Everdeath

Luna, the bearers of the elements of harmony and myself were stood in a circle, discussing our plan. So far we had get to the stronghold, then defeat the necromancer. I know, awesome plan right! So after that riveting course of action we all picked up our bags and stepped into the Everfree, taking the first step of a long journey.

"Do we have to go through the E-Everfree forest?" Fluttershy asked us.

"Yes Fluttershy, it is the only route to get to the Barren Lands." I said to her. The Barren Lands were a uncharted, desolate wasteland of nothing but sandstone and heat. On the other side of that was the Fiery Fields, a vast plain of lava and volcanoes, this was all shaping up to be a freaking storybook type quest. Fluttershy slowed her flying down a bit and fell into line with me, she looked a little more calm than before. I guess flying next to a pony who knew how to use a giant double edged broadsword would do that.

"Fluttershy you have nothing to worry about!" Rainbowdash said to her. "With Princess Luna around nothing will get even near us." Fluttershy then finally seemed to calm down completely. We walked without incident for the whole day, and we made good progress too. We had walked almost a quarter of the way through the forest in one day, with progress like this we would be done in no time. We stopped at the face of a cliff and started to set up camp.

"Why are we setting up next to a mountain?" Twilight asked me.

"So we only have to guard one direction." I said to her.

***

I could hear the group snoring softly in their tents. We had decided to have two per tent, Rainbowdash and Fluttershy, Twilight and Pinkiepie, Applejack and Rarity and last but not least, me and Luna. Really it was just myself as Luna sat outside all night on guard, I felt like going out as well for I couldn't sleep, but I had decided not to for one reason. I was not at all well rested, sure I put on a energetic attitude for the rest of the group, but I could never get to sleep. I would always be kept up all night either plagued by nightmares of my past, or trying to remember the lost bits. I could remember going back to the orphanage after my friend Flip had died, but after that everything was gone up until about four years later. From what ponies told me I pieced together that somepony adopted me, but must have used a memory erasing spell on me then dumped me somewhere where nopony would find me. Those lost pieces of my life haunted me, what had happened? I shuddered as a cold wind blew in underneath the tarp that was the door. I closed my eyes and tried to get to sleep.

***

I woke up with the sun on my face, this was the first night in a week that I had gotten any rest and I was grateful, it was amazing how much eight hours of sleep could rejuvenate a pony! I was full of energy, good thing too for the rest of the ponies seemed quite tired. "Come on ponies! Perk up!" I said with a grin on my face.

"How can you be so full of energy?" Rarity whined "I never even got three hours of my usual beauty sleep!"

"Well you're going to have to get used to it." Luna said to her.

"Any trouble last night?" I asked Luna.

"No, but this troubles me." the princess of the night replied "I was expecting to at least see something."

"Maybe the animals know we're gonna kick their buts!" Rainbowdash exclaimed.

"No Rainbow, something is really wrong here." I said to her.

"Anypony else smell that?" asked Applejack. We all took a whiff of the air, it reeked.

"That smells like..." I gulped "timberwolf breath." I drew my sword and stood ready for a fight, menacing yellow eyes had sprung up all around us. "They have us surrounded!" I shouted.

"That is not possible! I would have noticed them!" Luna yelled to me.

"Well you better believe it cause here they come!" I growled. The wolves started howling, their razor sharp teeth showing, then they charged. The first wolf jumped at me and I swung my sword, taking it's head off in one clean swipe. All around us wolves were charging our camp, I danced around them, swinging my sword like a madpony, looking back on the carnage I had wrought on their numbers I smiled. A scream erupted from behind me, I whirled around to see Fluttershy get tackled to the ground. I threw my sword like a spear, stabbing the wolf on it's right side. The wolf jumped off Fluttershy and charged me, I was now weaponless so I back kicked it in the head, hearing branches snap I turned around and let off a volley of punches. The wolf stumbled back from me with the entire right side of it's face crushed. Although we were putting up a good fight we were quickly being overwhelmed, I formed a plan. I looked over to Twilight, who had just finished shooting a ball of raw magic from her horn, I flew over to her. "Twilight!" I said as I landed next to her. "Do you know any fire spells?"

"I learned a couple while we were preparing." She said to me.

"Okay, I need you to grab somepony who doesn't have wings, we need to get off the ground." I said to her.

"Why?" She asked me, then she realized what I wanted her to do. "Got it!" I flew over to Rainbowdash and told her what to do, then she went and told Luna and Fluttershy.

"Okay!" I yelled. "NOW!" I flew over and picked up Applejack, who was closest, Twilight grabbed Rarity and took to the sky with me. Looking around I could see that Luna had Pinkie and Rainbow was flying next to Fluttershy. Twilight's horn lit up as she concentrated on the ground below, she closed her eyes and a wall of flames rocketed out of her horn. The wolves below started howling like crazy as they burned. With another blast of magic Twilight put the fire out, we all descended putting the wingless ponies on the ground.

"Woo-wee that was some good thinking there Twilight!" Applejack said.

"Yeah that was AWESOME!" Rainbowdash said to Twilight.

"It was Sargast that came up with the plan." Twilight said.

"Yeah but you did the magic." I said to the purple alicorn.

"Good job both of you." Luna said to me and Twilight. "It was both of working together that saved us." I nodded, but my vision suddenly went blurry and I collapsed.

"Ah yes, good show Sargast! Good show! You have fended off my first attack, truthfully I would have been very disappointed in you if you had failed and everypony died." A deep voice said. I looked around, I was in that throne room again, and I was still alone.

