Colgate sat on the banks of the bog and watched silently as the shaft of a spear slowly sank into the muddy water. She did not move as the shaft submerged with a small ripple, which quickly subsided as the water’s surface returned to a smooth, flat surface, as if nothing had disturbed it. For a while longer she stared at the pool, then she stood and wiped the tears from her face.

She climbed back to the top of the hill and looked down its opposite side, to the far off stone archway which lay just barely visible through the mist. She trotted down the hill and approached the arch warily. As she drew nearer to it, she began to see that the arch itself stood as the entrance through a low stone wall surrounding what looked uncomfortably like a graveyard.

“OK,” Colgate muttered to herself as she shuffled under the archway and into the graveyard, which stretched out in front of her as far as the eye could see. “If I was an evil book of the dead, living in an evil bog-forest-place, then I would definitely want to live in the creepy graveyard that just happens to be in the middle of an area that nopony ever goes to.”

She carefully weaved around the overgrown headstones as her teeth began to chatter. As she walked past stone mausoleums and plain, half-rotten wooden markers Colgate caught sight of a dark shape rising out of the mist. After a moment of trepidation she turned toward it and pushed ahead. As she neared the shape coalesced into a worn stone dais, leaning at a very slight angle to the gravestones surrounding it. Lying on top of the dais, she saw the dim outline of a book.

With a cry of joy, Colgate galloped ahead, feeling her mood soar as the object of her quest finally appeared in her sight. Before she had even reached the dais Colgate had grabbed the book firmly in her magic and pulled it to herself with an elated cry.

“I did it, I did it, I did it!” Colgate laughed as she threw herself onto the dais, holding the book to her chest and ignoring the disturbingly fleshy texture of the tome. She sighed, looking across the stone and suddenly felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. Across from her, looking as ugly and vial as ever, was the Necronomicon. From the corner of her eye she saw something that made her head swing to the side in a panic. A third copy of the book squatted evilly on its back, its human hide cover seeming to glare at her with the twisted face set into its cover. Colgate looked back at the book in her hoofs and felt her elation draining in a sensation that was becoming entirely too familiar for her likening.

“Clover never said anything about three books,” Colgate grouched. “What the heck am I going to do with three books?” As if in answer, the book in her hooves began to growl menacingly. Colgate quickly held the book out at legs length as it began to shutter and shake. “Alright, so just bringing them all back with me is out of the question then…”

The book jerked forward out of Colgate’s grasp with a snarl and latched onto her face. She screamed and beat at the tome as it madly snapped at her head, its foul-smelling pages mashing against her muzzle and eyes in a way rarely found in usually inanimate objects. Panicking, Colgate pulled back her hoof and swung with all her strength, hitting the book squarely on its cover. Unfortunately this had less of an effect on the book as it did on Colgate herself who staggered from the force of her own blow.

Finally, Colgate forced her hoofs under the book’s front and back and pried the terrible text off her face. The book snarled and snapped, but Colgate braced herself against its assault, unwilling to let the thing anywhere near her head again. Finally, the book gave out a defeated hiss and went limp in Colgate’s hoofs. Colgate eyed the book suspiciously for a few seconds, but when it failed to move again she cautiously relaxed her death grip on it. Still, she kept a watchful eye on the vile object as she placed it back into place on the dais.

“Alright then,” Colgate muttered, staring at the two other identical books sitting at equal distances from one another on the dais. Colgate circled the strange stone, looking from one tome to the other. “So which one of you is the real book?” she asked thoughtfully. The books remained unhelpfully silent. Colgate kneeled down next to one, then the other, carefully comparing the two for any discrepancies, but found none that she could see. Growing bolder, she prodded one of the books to see if it would spring to life and try to bite her, keeping a large branch at the ready just in case it did. Nothing happened. She repeated the experiment with the other book to an identical result. She even briefly considered doing the same thing again to the first book, but dropped it after a moment as being a profoundly stupid idea.

