Reaper's Story

As a small recap of what happened last time, let me fill you in. We fought Nightmare, Fluttershy saved me from certain death, Nightmare died, and now me and Fluttershy are seeing each other a lot. One day we heard a pony-like scream come from the Everfree Forest so we went to investigate, and to my surprise it was my cousin Steven… in pony form. He was a lime-green unicorn with an angel-wing-and-halo cutie mark. He was practically unrecognizable, but I knew it was him because he was muttering to himself like a crazy pony, so I could recognize his voice. He was freaking out, obviously, so I approached him slowly in hopes that he might not freak out more. He looked up at me and instantly got frightened. “Who are you?” he retreated.

“You know me, Steven” I replied.

He calmed down a bit as he recognized me. “Peter? Is that you?”

“Damn straight!” I said proudly. “Welcome to Equestria, cousin!”

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I’m a Pegasus”

“Then, am I…” he stopped and looked at me worriedly, “am I also a pony?”

“Yeah, you’re a unicorn” I told him. His eyes widened as he looked hat his hands which were now hooves. He yelled in shock, and then reached up to feel his horn which he yelled in shock at, too. “Oh, and now that you’re here you need a new name” I said, interrupting his moment of insane terror.

“Why?”

“Ponies won’t recognize human names as normal… or… when given to other ponies, anyway. I changed mine to Reaper.” I answered. “Considering it seems to fit you, how ‘bout we call you “Savior”?”

“Sure” he said. I asked him how he died, because I remembered Bo saying something about somepony coming here. “I hung myself out of depression. I felt like I was responsible for your death, so I decided to just off myself in hopes that I could apologize to you in heaven or hell or limbo or wherever.”

“Oh, you weren’t responsible for my death” I assured him. “You saved me once. I chose to go back to try and save you. It was my fault. I’m sorry if I… you know… killed you.”

“That’s fine” he replied, much more calm now. “By the way, uh… what’s so special about unicorns?”

“You can use magic” I said, unaware of what I had just set myself up for. He started snickering after a moment. “What is it?” I asked.

“Hey Reaper” he snickered. “I’m The Unicorn Wizard.” (If you get the reference, have a cookie :D)

“Fuck” I sighed. “Seriously, Savior? Only you, man; only you.”

“I guess that makes you Ninja Brian” he laughed. (And another one)

“You call me Ninja Brian, and I will kick you so hard you’ll cough up a testical” I threatened.

“How about Princess Handjob?” he asked, giggling uncontrollably. (And one more)

“How about shut the fuck up and let’s get going” I growled. He squeaked in fear and jumped up. We walked back towards Ponyville as I told him about the ponies who lived there. “Now, I’ve got some stuff to do, so for the whole tour, I’ll leave you with Twilight Sparkle. She’s also the one you’ll want to talk to about shelter and whatnot considering you can’t walk on clouds like Pegesai.”

“Okay. What does this “Twilight” pony do?” he asked

“She’s the intellectual type. She lives in a library, so I’ll assume you’re gonna get along fine” I answered him, remembering how much he used to read in his spare time. We walked in silence for the rest of the way. I knocked on the door as loudly as I could, and when somepony opened up, it wasn’t Twilight. It was… a dragon? A baby dragon, but still a dragon. “Hello, Mr. Dragon.” I greeted him awkwardly. “Is Twilight here?” He nodded and waved her over. She trotted over to the door and the second she came into Savior’s view, I saw his eyes light up like lanterns in the middle of the night.

I could tell that he had practically fallen head over heels… or head over hooves in this case, for Twilight already. What he saw in her from that very first moment was a mystery to me, but I guessed it would just allow him to get along with her even better. Although it may seem a little strange, I thought it was kind of funny. Savior was (and is) the most introverted person/pony I’ve ever known. Then again, Twilight was never the most outgoing pony in Ponyville herself, so I guess that made them even more alike. Regardless, I already knew that it was a matter of opinion, so I couldn’t do anything about it…

Not the point.

“Hi there, Reaper” she said. “Who’s you’re friend?”

“This is my cousin Savior” I told her. “I have some stuff to do, so I was hoping you could give him the whole “tour and introduction so Ponyville” thing.”

“Sure thing!” she chirped.

“Thanks Twilight. Bye Savior.” I turned around and walked off as I heard Savior and Twilight start talking. It just made me wonder how they would get along… meh, who knows? Fluttershy trotted up beside me. She had been silent that whole time, so it felt as if she wasn’t there.

“So… that was your cousin?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah” I replied. “Not a bad pony, but he can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.”

“Oh, well… I’m sorry I brought it up”

“You apologize too much, ‘shy” I laughed. “Anyway, I’m just not too sure how well he’ll get along with Twilight. I mean, they both read a lot and they’re both pretty smart, but I’m still not sure how it’ll go.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, I think he’ll be fine. Twilight is really nice” she assured me. We went back to her little woodland house. It was getting pretty late when I heard a whisper at the back of my head.

“GO… TO… THE… MIRROR…” In confusion, I walked into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. “Reaper, I think something big is going to come up soon.” It was Bo.

“What makes you say that, Bo?”

“Us down here in the Equestria department… we’ve got a really bad feeling ever since Nightmare died.” He gulped and continued. “We’re afraid it might be something worse than Nightmare. Trust us on this, too! When we have a bad feeling about something, it’s usually true.”

“We’ll blow up that bridge when we get to it” I retaliated. “Savior just got here and we just killed Nightmare a little while ago, so let me rest while I can, and we’ll deal with shit as it comes, ok?”

“Okiedokie” Bo agreed. I walked out of the bathroom to be greeted by Angel bouncing happily up to me.

I smiled and hopped over him. Fluttershy was curled up on her sofa. I walked over and sat down beside her. She looked up at me with deep eyes and then curled back up, putting her wing around me. I decided to curl up next to her.  “Reaper?” she said quietly.

“Yeah?” I responded.

“Are you still worried about Savior?”

“A little” I told her. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering” she answered.

“Thank you” I uttered.

“For what?”

“For your concern about me, silly” I chuckled quietly.

“Oh, well… Ok”

“’Shy?” I called her gently.

“Yes?” she muttered.

“I’m sorry I never properly thanked you for saving me from Nightmare” I apologized.

“No, it’s okay” she said.

“No it isn’t” I continued. “You saved my life and… I… I never really thanked you for it…”

“It’s okay” she repeated. I still felt as if I didn’t give the thanks necessary for her saving my life. I wanted keep talking about it, but I just decided that it would probably be better if I kept my mouth shut.

I knew it was important… but priorities can change… They can change so fast it can make your fuckin’ head spin.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! I woke up to the sound of somepony hitting the door impatiently. I opened it and drowsily said “What is so goddamn important that you had to wake me up this early in the morning.” My eyesight came into focus revealing Savior with a fairly worried expression.

“We gotta talk, Reaper” he demanded. “It’s pretty serious.”

“Okay, what’s up?”

“I was reading through one of Twilight’s books. One of them had a poem that… had something that may be a bit… problematic” he hesitated.

“What?”

“It was an old legend” he explained. “It came out of the same book as “The Mare in the Moon.” It went like this”

To the land of lost souls a nightmare flies

To maintain a good balance, the guardians try

To even the flow, some lost souls must go

And the outcome will cause all to die.

A sacrifice of blood is needed for it to cease

Until then, dark forms will increase

The heart of a cave. A cup and a blade.

The forms of flesh and blood, but the spirits still release

Unless the sacrifice you do send

The hole in in the land will not mend

Lost souls will escape then murder, steal and rape

And all things will end.

“There’s a lot more to it than that, another 2 pages to be exact, but that is by far the most important part of it.”

“Yeah… I don’t get it” I told him.

He sighed angrily. “Twilight told me how you killed Nightmare. Lost souls might be released, and we may need a blood sacrifice! It says we can kill the dark forms, which are apparently clones of ponies except darker in color and commanded by lost souls, but the spirits themselves won’t die, just the forms.”

“That makes sense, but I’ll believe this shit when I see it” I said.

Fluttershy lifted her sleepy little head to see what we were talking about. “I’m just telling you to look out for anything suspicious. You see anything, you let both me and Twilight know, okay?” he continued.

