by skeletons wearing meatsuits that were fashioned by your own magic that are speaking with faces that don't resemble any person that has ever lived."
"... Right."
The defenses of this town were very bare and minimalistic. The towers were nailed together not by some master artisan like the spires of Canterlot, but by what seemed to be whoever was around and using whatever was available. Bone Marrow supposed it was a miracle to even find lumber in a dry desert like this.
Sandstone walls made up the majority of the defense of the town. There were a few patrols walking around, though they were armed with spears and shabby shields rather than golden fullplate and magical swords. No, the people of this town were scraping by, that much was clear.
The citizens were mostly Diamond Dogs. At least, whatever species they were supposed to be called. Bone Marrow had only ever known about the 'clan name' of the few that had attacked his home town. The rest were cat-people and some others that he wasn't entirely sure about. They looked like lizards, but not in the same way that kobolds were lizard-like. These ones were muscular, powerfully built, and very hungry. It was a wonder they were still standing.
Bone Marrow's hope was dashed when he saw one of the guards topple forwards into the sand. His ears flattened and his eyes were wide. How were people surviving out here? How did anyone manage to make anything work?
Toothpick and the necromancer shared a glance of concern before the foal hurried over to the collapsed cat-person.
"Whoa, hold it there." The friend of the first guard held up a hand as he struggled to lift his emaciated friend. "Give us a second before you try tresspassin', okay?"
This was a shock to Bone Marrow. This was what had happened? A thousand years ago, before he'd been frozen in stone, the world outside of Equestria was supposed to be a powerful and terrifying place where armies gathered to march into Equestria's borders. Was this what had happened after the Battle of Canterlot?
He gulped down a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was partly to blame. How many hundreds of thousands did he kill back then?
"Hey there." The cat-person waved a hand in front of Bone's face to get his attention. "What's a pony doin' way out here? You lost?"
"He doesn't look lost." The guard that had fallen over grumbled. "Looks perfectly healthy and fine to me." The guard then spat on the sand in front of Bone Marrow.
The first guard flicked his friend's ear. "Don't go wasting water like that you idiot."
Bone Marrow cleared his throat to get a hold of himself. He'd deal with his feelings later. "Sorry, yes, I'm lost. I've been wandering the desert for a while and I found these friends to help me." He gestured to the eight others behind him. The 'people' that he'd crafted.
"That so?" The first guard raised an eyebrow at that claim. "Well, you must've done better than us at surviving if you're all looking so well. That some kind of magic trick of yours, unicorn?"
Magic trick? The confusion was clear on the foal's face.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Why don't you make yourself useful and do some of your hocus pocus? If you're so healthy, go catch dinner or somethin' and we'll let you in the town."
Catch dinner? Did he mean for him to go out hunting? He hadn't even seen another creature out here aside from those in this town.
"Ah, right. You're not a meat eater. You prolly don't get what I'm saying." The guard pointed to the fangs in his mouth. "We eat meat, see? No farms here. No crops, no tending to fields and no raising cattle on account of the lack of grass." He then leveled the tip of his spear towards the sandy dunes. "Go out there and find us some rabbits. Maybe some other ponies, if you catch my meaning. We're starving here and unless you wanna be on the menu, help us out."
Oh. The understanding struck Bone Marrow like a morningstar to the face. That's what they meant by hunting. Why he hadn't seen any creatures around. Is that really how things were out here? Did they have no other means of food than each other? That couldn't be it. There was no way things were that bad for the rest of the world.
"Go on!" The cat-person hissed. "Get going!"
"A-ah," He looked to the 'people' that he'd created. The skeletons covered in meat suits. "I have some here? No, wait," He pressed a hoof into his face. "Sorry, that came out wrong."
Both of the cat-people guards raised their eyebrows in surprise, their ears perking up. "Oh ho!"
"That's cold blooded of you, isn't it?" The second guard giggled. "Selling out your friends that quickly?"
What should he do? Tell the truth? Lie? He didn't stand to gain much by lying, did he? Besides, who was to say that these people wouldn't try to eat him in his sleep and then get consumed by the void in turn?
"Er..." He decided to go with caution. He didn't want to be the cause of more deaths. "It's not like that. I'm a necromancer, not a traitor to my friends."
The two cat-people paused and blinked in confusion. One of them gripped their spear with enough force to cause the wooden shaft to crack.
"Wh-what'd you just say?" The second one stood, his eyes becoming wide like black discs. "You didn't just... no..."
There it was. Both of them were looking right into his eyes.
"O-oh, oh, um," The first looked over his shoulder and saw that his friend was already sprinting away in the sand, adrenaline carrying his weak body far faster than anything else could. "Oh hell!"
The first followed after the second and both ran in terror.
Bone Marrow suddenly felt cold despite the heat of the sun overhead.
He stood in place for quite some time as he came to terms with what had been told to him. The world was a desert outside of Equestria. People had to resort to eating each other to survive, there was nowhere to grow crops or to breed cattle, and in some places they even put out bounties for herbivores.
