Mortem: The Last Necromancer

by SecretAgentPlotTwist

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Other, Original Character, Comedy
Length: 4631

Almost a year after Celestia's great crusade against necromancers concluded, Mortem discovers a rather large army outside his castle. Not wanting to cause an incident, he works towards a diplomatic solution.

Almost a year after what seemed to be the concluding battle in Celestia's great crusade against necromancers, something Mortem believes to be borderline discrimination, he discovers one of Celestia's armies setting up camp just outside his stronghold.

Not wanting to jump to any conclusions or risk angering the very powerful Princess, he concludes a diplomatic solution would be the best way forward. And so, he writes a letter.

Proofread by the wonderful Soren Mercer
Featured on Equestria Daily here
Audiobook versions by Illya Leonov and TheArchitect are here and here respectively
SoundCloud verion of Illya Leonov's is here

Published 2016-07-11 11:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-07-11 11:20:02 UTC

Chapter 1

Dear Princess Celestia:

I know we are yet to be formally introduced—which is a real shame because I’ve been meaning to for a while, always something else popping up, you know how it is—but I’ve been pushed to write this before those meetings could happen.

Now, I’m not accusing you of anything, and I’m sure this is all just some huge misunderstanding, but I can’t help but notice that a rather large army of yours is currently located outside my castle.

I wouldn’t normally bring this up, as I am just as prone to some accidental territorial overlap as the next guy. It’s just that this rather large army (a couple thousand strong, just so you know) has currently set up camp directly outside my castle and killed a handful of my soldiers.

Again, I’m not blaming you for any of this. My soldiers have been known to spook some ponies—with them being undead and all—but I’d still rather them not die again. Not because I am of a shortage or anything, I still have plenty enough undead soldiers ~~to kill every one of your soldiers~~ to get by, but it’s still a pain to revive them constantly.

Anyway, hope you get this soon so we can get past this little misunderstanding. I’m sure we’ll have a good laugh about it one day. You know, once we’ve actually met.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: Bringer of death

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

Hello, me again. I assume you got my last letter. It definitely got to the general. He did kill my messenger though—not going to get too upset about it; how do you think I got an undead messenger in the first place—but I only have so many of those, so I hope we can sort everything out before I run out.

Just giving you a little update on negotiations: they could be going better. I tried to call out to them from a balcony, but someone shot me with a crossbow. I didn’t see who it was, unfortunately, as the whole crossbow brigade opened fire. No idea who got the lucky shot.

Don’t worry, I’m fine though. Us necromancers are incredibly difficult to kill. Something you’ve probably found out, you know, before you killed all of them. No hard feelings though, most of them had it coming. For the most part they were a bunch of dense assholes.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the unkillable

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

So how have things been going? Not to sound passive-aggressive, but I wouldn’t know because you still haven’t replied to any of my letters!

I have been sitting here patiently for a response as everything just continues to get worse around me. The weather is annoyingly humid, my real estate investments have crumbled, and you know that army outside—the army that’s parading around under your flag—it has got reinforcements.

Now, it’s not the reinforcements per se that have got me in a bad mood, I still have more than enough undead to kill them all. But they also brought siege weaponry. Weaponry they seem to just love firing at my castle.

Again, this isn’t my concern. It would take something much bigger than those trebuchets to even scratch my magical walls, but they are bloody persistent. Persistent enough to keep on firing all through the night, which, as I assume most ponies know, is meant for sleeping.

I haven’t had even a snippet of sleep all night and I desperately need that beauty sleep. Not because I give into those unrealistic beauty standards of necromancers, but because I am over ten thousand years old and I look every day of it.

Just picture the snowy mountains of the north on an old colt's face and you get a good idea of what I looked like in my prime. Now I’m a mess.

My wrinkles are so bad that they’ve on occasion slid in front of my eyes, obscuring my vision until I can sort them out with some clippers. This face can not afford any bags from sleep deprivation.

So yes, the quicker you can call those troops off the better. I want to look my very best for our tea get-together. Send me a letter with the details of when we can do that by the way.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the sleep deprived

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

You won’t believe this, but more reinforcements have arrived, and they brought bigger siege weapons with them. Again, army's still too small and the weapons still aren’t strong enough. But this new development has brought up two important factors that you should think about.

