Chapter six: Fight the dead

The Everfree Forest, it is said, has it’s own rules. Animals run wild and free here. Strange beasts are seen in the shadows. All of the world’s monsters, it is said, come from here. Tell that to any coroner or mortician. There are plenty of hidden monsters in any city.

We were strangers here. Even in the middle of the day, this place terrified most ponies. I don’t know how someone like Fluttershy was able to explore the maze of half-hidden trails and ages-old shrubbery without freaking out.

Rarity and Twilight used their unicorn levitation to pull apart the foliage that would otherwise had stopped us.

When we finally broke away from the clusters of trees and walked out into an open field, we spotted the vine-smothered, dilapidated castle in the distance. A silvery light began to glow over a hill. The moon was rising, but the surface was stark white. The Mare in the Moon was gone.

We kept close together as we trotted out into the field. As the moon rose higher, fog seemed to boil up from the ground.

“It’s gettin’ chilly out here,” said Applejack.

“Equus?” said Twilight.

I walked over to her and replied, “Yes?”

“When Nightmare Moon visited you in your dream, did she say what she was going to do?”

“Well, she talked about bringing back her followers.”

Fluttershy asked, “Why would she do that?”

I shrugged. “Loyalty is a big deal with her. My dad’s sacrificing of himself is what led to this whole mess. Her followers, once they get back to the land of the living, will be just as dedicated to massacring her enemies now as they were a thousand years ago.”

Rarity sidled up to Twilight. “How much time do you think we have before she can raise her army?”

“Ask Equus.” Twilight turned to me. “Did your father tell you anything that could help us?”

“I may have worked with the dead my whole life, Twilight, but I’ve never had to fight them.
When I dig around in a body, I don’t have to worry about them hitting me. All I can suggest is to just get to Nightmare Moon before she gets a chance to do anything.”

Fluttershy gestured at the fog and said, “Who’s that?”

I looked at where she was pointing. About twenty hooves ahead of us, a shadow flickered. I heard hoof-beats. A silhouette formed. The hair looked familiar.

We all stopped.

“Hey, girls,” a phlemy voice gurgled.

Applejack whispered, “No...”

She stepped out of the fog.

Rarity wrinkled her nose in disgust as she said, “Oh, please say you’re kidding.”

It looked like Rainbow Dash. For a moment. But then we saw the milky pupils and the drooping skin that sagged around the eyes and joints. Rust-colored dried blood stained her wingless back and flanks. The white epidermis around her skinned head glistened with fog-dew. She looked like her body was left out in the rain for a few days.

When she spoke, drool tapered down her lips. “Ain’t you happy to see me? It’s good to be back!” It sounded like she was gargling a huge spit-wad.

Fluttershy clutched the ground with a squeak. Applejack growled, giving the not-Dash the same stink-eye she once gave me.

Twilight demanded, “Don’t come any closer. We know it’s not really you.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Right?”

What could I tell her? How do I analyze a living nightmare like this? It was bad enough seeing my deceased hero walking and talking in my sleep. This was almost too much to take.

“R-right.” I said. “It’s Nightmare Moon. She’s just messing with us.”

The not-Dash laughed, a blob of spittle dropping off her chin. “Now is that any way to talk to your fave pegasus, Morty?”

She took a few steps towards Applejack, eyes slitted, grimy teeth showing. “Hey, Appleclit?
Why are you still hanging with these losers? Come with me and we’ll muff-dive each other into a foamy lather. You know, just like four days ago? Before Pinkie and I had a little...talk?”

“Shut up,” Applejack seethed. “Just shut the buck up right now.”

“Oooh, don’t act like you don’t still want it. What was that cute little nickname you gave me? Oh, yeah!” She wiggled her sagging, rotting flanks. “Rainbow Sploosh.”

I saw a warning purple glow from Twilight’s horn. “Get out of here...whatever you are!”

“I get it. You girls are still uptight about what Pinkie Pie did to me. It’s okay. It didn’t hurt at all.” She turned her head completely behind her with a twig-snap of her neck. “Not even when she sawed my wings off.”