“Okay” I agreed. “Thanks for stopping by to talk to me about this.”

“No problem” he replied. He then got up and turned to leave. As he was halfway through the door, he stopped as if he was going to say something else, but passed it off and continued out the door.

Fluttershy got up and walked over to me. “What was that about?”

“It wasn’t anything too important” I told her. It wasn’t important yet, anyway. Me and ‘Shy did our average daily routine of taking care of her animal friends. When we were done with what we needed to do, I decided to go talk to Savior about getting the book that had this legend in it. I trotted gently over to Twilight’s tree, assuming he’d be there with his nose stuck in a book. I rapped gently on the door with one of my hooves and waited for somepony to open the door.

The door swung open to reveal Savior. “What’s up, Reaper?” he asked.

“I just came to see if I could get that book with that legend in it. I want to read it to see if I can make anything more out of it.”

“Okay, sure” he smiled. “Hey, Twilight! You think you can grab that book of legends I was reading the other day?”

“Of course” she chirped, grabbing a book off of a random shelf with her magic and transferring it to Savior who had apparently figured out how to use a little bit of his magic.

“Thanks” I said. I turned and went back to Fluttershy’s house and sat down on the sofa. A layer of dust flew from the pages as I flipped through them to find the legend Savior had told me about. Sure enough, I found it and Savior was right. I wasn’t all that surprised that he was right, though. He’s pretty much never wrong when it comes to this shit…… pisses me off…

I began reading the legend. Savior was right when he said it was 2 more pages after that one part he recited for me. I kept on reading, trying to find anything Savior had missed. I couldn’t find anything useful though. Hell, a lot of the stuff was written in a strange way, making me have to decode it before moving on. I read it at least 3 or 4 times before Fluttershy came in.

Fluttershy walked through the front door of the cottage and saw me lying on the sofa reading a book. “If you want to tell me, I’d be interested in knowing… um… What are you reading?”

“Just a legend Savior told me about. It might come in handy later.”

“Oh, okay” she uttered softly. I kept reading the legend over and over trying to see if I was missing something, but nothing seemed to come up. Eventually, I just fell asleep, my head landing on the book. I woke up the next morning, remembering that I was reading the legend until everything went black. I laughed at the fact that I must have fallen asleep while I was reading the legend over and over again.

I decided to get up and just give the book back to Twilight now. I walked slowly down the path that lead to Twilight’s book-filled highly-flammable dwelling. As I walked, I noticed that the streets were empty and baron as if everypony was hiding from something. I knocked on the door to Twilight’s tree awkwardly as I continued to look around for some kind of a sign or something. It scared the shit out of me when the door swung open and a bright green hoof emerged to grab me by the neck and throw me inside. I landed with a thud, then I turned to look at the pony who did this… Savior… why am I not surprised… “What the fuck was that for?” I yelled at him.

He stuffed his hoof in my mouth and hissed quietly at me “Shut up and listen, cousin!”

“I just came to return this book” I said. Twilight suddenly snatched the book out of my hooves with levitation and put it neatly onto a shelf.

“Look, we have a problem” Twilight told me, also being fairly quiet. She walked towards me but tripped on her way. She had a large splinter sticking out of her hoof, causing crimson red blood to emerge from the sides of the splinter.

“Shit” Savior heaved rushing over to her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine” she chucked, pulling out the splinter. “It’s just a splinter.”

“That’s my little Sparkle” he smiled. I raised an eyebrow at him as he turned back to me… “eheheheh… We’ve gotten along really well, so we’ve kind of-”

“I think I know what you’re talking about” I interrupted. “I know you two have plenty of fun together, but just don’t have TOO much fun. I don’t need a nephew to get in the way of all the shit that’s been happening lately.”

“Woah!” Savior withdrew. “We’re not goin’ that far any time soon. I’m just letting you know!”

“Yeah, whatever” I growled at him. “What the fuck did you want to tell me?”

“There’s a strange pony out there” he said.

“What’s so bad about ‘em?” I asked. “Didn’t you learn not to judge when this happened with Zechora?”

“No, no. We know” he explained. “We saw this pony beat the shit out of some random stallion on the street… ended up killing him. Poor bastard didn’t have a chance.”

“What does this pony look like?”

“He looks like a darkened version of Big McIntosh” Savior told me. I think we had the same epiphany at the same time, because his eyes grew right when mine did.

“Fuck me” I squealed weakly.

“What?” Twilight asked frantically. “What is he?”

“A…” I struggled to say it. ”A… Shadow Form…”

“This might be a problem” Savior said, looking at me with a very worried expression.

“Define “might be?”” I asked sarcastically.

“Well it won’t be too big of a problem for a while” he continued. “Remember what the legend said. “Start off slow, it most certainly will; then much more will gather and towns they will fill; until it comes to a halt, Equestria will face fault; for the blood of the innocent shall spill.””

“So we’ve got time to prepare” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. “We’ve gotta warn everypony! ASAP!”

“No shit, Sherlock!” Savior yelled at me. “Anyway, we’ll take over alerting everypony as well as the ruler of Equestria. In the meantime, you should make sure you have any gear you need or anything of the sort, and see if you can get me a ranged weapon of some kind because I can help. Even if you can’t find me a ranged weapon, I can still kick ass! After all, I am The Unicorn Wizard!”

“Oh, fuck you!” I snapped. Leaping out the door and taking off to fly to Fluttershy’s small cabin, I felt like Bo was going to say “I told you so” or something like that. I rushed through the front door and checked to find all my gear. I found all of it, but I still needed a weapon for Savior… RIFLE! I remembered my rifle. I rushed over to my equipment and grabbed out the scoped rifle. I checked the magazine to make sure there were bullets in it… 3… 3 bullets… fuck…

I decided to pay a visit to that old blacksmith to see if he could find out how to make more bullets. I doubted it, but it never hurts to ask, right? “Hey, I was wondering if you could find out how to make more projectiles for this” I said, swinging my gun up on the counter.

He examined the gun, and activated the mag-release somehow. He looked inside the magazine and popped out one of the bullets. “These?”

“Yes” I spoke firmly.

“I don’t know what the hell this thing is” he laughed. “It looks like a little casing with a pointy piece of metal stuck to the top of it.”

“That’s kind of what it is” I told him. “The only thing you forgot is inside the little casing, there’s a grainy substance called gunpowder and a little piece on the bottom that ignites that gunpowder and launches that little piece of metal at the top at an insane speed.”

“Gunpowder… gunpowder…” the old blacksmith stood there thinking for a little while. “OH! You mean the stuff in fireworks!”

“Yes!” I nodded.

“Okay, I think I might be able to work with it. This’ll be on the house, since I may screw up your… doohickey” he said, pointing at my gun. I thanked him and flew off back to Fluttershy’s house.

“Oh, hi there Reaper” she greeted me as I walked inside. “Where were you?”

“I was just asking the blacksmith for something” I answered. She was grooming Angel, who looked to be quite unhappy that I had interrupted his grooming. I shrugged off the look he gave me, knowing that he was always just irritable. Since I had found out about the Shadow Forms, I decided to inform Bo, regardless of it being fairly late at night. I walked into the bathroom and gently tapped on the mirror after closing the door behind me. Bo appeared and certainly didn’t look happy that I had woken him up. “We found out what that bad feeling was.”

“Oh, good” he sighed. “I thought you woke me up for nothing.”

“It’s lost souls that have escaped from Limbo!” I explained to him. “They’re gonna kill everything in this world if we don’t give a blood sacrifice at the heart of some mountain.”

“Okay, well…” Bo thought for a minute. “I’ll look into this, because it sounds like this is one of the more “slow-moving” kinds of things.”

“Oh, and Bo?”

“Yeah?” he responded.

“Is it just me, or does this seem a little bit… familiar to you?”

“…The fuck are you talking about?” he asked

“I dunno” I shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

I walked out of the bathroom to see Angel in front of me. “Howdy, Angel.” He raised an eyebrow. “What?” I asked. He facepalmed and hopped away. I laughed to myself, knowing he heard me talking in there but he himself couldn’t properly speak to ask me anything. Such a perfect combination: curiosity and inability to communicate.

