Stick Figures

CHAPTER III

Three thousand years ago, there was a Savage born with his Cutie Mark. As a young stallion he quickly found out that his gift of greatness was his perfect social ability. He was able to make any mare fall for him. He was, however, left with the curse of being lustful. Using his special gift, he courted Princess Celestia without fail, which is how I am related to her. Celestia and him were wed and lived happily for around twenty years... until Celestia caught him in an affair with Luna.

This came as a shock to Celestia, but at the same time, she wasn't too surprised. Regardless, the Savage was executed, leaving Princess Luna to have the next Savage child. Instead of being an alicorn, though, it was a unicorn. As peculiar as that was, it didn't matter. Princess Luna relinquished the child to Celestia and she raised him.

Two thousand years ago, a Savage was born with his Cutie Mark. He was unusually light on his hooves, yet he was stronger than most other stallions twice his size. For this reason, he became an expert assassin, forging the "Dark Brotherhood." He was, however, a little bit unobservant, and this would often times put the brotherhood in danger. Luckily, they had amazing defenses.

One fateful night, he fulfilled the deadliest and most dangerous contract yet. He was assigned to kill Star Swirl The Bearded. It was him who was assigned because he was the deadliest assassin to ever live. His contract was discovered and he ended up killing a decoy. It turns out that the contract note slipped from his pocket when he was traveling from the only informant they had back to his sanctuary.

One thousand years ago, there was a Savage born with his Cutie Mark. Nopony knows what he did that was great and rarely anypony knew him at all. The only pony who knew him properly was his wife, who only lived with him for five years before he left and never returned. The one and only guaranteed thing is that he is the one who developed this Shatter-vision. Other than that, there is no useful information about him that has been discovered.

"Wow..." I was near speechless as I read the history of my family. The book of the Savage family was made in multiple volumes, but only so many copies were officially printed because they were never published or marketed. We were always able to make a deal with a certain publishing company somewhere in Saddle Arabia to print out a couple copies every time a new volume was finished. I had every single Savage-family history book made, and looking through all of them at my predecessors was amazing. What they had done just blew my mind.

The one thing I didn't understand was my most recent predecessor. Nopony knew where he had gone or what he had done. They only know that he had a child in Ponyville then left days after he was born. I sighed in annoyance. I was getting no help on what to do. If my predecessor left somewhere from Ponyville, he probably didn't go far from it. I wondered where he could have possibly gone. There were only three known caves in the Everfree Forest, only one of which hadn't been explored.

That cave had to be the one. There were no other reported structures that were left unexplored in the forest, so that kind of narrowed it down. It was around 10:30 at night when I had packed up all the things I needed for the journey. "Phantom, where are you going?" Octavia suddenly asked, making me jump a bit.

"I'm going to find the place where my predecessor went," I told her.

"What?"

"The last Savage who was born with his Cutie Mark's work was never known. I'm going to go find out what it was."

"At least sleep tonight, Phantom," Octavia begged in the sweetest voice I had ever heard. "You haven't slept in over three days."

"Well..." I let out a long sigh and then finally accepted my defeat. "Fine, I'll head out tomorrow morning."

She embraced me in a hug from behind. "Thank you!"

"What the hell?!" I jumped.

"Oh!" She sprang off of me with a nervous laugh. "Sorry."

I laughed. "It's alright." That night was very helpful. I couldn't express how good it felt to get even a little bit of sleep after over three days of being awake. The bad part was that now I only had seven days to do everything. I left in the morning, right when Octavia was able to come down to bid me farewell. There was something about her, I couldn't quite put my hoof on it.

The forest was dark, thick and all around terrible. It took me forever to even just figure out where I was and what direction I needed to go to get to the cave after I had been walking for an hour or two. It was around mid-day when I came upon a... slight issue... And by that, I mean I came upon some bandits.

Bandit camps in the Everfree Forest were not a really common thing. They did exist, though and it made it a lot harder to get through certain areas of the forest without getting mugged, raped or even killed by the ruthless bastards. They would always wield things that were either amazingly effective or total garbage. I could see from the hiding spot I was in (in a few small bushes) that there was a machete lying out on a table without anypony guarding it. It looked like it had just been sharpened, too!

I quickly swiped it with my magic, bringing it over to me. I knew I couldn't sneak through the camp without being spotted because these bandits aren't as stupid as they may seem. I instead would need to hack and slash my way through.

I waited until one of the lesser bandits was close enough for me to pull him into the bushes with my hooves. I yanked him back into the bushes and quickly plunged the machete into his upper chest, probably fucking up his internal organs pretty good. I couldn't see anything in the bush, but I was sure it would have been nauseating for me to watch with my Shatter-vision. I'm sure the poor bastard would have screamed, but I may have cut into one of his lungs. It's either that or he was in massive shock.