Fluttershy whimpered, “Go. Just go.”

The not-Dash whipped her head forward and stood up on her hind legs, revealing the blood-encrusted slit in her belly. “I’m telling you girls, I’m all right. Pinkie is such a kidder. She didn’t torture me to death. As a matter of fact, she just tickled me!”

She grabbed the skin flaps and spread them apart like a skirt. “Why, I laughed so hard, I literally bust a gut!”

Equines can’t vomit. When everyone couldn’t help but stare at the slimy, hollow interior of the not-Dash, I could hear a few of my companions dry-heave.

I heard Spike say, in a shaky voice, “Dude, that’s creepy.”

Applejack stamped her front hooves and charged the creature. “That’s it!” She yelled, “Ah’m kickin’ yer ass!”

Twilight hollered, “AJ! No, stop!”

Applejack ran straight through the not-Dash as if the apparition were smoke.

“Can’t wait to dig your way into all my holes again, huh, Appleclit?” teased the not-Dash. “I got a nice, big, gooey one for you right here!” She wiggled her gut-skins at Applejack, snicker-ing.

The brown pony turned and dashed back at her target, yelling “Stop callin’ me that!”

I had to put a stop to this. I may not know anymore about ghosts than anyone else, but I knew this specter was just wasting our time. I ran through the not-Dash, a sudden shiver shaking every inch of me.

Applejack slid to a halt in the wet grass. “Git outta th’ way!”

“AJ, this thing is just keeping us distracted. It’s not Rainbow Dash, it’s just one of Nightmare Moon’s projections.”

A cold cheek rubbed up against mine. I looked at the not-Dash who was now on all fours again. White eyes filled my view. “Oh, I’ll be anything you want me to be, sweet little Equus. All you have to do is wait a teensy bit longer for your family’s master to gain full strength. Then you, me and Applesnack over there will have a threesome.”

She chuckled, a slimy gurgle bubbled in her mouth, as she added, “It’ll be the only way you’ll ever get laid.”

Not for the first time, I wondered what in the world did Dad ever see in Nightmare Moon. Ivory sacrificed himself for this?

I snorted as I said, “You’re not real.”

She leaned into my ear and whispered, “Your father is. He’s waiting for you in the castle.”

In an eye-blink, the not-Dash blipped out of existence in a puff of pale blue mist.

Applejack took a few deep breaths, calming herself. She pawed the ground, ears drooped. “Ah’m sorry about that, Equus. Ah just lost mah temper.”

I lowered my voice as I walked with Applejack back to the group. “Nightmare Moon’s really getting the hang of messing with us, isn’t she? In my dream, she told me you and Dash were lovers. I just kept that out of my briefing with the princess.”

Applejack blushed a little and smiled. “Yew know somethin’? Yer all right.”

Rarity was nuzzling Fluttershy. “It’s all right, dear. The ghost is gone.”

“That thing was sent here to rattle our cages,” said Twilight. “Let’s go return the favor.”

We set out again. The fog was getting colder, but I doubt anyone cared. In fact, the closer the castle was, the faster we all trotted.

The castle court-yard’s stone floor was cracked along the brick-work. Vines and shrubs were slowly winning the war against all things pony-made. In a few more decades, the castle would be devoured by the everfree forest.

Past the fallen, shattered support pillars was the entrance. The fog began to clear as we all went inside. We ran down the hallway, past the decayed paintings, the water-damaged carpets and the broken furniture. This place, in it’s hey-day, must have been as glorious as Princess Celestia’s current home.

We turned a corner and saw a lone white pony standing in a large atrium, a large beam of moonlight making him glow. The overhead glass ceiling had long since had all its glass shattered and powdered on the floor.

Twilight demanded, “Who are you?”

“I am one of the faithful,” replied the pony, with the same small smile I had seen since my childhood. “And you are my enemy.”

I swallowed and grit my teeth. I had never been so scared to see my father. “Dad, this is just between you and me.”

“No, little Equus. This has nothing to do with you at all. It’s about making things right again.”

