Recollections on Undeath

by Yoohoo

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, Dark, Zecora, Sad, Romance, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Adventure
Length: 1290

After his untimely demise, Anchors Aweigh finds himself suddenly brought back to life by unknown means. Confusion continues to heap onto the stallion as he tries to uncover just why he's been brought back, and how he can manage to bring himself back.

Anchors Aweigh, sailor and exporter of goods meets his end at sea after an unexpected storm tears his ship to splinters. But much to his shock, awakens on land without a pulse and feeling strangely lifeless. What follows is his journey through the wide world of Equestria to figure out just why he had been brought back in the first place, and more importantly, how to return to life once more. Stick around, because this corpse is more than just dead weight.

Cover art by BB's Art Boutique!

Published 2016-02-26 17:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-02-26 17:20:01 UTC

Pallor Mortis

I awoke, feeling altogether cold and uneasy. I felt... Wet. It was as if I had been soaked all the way through; curiously, I felt no water drip from my coat. This coldness, this wetness, it came from within and radiated outward. When I finally mustered the strength to open my eyes, I was met with not the open sky as I had anticipated. As the darkness quickly faded and my eyes adjusted, I saw wooden boards.

'A roof?' I wondered silently as I blinked to focus my eyes. I swallowed, my throat so painfully dry it felt as if a spike had been driven through it. Numbness had seeped into my every limb, and it bit back with sharp pinpricks as I flexed my hooves to drive it away. Soon, control and feeling had returned to my limbs, and with it, a strange discovery:

I was laying in a bed.

Perplexed, I sat up and felt the sheets roll lazily off my body, and a curious glow began to fill the room. I began to look around; had somepony entered? It took me just a moment to realize that this strange purple glow was coming from me.

It was coming from a gaping hole in my chest.

There was a massive hole going straight through my chest.

I blinked once, twice, three times in an attempt to try and wake up. Surely I had to be dreaming. No matter what I tried, it seemed as if this really was the waking world. Tentatively, I reached my hoof deep into the hole, making contact with the strange, glowing purple wisp of light hovering within. Gripping it tightly within my hoof, I began to pull, and pull, and pull. I felt the wisp relent under my unyielding force and slowly begin to recede along with my hoof. However, as I did this, all feeling within my extremities began to fade, as if my very hooves were going limp. Still I persisted, and the further I continued to remove the strange object, the more intense these feelings that were washing over me became. Horrible throbbing pains began to radiate out from the center of my chest, and the very act of breathing became an ordeal. Chills broke out along my body and a cold sweat rolled down my forehead; I began to feel faint, and soon collapsed out of the bed onto the floor as I let go of the small orb. It quickly returned deep into the recesses of my chest as I laid there doubled over on the floor in a fit of coughing.

It was clear that whatever this thing was, it was keeping me alive.

'Alive?' Is that what it was? Had I really... Died? All I remembered was that storm... The sound of wood splintering... The rush of water over my head and then... Nothing. Just darkness and then this... Hut. I stood shakily and took a better look around; perhaps I knew this place.

Though the more I looked at my surroundings, the more foreign they became. I definitely had never visited this place before. Seeing light filtering in from a crack under the door, I opened it and was greeted by the harsh light of Celestia's sun. Shielding my eyes until they adjusted and stopped their dull, painful throbbing, I stepped outside.

Immediately I was hit with a noticeable difference in humidity, as well as another foreign feeling, one of wind blowing through my body. No doubt it was thanks to the massive hole in my chest. It's hard to explain what wind feels like cooling your insides, and it only layered itself upon the ever-present bone wetness that never seemed to leave... But where was I? I didn't recognize this flora from anywhere, and the small patch of sunlight I'd felt before was fleeting at best, as the trees blocked out most of what the clouds above did not. Turning around, I was met with the small hut I'd woken up in just moments ago. Like  I had assumed, it was unremarkable, perfect for somepony that wouldn't want to draw undue attention. I blinked a few times as the realization dawned on me that whoever had done this to me was probably still around, and if they had no problem with bringing me back to life, who knew what else they were capable of?

I had to leave, there was no debate. They could return any moment and see that their "experiment" had gotten up and was trotting around. I looked around, considering my options. All of these options were the same however: Wander in one direction until I found something worth following. With no other plan than "quickly get away from this place" I set off into the woods in a desperate search for... Something. Perhaps somepony could help me out of this horrible mockery of a life I now found myself in.

As I continued through these woods, I kept trying to find something, anything that could give me a clue as to where I was even at. Was I going in circles? All of these trees were beginning to look the same, and I'd not stumbled upon any sign of civilization since I left. I began to wonder as well if I was ever going to leave these woods. Navigating them at night would be nigh impossible, and the sun was beginning to sink dangerously low from what i could make out between the thick trunks of the trees. Other than the small wisp within my chest, I had nary any source of light to find my way with, and it was less of a torch and more of a beacon to let somepony know where I was. While this may have been beneficial to me, my mind did wander a bit. 'What if it just gave away my position to whoever did this to me? They could be searching the woods right now, looking for their science project gone missing...' It was unsettling, but seeing as I seemed to be stuck with it for the time being, I had little choice but to continue to soldier on. There had to be an end to these woods eventually, right? There was no feasible way they could go on forever. I could only hope that they ended in civilization, and not simply a mountain, or some such like that. I wasn't exactly sure how much I could take this day.

Thankfully, I seemed to be making progress. Soon enough I could hear waves gently lapping at a shoreline, and if I was close to the coast, that meant that sooner or later I would end up in one of Equestria's coastal cities. What were they again... Los Pegasus, Baltimare, Vanhoover, Fillydelphia, or Manehattan. If I were unlucky however... I could simply end up wandering the coast for hours, perhaps even days if I were far enough away. I grumbled softly to myself as I began altering my path towards the sound of the ocean. 'No, if somepony lived out here, there must be a city or town nearby, they would have no way to get food otherwise, and I didn't see many edible things in that forest... Gotta keep up hope, there has to be a city around here. I took a deep breath and picked up my pace with renewed vigor, I would find my way no problem.

It was the whole "undead" thing that was the issue. How was somepony going to react to what was basically a zombie sidling up to them to ask for help? Not well, I would imagine. There were no shortage of understanding ponies in Equestria, surely one of them would help... Right?