Finally running out of anything resembling a decent idea Colgate dropped her face onto the flat surface of the dais and groaned loudly. “That one!” She shouted, jamming a hoof in a random direction. She lifted her head slightly to see which book she was pointing at and groaned again when she realized that she was pointing to the first book. She slowly moved her hoof to the side till it was pointing at one of the untested books and repeated, “That one!”

Having thus deduced the most likely book Colgate tentatively flipped over the front over, beating stick once more magically held at the ready. When the book did not immediately lunge forward at her, Colgate nervously looked down at the first page and felt her jaw drop. Where she had expected to see lines of strange characters, written in the blood of near-mythical creatures, she instead found the edges of the page dripping down into a hole that seemed to reach down far further then the book should have allowed. At the bottom of the tunnel of liquid pages a strange, nearly hairless creature with an enormous chin stared back at her with an equally baffled expression on its bizarre face. The world around it was odd too, seeming… off in a way that Colgate could not put her hoof on, yet that made her feel very uncomfortable.

“What in Equestria?” she muttered.

“Well… That’s new,” the strange creature replied.

“What are you?” Colgate asked, feeling lightheaded.

“Who wants to know?” The strange thing shot back.

Colgate bristled at the weird thing’s rude tone. If it was going to go and break the rules of reality by existing in its strange world, it could at least have the decency to not be rude about it. “I’m Colgate. Now, what are you?”

The creature frowned, “So you’re a toothpaste, talking horse?”

Colgate blinked several times, “What? No! I mean, what does that even mean? What are you?”

The strange creature raised an eyebrow; “Weird.” Then it stepped back and closed the back cover of the book. As it did so, the tunnel of pages suddenly collapsed in on itself forcing Colgate back as the cover slammed shut on its own.

“What a jerk!” Colgate cursed, giving the book a dirty look. She considered reopening the book and giving the strange creature a piece of her mind, but then thought better of it, instead settling with just sticking her tongue out at the book and making an exceptionally rude sound. Having thus taken her vengeance, she turned her attention to the last book on the dais. “Well at least this narrows it down a bit.”

She reached out with her magic to retrieve the book, but just as she was about to lift it, a thought struck her. Colgate’s eyes widened as her mouth formed into a tiny o. “The words…” She looked back to the two previous books and bit her lower lip. “That might have helped.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “I am so dumb sometimes…”

Colgate lifted her front hoofs up onto the dais, turned her head to the sky and intoned in her most commanding voice, “KLAATU!” She took a deep breath and thought back to what Clover had told her and continued, “BARADA!” She filled her lungs for a third time and closed her eyes as she shouted, “NECK...” She frowned. “Neck? No, no, no…” She opened her eyes and looked down at the book. “Nock?” She felt sweat begin to bead on her face as her mind went blank. “Nah… nah…. N something…” Colgate bent down and screwed her eyes shut, thinking as hard as she could as her whole body broke out into a cold sweat. “It’s an N word; I know it’s an N word.”

Colgate began to take deep breaths as voices inside her head began to scream at other voices to remember the word she had been told. In her mind’s eye she saw the horrible corpse of her doppelganger, rising from the bog, ruined face leering as it pointed a decaying hoof at her. “How could some pony who can’t even keep in mind one measly word ever save their friends?”

“Shut up!” Colgate screamed, smashing her metal hoof into the dais hard enough for the impact to send a flash of searing pain through her not-yet-fully-healed stump. Colgate yelped and cradled her leg as she collapsed onto the dais, crying. Her cries quickly tapered off to soft whimpers as she curled up next to the Necronomicon. “What am I going to do?” she sniffled, rubbing at her nose dejectedly.

“The same thing you did at university.”

Colgate lurched upright with a start and looked around. “Hello?” The voice had seemed so familiar, yet it could not be who Colgate thought it sounded like.

