The Page of Pride

The pages of the Necronomicon

Paragraph three

The signal from the Everfree

“And a stitch here, and a stitch there.”

“We need a little gypsum here.”

“I think he’s waking up”

“Well then, apply more narcotics.”

“You do that, I’m trying to make sure that that thing sticks to his skull.”

“I can’t, my hooves are occupied.”

“Well, I’m busy too.”

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

“See, bet…”

----[一]----

“Get out!” A soft female voice commanded.

“But I want to see his face when he wakes up.” This time, the voice came in a whining fashion. Even though the hoarseness made it difficult to hear that.

“Then stop smoking and put the mirror away! We had agreed to be tactful about it.”

“But Fluttershy~”

“No buts, mister. This is my medical wing and I am here the boss! Now put that away and be quiet, you’re going to wake him up.”

“Guyssss…” I groaned as loud as I could, without straining my lungs too much. “Please…”

I slowly tried to open my eyes, but my eyes had to adapt to the bright magical light first. And my right foreleg felt as if it had been torn apart and rearranged only to be torn apart again. As I tried to turn myself around, an alien pain shot through my head. I recoiled at the new feeling and shot straight up as ignored all the other pain I was feeling.

Fluttershy rushed forward and started to comfort me. “It will all be ok. You just have to get used to that. But believe me, it is not so bad and it was necessary.”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” I checked my forehead to find where the pain had come from. And as I did, I could feel the thing where my headache was coming from. “Fluttershy?”

“Y-Yes?”

“What is that thing on my head?” I asked as calm as possible.

“I-It, well, you see… um, we had to…”

“IT’S A HORN!” Crafted Shadow sprung into my field of vision as he held a mirror to show me what he meant.

“CRAFTED!”

I looked at my new reflection, my skull was covered in bandages. And in the middle of my forehead, a sharpened piece of bone stuck out. I touched it in disbelief but regretted it as the same alien pain shot through my head. “What have you done to me?”

“YOUR CUTIE MARK IS GONE TOO!” Crafted grinned.

“Out!” Fluttershy stared at him, until he started wincing and covering his eyes as he ran for the door. Fluttershy then took a seat next to my bed. “Nemo, I need you to remain calm. I can explain everything.”

“Twilight tore a bone out of my leg, you guys attached it to my skull and removed my cutie mark. Good luck with explaining.” I spat in her face but—unlike the mare that cowered away from me yesterday as I had yelled at her—she didn’t even flinch. Instead she just stood up and lifted her coat to show her flank. It was common knowledge what the cutie marks of the wielders of the elements of harmony looked like. Yet as I looked at her flank—the three pink butterflies that should have crested her flank where nowhere to be found. Instead, I just saw a big patch of scarred tissue. She covered her flank again and took her place again.

“That is the same thing you’ll see if you check anypony else’s flank.”

“Why? Why did you do that to yourself?”

“We all had a life, a job, a family. We all had our special something that made us different from the rest,” She sighed, “But as Cerberus was formed, we came to the conclusion that we were all the same now. So, we all agreed to remove our cutie marks as a symbol of unity and that we now only lived for Cerberus. As you decided to not leave, you had officially joined us. And since we had to operate on you anyways, we also removed your cutie mark in the process.”

“That’s insane! You could have told me!” I yelled her in the face.

“I know… and I’m sorry.” Her ears drooped and she let her gaze fall to the ground, the last words had only left as a whisper.

“I—what?” My anger cooled down until I could only feel some icy thoughts in the back of my head. "I'm sorry... Is that all you have to say?"

Fluttershy just nodded absently.

"That cutie mark was the last thing I had left from my past. And now it is gone, I've nothing left."

“I’m sorry. But we had to do it. A necromancer is invaluable. And you needed a horn, but it had to be done with that ritual.” She straightened herself and looked at the ceiling as she cited a phrase. “The master has to steal a bone of the hornless. If he survives, he is worthy to learn. That’s what the book told us.”

"So, you tricked me into joining your little club to take the last thing that could possibly bring back my memories, and almost killed me because a book told you to do so?!"

Fluttershy didn't respond to that. She just stared at the floor, lost in deep thought.

I just sat there—looking at Fluttershy. Her expression had shifted multiple times during our conversation and I just didn’t know what to make from it. At the moment I hated her, I hated Twilight, I hated Cerberus. "Could I make a difference?"