Seeing my father again, that lake of blood he died in flashed in my mind. My throat began to clench as I said, “I don’t understand! Why did you kill yourself? You left me alone!”

He sighed and shook his head at his wayward son. “You always think it’s about you, don’t you? Did you ever ask me what I wanted?”

“That’s not an answer!” I stamped a hoof.

“When my beloved Marrow died bringing you into this world, I held it against you. Until I realized that our master of the night would return in a few decades, that is.”

“What does Mom have to do with any of this?”

“Not long ago, I meditated, using methods described in our family history book. Those methods helped me talk to Nightmare Moon. I told her that I tried to live without Marrow, but I just couldn’t carry on any longer than I already had.”

He walked around the moonbeam, never taking his eyes off me. “True, I suppressed my grieving by raising you in the old traditions of our family, but when you moved out on your own, the yearning for my wife grew so bad, I had to be with her again. Death may be our life, Equus, but I wanted my wife back. No matter what.”

Dad grinned at me, a gleam in his grey eyes. “Nightmare Moon told me that she would reunite us all in Equestria, but I had to help her first.”

My ears flattened. I scowled as I said, “So you sacrificed yourself. After preparing to kill me!”

“Why do you struggle against life, my son? In death, there are no superiors or inferiors. We will all be equal soon.”

“See, Dad, that’s the difference between you and me. In death, there is no choice in what you’re allowed to be. Or could ever become. You want to run back to the past.”

I gestured to my companions. “I’d rather have the future.”

Applejack smiled a toothy grin at me. Twilight nodded as her horn flared with purple magic again. Spike hopped onto her back, cracking his tiny knuckles. Fluttershy flapped her wings, ready for flight. Rarity scuffed the ground and lowered her head at my father, preparing to charge.

What exactly was I going to do? Kick Dad in the hooves? Did he even have a solid body or was he going to be like the not-Dash and annoy us to distraction?

Dad stopped pacing and looked at me. He shrugged and said, “Very well. My new body should be fully formed by now. I promise to kill you quickly.”

Ivory charged.

There was a research paper on stress that I read once. When a pony has enough adrenaline running through their blood, the pony’s time-sense slows down. The next ten seconds seemed more like a minute.

Applejack side-swiped me out of the way. She leapt, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Twilight opened fire with a purple blast of magic, hitting him in the head.

Spike belched out a blast of green fire, singing his left ribs. Fluttershy flew up and dived, her rear hooves hitting him in the neck.

In spite of that impressive combined attack, Dad still got off a lucky shot. He kicked out his rear right leg and knocked me in the forehead.

The world flipped upside down. Then sideways.

Then the moon shut off.

I opened my eyes.

The floor was black. It was stone grey a moment ago. Slowly, I lifted my head.

Rainbow Dash was sitting on her flanks. Unlike the not-Dash, she looked robust and healthy. Her wings were back along with her cutie marks. She was as colorful as ever, too.

She smiled at me. “Hey,” she said, cheerfully. “What’s up?”

No gurgling voices.

This wasn’t Nightmare Moon’s doing.

That meant...

“Ooh, no!” I cried. I let my head drop to the black floor.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

I looked at her again, bewildered at her question. “Uh, yeah! I failed! Dad killed me and I blew it and...”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Mmm, no. You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.”

“Huh?”

“You’re just mostly dead. And I’ve been sent here to kick you back into play.”

I got up and walked over to her. I had almost forgotten how vibrant her colors were.

“Listen, Rainbow, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I know it’ll be hard to believe, but Pinkie Pie was’nt really the one that killed you. She was mind-controlled...”

She held up a hoof, cutting me off. “By Nightmare Moon. I know.”

I did a double-take. “What? You know that? How do you know that?”

“My new boss told me. I have to admit, when I first got here, it took a few hours for me to stop screaming. The last thing I remember was Pinkie peeling the skin off my head.”

Rainbow scratched her head, as if she had fleas. “Now I know what an orange feels like.”

“Not that I mind seeing you, but why are you sending me back?”