"That..." Toothpick tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat.
Bone Marrow shook his head. "No." He then stamped his hoof into the sand. "No, it can't be like this everywhere. There has to be some place that isn't a nightmare. Someplace that's not just a city of skeletons or a few huts in the sand with people on the verge of death. There has to be better!"
"They eat meat?" Toothpick scratched his neck. "Well... you weren't wrong to start with. We do have a unique service to offer." He then extended his claws and ripped off a chunk of his own forearm with a grimace and a hiss.
"Could you not do that!?" The young necromancer exclaimed. "We don't want people... thinking..." He sighed. "It's too late for that. They already know and they already freaked out." He rubbed the side of his face and looked into the town. Most of the people were running into their huts and closing their doors.
"You know what?" Bone looked up at Toothpick. "Sure, give 'em your flesh. I'll just make you more. Same as everyone else." He motioned for the other seven in the group to head into the town while he and Toothpick followed behind.
"Hey!" Bone Marrow shouted as loud as his shrill foal voice could carry. "You heard right; I'm a necromancer! I'm not here to kill you, though, I'm here to feed you!" He gestured to his minions that were now each standing outside of a hut. "These people are with me, and no, they don't mind. Look at their eyes. See the skulls? That means they're a part of me." He paused, lowering his voice to a murmur. "Well they're technically a part of me, seeing as I'm controlling them and I made their bodies and everything aside from the bones..." He shook his head and raised his voice. "I can keep healing their bodies, which means you all can keep eating. Understand?"
There was a terrible silence for a solid five minutes before someone spoke up.
"How do we know you ain't gonna eat us?"
Bone Marrow applied a hoof to his face and sighed. "I'm already dead! What do I need to eat people for? I don't even need to eat!"
Another silence. This was going to take some doing, wasn't it?
"Look, I'm not here to cause trouble or to destroy anything." Bone walked down the street and tried to look through the windows from a distance. "I saw all your bodies, I've seen how hungry you all are. I don't like seeing this kind of suffering, okay? I've had too much suffering happen already and I'm sick of it! Come on out, take as much meat as you want, and let's talk!" He drew a shaky breath. "I just want someone to talk to."
More quiet. Just the howling of the wind and the shifting of the sands greeted his ears.
"I've seen another town. A city, much larger than this one." Bone spoke up again. "A place with thousands of people, all of them dead on the ground. Skeletons. Nothing left. There wasn't a single person to cry out, not a single person to sweep the streets or to give a morning 'hello' to. I don't want to see something like that again. I don't want to live alone for months on end to slowly lose my mind!"
"Please, come out here!" He was begging by this point as no one dared to reply to the necromancer in the center of town. "What do I have to do? What do you want? Do you want meat? I've offered it! Do you want me to leave? I can't do that until I see you're all okay. At least give me something!"
Silence. Nothing but terrible silence and horrible wind. Everywhere Bone Marrow looked, no one would reply. No one would show their face.
Could he blame them? Even he had his own rules. Never trust strangers. Wasn't that the rule? Never. Trust. Strangers.
That rule went both ways, it seemed. If he were in their place, wouldn't he do the exact same? Sure, he knew that if he really wanted to he could just have his minions burst down the doors and drag everyone out by their ankles. Heck, he could consume their very houses with his magic!
Bone shook his head. He didn't want that. He didn't want to turn into what he had been during the Battle of Canterlot. He didn't want to be some kind of monster that froze the streets into ice with his passing, nor did he wish to be the horror that parents told their kids about when it was time to sleep. There had to be some other way of going about this. Honesty wasn't working. Kindness wasn't working.
The necromancer tapped his hoof on the ground in agitation. What could he do? These people were starved. They were resorting to eating others to stay alive, and what choice did they really have? He locked eyes with Toothpick and they stared at one another for a long while.
Maybe he would need to use force. He did have magic, after all. If he could heal himself from being a skeletal heap of skin and bones, then by all that was right in the world, he could fix their emaciated bodies. That might just go far enough to get them on his side. Would it be terrifying? Probably. Could they do anything about it? Not at all.
Bone Marrow smiled. He had a plan. Was it nice? Absolutely not.
"Fine then!" The foal shouted. "If you won't come out here, then I'm going after you!"
His minions moved in concert, each of them using unnatural strength to open the doors of the huts to the joined screams of startled surprise from those who hid inside.
"Come on, come on!" Bone Marrow's impatience got the better of him. He was going to help whether these people liked it or not.
One by one his minions carried the people from their homes and set them down in front of the unicorn. Some were shaking, most were terrified, and some were children. Diamond dogs and cat-people. None of them had the presence of mind to bring a weapon after seeing the necromancer's minions treat the sanctity of their homes like tissue paper in a hurricane.
"Okay!" Bone clacked his hooves together. "I know you don't like me and I know you don't trust me, but that's too bad! I'm going to help you."