“Oh really? It can’t be?” the voice teased. and Colgate found herself staring at a very familiar face, details twisted into the cover of the very book she had come to retrieve.

“Lyra?” Colgate gasped, hardly believing her eyes.
The face in the book twisted and turned till it looked like it was winking. “You better believe it, Cole!”

“But… but how? You’re, well, dead, for one thing; not to mention several thousand years in the future or something!” Colgate shot an accusatory glare at the image of her dead friend’s face set into the flesh covering of an age old tomb of pure evil. “How do you explain that, huh?”

Lyra’s eyes rolled as she grounded loudly. “Oh come on, Colgate. My soul got trapped in the Book, just like Derpy and Bonbon and Carrot Top. Until you can destroy the Book in the present, we are not exactly going anywhere anytime soon.”

“But, what about the whole time travel thing?” Colgate asked. She was starting to get a headache, something that always seemed to happen whenever she tried to read any story with time travel in it. Time Turner used to drive her mad talking about it when they were kids.

“Look, I know you have trouble with this stuff Colgate, so let me try and explain this as simply as I can,” Lyra soothed. “The Necronomicon is not bound by time, it exists at all moments of its physical existence simultaneously and so the ponies whose souls it swallows also exists at all those points in time as well. Get it?”

Colgate nodded slowly. “So it’s like that book you had me read at university?”

Lyra nodded as best she could. “Yes, just like that one you read half of and then threw out a window!”

Colgate blushed. “Oh… right.”

“Yeah, so maybe we should focus on getting you home and us freed from this book?” Lyra prodded.

“Right, yes let’s do that!” Colgate nodded vigorously, feeling giddiness begin to overtake her. “So what do I need to do to remember the word?”

“Same thing you did in university!” Lyra chirped. “Fake it!”

“Wait, what?” Colgate asked, her giddiness ebbing slightly.

“Fake it!” Lyra repeated, encouragingly. “You have most of the words, so if you just kind of fudge the last one a bit, then who is going to care that you didn’t say every single word exactly right? You’ll have mostly said them!”

Colgate scratched her chin as she considered this piece of advice as she tried to think of any time Lyra had ever steered her wrong on anything important before. Apart from the whole ‘trip of the damned’ thing, she could not and so Colgate nodded. “OK, let’s do this.”

Colgate once again placed her hoofs atop the dais and took a deep breath. “KLAATU! BARADA! NECatoro…” Colgate faded off the last word into a mumble as she pretended to cough. She cringed for a moment, sure that something horrible was going to happen, but when nothing did she let out a sigh of relief and picked up the book. Almost immediately Lyra began to laugh.

“Oh wow! I can’t believe you fell for that! How stupid are you even?”

Colgate felt a chill run down her back as several gravestones cracked and crumbled around her. “What is going on, Lyra?” She asked as her knees started to shake.

“Well since you misspoke the words, I guess that’s either an earthquake or just my army of darkness rising from their tombs to destroy the world of the living. Which do you think?” Lyra’s face twisted into a sneer as it looked up at Colgate.

“But, why would you do this to me?” Colgate asked, tears welling in her eyes.

“Wait, are you seriously not getting this?” Lyra asked, looking puzzled. “I am not your friend. I just used your own fears, hopes and memories to trick you into thinking that I was so you would free myself.”

“But then how did you know all that stuff about me?” Colgate wailed, holding the book out in front of her.

Lyra’s face took on a puzzled exasperation as it regarded Colgate. “Didn’t you hear me just say I was in your memories?” It regarded the blank look on Colgate’s face then groaned. “You know what? You stay here till the army rises; I am going to go get a better body. Then I am going to come back here, crack your head open, and see if you brain really is peanut sized.” And with that, the face on the book’s cover returned to normal, leaving Colgate speechless and gaping.

At that moment a bolt of lightning lanced down from the dark sky and blasted a tombstone apart, startling Colgate out of her shock. From the place where the lighting struck, a skeletal pony leg burst from the ground, soon joined by others from the nearby graves. As the dead began to dig themselves from their less-than-eternal resting places, Colgate bolted for the graveyard’s exit.