Fluttershy slowly looked me back in the eyes. "I-I'm sorry, what?"

"Answer my question! Could. I. Make. A. Difference?!" I glared daggers at her.

She looked me back in the eyes. She didn't flinch and just looked for a moment. She then gulped, "Y-Yes..."

"Don't even think that I forgive any of you for what you've done to me... But... If I can help other ponies survive, then fine. I trade my past for the future of our world." I looked back in front of me.

"Thank you..." was al she could utter, even if was barely audible.

"Don't thank me. Because I'm not doing it for you." I glared back at her for a second. "Now tell me, how long will it take for this to heal?" I pointed at my new horn.

“It should have healed by now. You can take it off.”

I slowly removed the bandage, still wincing every time I touched my horn. I just couldn’t help it. It felt like a crowbar was attached to my head and that tried to break my skull open. “Mirror?”

She took the mirror—Crafted had left behind—and pointed it towards me. As I looked at my face I could see that there was little scar tissue left. Only a small crest around the bottom of my horn. I touched it and looked myself in the eyes.

“I think, I better get used to this…”

----[一]----

“Ok. Two mares were walking the wastes, the first asks: are we there yet? To which the other replies:—”

“Shut up, Vinyl.”

“Oh come on! You ruin the joke if you already know the punchline, Octy!”

“Well, I’ll punch you if you keep on asking if we’re there yet. Because we’re not! We still have to walk like four days! FOUR DAYS!”

“Ugh, all that walking will be my death one day,” Vinyl groaned.

“It will be if you make that joke one more time!"

“Oh really?” Vinyl teased her as she lifted her shades to show her diseased-white eyes. Her stained-scarlet irises stared at Octavia—taunting her, challenging her to do something. Anything that could make her forget how bored she was.

Octavia just groaned, “Come on, Vinyl. As soon as we have completed our mission, we can go back home. So stop wasting our time.”

“You’ve become boring since we’ve died you know that, Octy?”

“I’m sorry but being dead and having to obey that flankhole up there, tends to drain my patience.”

Vinyl just flared her nostrils in a bored fashion as she looked in the distance without interest. “Fine… Let’s just wipe that settlement off the map and go back home...”

“Thank you.” Octavia resumed her walk. Vinyl kept staring for another five seconds until she ressumed following her companion towards the big mountain in the far distant.

----[一]----

Twilight spoke some cryptic words and made a rabbit—made of purple energy—appear in the middle of the room. “Everypony gather around. –” Which everypony did in a practiced fashion, forming an—almost perfect—half-circle around Twilight “– Today, we’re going to practice accuracy. You will all summon five darts and try to hit this moving target.” She motioned the bunny to start running and turned back towards her students. “Begin.”

As darts were shooting through the room—Twilight corrected every little mistake she could find by the students. This ranged from using too little force to throw the dart, to not focusing enough on the target.

The exercise ended as a green dart pierced the flesh of the bunny—making it squeak and then scatter into purple dust.

“Good job, Summer Song.” A dark-orange unicorn with a hay-coloured mane and bags under her eyes smiled proudly and bowed at the praise. “But next time, use less energy. It’s a bunny, not a Hydra.”

“Of course, milady.” She nodded and took the same disciplined posture as the other students.

“I take that you have survived, Nemo?” She turned around, where she saw me standing at the entrance.

I glared at her. "Not thanks to you."

“How about you finally come in, so we can start your training?”

"Don't you have anything to say?" I asked with a hint of disbelief.

"As a matter of fact, I do. Come inside so we can start practising."

I snorted as it seemed obvious that the mare—who was once loved by many—seemed to have lost every last trace of empathy.

She coldly inspected my new horn and injured hoof. “Well, you’ve got to admit. Fluttershy is an artist. Almost no scar tissue.” She mumble until she looked me back in the eyes and cleared her throat. “You know. Normally, I would have to teach you all the basics of unicorn magic before we begin with necromancing. But Instead I’m just going to do this.” She leaned in and touched my new horn with hers. And like a spark igniting a fire, everything became clear to me. Knowledge flowed inside my brain, filling my mind with ideas and concepts I only had heard of from before. I knew—I just knew, not only the basics, but also advanced magical theorems.

She threw a pebble at the ground. “Pick it up.”