Each of the town's citizens were wrapped in an icy blue field of magic and they clung together for safety as they were lifted from the ground.
"This won't take long." The necromancer tried to be reassuring, but for whatever reason that he couldn't place, it only terrified the people more.
They soon realized what was happening when their bodies became stronger. When their stomachs stopped aching. When they could move their fingers properly and their throats didn't feel quite so coarse.
The necromancer smiled. "See? Not too bad, is it?"
He then set the village down and gave them time to become accustomed to their new bodies.
"Is that really how we're going to greet people from now on?" Toothpick questioned.
Bone Marrow looked over at the huddled group of townsfolk that were getting ahold of themselves. He'd pulled his hood over his face to shield himself from the guilt he was feeling about how he'd treated the townspeople when he looked their way, but he really didn't see any other way that he was going to get through to them.
"We really need to work on our people skills, don't we?" He shook his head.
"That's part of the reason we left the ruined city." Bone Marrow pointed out. "One step at a time, I guess."
"Claire, no!"
Bone turned his head and witnessed a cat-person child run towards him.
"Th-thanks, um, mister neko mancer." The kid -- a girl by the sound of her voice -- smiled.
The mother quickly came over to snatch up her child into her arms with a fearful expression. "I'm sorry, please forgive us!"
The foal was taken aback by this reaction. "I just... what? I healed all of you, I didn't do anything bad."
"You broke the door." The child, Claire, pointed out.
The mother was horrified, but Bone Marrow laughed.
"Yeah... yeah I broke down the doors. That's my bad." He looked to the broken homes and thought about fixing them. He then had a revelation.
Bone Marrow looked to the townsfolk. "Um, do any of you know how to fix doors?"
It was almost impossible for Bone Marrow to speak with any of the people in the town. He was just as alone as he'd been in the ruined city.
The townspeople knew how to fix their doors and furniture that had been broken during his 'kindness event' earlier that day, but as the sun set, no one had dared to approach him.
Now sitting on the wall next to Toothpick, the necromancer laid down and rested his chin on his crossed hooves.
"We messed up, huh?" Bone Marrow eventually spoke up. "Is there a better way I could've done that? Maybe making meat shipments or something and leaving it out in front of the town for them to find in the morning?"
"What, like trapping rats with cheese?" Toothpick shook his head. "As far as I know, which again I remind you that you are me and I am you, this was about as good as it could've gone."
"Right. I'm talking to myself again, just with a change in scenery." His eye twitched as he raised his head. "What exactly did I accomplish by coming out here?" He pointed out into the dunes with his left hoof. "This entire place is a wasteland of people getting hungry and starving to death. How am I supposed to do anything about that? Am I going to run around the wastes and just give everyone a pet skeleton that's covered with flesh? Maybe I could start a corpse farm and people could drop by and pick up their 'Pack-O-Minotaur' meat for dinner."
"Wait a minute, what do Minotaur even eat?" He scratched his ear. "Are they plant eaters?"
Toothpick shrugged.
"Right, yeah, forget I asked." The foal took a deep breath and sighed as he settled down. "There's gotta be something, though."
"Maybe... make a town?" Toothpick suggested with a hint of hope and a raised eyebrow of expectation.
"What, me?" Bone pressed his hoof against his chest. "Do I look like a carpenter? A mason? A farmer? Heck, I don't even know how to bake bread and my dad was a baker!"
"We could learn." Toothpick pointed out.
"Yeah? From who?" The necromancer pointed towards the town. "They're not gonna teach me, that's for darned sure."
The cat-person shrugged. "Then find someone who will teach a necromancer how to make a house, I guess."
"Real helpful advice, Toothpick." Bone rested his chin on his hooves and pulled his hood over his head with his magic. "But... at least it's something."
"Maybe they'll be hungry by morning?" Toothpick leaned back while sitting on the wall next to Bone Marrow. "Who knows. We have time on our side, at least."
When the next morning came, there were no greetings. No calls of 'hello' to Bone Marrow, not even a wave. He'd been expecting as much, but that didn't lessen the sting. The guards had gone out on patrol and they'd kept a very wide berth between themselves and the crazy necromancer that was now haunting their town.
The citizens of the town were remaining indoors. Occasionally some would peek their heads out of the window to see if he'd gone, but Bone Marrow was like a sad statue. He didn't move, he didn't leave his spot, and his mood only seemed to be getting worse as the hours passed on.
"This can't be good for us, Bone Marrow." Toothpick was leaning against the wall where Bone Marrow stared like a gargoyle from. "Certainly not better than being alone in the desert had been."
Bone Marrow's lip twitched in irritation.
"We should leave," Toothpick continued, "There's nothing here for us except disappointment. They've made their stance on us very clear."
"I know, Toothpick." The foal rubbed his eyes. "I know..."