She had covered about half the distance in a matter of seconds, before a grasping hoof lurched out of the ground directly beneath her. Colgate tripped over the hoof, staggered to keep her balance, and was pleasantly surprised when she managed to stay on all four hoofs. Just as she was about to give herself a pat on the back for not face planting into at least one patch of dirt in Equestria, a boney hoof jutted out of the ground and hit her directly in the kidneys. With a whimper Colgate hobbled the rest of the way to the archway and out of the graveyard.

As she fled, she chanced one last look back and felt her blood run cold. From a hundred or more graves and monuments the skeletal remains of countless ponies tore their way free from the earth. Colgate bit her lip as she watched them.

“Clover is going to kill me for forgetting that last word,” she muttered before taking off again, as fast as she could manage.

As she galloped past the windmill a gurgling from the nearby bog caught her attention. Colgate hesitated as her curiosity and common sense battled with one another, before idiocy won out, as it had a tendency to do. She crept down to the edge of the nearest pool of water and looked across its bubbling surface, knowing what she would almost certainly find but needing to see it with her own two eyes. Sure enough, from the middle of the pool and coming closer was the head and shaft of a spear. She slowly backed away from the edge as the spear rose further out of the water till the top of a pony’s head broke the surface, the spear jutting obscenely from it like some grotesque second horn.

As the head came fully out of the water, the dead mare’s one remaining eye fixed onto Colgate. “You may have taken the book,” the dripping corpse of Colgate’s double growled, raising a hoof to point at Colgate. “But you will not escape us and you will not hide from us! The book will be ours!”

“Wait!” Colgate shouted, holding the book up above her head. “Can’t you just let me use it to go home? You can have it after that! I swear!”

The corpse laughed in the dry, maniacal way that is unique to a demonically possessed pony’s corpse. “You cowardly fool! Do you think that we would just let you go so easily?” Evil Colgate coughed up a bit of muddy water and took a second to recover before continuing. “If you gave us that book we would kill every pony in this land and then spread across the world so that when you arrived back home there would be nothing left for you but a blasted wasteland!”

“Oh,” Colgate said dejectedly. “Well I guess that makes sense, but I probably would have mentioned that whole thing after you had promised to help me, so that I couldn’t run away. So thanks for being honest at least.”

Evil Colgate’s eye twitched as she slowly sat back in the muck, an expression of dawning horror spreading across her face. “Oh horse apples…” she whispered.

Colgate coughed uneasily. “You didn’t think of that till just now, did you?”

Her evil doppelganger shot Colgate a murderous glare. “Well in my defense, I did just come back from the dead, at the bottom of a swamp, with a SPEAR IN MY BRAIN!” Her voice rising to a scream as she stamped a hoof into the mud.

Colgate began to back away from the pool again as she put up a warning hoof. “Well you did beat me up and I think you were planning on killing me, so…”

Evil Colgate took hold of the spear shaft and with a mighty yank, pulled the weapon from her skull. Pointing the blood, brain and water drenched spear at Colgate she bellowed, “Well now I am going to skin you alive and stick your head on the end of this thing and see how you like it!”

Colgate screamed and dashed off across the bog, not looking back as the litany of curses, threats and foul langue drudged from the deepest bowels of her memories slowly faded into the distance. She had barely slowed by the time she reached the forest and by the time she broke free from the tree line and once again saw Clover munching on her dinner, Colgate had just enough energy left to shout something even she could not understand and hold up the Necronomicon before she collapsed to the ground in a faint.

Author's Note

Sorry about how long this took! This would have been up last week, but a page or two from the end of the chapter I got sick and spent all week in bed running a fever and hacking up troubling things. Fun times!

Thanks for sticking with me so far and stay tuned, because good stuff is coming!*

*For a given value of good...