Fluttershy was sleeping off in her bed tonight. I felt dizzy and a little lightheaded, probably from so much happening that day, so I began to walk over to the sofa to sleep, but then…

My muscles all locked and I fell to the ground. Right before I hit the ground I passed out. I couldn’t feel anything… I suddenly woke up in surroundings that were… strangely familiar, but at the same time, very new… it was my old house. The Rev walked straight to me out of nowhere. “Hey Peter, remember me?”

“How could I not?” I chuckled. “You are, were and probably always will be the best drummer ever!”

“Well, that’s nice to hear” he nodded, smiling. “Anyway, I felt like it might be necessary to remind you a little bit about your past.”

“Why?” I asked.

“People who receive a special case often try to be someone else, but we want them to live THEIR life” he explained. “That and I thought it might help you get thinking about this entire “Lost Souls” mission thing.”

“Oh, okay” I agreed. “But what part of my past are we viewing?”

The Rev disappeared and I saw a young human me sitting on the sofa in our small house. My big brother came walking over past the sofa, holding a piece of paper, and sat down in one of the chairs to the side of the sofa. “What’s wrong, big bro?”

“Peter, we need to talk” he sighed. I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to relive this. “It’s about your grades. You’ve failed your math, history and science classes. You’re gonna have to go into a special class to help you with it.”

“I tried my best” the young me sniffled.

“Your best isn’t good enough, Peter” my brother yelled, scowling at the young Peter. “I don’t want to have a dumbass as a brother. You’re in the seventh grade, Peter! You should be able to handle all your shit on your own!”

Young Peter started to cry. “Dad always told me to try my best! To just do what I could and I would be fine!” he sobbed. “But you don’t care! You’re not Dad! You’re just a dick!”

My brother reached across and smacked my young self across the face with the back of his hand. “Don’t you DARE call me that, dumbass!” he screamed. “You need to suck it up! You’re not a fucking 3-year-old! Stop crying, go to your room and do whatever the fuck you want to! As long as what you do makes you smarter than you are right now!”

I was starting to cry myself. The memory stopped and The Rev reappeared beside me. “I’m sorry I had to show you that, but it’s for the best” he said. “I’ll be back to show you another one soon, but until then, take care and good luck with your mission!”

Fluttershy was standing over me crying uncontrollably. I felt lacerations and hemorrhaging on my tongue and I had bruises all over my body. I also had a headache that could make you think you had a brain tumor. “What the fuck just happened” I moaned weakly, propping myself up against the sofa I had fallen down beside.

“Reaper!” Fluttershy squealed happily, rushing to hug me. “Oh! I was so scared! I didn’t know what had happened and I was afraid you were going to die and-“

“I’m fine” I assured her. “I just had another seizure. Damn things give me warnings only a quarter of the times they happen.”

“I woke up and you were just on the ground” she continued. “I didn’t know what had happened!”

“Well, then I guess the Tonic phase has failed me once again” I thought out loud, stretching all my aching legs to loosen them up after they had convulsed.

“Your mouth!” she gasped, seeing the blood dripping from the cuts on my tongue.

“It’s fine” I repeated. “That’s very common in seizures. I’m normally just lucky when it comes to that.”

“But… you’re bleeding a lot”

“It’s okay” I assured her once again, standing up. “It’s only a couple of small cuts. I’ve had to deal with much worse before.” I thought of those wolves tearing my chest apart. Now THAT was painful. “Thank you for worrying about me, though.”

“I was so scared” she winced. “I thought you might die.”

“Hey! I’ve had a lot of seizures in my lifetime” I reminded her. “They never get any easier to deal with, but they don’t get any harder either!”

Savior opened the door and waltzed right on in. He was about to say something, but then he spotted all the blood on the floor and around my muzzle. “Holy shit on a stick, what in the hell happened here?”

“You should probably know the answer” I growled, angry at him for just walking in like that.

“Seizure?” he raised an eyebrow in his questioning.

“Congratulations! You know something that’s totally obvious!” I hissed sarcastically.

“I just came by to tell you something, but I can come back later” he said. “You know, when you aren’t an asshole!”

“No, no, just tell me now.”

“You know Rarity?” he asked.

“Does Twilight live in a library?”

“Okay, well…” he paused. “Her sister Sweetie Belle is missing.”

“WHAT?!” I yelled.

“She’s missing! Gone! Poof!”

“Okay, but do you think this is linked to the you-know-what?” I hinted.

“Wha- oh! Yeah, it probably is linked” he agreed.

“I’ve got a guy that’s gonna help on finding out about these Lost Souls, so we need to wait for him right now, then we can go and put a stop to this shit” I told him.

“Lost souls?” Fluttershy interrupted.

“I’ll explain it to you later ‘Shy” I said back to her, smiling.

“Alright, we’ll wait for your little friend to gather some info” he agreed, “but if the shit hits the fan, it’s your fault!” He turned and dashed out the door.

“What’s this about Lost Souls?” ‘Shy asked again.

“You know how Nightmare died?” I said, looking in her eyes. She nodded slightly. “Well, there’s a legend that foretold of Lost Souls escaping from Limbo when Nightmare tried to get in there. Those Lost Souls can take the shape of anypony they want to, and they will commit as many evils as possible. The only way to tell them apart from the originals is that the Shadow Form will be darker than the original. It seems that the legend was true, and now some of the Lost Souls are on the loose, meaning we have to prepare for the worst. The only way to put an end to these Lost Souls’ reign of terror is to give a blood sacrifice at the center of a mountain. We need to find out which one though, which is why I have somepony working on finding info for us. We think that Sweetie Belle’s disappearance is linked with the Shadow Form of Big McIntosh that me, Savior and Twilight saw earlier.”

Fluttershy stood there petrified in terror, just looking at me with those innocent, adorable eyes. I walked her over to the sofa and sat her down. “It’s a lot to take in. I understand” I said sitting down beside her. She scooted closer to me and pulled me into a tight hug. I smiled at the warmness of her embrace and returned her hug.

She began to quietly cry as she buried her face in me, making my fur wet. We sat there and she continued to cry until she finally lifted her head out and sobbed, “I don’t want you to go!” She buried her face back into me. “I don’t want you to die!”

“I know, I know” I sighed, almost starting to cry myself. “I have to though. If I die, I want you to live on. I don’t want you to die with me.”

“You can’t go, Reaper!” she sobbed.

“I have too” said, tears beginning to form around my eyes. “I don’t wanna die, but I want you to live even more. I might not even have to die.”

“It’s gonna happen! You’ll be the sacrifice!” she cried. “I know it!”

“It’ll all be fine” I wept quietly. “Nothing bad is gonna happen to you, Fluttershy, I promise.”

“I don’t care what happens to me!” she yelled.

“I don’t care what happens to me!” I echoed.

We sat there and cried while holding each other for a long time, until we both just curled up right there and started drifting off to sleep, my wing put over her to hold her close. I was just about to fall asleep when Fluttershy quietly said “I love you, Reaper.”

“I love you too, Fluttershy” I replied. “I always will.”

I woke up next to Fluttershy’s warm body, my wing still draped over her in comfort. I slowly retracted the wing and put it back at my side as I got up to go see how early it was. I looked outside the window to see that it was still pretty dark. Damn, though! Luna had done a hell of a job that night. She must take some real pride in such good craftsmanship. Not the point. I slowly and quietly opened the door, grabbed my obsidian scythe, put it on my back and flew out so I could patrol the area in search of any of those Shadow Forms roving around. It must have been 10 minutes before I heard a scream from Sugarcube Corner.

I did a nosedive straight to the front door of the large building, coming to a quick halt in front of it. I kicked down the door to see a shadow version of Mr. Cake making an advance on Mrs. Cake with a knife held in his mouth. The real Mr. Cake was petrified in fear, standing in the corner with the inability to do anything except for watch his wife get cut up by the Shadow Form of himself…

“NOT WHILE I’M AROUND!”

I dove in-between the two and whipped out my obsidian scythe, smacking the Lost Soul in the jaw with the iron rod. The Shadow Form of Mr. Cake hit the wall, almost going through it, and then started trying to get up. I quickly swiped the blade at his torso, but he jumped out of the way and sliced a cut into my left back leg. I gritted my teeth at the pain and swung my blade in a full circle, slicing the fake Cake in two. The Shadow Form’s body hit the ground and simply dissipated into thin air. Mrs. Cake let out a sigh of relief, but Mr. Cake was still scared stiff in the corner of the room.