Bone Marrow had continued to watch the townsfolk for a week. Even though he knew it would tear at him emotionally, he still wanted to see if there was any way he could help. While he watched, day after day, he saw the townsfolk becoming skinny again. Emaciated. They were starving but they didn't leave their settlement. They didn't look for help, they didn't even pay him a glance.
Though he had become like scenery to the townsfolk -- a haunted gargoyle that perched itself on the walls -- he had begun to notice something. It didn't strike him immediately, but he realized that there was a difference between ponies and the different kinds of people outside of Equestria.
If a pony needed help with something, they asked someone nearby to help them. Be it advice, labor, food, or even conversation, a pony would help someone if they so much as asked. With these people, however, they never asked for help. They outright refused help if offered, and they would rather starve to death than accept any form of charity.
Bone Marrow sighed, pressing the bottom of his hoof into his forehead. "Is this why the place is a desert?"
"What do you mean?" Toothpick asked. He knew what he meant, but since he was also Bone Marrow, he knew that venting was a somewhat normal thing to do.
"What if after the Battle of Canterlot, they just... I don't know. They didn't want anything to do with Equestria again? I killed I don't even know how many people in that battle, so all the ones that went home probably just had nightmarish memories of what happened. Maybe they're terrified of ponies?"
Toothpick shook his head. "They didn't care who you were until you mentioned you were a Necromancer, Bone."
The foal rested his head on his hoof. "Yeah, that's true. Maybe I should wear goggles or something?"
"With tinted lenses so your eyes can't be seen?"
Bone glanced at Toothpick and then paused, taking a longer look. "You know, I just got an idea. You're me, right? So that means that at least some part of me is in you. Doesn't that mean that I'm not really tied to this body?" He gestured to his pony-self. "If that's the case, then... what's stopping me from swapping my body?"
"To what end, Bone Marrow?" Toothpick's head tilted with curiosity.
"If I could look like a cat-person, then I could go back to Equestria, couldn't I?" He thought on the idea for a moment. "I mean yeah, I've still got the skulls in my eyes, but I could just wear more clothes and maybe a hood."
Bone paused and blinked. "Right..." He sighed. "So then what? What do I do out here in the desert where everyone is starving themselves? They don't want my help, they don't want anyone's help."
Then don'thelpthem.
The Necromancer's ears flattened. Where had that suiggestion come from? Did he think it? He shared a worried look with Toothpick and was given a shrug in return.
"Don't help them?" Bone scratched his cheek. "Why the emphasis on help?"
He was doing his best to wrack his twelve-year-old mind for an answer to that question.
"Don't help them, don't help them..." Bone was rambling to himself, as if repeating the line over and over might reveal some new insight. The sun was setting at this point and the glowing eyes of himself and his skeletal friends acted like blue fireflies in the darkness.
"You know..." Toothpick spoke up. "Perhaps we've been looking at this solution the wrong way?"
Bone looked to his proxy with his attentive ears perked up.
"We noticed earlier on that they don't want help, right? Then maybe that voice isn't wrong. We don't help them, we give them something that they'll feel like they've earned. A reward for doing something. Kind of like employment?"
Bone shook his head. "I can't force people to work for me if I don't even know what I want done. Even then, they won't work for me or accept anything I give them anyway."
"No, no, that isn't what I meant." Toothpick raised a hand and pointed towards the huts that the villagers were sleeping in. "They are on the hunt for herbivores, aren't they? They want something to eat." He gestured to the other skeletons wearing meat suits. "We have a supply of meat, but they won't take it when offered."
"So... what?" Bone wasn't keeping track of his own line of logic.
"So, what we do is we give them a reason to eat the skeletons. Make them threatening. Make them tasty. Give them a monster to fight, an animal or something else, something that they won't feel like they're being patronized with."
"You want us to make monsters to attack a village? I'm not going to do that... unless..." Now Bone Marrow's mind was spinning. He didn't have to make monsters, he just had to make skeletons that looked like monsters. Something horrible enough to get people spooked, but reel them in enough that the skeletons never killed anyone. Heck, he could command his skeletons as easily as thinking, so if he told his skeletons not to kill anyone then they wouldn't.
"You see what I mean now?" Toothpick looked like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders.
"Well we can't really just sit on the wall while making monsters, can we?" Bone looked to the small group of skeletons outside the settlement's borders. "We'll need a place to base everything out of. A fortress or something where I can work on things without... being... bothered."
They shared a look and groaned. "Does it have to be so far away?"
"I hope these people like what I'm doing for them, even if these things look horrifying." Bone Marrow grumbled to himself.
He'd returned to the empty city filled with thousands of skeletons waiting for a purpose. He could see through his skeletons, and with that knowledge, he could command a group of monsters to carefully attack a settlement. Well, 'attack' with heavy sarcasm. The monsters he was creating weren't anywhere near as lethal or horrible as what he'd scraped together during the Battle of Canterlot.