The first being you may have some seriously out-of-control factions in your empire. There are literally thousands of your soldiers here. So many it’s kind of hard to believe they are all here by accident, and that reinforcements keep arriving by accident also.

Now, I don’t wish to tell you how to run your country—if the great massacre of HoovesVille has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t effectively rule a population that isn’t undead—but I still think you should watch out for anyone going against your rule.

The second, if they are indeed an out-of-control faction, is that our letters may be getting intercepted by them. Granted, I have been sending these letters directly to them, but I addressed them to you, assured that they would respect your privacy enough not to open them.

To avoid this issue in the future, I am sending this and subsequent letters though a secret passage in the back of my castle. Then my messenger will be able to get it directly to a post office without being intercepted or attacked.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the inciteful

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

Big developments have happened here since my last message. This out-of-control faction may have control over your postal service, because only a couple of days after I sent my letter there was a sneak attack through my secret passage.

Luckily, it was dealt with quickly. The rather blind attack was easily outnumbered and surrounded. Which reminds me, once this mess is over, fire your General.

Since then I’ve been continuing on from these events rather maturely, unlike these soldiers outside. You wouldn’t believe the fuss they had when I began to display the dead on spikes. Like a bunch of big children they were.

The spikes are an important part of the ritual to turn them into the very best undead soldiers. Which as they have destroyed many of my soldiers, I believe I am completely in my right to replace them. They weren’t using their bodies anymore anyway.

But still, if these aren’t a rebellious faction and it’s all just a misunderstanding, I just want you to know I was completely humane with them.

If you get any complaints about how mutilated they were, I have no idea how they got like that. I didn’t forget to tell my minions to fight humanely and not fight as brutally as possible like they do normally, so your guess to why they ended up like that is as good as mine.

Onto some better news, I managed to capture some survivors. As these letters seem to be only one-way at the moment, I decided it will be mutually beneficial to get any information I could out of them. You can thank me during our tea get together.

One little thing though, as I don’t have any university degree holding interrogators who can use clever and effective ways to get information out of ponies, we’ve just gone with good old-fashioned torture.

Granted, like many things considered to be ‘good old-fashioned,’ it is incredibly inefficient. So far, before we could get anyone to snap mentally they’ve snapped physically. And the less said about the folks who have mentally snapped a bit too much to be useful the better.

But I’ll keep you updated to see if we get any useful info. We have plenty of captives, so keep your hopes up.

Anyway, since the postal service has been compromised, I will send this letter via undead eagle. You, unfortunately, can’t use it to send one back to me, as they get very bity around non-dead ponies, but you can just use your own eagle. I’ll tell my air archers to stand down for the next couple of days.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the merciless

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the rebels outside launched a massive air offensive on my castle. A huge number of pegasi attacked from all sides, seeking to take advantage of my unready anti-air archers so they could open my gates and storm the castle with their whole army.

The good news is that it completely slipped my mind to call off my archers. The bulk of them were killed in the air and those who managed to get to the ground were overpowered before they could open the gate.

It was a great victory. Would have really improved the morale of my troops—you know, if they had any morale. And now I have a huge air force after I resurrected them with the stick ritual (again, no idea how they got so mutilated).

In fact, forget what I said, there is no bad news, only good. I’ve been smiling all day, which is insane because I thought I forgot how to smile centuries ago.

I think we’re close enough at this point for me to have no worry in telling you this, but I’ve been getting really worried. I know, silly right? It’s just that since you haven't shown up and the rebels keep getting reinforcements, I didn’t know if I was going to get through this.

But after this victory, I think that even if you don’t show up I’ll still be able to hold them off. I’ll make it to that tea party yet.

Your sincerely,

Mortem: the hopeful

P.S. Unlike the others, I’ve never been referred to as this, but I feel like it sums me up best right now.

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

I’ve noticed that you’ve shown up finally. You brought a sizable army as well. And you’ve set up camp with the other army.

Please write back to me once you get this.

Yours sincerely, Mortem.

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

You didn’t reply. I know you saw it. I saw you read it from one of my balconies. Your tent is in a pretty bad spot, I could have had a couple lucky shots at it by now. You know, if I wanted to, ~~but I just~~.