Mrs. Cake spoke up while I slowly panted. “Thank you so much! You saved my life!”

“It’s nothing” I panted. “Just be careful.” I flew out the door as fast as I possibly could to get back to my patrolling. I flew gently around the town as the sun rose out from under the horizon. I was a little busy looking at the sunrise to notice a call of help from below me. After a minute, I finally heard it. It was Derpy and her little sister Dinky being cornered by two Shadow Forms of… themselves.

I flew down at a 90 degree angle until I quickly changed directions and whipped out my scythe to assault the Shadow Forms from behind. I made a huge baseball swing and lopped off the Dinky Form’s back legs and one of the Derpy Form’s forelegs. I came to a halt and casually walked up to the fallen and helpless Derpy Form. “Oh, I’m sorry! Did I hurt you?” I asked sarcastically. SHING! Its head came off without resistance. “There! That ought to take care of the pain!” I flew off again, looking back to see Derpy and Dinky waving happily. I smiled back at the two, then proceeded on my patrol.

At around midday, I decided to see how the blacksmith was doing with that gun. I walked in to see a bunch of freshly made bullets strung around the place… they didn’t look right though. “I’m trying! I just can’t seem to get them right! I’m sorry!” he yelled out, somehow knowing it was me.

I walked over to the table to see a bunch of ammo that looked like it was pretty close to usable. “You’re getting close” I said.

“Close don’t mean jack shit!” he huffed. He pulled something out and said “There! I’ve finally found out how to make these fuckin’ things!” He turned to me. “Wait until tomorrow and I’ll have more of these turned out for you.”

“Okay, thanks!” I replied. I turned and flew out the door to go back and see how Fluttershy was doing. I walked in to see that she was done with all the stuff she had to do for that day. Now she was just kind of sitting there. “Hey ‘Shy!” I greeted her. “Sorry I was gone this morning. How’s your day been?”

“Fine, thanks!” she responded, delighted to see me. “How is your day so far?”

“Fine” I said. “I saved some people from Shadow Forms early this morning, but that’s about all that was interesting.

“You’re so brave” Fluttershy told me, blushing slightly. “I could never do anything like that.”

“Have you forgotten?” I chuckled. “You saved my sorry, helpless ass from Nightmare!”

“Well, that was-“

“Hey, there’s no excuse for that!” I smiled. “You’re brave, you just can’t control when you are.”

“I… I guess…” she muttered. We continued talking until the sun started to gently float behind the trees of the Everfree Forest.

It was getting to be about 6:30 or 7:00 (from a raw estimate) when Savior knocked on the door, having learned from last time that I don’t like him barging into Fluttershy’s home. We called him to come in and he complied. He stood right in front of the doorway as the door closed behind him. “I heard you saved some ponies from Shadow Forms this morning.”

“Damn Straight!” I proudly announced. “Why?”

“I was just coming to make sure it wasn’t some stupid rumor you started to make yourself look good” he sighed, almost rolling his eyes at the thought.

“Hello, I resent that” I said, annoyed.

“Dick,” he muttered. “Anyway, I think you should do a patrol like that every morning from now on. It may help save ponies’ lives like it did today.”

“Sure” I agreed.

“Okay, I’m gonna go now” he stated, turning and walking out.

Suddenly, a feeling started tugging at the back of my head, telling me to go to the bathroom mirror. “I’ll be right back” I told ‘Shy. “I gotta go to the bathroom.” I walked in, closed the door behind me and quietly rapped on the mirror. “Bo, what do you want?!”

“Calm down, Reaper” he sighed. “I got the info you wanted.”

“Thank you!” I said, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Although, this won’t make you very happy” he mumbled. “Look, here. The mountain you need to go into is located in the Everfree Forest. It should be at the center of it. Now, I know they took Sweetie Belle, and they took her, and now Scootaloo as well, to the heart of that mountain. They need three children to power these… orb thingies in order to summon more Lost Souls. That’s the mountain where the blood sacrifice will be. The Lost Souls will kidnap Applebloom tomorrow, and there’s nothing anypony can do about it, even if you wanted too. That means all we can do is prepare ourselves, then invade that temple and rescue the three fillies. Also, that blood sacrifice has to be from somepony “closely associated with the Nightmare himself.” Last, but certainly not least, you’ve still got plenty of time to prepare yourselves, but Lost Souls will start stacking up in a week or two, so I advise you get ready pretty soon.”

“Okay, thanks for finding all that out for us Bo” I thanked him once again. “I really appreciate it.”

“Whatever saves your ass” he laughed. I walked back out of the bathroom and sat back down next to ‘Shy. She looked tired, which was how I felt too. She looked at me and asked me “why is all this stuff happening?”

“I wish I knew ‘Shy” I answered. “I really wish I knew.”

The next morning was about the same as the one that came before it. A few Shadow Forms on the loose here and there, but nothing too serious. Rainbow Dash had a Shadow Form of Spitfire chasing after her (oh the painful amounts of irony) and Bon Bon was being tortured by a Shadow Form of Lyra (hey look! More irony!). Other than that, there wasn’t much that happened. I also handled it easily and quickly, and like the day before, I headed to the blacksmith at about midday. He was finally done with the ammo he had made. He apparently was able to buy gunpowder off of a pyrotechnics expert (and I thought my purpose was pretty weird) and that was how he had gotten the gunpowder. He gave me all the ammo for free, since he didn’t know if the ammo would fuck up the gun or not. It helped, especially since we now had a weapon to give to Savior.

I flew to Twilight’s tree with the rifle slung onto my back. I came to a gentle stop at the front door of the house. I grabbed the rifle off my back and tapped on the door using the butt of the gun. He opened it to see me holding a big ol’ rifle, which in the case of us both being ponies, must have been pretty damn weird. Regardless, he accepted the rifle with open arms, as well as the info that Bo had given me. We just needed a little bit more of a game plan. Other than that, we would be good.

That night passed like the one before as well. Me and Fluttershy passed a lot of the time talking, but she also wanted to know exactly what was going to happen with this whole situation.

“I ain’t no fortune teller” I laughed. “I don’t know how it’s gonna go, but it’ll hopefully end pretty well. We just need to go in there with at least a slight idea of what we’re gonna do.”

“Oh, okay” she withdrew. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“You’re adorable when you apologize, you know that?” I said, laughing a little.

She blushed and hid behind her mane. “Well… uh…”

“I’m sorry” I apologized (god, so much irony). “Let’s change the subject to something a little less touchy.” We kept talking until we both got tired. She wanted to sleep in her bed that night, so I just curled up on the sofa and fell asleep quietly after we said our goodnights. The next morning came all too quickly with the beginning of it being Savior knocking at the door. I opened it, rubbing my eyes at the sight of the familiar bright-green colt.

“We have a problem” he said straight out. “Applebloom is missing.”

I stood there for a moment… I only responded with one thing…

“I know.”

“Good god Reaper, what the fuck is wrong with your goddamn head?!”

“What?!” I asked

“YOU COULDN’T HAVE TOLD ME?!”

“I didn’t bother because there would’ve been no way to prevent it!” I explained. “It’s not my fuckin’ fault that Applebloom’s capture was inevitable. All we can do now is get a plan, go out and kick some Shadow ass!”

“Okay, but what is this plan?” Savior asked.

“I don’t know!” I sighed. “We need to make one!”

“We’ll work on it later” he said. “For now, I gotta go.”

“I’ll get this plan done on my own! I don’t need any help from him. I’m fine!” I walked back inside and sat back down on the sofa. Angel hopped up bearing a piece of parchment and a quill. “You read my mind, Angel” I laughed. “Now all I need is some” he handed me a small bottle of ink. “Dammit, Angel! Stop reading my mind!” He smiled and hopped away as I began devising a plan on how to go about this. It started off simple enough, but it began getting much more complicated than I was used to when I had to start factoring in all the Shadow Forms and shit. I wrote for what seemed like forever, when I looked up and it was only about midday.