Then again, he'd had no real idea of what he was doing back then. In the Battle of Canterlot he'd just been bringing back skeletons to swing weapons wildly in the vague direction of the enemy. As it turns out, swordsmanship goes out of the window when the opponent doesn't have a self preservation instinct nor any idea of how to use a weapon.
For these creatures, Bone Marrow planned on making them... unique. He got the idea from lines of ants marching across the desert, and after healing a few thousand of them, he figured out how the little things worked. Quite convenient, considering they worked until they died. For his monsters, however, he planned on making them a little bit more stylish.
These monsters stood at about his height -- that of the average pony -- and walked on two legs. They were a bit similar to kobolds in that they were bipedal and had scales, claws, and sharp teeth housed in an elongated mouth, but the similarities ended there. These creatures had eyes like that of an ant, no ears, no nose, and they had antennae sticking out from the top of their head where the ears would've been. The eyes had such small lenses that they glowed a light blue.
He didn't really know what to call these things. They had hands, they had clawed feet and a lizard-like tail, they had toned muscles and a slim build, but they could pick up Bone Marrow with one hand if he balanced correctly. As it turns out, knowing how muscles work and making them function even better with the magic of necromancy was a huge benefit. Add on to that the ability to give the horrible monsters he was making things that should have never been combined, such as the internal structure of a cactus to hold life-giving water, he had the perfect mobile meal-source.
It offered meat, it gave water since it was technically part plant, and it fought back just enough to make a villager consider it a hard-fought victory worthy of celebration with a campfire and a song while they cooked the thing.
The only issue Bone Marrow ran into was... well, what was he supposed to do with the skeleton after it played dead? Was he supposed to go to a town and sneakily recover the corpses once all the flesh and plant-matter had been picked clean? What if the villagers used the skeletons that he was hand-crafting from the pieces of a bunch of other skeletons and made a door out of it?
"We might be over-thinking things, Bone Marrow." Toothpick spoke up to wrench the Necromancer out of his thoughts. "Let's see how a test run goes first, shall we?"
"It's going to take them a whole week to get over to that settlement though, won't it?" Bone was weary in his mind, not his body. He wanted to help, but if it took that long, the town filled with villagers might starve to death before the monsters arrived.
"They're monsters, Bone Marrow." Toothpick smirked. "They don't need to behave like normal people, do they?"
The little foal perked up. "They don't! They can even leave trails of ice behind!"
"Exactly, since you can use your magic through your skeletons -- so long as it's necromancy that is -- they can run as fast as you did when we were in Canterlot."
"I should've just given them wings." Bone Marrow lamented. "It would've probably been more... I dunno, efficient? I think that's the word. Having five of those things sprinting like this is kind of taxing."
"Taxing, really?"
Bone Marrow was watching the progress of his pet monstrosities as they zoomed across the desert in the night like streaks of blue light as he talked with Toothpick back at the dead city. He couldn't hear from his skeletons after all, so that gave him something to do while he waited to see the results of his experiment.
"Yeah. It's like I'm running five times over. Like each step is five, and all of them are catapulted forward at stupid speeds."
"Couldn't you give them wings from here?" Toothpick suggested.
The five monsters halted.
"Uh... yeah. I could." He shook his head. "I know I thought of that, but why not think of that sooner?"
Using his magic through his skeletons, the monsters soon grew insectoid wings modled after the ants that he had come across earlier. Now the monsters were part lizard, part insect, part cactus.
"I didn't give them weapons, did I?" Bone pressed a hoof to his forehead and saw that the skeleton he was looking through mirrored the action. "Nevermind, these guys aren't meant to win, they're meant to feed people."
An hour later, a total of two since departing from the dead city, the insectoid monsters arrived at the outskirts of the town. Bone could see a few weak looking cat people standing watch in the towers at the main entrance of the town.
"Think they'll be able to fight off the monsters?" Bone asked himself.
"Perhaps send them in... inefficiently?" Toothpick suggested. "A single one to begin with, and once the guards rally and get organized, send in two, and finally three?"
"Yeah, the goal isn't to win." Bone nodded, his skeleton mirroring the action.
One of the monsters went out, and Bone watched with a smile of anticipation.
"Gods, I hate standing guard." Thomas, one of the catfolk in the guard towers, loudly complained. "Especially after that necromancer showed up and spooked everyone. Glad he's gone."
"You gonna stand there talkin' all night?" The other guard, named Tabbin, grumbled loudly from the other tower. "We've gotta listen for things creeping up on us out of the darkness, you know?"
Thomas was quiet for a while, directing his aggression towards the darkness outside of the town's walls with a glare. After a few minutes, he spotted something strange. Ten glowing lights in the sky that were heading towards the town.
"Hey, Tabbin, you see that?" Thomas pointed out towards the strangeness.
Tabbin leaned on the side of his tower and squinted. "What in Tartarus is that? You don't think thats the necromancer, do you?"
"Nah, he couldn't fly." Thomas shook his head. "Maybe it's something else?"
Two of the lights were moving closer now, while the others laid back in wait.