I wanted to say something acidic, but realized that—if I wanted to help—the shortest path would be to learn instead of to seek vengeance for things that cannot ever be undone. So I leaned in to pick the pebble up with my hooves but stopped as she hit the back of my head. “Not like that, you idiot! Levitate it.”

I rubbed the sore spot for a while, but quickly resumed my attempt to pick up the pebble. I focused on it and felt a warm layer of magic engulf my horn. And as if by magic—which it obviously was—the pebble started to float—suspended in mid-air—covered in the same white colour as my coat, sparkling in the same black colour as my mane.

“Do you want to know how heavy it is?”

I looked confused. “It’s a pebble, a few grams maybe?”

“Float it towards your hoof and catch it.”

I did as I was told and dropped the pebble in my hooves. It was humoungusly heavy, weighing—what I estimated to be fifty kilos. “What is this made of?” I groaned as I let the pebble fall towards the floor.

“Irrelevant. All you have to know, is that you now know almost half as much as I do about magic.” She turned around and motioned the group to assemble.

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“It is,” She said flatly. “You know how much I care about that?”

I almost answered until I realised that the question was covered in acid and as rhetorical as it could be.

----[一]----

“Good morning everypony!” Crafted Shadow shouted cheerfully through the war room.

Everywhere ponies were rushing from one side to the other—carrying papers, maps and cups of coffee. The few who heard Crafted Shadow enter the room—and did care about it—saluted.

A green mare with a short army-like yellow mane ran towards him.

“Good morning, sir. Did you sleep well?”

Crafted Shadow met her gaze and smiled. “You know that I don’t sleep, and yet you always ask me the same question when I enter. I can appreciate that.” He took another cigarette and lighted it.

“I do that mostly because it is fascinating to see that—even though you don’t sleep—you’re always late.”

Crafted Shadow took a drag on his cigarette and expelled the smoke slowly. “Yeah, can’t help it. I got a lot of bad habits. I mean, these cigarettes would kill me if I wasn’t already dead.” He grinned as he waited for somepony to laugh at his poor excuse of a joke. After a few seconds he just huffed. “Sheesh, you could also just laugh to be polite. Anyways, Violet, get me a coffee and brief me on what has happened while I was gone.”

The mare saluted and brought the coffee. After ten minutes, Violet had updated Crafted Shadow on everything. The latest test results of the Canterlot super-zombie. The rating of the data they had gathered through exploration missions over the last month. Data about their weapon supply and medicine stock. And a new topic, pregnancy.

Crafted Shadow groaned a bit. “So, there are mares pregnant…”

“Yes sir. Three at the moment.”

“I hope none of them are warriors or mages?” He took another drag from his cigarette.

“Negative, sir. One is a mechanic and two of them work in the orchards.”

“Good… please make a note that any female warrior has to ask for permission to get a foal. And tell them that I’ll castrate any Stallion who doesn’t practice safe sex.” Crafted Shadow said while taking another drag.

“Shall I add that you’ll use the big scythe, sir?”

Crafted laughed exuberantly while he coughed out all the smoke he had inhaled. “You know I like your kind of humour, Violet.”

“So I shall add it?”

“Of course. Anything to keep them from multiplying, the facility is still not strong enough to carry foals. Besides, imagine mercenaries taking care of foals?” He shivered at the thought of it. He took another drag and looked back at Violet. “Anything else?”

“Yes, our sensors have detected a signal coming from the Everfree forest.” She handed over the paper but noticed the sudden serious look in Crafted’s face. “Is something wro—”

“Why wasn’t I informed of this immediately?”

“Well, the message stated that they had survived for about four years in the Everfree, without even seeing one zombie in there.”

“THAT DOESN’T EXCUSE WHY YOU DIDN’T TELL ME RIGHT AWAY!” The whole chamber fell silent as Crafted Shadow bellowed through the room. Some looked terrified, others annoyed that the zombie—who was always late and never seemed to care about anything—suddenly acted like that was somepony else’s fault.

Violet recoiled at Crafted’s outburst. “I don’t see why it is of importance, I mean yes we have to help them. But they haven’t seen a zombie in four years, so we assumed that it wouldn’t matter if we helped them a few hours later,” She gulped, “I-If I may ask, sir. Why do you suddenly... care?” She said due to lack of better words for it. It's not that he didn't care, but he never showed it as excessive as he did that day.

Crafted came closer and closer towards Violet’s face until they were only separated by a small space.

“Because, zombies can pick up those signals too.”