Damn! Either I was writing fast or somepony slowed down time! Fluttershy walked into the room from her bedroom, finally awake after last night. She greeted me and sat down next to me to see what I was writing. I kept on writing as fast as I could. Through all that writing, I figured out that writing with your mouth is a lot easier than it looks, it would just help if they were to make something less… feathery. Trust me when I say a feather does not feel good in your mouth and it sure as shit doesn’t taste good either!

As I continued writing out the plan, I noticed a pattern in my writing. Whenever someone got surrounded by Shadow Forms, I would always leave it up to me to save them, even if I got surrounded myself! I also gave Twilight almost nothing to do in the fine print, because I didn’t know how she could help out. I was guessing I’d just have to find out later. I kept on writing and writing until I had used up 4 pieces of parchment paper, front and back. My jaw was cramping up like hell from all the writing. I also needed to take a break to see what everypony was doing, but I decided against that and decided to just get the plan done first.

It took about half the day but I had finally worked out a plan on what to do. I also worked out what to do if too much went wrong (always expect SOMETHING to go wrong, but not necessarily everything). The only thing that last part didn’t have was to run away. We wouldn’t run from shit… well we would if we HAD to, but if we just got overwhelmed, then we’d just deal with it… Okay, so it doesn’t exactly sound like a good idea, but it seemed fine at the time, okay? “Is that the plan?” Fluttershy asked.

“Sharp as always, ‘Shy” I smiled at her. “If you think about it, if we go in without a plan, we would be totally fucked. Now that we have this here plan, we’re at least 25% less likely to die.”

“What was the original chance of dying?” she questioned.

“I’d say about 75%” I responded. “And a 50/50 chance is about as good as it’ll get for this kind of a mission, so we’ve gotta take it or leave it.”

“Okay, but I want to go with you” she muttered. “I mean… if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of anything.”

“It’s totally fine!” I continued. “I was actually hoping you’d come. That way, you could save my sorry ass again if I needed it, ‘cuz I sure as shit can’t count on Savior to help me!” I started laughing a little.

“Are you always such a dick to me?” The voice came out of nowhere… but it sounded like… I looked over to the door, and standing in the doorway was Savior himself, who had apparently heard the entire conversation. “Anyway, we have a plan, we’re armed, we’re ready… when do we leave?”

“Slow down there, speedy McSpeedertons!” I halted him. “We need to get Twilight and Fluttershy some armor, too! They can’t just walk in totally unprotected! They’ll get ripped to shreds!”

“Taken care of” he said monotonously.

“Since when?”

“Since I bought armor for them.”

“Alright…” I continued. “In that case, we should leave early tomorrow. We need to be well rested and ready to kick ass!”

“Gotcha!” he nodded. “We’ll meet you here tomorrow morning, since this is the closest place to our destination in the heart of the Everfree Forest. Fluttershy,” he put some bright yellow armor out on one of her tables. “This here armor is for you.” Without another word, Savior turned and left. A silence fell over the room as I tried to think of something to say to end the silence. Fluttershy looked a little sad and I felt a little sad too, but I didn’t want to say anything that might make it worse, so I tried to think of something that was relevant to the subject but couldn’t make anything worse…

“Well, this is moving pretty fast!” I thought out loud.

The air in the room suddenly got really cold, as if it were trying to intentionally fit the mood. It didn’t feel very natural to me, but I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to know if I would or wouldn’t make it out, but chances are that I wouldn’t make it out, and I knew that. I was afraid of Fluttershy’s reaction though. I knew she’d be broken up about it if I died, and I don’t want her to just give up on life or something of that nature. I want her to go on without me. But did this mean that this was our last day together? Did this mean that we would never see each other again after tomorrow? It was almost as if she had read my mind or something, because she spoke up suddenly with what I was thinking about.

“Will… this be our last day… together?” Fluttershy asked quietly

“Possibly” I told her. “I… I might have to be the sacrifice. It has to be somepony directly associated with the Nightmare himself, so I might have to do it.”

“Then… we should make today…” she tried to hold back a waterfall of her own tears. “We should make today count then.”

“We should… we really should” I agreed. And so we spent the entire day just with each other… nopony else. We talked and we played with her animals; we spent some of the best time together that we ever had (except for the whole Nightmare fiasco). It felt great… I didn’t want the night to come but, as it always does, it did.

I was about to curl up on the sofa and fall asleep like usual when Fluttershy gently tapped on one of my wings. “Since tonight might be our last night together and I’ve never… uh… would you want to try…” she turned bright red. “Well… I’ve never… I mean, the bed is warmer than here, and if you want to…”

It didn’t actually take very long before I got what she was trying to hint at. “I get it” I said, interrupting her stumbling. I stood up and looked her into her eyes. “I love you, Fluttershy… I always will.”

I REFUSE to go into detail of what happened after that, but if you haven’t caught on already, then 1. You’re kinda slow on this stuff and 2. Let’s just say we both got out of the same bed the next morning. Night passed all too quickly, but it wasn’t like we could do anything about that. It was way too early in the morning for me when we got up, but I knew it was all necessary. In layman’s terms we got up really early and got ourselves ready to go… It was time to go kill some Shadows and rescue those three fillies… It was time to go save Equestria… again!

We set off as early as we possibly could that morning. Before sunrise, Savior woke me and Fluttershy and told us to hurry up and get ready. We weren’t too happy about it but ‘Shy and I both knew how important this mission was, so we complied with Savior, regardless of how much we both wanted to slam the door in his face. When me and ‘Shy went out the door, we saw Savior loading up his rifle. He lifted his head to look at us, but I just smiled and nodded.

We were out on the road earlier than I would’ve liked to be, but again, importance of the mission made it so I didn’t really have much of a choice. We all walked side-by-side talking for what seemed like an hour or two, until we reached a clearing. It was still not too bright outside, just bright enough to see that the clearing was only about the size of a football field. I felt like something was off, though… Like… something was going to go wrong… was this another Aura, or was this instinct? Or maybe both? We all proceeded into the clearing normally, me having decided to keep my mouth shut.

Halfway across the clearing, a Manticore jumped out in front of all 4 of us. Fluttershy began approaching him, about to tame the Manticore with her caring compassion, but the bastard decided that he didn’t want to live anymore. He lifted a massive paw and swiped, flinging Fluttershy far off to the side… yeah… I wasn’t gonna let him live.

I whipped out my Iron scythe and raced towards the huge beast. I was too obvious though, because he retaliated as if he knew I was coming (which he did). He smacked me away with its scorpion tail & jumped over to where I landed. I managed to swing my scythe up into his side. He screamed in ridiculous amounts of pain before simply ripping the blade out of his scythe as if it were nothing but a splinter. It then flicked me off to the side like a housefly. I wasn’t going down that easily, though.

I jumped up over his pointy tail to get a clean shot at his spine. The scythe went from shining gray to deep red as the blade plunged into the Manticore’s back. The beast cried again in the agony, but managed to flick his tail up and return the favor of what I just did. Using the hold he had on the inside of my flesh, he flung me across the field where I landed face-first, still with the feeling of impending doom.

The Manticore jumped to be right over me… His mouth was wide open, revealing very sharp teeth (and fucking awful breath). I really thought he was gonna just bite my head off right then and there, but then his brain was blown out of the left side of his head. I’m not even kidding when I say that his head blew up; the poor bastard’s grey matter was everywhere! It was Savior, who had used his rifle well. I got up and dusted myself off. “Thanks, Savior” I said… Then I remembered. Fluttershy was hurt.

I rushed over to Fluttershy’s side, where I could now see that she was bleeding from the left side of her abdominal region. Not much; it didn’t look like anything was fractured and there wasn’t much bleeding. It was more or less just an oversized scratch. I found a couple of soft leaves to put pressure on the wound while the bleeding stopped. “Thank you Reaper” she whispered to me.

“Anything for you ‘Shy” I smiled. I still had this raw and undeniably noticeable feeling of impending doom and now extreme mental discomfort. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something that was bothering me. It hit me just a little too late, though. “Oh shit!” I spouted. “Savior! I’m about to-” I couldn’t even finish my sentence before all my muscles locked and I fell to the ground in nothing but darkness.