"Oh no." Tabbin picked up a spear that was leaning against the side of the tower's guard rail and gripped it in his hands.
"Ring the bell?" Thomas suggested.
"Right, yeah, ring the thing!"
The loud clanging of a hand-held bell sounded out from the town.
"Ooh, they saw it!"
"It's getting closer man, get down from the tower already!" Tabbin shouted up at Thomas.
"What's all the racket for?" Some of the town's villagers complained.
"We've got a bunch of glowing lights coming towards us in the dark and we've gotta be ready for it." Tabbin explained.
"Glowing lights?" An older gentleman yawned. "I think my club is around here somewhere."
"They're getting closer, maybe a minute till they reach the wall!" Thomas yelled with alarm.
"Get in formation, maces up front, spears in back!"
Their line consisted of the two town guards, an elderly man, a few diamond dogs with shields and their clawed hands, and an Alligator-person with a two-handed axe in the back.
What came around the corner was... unexpected. The line took a step back as they got a better look at what they were dealing with now that it was illuminated by the light of the town's torches.
The thing, standing around four feet tall, had the body of a kobold. Its eyes were like that of a fly, antennae protruded from its head like an ant, and its long maw revealed rows of sharp teeth with a tongue that was split in the middle like a snake. It was expressionless, probably incapable of raising an eyebrow or even sneering, and that coldness made it all the more unsettling to witness.
The creature's head tilted to the side, and silently, it charged the line. The shields held, but just barely. They were worn and sun-baked, leading the wood to warp and crack. With the strength of this small thing, the shields held by the diamond dogs nearly splintered and broke apart when the thing swung its claws.
Spears from the back line lanced into the creature's chest, but it didn't scream. It didn't so much as grunt in pain or weeze. Maces from the cat-people fell on the creatures head, bludgeoning it repeatedly while the creature tried to bite and lash out at the villagers, seemingly without concern to its own well-being.
After a few dozen seconds, the monster collapsed into the sand. Its blood was clear, without color, and flowed easily as water from its cracked flesh. There was no time to dwell on this as two more of the same creatures rounded the corner.
"Oh grief, here comes more of them!"
Bone Marrow couldn't help but smile. They were dealing with his creations really well, even if he'd had them hold back. They weren't meant to win, so having them behave like idiots was the best course of action. Not that he had any real idea of how to go up against a shield wall like that, but hey, he was making progress.
The two monsters that he had sent were giving the villagers a little bit more trouble, and thankfully they weren't doing anything that would actually harm the weakened people. He did notice that his creations were bleeding out a bit faster than he'd imagined, but he realized that if their 'blood' was water, then it'd flow out as easily as water.
For the last three monsters, he made their liquids behave a little bit more like blood. It could coagulate, at least, so that should help with the whole 'water being dumped out uselessly into the sand before people could drink it' problem.
The final three monsters came a few minutes after the previous two, giving the villagers time to rest and plan for the final wave. It came to Bone Marrow's attention that if he was going to be doing this regularly enough to feed a village, then it would take a heck of a lot of time and dedication to personally control things like this. Not to mention, by fighting villagers and others -- even in a mock battle like this -- he was learning how to properly fight. In Canterlot he didn't have much time to really pay attention to what was going on; there was too much to keep track of, so he had told all of his skeletons to just 'kill everything'.
With this, however, by sending in waves that were inefficient and stupid, he could learn how to counter certain tactics. How would he get past a shield wall, how could he deal with different things like flying enemies, etcetera. Maybe then he wouldn't need to fear so much for Scenic's safety once he brought her back. If he could fend off armies of villagers and even soldiers, then defending Scenic would be so much easier with a bit of practice.
"Whew..." Thomas wiped his forehead from the splatter that had gotten onto him when he noticed something. "What the... is this stuff blood?" He took a closer look at it and noticed that it looked like watermelon had gotten on him.
"Hey, Thomas." Tabbin held up one of the creature's arms. "What's the insides look like to you?"
Thomas blinked in astonishment. "No way. These things are fleshy and have plants in them? What the heck?"
The Alligator-person decided to find out for himself and picked up one of the creature's bodies.
"Whoa, Al, what are you doin?" The village's elder spoke up with concern.
"Taste test." Al replied simply, biting into the torso of one of the creatures with a sickening crunch. After a few chews, he nodded. "Yep, they've got bones, meat, plant-stuff and uh... water?"
The village was silent for a moment as they all looked at one another with alarm and confusion.
"S-so..." One of the villagers spoke up. "They're edible?"
Al nodded. "Yep."
The villagers grinned, looking hungrily at the bodies with a new sparkle in their eyes.
"Meat's back on the menu, boys!"
Bone gave a satisfied sigh as he watched from one of his skeleton's bodies. They weren't dead, really. He was having them play dead. Still, his idea paid off. The village could eat so long as he consistantly attacked them with monsters, and they were none the wiser as to him helping them.