"Why don't you show your ugly face?" I yelled to the voice. "I know who you are!"

"Oh do you now, tell me, who am I?"

"You're Stronghorn Deadriser! You're a necromancer!" I said to him.

"Oh, I had thought you had figured out why i'm interested in you!" He said with a chuckle. "Well Sargast it appears your friends are starting to believe you are really dead, silly little ponies aren't they." The dream ended instantly.

"Sargast! You're awake!" Twilight said. "I was beginning to think you died!"

"Deadriser spoke to me again, he said that there would be more attacks like this." I said to the group.

"Well we knew that already!" Rainbow said. "How come he can't tell you anything useful?"`

"He also knew that you were shaking me, that must mean he is watching us." I said.

"Or that somepony is a traitor!" Pinkie said, putting a hoof to my chest.

"Pinkie if I was a traitor you would all be dead by now." I said to her flatly.

"Or that you are waiting for the perfect moment to strike! I'm watching you." She said to me. I sighed, Pinkie was gonna be Pinkie and there was no changing that.

"So how do you think he's watching us?" Rainbowdash asked me.

"Or how is he getting letters from you?" Pinkie butted in.

"Well Rainbow, he could have a connection with the animals around here, I wouldn't be surprised if he made some of them." I said to the rainbow-maned pegasus. Pinkie was about to speak again when Twilight put her hoof over Pinkie's mouth, blocking her from talking.

"Pinkie! Sargast is not a traitor! Now let's get moving." Twilight said, removing her hoof from her friends mouth. Pinkie still kept looking over at me as we walked though, I think she was trying to give me the evil eye.

***

We only got a little walking in before the sun set and Luna brought up the moon, this time we had to camp in the open. Both me and Luna were guarding tonight, I wasn't there because I had to be, I was guarding because I was now paranoid of impending attacks. Every ten minutes I would get up and do a perimeter check of the camp to see if anything had snuck up on us in the dark. After about twenty of my rounds Luna finally said to me "Stop, go back to our tent and get some rest Sargast, we have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow."

"No, i'm fine I can go without rest for a month." I said to her without even looking over at her. I heard her stand up and walk over to me.

"I do not doubt you one bit on that, but you have been going without rest for over two months, ever since that first nightmare you had I have only sensed your dreams five times. You have only slept five times in the past two months, you need to get some sleep." She said to me.

"I said I wasn't going back to the tent and i'm not. It's time to do a perimeter check." I said to her, hiding my tired eyes from her view.

"Sargast listen to me-" I cut her off.

"NO! You listen to me! The damn reason why I haven't slept is because I have been too damn scared that I would have to watch my parents die again! Every time I go to sleep I see them burning! You just can't unsee something like that!" Tears were forming in my eyes. "A foal shouldn't have to hear that their parents are dead from a police officer! A foal shouldn't have to see his only friend die! I shouldn't have to spend every waking moment of my life thinking of what I could have done different, thinking of how I could have saved them!" I looked at Luna. "The reason why I came to you that day was not because I hated the pain of dying, it was because I didn't want to live anymore. If you had taken away my ability to come back from the dead I would have killed myself, to end the pain of horrible memories that are dealing death blows to me every moment I am still alive." Luna looked at me, I guess none of them really had thought of the emotional turmoil I had felt inside. I saw her horn light up softly, I started feeling really drowsy. "What'ss going onnn?" I was so tired my words were coming out slurred as if I were drunk. I closed my eyes, and never opened them until the morning.

***

I woke up disoriented inside of my tent. "What the hay?" I whispered to myself. "Wasn't I outside?" Then it all came rushing back to me. I got up and stumbled out of my tent, maybe I was drunk, I sure looked the part from the way I was walking. The girls were outside having breakfast, they had toasted some bread over a fire and were having toasted hay sandwiches.

"Good morning lazy butt!" Rainbowdash said to me. "Took you long enough!"

"Huh?" I was still walking off my sleepiness so it came out more like "Hureshjif" but they understood.

"We had enough time to get wood for our fire, start it and toast a loaf of bread before you woke up." Rainbow said.

"Oh." I replied.

"Don't worry we saved some for you." She said to me with a smile. I walked over to the fire and sat down on one of the logs that they had pulled up. I picked up a sandwich and wolfed it down, reaching for another I saw them staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Well you normally only eat half a sandwich, in fact you normally are the first one awake. What's gotten into you darling?" Rarity asked me.

"Yeah, ya'll feelin alright sugarcube?" Applejack asked while watching me pick up a third sandwich.

"Don't worry i'm fine!" I said after swallowing the first bite of my sandwich. I took another bite. "Last night I-" I paused, I didn't want to ruin their good morning with my sob story. "I got to bed much earlier than I usually do, so I guess the past couple of weeks finally caught up with me and made me fall asleep for much longer so my energy could be kept up. The eating is probably for the same reason." They all nodded, except for Luna who frowned a little. I could just hear her say. "Why do you not speak the truth Sargast? I talk really funny and I grew from the size of a normal pony to the size of my sister in the time frame of when Nightmare Moon was defeated to Nightmare Night! I always get my way with my subjects because I yell at them really loud! I am a stupid royal bi-"

"Uhh, Sargast? You there?" Rainbow was waving a hoof in front of my face, I realized I had been smiling like an idiot while making fun of Luna in my mind. I shook my head as if to throw the silliness out of my brain, I then put on a serious face and said. "Come on lets get moving before we waste too much time." And with that we packed up and moved out, walking the entire day, moving ever closer to the next leg of our journey.