I was suddenly back in my old house again. I knew what was going to happen, and so now I just had to wait for The Rev. It took about 5 minutes for him to get there. “Sorry I’m late” he apologized. “It’s time to show you one more thing from your past. You sure as hell aren’t going to enjoy it… but it’s necessary.”

He disappeared and I saw a not-so-much-younger me sitting at our old piece-of-shit computer watching MLP online. My brother walked in the room and his jaw dropped open. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WATCHING?”

“I’m watching My Little Pony” I said, not realizing he was so shocked.

“Oh god, no” he sighed. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those homosexual jerk-offs that watch that kiddy shit.”

“What th-” I stopped myself. “Are you asking if I’m gay?!”

“Yes”

“Would there be something wrong with that?”

“Yes”

“I’m not, first off” I growled. “And second, when you say there’s something wrong with being gay, you have some serious homophobia goin’ for ya!”

“But you watch that show” he responded.

“HOW ARE HOMOSEXUALITY AND A TV SHOW RELATED IN THE SLIGHTEST!??!” I screamed at him. “You treat it as if it’s a sin to have my own fucking opinion! Well, guess what? I’m sick of your shit, bro! I’ve put up with your judgment all my life, and now… I’m done!”

“What are you gonna do?” he taunted me. “What’s a little homo like you gonna do?”

I snapped right there and rushed straight at him. Jumping off of our table, I jumped on top of him, knocking him over. I began to punch him mercilessly over and over. After only 30 seconds or so I realized what I was doing. I got up off of my brother, who was now out cold, and ran to the phone we had. As soon as the ambulance arrived, the medic and I got my brother into the ambulance and drove away.

I stood there watching my past events. The Rev popped up beside me again and said “There’s a second part to that” he said. He disappeared again and the memory went on, except now it was a few hours later. We arrived at our house in a cab. I paid the cab driver with the little money that I had and walked back inside.

“I’m sorry, bro” I sniffled weakly.

“Stay away from me” he snapped, storming off to his room. I then just walked over to the nearest chair, and then collapsed and started to cry like the younger me had.

The memory stopped and The Rev appeared beside me one more time. “That’s all I’ll need to show you” he uttered, looking down. “Just be sure to remember that this was for the best.”

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling when I woke up. “Well… that was depressing” I croaked, waking up.

“You got that right” Savior groaned, walking over to me. “You’ve been out cold for half an hour. I think we should get moving.”

“Yeah” I agreed while getting up off the ground, “as long as there’s nothing along the way that might break my seizure threshold again.” And so we set off again. It was another 3 or 4 hours before we reached a source of clean water where we decided to take a break. Twilight and Fluttershy were off talking with each other so me and Savior could talk alone for a little bit. “Savior, did you and Twilight do anything special last night?”

“We spent pretty much the whole night together, if that’s what you’re asking” he answered. “Spike can be a pain in the ass when you’re trying to spend some time alone with your “very special somepony.””

“Well, there’s that” I continued, “but I’m talking about something that you were only doing because it may have been your last night together.”

“That’s all that we did” he said.

“I mean did you do something special… you know… with each other…” He still didn’t get the message, so I went into sarcasm mode. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much they-”

“Oh, that kind of something special” he interrupted.

“You finally get it” I sighed angrily.

“Why? Did you?”

“Well, yeah” I admitted under my breath. “I can understand if you didn’t ‘cuz I’ve known ‘Shy for a much longer time than you’ve known Twilight.

“To tell you the truth…” he was hesitant to tell me, making me a little nervous about the answer. “We did. Spike almost walked in on us and-”

“You could’ve just said you did” I sighed looking over at him. “The details are yours to keep, man. I couldn’t give a shit n’ a half about ‘em.”

“Yeah, well I had always wondered what my life would be like if I turned that shit up to 11 out of a possible 5?” he snickered.

“What’s with you and that song?” I asked.

“You’re just jealous that I’m The Unicorn Wizard!” he said, giggling through his teeth.

“We should probably go now” I suggested.

“Okay Ninja Brian” he laughed.

“Or we could just stay here and Twilight could watch me beat the living shit out of you and then back into you” I threatened him.

“I like your first idea better” he winced.

I suddenly heard a loud horn-like sound… as if something was calling… it was the mountains. “Can you hear… The Holy Mountains?” At that we continued on. It took a long time, but we finally reached the entrance of the temple…

“That’s a lot of Lost Souls” I said.

“What are these mountains called again?” Twilight added.

“The Holy Mountains” I responded quickly.

“Well these guys will sure be holy when I shoot them full of holes!” Savior interrupted.

“I got an idea that won’t get us killed” I butted in, looking over at Savior. “I’ll go in and start slicing at them and Savior, you provide sniper support from over here. Twilight, do you think you could throw rocks at them or something?” Twilight gave a nod, so I ran out there in a mad dash. I knew Fluttershy would be freaking out about it right then, but there were no other ways in that we knew of and we had to get this done now, or it would be impossible. I yanked out my trusty scythe once again and gave a big baseball swing, cutting through 4 or 5 of them like a knife through warm butter. Then they started to surround me.

This was the part where bullets and rocks started pelting them. Savior had enough ammo to take down an entire army and Twilight had plenty of rocks to throw, so I had enough backup to last me the entire fight. Lucky for me, these things were dipshits and are distracted way too easily, making it a piece of cake to off them each one by one. They kept on coming though, and soon I began to get a little tired. It was becoming a little bit overwhelming of how many Shadow Forms there were.

Eventually, I just collapsed and all the Shadow Forms began to pile onto me. On the outside of the pile, I could hear the other 3 freaking out, but then I thought of The Matrix… But instead of just throwing them off of me, I had a scythe! I started swinging it as wildly as I could, cutting through what seemed like thousands of the darkened pricks, but after enough time, I finally reached the surface of the enormous pile of Shadow Forms.

We all began to walk casually into the temple. “Where’d you learn to do that?” Fluttershy asked me.

“The hell if I know” I replied. Savior knew though… I felt something… I felt the Lost Souls’ presence. “Can you feel their haunting presence?”

“I can, cousin” Savior said. “I can.”

It was dark and wet inside the Temple. There was moss emerging out of every possible crack in the wall and fungus was growing out of the ground, making the Temple seem like it was the oldest thing ever created. It obviously wasn’t the OLDEST thing ever created, but it was certainly old as all hell.

We wandered around for several hours, drinking water we had collected in glass bottles that Twilight had brought along in her saddlebags. It was about 5 hours of nothingness before we finally decided to just give up and take a break. “Why are there so many empty rooms?” Twilight asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“They would make useless rooms in tombs like these so that grave robbers would get hopelessly lost” I explained.

“Tomb? I thought this was a temple” Savior said.

“Well, it’s also a tomb” I told him. “I’m pretty sure the room we’re looking for is connected to a few others… but I’m pretty sure we’re lost.”

“So we’re fucked?” Savior added.

“No, we’re just off track” I corrected him. “As long as we keep moving and don’t go in circles, we’ll find it eventually. We just have to keep on looking.” We kept on looking and another 4 or 5 hours passed before we finally accepted that we were totally lost. “Okay” I said. “Now we’re fucked.”

“We can’t give up just yet” Fluttershy spoke up. “We can do it, we’ve just gotta keep going! If we don’t keep going, then Equestria will be destroyed! We’ve also come this far, so there’s no point in going back now!”

“Fluttershy is right” I said, surprised at Fluttershy’s random inspirational speech regardless of us all being tired from walking for countless hours. “I’m assuming Canterlot wasn’t built in a day, so it’s gonna take us some time to find these rooms.” We walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and… you get the idea. We walked so far, I swear I could feel my legs about to snap in 2. It was a total of 12 hours of walking after that conversation before I finally collapsed… in front of a doorway to one of the rooms we needed to get to. We rested for a few hours to regain our strength and then we got back up to examine the name of the room.

I read the writing, which was written in English but it was written is such a strange way that it made it kind of hard to read. “The chamber of-”

“Passion?” Savior erupted randomly. “Is it the chamber of passion?” He walked over to me and whispered. “Will we bathe in a pool of strawberries and cream?” He got even closer to me and whispered even softer “Will the cream travels places you can’t even dream?”