I guess this all means that I was indeed part of this Crusade to kill all the necromancers. I don’t really know why I thought I wouldn’t be, as I am indeed a necromancer. It was probably because I was never part of the big gang of necromancers.

Neco and his great alliance of necromancers never had much interest in getting me on board. Quite the opposite in fact, none of them returned my letters. I had wanted nothing more than to be part of the group that brought a dark storm of undead over all of Equestria, the very plan that brought about this crusade.

But I was nothing but a liability to them, a necromancer who couldn’t rule over a simple village without it ending in chaos. I’m not a warlord, I’m a failure whose only achievement has been building a wall to hide behind because I’m terrified of what’s out there. A necromancer who’s scared of death, it’s pathetic.

But what did I expect? It was just wishful thinking that you’d ignore me like they did. Well, I mean you almost did. It’s almost been a year since I became the last necromancer, and all you sent was a small force to kill me. I guess you thought as little of my abilities as they did.

To be fair, had I not miraculously won that battle, there’d be no point in you coming here at all. If it comes to a one-on-one there won’t be a great battle, like facing Ardeo’s flames or when you were almost drowned by Merso. No, if we come face to face, you’ll make quick work of me.

Please, Celestia, I know that in your ideal world of harmony and peace there’s no place for necromancers like me, but there must be some kind of compromise we can come to. I admit I find it hard to understand your kind's morality. It’s been so long since I’ve cared for anyone that caring for a whole kingdom full of ponies is difficult for me to get my head around, but I’m willing to try. Can you give me that chance?

Yours sincerely,

Mortem

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

Buck you.

No, really, buck you. You think you’re so bloody righteous coming after me. But you know what? You have no justifiable reason to. I hadn’t killed anyone in decades, not until you sent over soldiers to kill me. Meaning you were the aggressor, not me.

What dastardly deeds did you think I was getting up to? There is nothing to do in the castle. It is mind-numbingly boring here. I live alone in a huge castle, miles away from any civilisation, with nothing but the undead to keep me company. I couldn’t be evil if I tried.

I have a library that could rival any library you have in your empire, and I don’t have a single book to read. Any book that I could read I’ve read hundreds of years ago and it would be pointless to read a story book because I can’t connect to any of the characters, being a necromancer and all.

But hey, it’s not all bad, at least I have my undead friends to keep me company. Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a conversation with an undead, but they’re not the most lingual of ponies.

The smartest undead I have can’t structure a sentence that’s longer than three words and a grunt. And yet, he is the closest thing I have to a friend.

We often play chess, my favorite game, but even after millennia of experience, he still doesn’t understand how knights can jump over other pieces. I have wasted literal years of my life explaining that the knight, or horse as he refers to it, can go over other pieces and then subsequently explain why he can’t do that with the bishop when it comes to his go.

Do you think this is the life I choose to lead? No fun, no friends, no compassion, it’s torture. Granted, not the literal torture I’ve given to some of your soldiers, but I was doing that because I thought it would help both of us.

And while you have everything, friends, a loyal and loving population, you’ve even got a ragtag group of homosexuals who you can send on adventures, I have none of that, and never will. All you’re doing is hunting a sad old man who's got nothing to live for. How is that heroic?

We both know this didn’t start out of any moral duty. The massacre of Hoovesville lead to no crusade and was in reality such a small event this deep in what was then necromancer territory. Be honest and admit that this is just a ticklist to you at this point. I’m just the final box that needs to be crossed so you can declare a necromancer-free Equestria.

And that’s reason enough to kill. It’s a shame we never had that tea get together, as it would seem we have a lot in common when it comes to lack of compassion.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the necromancer who will not come quietly

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

That certainly wasn’t quiet. Forget what I advised early and keep that general, at least he knows how subtlety works. When you’re in charge, well, that was an all out attack and a half.

Granted, you did have the bigger force, but was sending the whole force in once the walls caved in the best way to optimise your attack? Sure, us necromancers are used to using pony wave tactics, but that was a bigger wave than I’ve ever seen.

I will give you credit on leading the attack. I imagine it’s a huge morale boost having a god lead you into battle. I, on the other hand, prefer the aristocratic approach, sitting comfortably in my tower miles away from the actual fighting.