Now all he had to do was make sure that he couldn't be attacked or found out. He didn't want to kill anyone after all, and if people came looking for the source of these monsters he was sending out, he thought that the idea of killing anyone else just because they found him -- or worse, imprisoning those who found him out -- was a terrible weight on his mind.
To that end, he took a few notes. Though he still had thousands of skeletons wandering around the town, he hadn't found a use for them. He could create his own creatures just like his dream had shown him so many months ago, but instead of the horrible chimera-monsters that he had sent against the villagers, he figured that if he didn't know how to make a building, he could practice by making a new kind of creature.
It didn't have to be make from wood and stone after all, did it? Flesh and chitin worked just as well, and since he'd found so many ants, he had some rough idea of how to structure things together. The bones of various species would work as the scaffolding, the muscles that he could fashion would work to keep the buildings upright, and the chitin could shield the innards from the harsh sun as well as the blowing sands. Add some cactus-bits to keep the inside colder than the outside and he'd need to heal his body less. That, and it would provide some kind of nutrients for himself so long as it rained, and so long as there was enough things beneath him in the dirt to keep the building growing.
Well of course he could keep healing himself and the building, but if he was going to have any semblance of living like a normal person, he'd need to start eating food and drinking water again.
"This is all coming along rather well, Bone." Toothpick was sitting in a wooden chair while Bone Marrow brainstormed what he was going to do with the city.
"Yep! I've got the next wave all ready for when that village runs out of food. So long as I make it regular enough, they'll probably start relying on the monsters to attack them."
"Doesn't that create a horrible dependancy on you attacking people in order to help them?" Toothpick pointed out.
Bone Marrow shrugged. "As far as people know, Necromancers are just horrible monsters anyway. So what if I help people by attacking them? No one is actually going to get hurt by it since I'm telling my skeletons to hold back so much."
"And of the skeletons that are eaten or buried? We can't keep up this subversive charity forever."
That was a problem that gave Bone Marrow pause. "I can't really make a skeleton out of nothing, I think. As far as I know, that's one of my limits for Necromancy. I guess that's what living people are for?"
"What, growing skeletons?"
Bone Marrow briefly snickered. "Yeah, dead people don't grow skeletons, now do we?"
"You might be a special case, then." Toothpick pointed to Bone Marrow. "You've grown a little bit in the last couple of months. Maybe a few inches?"
The Necromancer blinked in surprise and shifted his view to that of Toothpick's in order to get a better look at himself. "Hey..." He saw himself speak. "I am getting taller!"
Toothpick sighed, not wanting to point out that he wouldn't lie to himself about being taller.
When Bone Marrow had finished some days later, he had transformed a section of the nameless city he called home. The center of the city had a tall white structure, the outside being chitin that was a pure white like freshly fallen snow without a single window, but with multiple insectoid eyes around the exterior that provided tiny pin-points of light in the darkness. From those eyes, Bone could get a better view of the land around his city.
He'd lost a few thousand skeletons in the process of making the scaffolding for a structure like this, but he still had around two thousand remaining. Some five-hundred of those skeletons had been repurposed into his 'monsters' that he would use to occasionally attack the small town that he was feeding or to patrol around the city itself to make sure no one was going to collapse and die on his doorstep.
For himself, he fashioned a few new bits of clothing to help keep the sun from destroying his body. Very thin bits of skin and chitin made something that looked like a sleek silk, and he used that to make a basic shirt and to repair his cloak that covered the rest of his body. Further, he upgraded the clothing of his skeletons from rags to basic shirts, pants, and boots so that they would get damaged less from just walking around. Toothpick got similar treatment, and through his help, Bone Marrow figured out how to make clothing that wouldn't chaff or injure a fleshy-person through continued use.
He was developing quite a lot of skills from simply trying to fit in with society, though he found that he was no closer to his goal of avoiding loneliness that he had been over a month ago. It frustrated him, but he had at least found some kind of purpose other than wasting away in the desert. If he could feed people that would've starved to death without his help, and without them knowing he was doing all of this for their continued benefit, then it eased his mind. It was like a hobby for him.
"Hey, Toothpick." Bone Marrow was inside of his tower near the very top, as he'd just moved furniture into the room with help from his skeletons. "What do you think about me switching bodies?"
Toothpick raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"If I can change how other skeletons work and look, then why couldn't I change my own?" The little foal looked up at Toothpick with a smile. "Don't you think I could make friends if I didn't look like a unicorn? If I was like you, a cat-person, then I could just wear a hood or a mask or something to hide my eyes and then I could stop being..." His voice caught in his throat.
Toothpick nodded. "You could make the attempt, I think. Wouldn't it hurt?"
With his mind distracted again, he looked back to Toothpick. "If I consume my nerves, then I wouldn't feel the pain. I could probably edit myself a lot, right? Try some crazy stuff on a skeleton first, then when I figure out something I like, I could shift my whole form to copy whatever I'd made. That way I could be sure all the flesh and organs work correctly before I switch myself."