“Uhh… oh god…” I cringed. “I think you just made me dream it.”

“How was it?” he snickered. “Amazing?”

“No… just… uhh” I gagged. I was literally about to start throwing up.

“You mean uhh-stounding? Yeah you do!”

“If I was going to survive this mission, I would fucking murder you” I growled.

“Still worth it” he laughed.

Him and that fucking song. “Only you, Savior” I continued, trying to ignore the impulse to strangle my idiot cousin to death. “Anyway, it’s The Chamber of All’s End. This is the first room we needed to get to. We should be fine finding all the other rooms after this; they all happen to be linked together.”

“That’s convenient” Twilight added.

“The only problem is that we have no idea what’s in there.” I alerted them. “It could be something perfectly harmless, or it could be the most dangerous possible thing we could run into… I’ll bet on the ladder.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to find out the hard way” Savior said. We all snuck quietly into the room, just in case there was something dangerous in there… It was infested. In every tiny nook and cranny was a Shadow Form, pissed off and ready to kill. I silently took out my scythe and proceeded to one that was sitting in a corner sleeping. I slowly put the blade behind its neck and quickly tugged it towards me. Making little noise, the Shadow Form’s head came right off. I moved on to the next one and the next one and the next one and I just kept going until I had cleared about half the room, at which point I was fed up with playing games and I quickly decided just to take them all head on.

I took a big swing at a bunch of them, taking out 4 or 5 of them in one quick hit. 3 of them came at me from behind, which I simply did a quick buck and all 3 were out of my way; not dead, but out of my way. I gave another huge swing at another group of them, but I only hit about a quarter of them. Those Shadow Forms didn’t get away for long. I caught up to them and sliced their legs off! I got a few more of them after that, but I was quickly outnumbered, outmatched and worst of all, I was surrounded by a sea of the Shadow Forms.

Fluttershy appeared behind a few of the Shadow Forms and she took out… my obsidian scythe?! She must have swiped it when I wasn’t looking, but how in the holy high hairy hanging hedges of hell did she conceal it so well for so long?! Anyway, she quickly chopped at all of the ones in front of her, allowing me to get the jump on the ones behind me which were now focused on her. I landed behind all of them and began to take them down one by one with quick slices. Each one had their head hit the floor shortly… it had worked perfectly. We all made it out of The Chamber Of All’s End safely and into The Tomb Of Lost Souls.

It was old, dusty and very dark inside The Tomb. Luckily, there were no Shadow Forms inside it, so we were safe from those for a little while. This was also the last room before The Final Chamber, which is where the blood sacrifice would be made. I slowly made my way over and sat down in the corner of the room so I could rest. My back was in intense pain and I could feel a few cuts along my sides, legs and face. Fluttershy followed me back there and sat down beside me.

I hated to make the decision I just had, but Savior knew it would’ve happened. I didn’t care. It was for the best and I was gonna do it! “I’m gonna do the blood sacrifice myself” I panted. “I think it would just be better that way.”

“So this is the last time we get to be together?” she asked

“I guess so” I moaned, trying not to cry. “I’m not happy about it either, but it’s gotta be done. Otherwise everypony will die, and I can’t let that happen.”

“We’ll make sure everypony remembers you” Savior assured me.

“I just… I don’t want you to get broken up about my death, ‘Shy” I sighed. “I know that’ll be hard, but you have to be strong about this. I can do this, so you can be strong about it, can’t you?” she nodded weakly, starting to cry. I pulled her close. “I know it’s not going to be fun for you ‘Shy, but I’ve gotta do this…  It’s the best for Equestria… It’s the best for you… I know I won’t come back… so I want to say this one last time, just in case: I love you, Fluttershy. I always will.”

“I hate to break up such a cute moment, but we’re on the brink of Equestria’s destruction here!” Savior interrupted.

“Okay” I said, getting up off of the ground. “I guess this is it…”

“I guess it is” Savior sniffled. “I’m gonna miss you, Reaper.”

“Come here, you bastard!” I laughed. We gave each other a final friendly hug and I got ready to end this.

I walked casually into The Final Chamber, Scythe drawn and ready to rumble. There were easily over a hundred and 50 Shadow forms packed into one room. I saw the three innocent little fillies stacked on top of pillars stuck in what looked like glass balls. Their faces lit up when they saw me. My attention was still on the Lost Souls… I gave a devilish little smile.

“Gentlemen, today is the first day of the end of your lives!”

All the Shadow Forms in the room suddenly and quickly turned their full attention to me. All of them began running at me all at once. I readied my scythe, and just before they could do anything I jumped straight over their heads and landed behind them. It was less than a few seconds before I had plowed my way through what had seemed like hundreds of them and I had made my way back to the front door of the place. I turned back around to face my enemies, instantly realizing that I had barely made a dent in their forces’ numbers. They began to easily swarm me as I felt cuts emerge on my legs and face around my eyes. I lifted my scythe in front of my face, which got a few of them killed or mortally wounded from trying to attack my face. I managed to make it out of the huge crowd of Shadow Forms and I flew up then proceeded to do several diving swipes which made several kills fairly quickly.

The Lost Souls wouldn’t stop forming Shadow Forms, making it near impossible to tell if I was thinning the forces that crowded the room. Obviously not, but I kept going, ruthlessly chopping through what felt like thousands and thousands of the darkened bodies. It never came to an end, and eventually I began to get fatigued from my repetitive chopping. Apparently, the Lost Souls got irritated too, because they all just seemed to give up. Well, they didn’t exactly “give up…”

They began to merge together into one pony and his familiar looking weapon of choice… me and my scythe. After about a minute and a half of standing there, wide-eyed, watching the souls “combine,” a shadow version of me became manifest. It was like the Legend of Zelda II’s ending, except I was even more fucked. We both drew our scythes at the same time and in the same way. “Two great minds think alike, huh, me?” I asked, chuckling a little. He nodded. We ran at each other at the same time, as I had anticipated. We began to brawl a little. It became very repetitive between us, as we kept preforming the same attacks and tricks, making all our combat efforts end with nopony hurt in the slightest. I kept trying regardless, but it didn’t turn out so well.

I was a physically living thing as opposed to him, who was technically only a physical representation of my appearance made up of a bunch of different beings. In Lyman’s terms: I had physical limits, but he didn’t. This was a very, VERY big problem for me. I eventually hit my physical limit and became too fatigued to continue. He began to advance on me as I tried to catch my breath. His advance was a little bit slow, giving me time to catch my breath. As soon as he was a matter of feet from where I stood, I decided to suck it up and beat him out. I stood up, trying not to wince from the pain I had in all of my legs. We began to trade blows once again, but this time I had to think like somepony else. That way I could catch him off guard with an attack and he would actually get injured.

I thought of the worst possible move, but I gave it a shot anyway. I threw my scythe straight at him. I could hear Savior yelling at me from the other room, but I just tuned him out and focused on my adversary, who had finally stopped copying me in the fact that he still held his scythe. He began to charge me as I would have. I anticipated it, so I jumped over him and tried to stomp on one of his back hind legs. I missed and slipped, hitting the floor with a small crack coming from my chest. I also felt a very sharp and abrupt pain in the area where I had fallen on. It must have been one of my ribs, and considering I still had 11 of them left to spare, I got back up and continued.

He did an aerial dive, which I managed to dodge. I ran over to the side of the room, where (as I had hoped) he did another aerial dive. When I dove out of the way, he slammed into the wall allowing me to get on top of him and proceed to beat the shit out of him with my own two forelegs. The Shadow Form’s face began to distort as I continued punching it over and over and over and over. No matter how many times I punched the bastard’s face and no matter how fucked up-looking it got, he didn’t seem to get hurt at all. Eventually he decided “I’m done with this bullshit” and threw me off of him and into a wall. My head slammed into the wall hard enough to crack its surface. Blood came out of the back of my head as I fell to the floor. The fucker was ready to kill me right then and there.