“Let’s just say that Celestia isn’t the only heavy-hitter in the playground. My boss doesn’t want Nightmare Moon coming back and taking another dump in the sandbox again. Her ability to raise the dead screws up the balance of the natural and the supernatural.”

“Who’s your new boss?” I asked, looking around the blackness.

“I can’t say. Sorry. But what I can tell you is a message for Pinkie Pie. I know she’s in that mental ward, so I want you to tell her something.”

“Uh...she probably won’t believe anything I tell her about you.”

Rainbow smirked as she replied, “She’ll believe you, if you tell her this.”

She told me. My eyes bugged out.

“Are you sure you want me to say that message?”

“I think that she deserves closure, don’t you? It may be the only comfort she gets until she meets me face to face.”

I rubbed my chin and nodded. “You have a point.”

“Of course I do,” she said with a smug look. She looked me over. “So you’re the new Rainbow Dash, huh? Well, the Mane Six has had weirder members before. I guess you’ll do okay.”

Rolling my eyes, I moaned. “I’m not the new Rain..”

She giggled. “PFFT! Come on, I’m just yanking your chain. A girl’s got have some fun, you know.”

I smiled. Nice to know that she still had a sense of humor. After a quiet moment, I said,
“Applejack misses you. Everyone does.”

“Yeah, that’s good to know. Listen, all goofing aside, I don’t think you should tell my friends that you saw me, okay? Pinkie needs my message because of where she is and what she thinks she did. But the others need to move on.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.” She walked over and put her front hooves on my shoulders. “Now hang on. It’s going to get a little bumpy.”

“What do you...”

She shoved me and I flew back like a bottle rocket. The darkness took me again.

Then Applejack was yelling at me.

“Dang it, Equus! Git up! It’s time to engage!”

“Huh?” I replied intelligently as my eyes fought to regain focus.

Applejack grabbed my front hooves and hauled me up onto my rear. She tapped my forehead and I flinched.

“Man, yer daddy gotcha good. Yew ready to go?”

I strained to get back on my feet. My head felt like a hammer had bashed a dent in it. I flinched at the pain ganging up on the backs of my eyes, but I nodded.

“Good. Let’s go. He ran down the hall. Guess we were too much for him.”

As I followed Applejack, I couldn’t help but think that dad was just buying more time for Nightmare Moon.

As it turns out, I was right. We all ran into Ivory again in what must have been the throne room. The ceiling was shattered over the twin thrones. I could see the moon directly beyond.

He was limping, smoke rising from the left side of his body. White fragments drifted from his bloodless, yet painful-looking wounds. I thought I saw bones in his deepest wounds. That gave me an idea on how to fight him.

Behind Ivory was Nightmare Moon, a black-furred Alicorn floating in a blue swirling fog. It looked like she was coalescing, becoming flesh like my dad.

She looked at me with large, furious cat-eyes and screeched, “Ivory, Equus is still alive!”

Dad could only stare at me. “That kick should have killed you.”

“Gee, Dad. I’m so sorry that I disappointed you.”

Moon waved a half-formed hoof at us. “You’ve regenerated enough, my friend. Stop them!”

Ivory charged us again. This time, however, I was ready.

I reared back, keeping track of where his skull and neck-bones were. I couldn’t kill him, I figured, but I could at least slow him down enough for us to get a shot at Nightmare Moon.

He leapt at me, mouth wide open, teeth bared.

I jumped as well.

My time-sense slowed. Seconds became minutes again.

We slammed together in mid-air.

I was actually doing this. I really was fighting my own father.

There was no guilt in this, however.

We are all haunted by our memories.

It’s Rainbow Dash. One of the Mane Six, Flashbulb said, tears beading in his eyes.

I want my Dashie Back! I want to hold her in my arms! Pinkie Pie cried, a flat-haired fallen hero who longer wanted to live.

My dad asked me why I struggled against life.

Because life is worth struggling for. Even Pinkie Pie’s life.

I moved my hooves up along his neck. No pulse. The flesh was cold. Any medical school worth its scholarships would tell you that what I was fighting now was scientifically impossible.
The dead can’t move on their own. If only my teachers could see me now.