"I'd recommend making a duplicate of yourself first." The helpful part of his brain known as Toothpick suggested. "Then if you don't like the change, you can revert your form."
"Right, yeah." The necromancer nodded and closed his eyes, focusing on healing himself so he could get a very accurate map of his body and how it was at present before transferring that mental image to a nearby skeleton.
Bone Marrow blinked at himself, who in turn blinked at Bone Marrow.
"Okay, that's strange." The real Bone shook his head and rubbed his eyes. His copy continued to stare blankly ahead.
"Should... should I wait?" Bone looked up at Toothpick once again, now filled with doubts. "I mean, if I lose my body, am I really me still?"
"You've died how many times? You even consumed yourself when you were captured once. I don't think your original body even exists anymore, Bone Marrow." Toothpick pointed to himself. "I'm a part of your mind, remember? You didn't get so concerned with the idea of being someone else or splitting yourself into pieces before. Now isn't the time to second guess yourself."
As Bone Marrow stared at his clone, he felt conflicted. Was there any part of him left? He had died, sure, but he always felt like himself. What was he doing now, out here in this desert? Making monsters to help people came to mind. Creating monsters in the first place also nagged at him. He was having an argument with himself, and the part he was arguing with had a physical body and sound reasoning.
The foal rubbed his face. This was a lot for him to process. For some reason, the idea of sending monsters to feed a village was fine, but was he really attached to his own appearance so much? What had happened to his original idea of being able to visit Equestria if he looked different? That would become a reality. He could probably head back to Ponyville and figure out some way to right his own wrongs if that were the case.
Pinkie Pie came to mind, surprisingly. The thought of Sugarcube Corner laying in shambles, the dead ponies that his recklessness had left in his wake, and his complete disconnect from what was going on around him when he was banished. There had to have been a better way to go about all of that, right? He couldn't make up for his mistakes as he was now, but... if he wasn't Bone Marrow but instead someone else, then he had a chance, right?
The skulls in his eyes would always remain, even if he changed the color of his eyes to plaid, or some kind of rainbow, he would still be Bone Marrow. That much would always remain the same. That's what Bone continued to tell himself. If there was one constant in all of this confusion, it was that. He was dead, but not. Some kind of inbetween that he very poorly understood.
As the young necromancer looked to the other skeleton in the room, the one he had yet to alter in any way, he thought of what he should look like. Perhaps something altogether different? Something unique and unseen by the world? Mm, that might backfire on him. If he wasn't understood, wouldn't people think he was some kind of horrible spirit? If he did it wrong, he'd end up looking like Discord; that floating chimera of bodyparts made anyone uneasy to look at.
What, then, should he look like? If he was resolved to change his form to escape scrutiny as a Necromancer, then he couldn't change into something as simple as a different pony or even a cat-person. Anything with a 'standard' eye would give him away.
He thought back to the monsters he had created earlier. They had insectoid eyes, but they didn't have skulls in them. The little lenses were too small for him to see the skulls, at least, so maybe he could do something similar? Could he make the lenses so small with so many that he could fake an eyeball?
Bone Marrow looked to the untouched skeleton to experiment. Perhaps if he made an insectoid eye with so many lenses that it looked like a glowing orb? Mm, no, that just looked scary and bright. What if he changed the coloration? Maybe some parts could be white, and others could be... well no, it was still glowing.
"Maybe try coloring in parts to be black? The glow would be much more dull." Toothpick suggested.
The necromancer looked to the one eye in the skeleton he was working on. "You mean like instead of having whites in the eyes, it's all black with some parts for color?"
He tried that idea, now making the eye entirely black. The glow had lessened to be almost gone, and Bone smiled. "Okay, so what if we add some color?" He squinted as he changed certain parts of the many lenses to be teal in color, much like Toothpick's eyes. As he worked on it, he realized that he could make the eye look like it had pupils like a cat-person, like a pony, or like a kobold if he tried hard enough.
"So the skulls are technically still there, in each and every lens of the eye, but the lenses are so small that we'd need a magnifying glass to see the skulls clearly and there's so many that it's really hard to tell each lens apart." Bone tried to copy the eye he'd been working on and placed a mirror image of it on the other side of the skeleton.
To him, and to Toothpick, it looked like a normal eye. The two shared a look and a grin. With this, they could probably sneak their way into settlements and have a look around, couldn't they? No more scary necromancer to haunt the area, no more villagers running away in terror, and no more loneliness.
He then realized that he'd had a similar idea to this well before he started making monsters, but now there was a different outlook to the question. Bone Marrow wanted to help the people out here in this inhospitable desert before he tried making amends for what he'd done in Equestria. In a way, he was still experimenting. This way, however, he didn't risk Celestia's wrath for messing up again.
Bone Marrow made a solem vow to never intentionally step on an ant again, and if he did, he'd heal them immediately as an apology. If something so small could make such an impact on his own life, then there was no telling what else he'd been overlooking.