I’m guessing the reason you went for such a quick and heavy attack was to hopefully catch me if I tried to run away, something I can imagine myself doing. But, as you are reading this letter, I can only imagine it’s making you even grumpier after your attack failed to do that.

HA

Did you really think I’d be silly enough to rely solely on my near impenetrable walls for protection? Of course not. As you have probably figured out my tower has a very similar spell to stop breaching, the only difference being that it moves projectiles so they always slightly miss it.

Clever huh? This means that we are at an impasse until you get some battering rams that are strong enough to breach my tower. And considering you need very big rams to breach them, we will most likely be at this impasse for a while.

Hope you packed for a long trip. I’d maybe consider taking up a hobby, maybe gardening in the deserted wasteland that is my home.

I, for one, will be working on a way out of this very sticky situation of being trapped in a magical tower that’s surrounded on all sides. A tricky one, but I’m optimistic. At the very least I hope to hold you up a bit longer than you were planning, something I’ve so far become very apt at.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: a very hard box to cross off

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

Been a while. I’ve noticed the battering rams have finally arrived, and judging by the size of them, I completely understand why it took so long for you to get them out here.

Give your post ponies my admiration, because I have no idea how they managed to get those fifty-foot-long rams over the rainy mountains or thick forests of the west. Whatever you’re paying them, it’s not enough.

I suspect any hour now you’ll start ramming in my tower so I’m well aware I don’t have long left, but I feel like I should tell you this.

Recently, while I was brainstorming ways to change this fate of mine, I started going through some novels to look for inspiration. During one such book, I became hooked reading about one character who found himself trapped in a situation where all the odds were against him.

While his method of escape was, unfortunately, not useful for my current predicament, I later realised the significance of me being ‘hooked’ by the story.

This may be hard for you to understand, but us necromancers can not get hooked on a story, as our aforementioned lack of compassion stops us from relating to characters. So this sudden development of what seemed to be empathy for another pony, albeit a fictional one, has given me much to mull over.

The conclusion I have come to, while fully admitting that this could just stem from me wanting to escape like this character has, is that I may have been wrong about necromancers.

I have always believed that necromancers were inherently incapable of these emotions. And I believed this because, well, that’s what I had been told and how it has been presented. I mean it must be hard to be surrounded by so much death and care for all those who died.

But I’m starting to wonder if this lack of compassion is inevitable, or if I can change that. Whether it’s not something genetic or spiritual, but something caused by the life led by necromancers or by my isolationism.

I’ve spent so much time hiding from the rest of the world that I have no idea what’s even possible for me to feel. I don’t know if I’ll feel anything when I see something of great beauty or if I’ll ever be able to connect emotionally to someone.

But I’ve decided I’m going to try.

So when you break down my door, hoping to bring this all to an end, ready to declare this land free of necromancers once and for all. I have one thing to say to you.

Good luck.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: Defiant till the end

***

After Action Mission Report

Deployment Location: The Undead Kingdoms, Northwest Region, Mortem’s Stronghold.

Divisions Deployed: Fifth and Sixth Division, Eighth Air Division, Sixteenth Crossbow Division (now Seventh Royal Division after promotion).

Tenth Division and Second Siege Division reinforcements.

Third, Fourth, and Twelfth Division, Fourth and Sixth Siege Division reinforcements.

First Royal Elite Division and First Royal Siege Division reinforcements.

Extra equipment sent: twenty-six division rations, two Luna -class siege battering rams.

Generals on site: Princess Celestia, General Neponyian, Field Marshall Montponery, General HoofShoes (Retired from action), General SwiftGlide.

Mission statement: Breach tower walls. Find and execute Mortem before he can escape.

Detailed Report

Before we set out on our long march to Mortem’s strong hold, I suggested we make a slight detour so we didn’t have to pass through some of the largest mountains on the way there, but HoofShoes insisted on going straight there despite the fact...

...Once the battering ram had started to dent the door, I readied my troops for a quick attack, knowing that he was most likely going to make a run for it.

It wasn’t till the door had been busted open did we realise we had been tricked. It turned out that Mortem had laid a second contingency plan for if his walls had gone down, as he had been hiding a whole second army underground that suddenly emerged from underneath us as we charged.