I quickly stripped him of his tattered uniform and got into it, ignoring all the slimy liquid (probably blood) all over the inside. I grabbed my stuff and stepped out of the bushes. Just then, a large stallion came up to me, his eyes angry as if he wanted to tear me apart. "Recruit," he said in the deepest voice I had ever heard. "What the hell were you doing in that bush?"

"I found somepony in that bush," I lied. "Gave him a quick and silent death."

The stallion huffed. "Damn trespassers. Like always, you get to keep his stuff."

"Oh, I did," I said in a very creepy tone which could almost be taken as seductive... until I jammed the machete through his head. Shatter-vision activated and I saw it as the blade pierced his skull and dove into the pink fleshy mass that was his brain. The blade kept going until it came down through his chin, causing blood to pour from both the openings that were created by the machete.

I tore the blade out of his head and dragged him over into the same bush as the other guy. As I dragged him along, I felt this odd exhilaration... like I wanted to kill more of those bastards. I wanted to chop every one of them into pieces, tear them limb from limb.

I took my machete and ran as fast as I could in order to assault the rest of the bandits head on. As I came running up, several noticed the blood on my machete and attempted to draw their various wooden clubs and butcher knives. I was able to hack through the first guy's head with ease, the Shatter-vision showing the muscular tissue being separated as the blade cut through his neck like it was butter.

The next guy, I stabbed in the neck, piercing his windpipe and causing him to fall on the ground, bleeding and gasping for breath. The next bandit was a mare, but a big one. She looked bigger than some of the stallions there. I gave one of her forelegs a good hack, separating the bone in graphic detail and causing her to fall forward and bleed gallons at a time.

There were only two left, both of which were ready for me now. The first one was another mare, but she had thick body armor and was only vulnerable at the knee joints. I sliced one of her knee's open and would have swung back around to finish her off if I hadn't heard the last guy yell "CAPITAN!?"

I jumped at the last guy and was able to jump over him while tearing a slash all the way down his back with the machete. He dropped lifelessly as the Capitan laid on the ground in total shock. I approached her slowly, trying to make killing her as epic as possible."WHO ARE YOU" she gasped, barely alive from the massive slash in her knee which was seeping blood.

You could see about half of her leg was still intact. I knew that that would be the place to slash for the final blow. "My name is Phantom Lucifer Amon Savage III, and I hail from the city of Canterlot."

"HOW?!" the Capitan wheezed weakly. "How could a Canterlot pony defeat all of my bandits AND me?!"

"Do you even know what I'm capable of?" I began. "I can smile; I can murder whilst I smile, and cry content to that which grieves my heart, and wet my cheeks with artificial tears and frame my face to all occasions. And thus I clothe my naked villainy with adult stolen ends out of holy writ and seem a SAINT, WHEN MOST I PLAY THE DEVIL! WHAT THE FUCK AM I TALKING ABOUT?!"

I realized that firstly, I didn't understand what I was saying and secondly, the bandit Capitan was dead... oh well, it was a pretty cool monologue, even if I didn't know what the fuck any of it meant.

As I continued walking, I kept wondering why I had gone so crazy like I had. It was said that every Savage born with his/her Cutie Mark would have a curse as well as a gift. Could my curse be bloodlust? Who knows? It made sense considering what had happened, but it still felt unlikely.

My thoughts were interrupted by a strange feeling of... why did it get so dark all of a sudden? I realized it then, I was in the cave. I had walked straight into it and I hadn't noticed. I'm such a genius.

Walking through a long damp tunnel, I heard an echo from the other side. I stopped and began to listen. In a crackly and robotically stuttering voice I heard "Cel-elestia da-da-damnit! I wish I wasn't st*BZZZZ* with these round Ba-a-alls at the end of each a-arm. I wi*crackle* I had so-omthing like these hand things."

Was this some kind of automaton male version of Lyra or was I hearing things? I galloped into the open area in the cave. Before me stood a five foot tall bass guitar balancing on one wheel. It only had one string going right down its fingerboard (what the hell are these finger things? And why are they referenced on the parts of so many instruments?!) and it appeared to have a camera of some sort installed in the headstock. Protruding from its sides were two long metal arms, jointed about a third of the way down. On the end of each arm was a metal ball.

I heard its camera shift inside the headstock. "Do my Optica-al receivers decie*crackle* me?" the machine gawked.

"What?" I asked suspiciously.

"Either my cam-amera is faulty or your predecessor is my-y creator!"