We hit the floor together in a teeth-jarring thud. Dad tried to squirm out from my arms around his neck. He swung his front legs up to dislodge me.

I heard the snap and then felt my front left leg catch on fire. Dad managed to crack my radius, the upper leg-bone. I forgot that my father was a coroner. He knew what bones were the easiest to break.

Screaming from the white-hot agony, I frantically moved my non-crippled arm up behind Ivory’s head. There are two neck-bones behind the skull called the atlas and axis. If I slammed my hoof down hard enough between his skull and those bones, his neck would snap. That would slow him down. Right?

You belong to me, little death-pony, Nightmare Moon said in my dream. You were mine the minute you were born.

No. I’m not.

Raising my hoof, I took careful aim through the red fog of pain.

I belong to noone but me.

My hoof slammed down into dad’s head. Something crunched beneath the cold flesh. He still struggled to get to his feet.

“You won’t...rrg..stop Nightmare Moon, son,” My father grunted as he swung down at my rear right leg and snapped it, right at the tibia. I almost couldn’t see at all through the sudden explosive agony. “We’ll soon be with her, and my wife, no matter what.”

As he struggled to lift himself away from me, I took one last smack at the back of his head. My hoof went in a little deeper this time.

His eyes wavered as his head slipped forward and wobbled like a loose shirt-button. Dad must have known what I was trying to do. He looked at me, pleading. “Don’t. Please. I’ve missed your mother so much.”

He whimpered, “I’m so lonely. I have noone else.”

Ivory Mortis wasn’t my father anymore. He was just another shape under the sheet. Just another body to lower into the ground and forget.

“You had me, dad.”

I drew back my hoof.

“But not anymore.”

Swinging my hoof, I aimed for his jaw. With a loud crack, his head swung halfway around.

He fell back down on me, making my busted bones scream again.

“C’mon, Rarity,” hollered Applejack. “We gotta git him outta there!”

Rarity used her magic to lift dad off me while Applejack bit down on my mane and dragged me away.

Twilight hollered, “Nightmare Moon’s almost fully formed! It’s now or never! Pick him up and, well, aim him!”

Rarity and Applejack lifted me up on their shoulders. Even with my vision blurred from the pain of broken bones, I could see Twilight’s eyes glowing. I had read about how the elements are used. Everyone’s eyes glow like street-lamps, thin rainbows slowly ribbon out and connect all the members. Then the big color-blast of magic lights up the battlefield like a forest fire.

“Skip the rainbows!” yelled Twilight. “Just shoot!”

My own eyes flared like the morning sun, yet I could still see the six light-beams from our Elements joining into one multi-colored light-swirl. It punched right through Nightmare Moon’s
purple fog and lifted her off the floor.

My father managed to lock his head back into place, but his body was getting dragged into the vortex. I think dad knew he lost, for he looked away from me. One would think that I would feel pity for him even then. One would be wrong.

Within a few moments, they were clinging to each other as the ever-growing pillar of magic pushed them up through the shattered ceiling and towards the moon.

About a minute later, the familiar silhouette of the Mare in the Moon reappeared. It seemed to me that the Mare’s eye seemed a little angrier, but that might have been my whirlwind of pain making me loopy.

At least my father no longer haunted me.

Spike hollered, “Yeah! We did it! Go us!”

Rarity and Applejack lowered me gently to the floor.

Fluttershy looked at my legs. Her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, my. I can’t help him much here.”

“That was a ring-tailed doozy of a fight, Equus,” said Applejack, grinning.

My eyes began to wander around. “Sooo...did we win?”

“Yes, Equus,” answered Twilight. “We got her.”

I smiled and said, “Oh. Goody.”

And then I took a nap.

Author's Note

Not-Dash: You got here slow and now I am zombie ghost. You shall...er...aw, I'll be in my trailer.
The soundtrack for this chapter is Tombstone-The blue girl in the crypt. (Appro. No?)
Janin Winans-John's walk (Ink movie soundtrack)