Our entire army was caught off guard, and despite outnumbering them an estimated five to one, we took heavy casualties. But even with this counter attack, Princess Celestia, along with a small group of soldiers, stormed through the tower, heading straight for Mortem.

Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful in finding him. His escape technique wasn’t discovered until after the battle, when a long tunnel was found underneath the tower. It was newly dug, and we suspect that he had used the remaining undead in his tower along with some of the underground undead to dig it so quickly.

After an expeditionary force, led by the Princess, made their way through the tunnel and failed to find his whereabouts, the search was called off. He was most likely miles away from the battlefield by then, and we are without a tracking force.

Our hope is that he’ll cause some commotion wherever he ends up and we’ll be able to finish this. Until then, the mission has been announced a failure, meaning we all marched home with very low morale and a very angry Princess.

General SwiftGlide

***

Dear Princess Celestia:

Hello again. I’ve been meaning to send this to you for a while—always something else coming up, you know how it is—but I decided that I’m in a good place right now and I feel like I should let you know how the one that got away is going.

Hope you’re a little less angry, time is a good healer, and I feel two years is long enough. So I hope you’ll read this in an accepting and calm manner, and not just rip it up into little pieces like old times.

Once I gave you the slip with my back-up plan for my back-up plan, I made my way along the mountains until I found the far western pony settlements. I feel confident that you won’t send an army out there, as you’ll probably run into a lot of diplomatic issues. They’ve made themselves some pretty impressive kingdoms out here.

Now, I’ll be honest, I did assume I would get chased out of those kingdoms with pitchforks, and while that may have happened one or two times, I eventually found some landowners who were happy to exchange a place to stay for some cheap undead labour.

From there I kept the promise I made myself to try and feel something for someone. And so, I went around different pubs to try and talk to anyone who'd give me a chance.

Now, this is where I admit that one of the big reasons this letter is so late is because this took me a good number of months before it was successful.

This is partly, as I’ve said, because I don’t look like the most approachable of necromancers, but I kept at it and eventually I found someone who I managed to talk to. Now, this may surprise you, as I find myself to be quite confident in my writing, but when you note I haven’t talked to another living being for hundreds of years, you understand why I am indeed a nervous wreck in reality.

Luckily, he was extremely drunk, which was probably the reason he talked to me in the first place.

Now, cutting a story short, he and his friends got into a bit of a fight with another group of ponies, I—with him being the only pony who’d talk to me—decided to take his side, the fight got a bit out of hand, we got arrested, it turned out to be a gay bar, we made a run for it, and now I have a ragtag group of homosexuals I travel around with.

Yeah, it turned out they were a bunch of wannabe adventurers, and they realised that having a near-impenetrable necromancer with powerful magic abilities would be very useful on some of those adventures.

So basically I’ve been spending this past year going round the far western kingdoms fighting monsters and finding treasure. During some of these antics, I found myself enjoying new emotions. One of my companions later explained to me that it was most likely ‘fun’ I was feeling, so I can tick that emotion of the list of things I didn’t think were possible.

I’ve also found myself doing a lot to keep my companions from dying. I originally thought this to be an extension of keeping my smartest undead safe so I can still play chess, but later I began to think maybe it was something different, as they are all terrible at chess.

I’ve been pondering these developments quite a bit in my new home. It’s a nice wooden house on the side of a hill we all bought with the money from a rather successful adventure. The Deadly Swords Stronghold it’s known as (we’re called the Deadly Swords. It’s a pun kind of thing because I’m a necromancer and they’re all swords ponies. It’s not too important), and it has all my protection spells that you grew to love during our encounters.

Overall, I like to think I’ve done pretty good with the second chance you were so adamant on me not getting. Maybe you should consider giving it to a few other “unredeemable villains”. They just might surprise you. Hey, I surprised myself.

It’s funny though, for as long as I could remember, I wanted to make my name as a Necromancer. I dreamt about having the whole of Equestria know me as some great military conqueror who wasn’t belittled by those around me. But now I feel as though I can make my name through other, more enjoyable means.

Yours sincerely,

Mortem: the Last Necromancer