My vision was blurry and I could feel blood all over the back of my head. That wall hit me hard enough so that my ears were ringing and I felt the pain at the front of my head… There… standing over me… was Shadow Reaper. His scythe was at the ready. I was ready to get a giant blade plunged into my head, but I didn’t. I opened my eyes to see him just standing over me with his scythe raised like he was about to strike. In the background, I could easily see Savior with his rifle at the ready about to shoot the Shadow Form in the head. I nodded weakly and I could almost sense the trigger being pulled. The Shadow Form’s head almost seemed to disappear with the sound of the gunshot. It fell to the ground without another action… “Thanks!” I called over to him.

“It’s not over yet!” he yelled pointing at the Lost Souls forming something huge and very… Deja vu…

Forming into huge beast with wounds all over its body, the Lost Souls continued to swarm. It began to have armor form around it and a huge blade right next to it… It was a Shadow Form of Nightmare. It turned around and gave me a death glare before picking up his weapon and rushing at me. I turned around and started running as fast as I could so I could reach my scythe before I got ran over. I managed to grab my scythe but by the time I had picked it up, Nightmare’s big metallic shadowy boot struck me in the side of the head, sending me flying until I hit the wall, once again with enough impact to crack the stone walls. I managed to push myself off of the ground and into the best fighting position I could manage. He began to rush me again. This time, I was able to anticipate it better, allowing me to dive out of the way and come back for an attempt at hitting him in the back. Key word there is ATTEMPT.

The giant pile of Lost Souls swung around and hit me square in the face with the blunt end of his blade. I flew clear across the room until I hit the ground, mere feet away from hitting the wall again. I got up and made my own charge. At the last second, I swooped upward and straight over to the back of Shadow Nightmare. I landed on my hind legs and took a big swing at his legs. The blade got a good solid cut at the joints of his legs, making him fall backwards… on top of me. I tried my best to wedge my way out from the 400 pounds of Shadow Nightmare plus his armor and his big-ass weapon.

I managed to wiggle free after a minute and I flipped over to get on top of him. Standing on top of him, I didn’t notice him lifting his leg to get it under me. I suddenly got flung across the room once again. Shadow Nightmare slowly rose to his feet and grabbed his weapon again. He began to rush at me once again, but with enough distance between us so that I could see it coming. I was able to dive under his legs (just barely) before he hit the wall with a solid crack. A massive set of cracks formed in the wall making look like an earthquake had hit that wall and that wall only. I rose up to make another aerial dive at Shadow Nightmare, but this time it was him anticipating my movements. He simply stuck up a boot and since I wasn’t able to change directions fast enough, I ran straight into it. I got clothes lined and did a full skid across the floor until my head grazed the stone of the cracked wall.

Shadow Nightmare stood over me and suddenly, two bullets impacted the side of his head. They didn’t penetrate the armor, allowing the Nightmare clone to look over to Savior with a death glare. He turned back to me and gave me the same death glare. His eyes weren’t green now; instead of green, they were pure black. Not just the pupils, but the iris and the white of his eyes were also pitch black. I thought I was about to die… but I remembered something:

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WATCHING?”

“I’m watching My Little Pony”

“Oh god, no. Please don’t tell me you’re one of those homosexual jerk-offs that watch that kiddy shit.”

“What th-… Are you asking if I’m gay?!”

“Yes”

“Would there be something wrong with that?”

“Yes”

“I’m not, first off, and second, when you say there’s something wrong with being gay, you have some serious homophobia goin’ for ya!”

“But you watch that show”

“HOW ARE HOMOSEXUALITY AND A TV SHOW RELATED IN THE SLIGHTEST!??! You treat it as if it’s a sin to have my own fucking opinion! Well, guess what? I’m sick of your shit, bro! I’ve put up with your judgment all my life, and now… I’m done!”

“What are you gonna do? What’s a little homo like you gonna do?”

I began to remember even more:

“What’s wrong, big bro?”

“Peter, we need to talk. It’s about your grades. You’ve failed your math, history and science classes. You’re gonna have to go into a special class to help you with it.”

“I tried my best”

“Your best isn’t good enough, Peter! I don’t want to have a dumbass as a brother. You’re in the seventh grade, Peter! You should be able to handle all your shit on your own!”

“Dad always told me to try my best! To just do what I could and I would be fine! But you don’t care! You’re not Dad! You’re just a dick!”

SMACK! “Don’t you DARE call me that, dumbass! You need to suck it up! You’re not a fucking 3-year-old! Stop crying, go to your room and do whatever the fuck you want to! As long as what you do makes you smarter than you are right now!”

I swallowed and muttered “I’m not a dumbass.” I swung the scythe harder than I ever thought I could. I swung it directly up into the Shadow Nightmare’s stomach, piercing his armor. I tipped him over and jumped on top of the Shadow Nightmare, yanking my scythe out of him. “You think you’re a fuckin’ Nightmare?” I growled. “Well, guess what? I’m YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!” I swiped my scythe down and sliced straight through his neck. His head detached from his body and the shadow form disintegrated. I let out a sigh of relief, knowing that I was done with the fighting. The only thing that I had to do now… was die…

I approached the altar that had the chalice on it. I noticed that there was a button on the underside of the stone altar it was on. That must have been the button that would activate whatever the sacrifice was. I was in front of the altar, thinking of what would happen when I died this time. I heard from behind me “REAPER!” It was Fluttershy crying.

“Fluttershy, don’t look!” I yelled. My hoof hit the button and three long, sharp blades came shooting out of the floor and straight through my mouth, causing my blood to flow into the chalice and causing me to die on the spot without feeling any pain. It was less than an instant before I was sitting above everything looking down on the Cutie Mark Crusaders racing to the other 3. I saw Fluttershy fall down and just let go what seemed like an endless stream of tears.

I felt Bo’s presence behind me. “Well, Reaper” he said. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news is, they’re gonna forget all about you, except for one pony of your choosing. The good news is that it’s only temporary. We’re putting you in conservation because Equestria will need you again in the future. When you’re sent back we’ll give back everypony’s memory of you.”

“How long will this be?” I asked

“Hell if I know” he replied. “I know that you won’t be able to see what’s going on down in Equestria, and you won’t have to eat or drink anything. There might be another being put into conservation with you. We’re not too sure yet, but just be patient.”

“Alright” I sighed. “I guess I’ll want Savior to be the one to remember. Fluttershy would probably give up on life if she kept the memories, and I don’t want that to happen, so it’s best to give ‘em to Savior.”

“Smart guy as always” Bo added. “Savior it is! See ya later!”

I sat down in the blank white that I was suddenly surrounded by. It wasn’t “above Equestria” white it was literally blank as in there was nothing there… but me… I waited for ages… but nopony came.

After what seemed like years, I felt someone pop up only a yard and a half away from me. I was sleeping, so I lifted my head to see who it was… It was a human…

“Who in the Sam hell are you?” he asked

“I might ask you the same question” I answered.

“I’m John Jack” he told me skeptically.

“I’m Reaper” I returned

“So…” he started awkwardly. “where in the Sam hell are we?”

“Welcome to a little piece of heaven” I quoted.

“You listen to Avenged Sevenfold?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Me too!” he laughed. “Why are we here anyway?”

“Equestria’s gonna need us again pretty soon, so both of us and all memories of us are being preserved here for the time being” I explained. “Brightside is you don’t have to eat or drink. Downside is that there’s not a goddamn thing to do around here except sleep and you can only do so much of that.”

“So I guess we wait then” he suggested.

“I guess so”

So we waited, and while we waited, we began to become friends. It was much easier to pass the time with someone there with me. His stories of what happened to him in Equestria were so… odd. I didn’t think it would ever happen; Earth and Equestria combining, I mean. We had both faced a death that was for a good cause though. We became great friends after a while, knowing pretty much everything about each other, knowing all of each other’s secrets. It felt like I had a brother that wasn’t an asshole! Occasionally, one of us would disagree on something, but we would resolve it through means of words, considering the fact that of we hit each other, the attacker would feel pain instead of the victim (I learned that the hard way).

We had a lot of curiosity about this entire “conservation” thing. What did we need to be conserved for? Why did they take the memories of us away? When would we be summoned back to Equestria and out of this fuckin’ blank dimension filled with nothing? Why am I asking questions I won’t get the answer to again? Didn’t I learn not to ask these questions last time I asked these questions? The point was that we had to keep on waiting…

And so we continued waiting…

Waiting for something to happen…