Back From The Dead

Ever since the final three months of 2016, a series of grizzly murders have been reported by both bystanders and law enforcement all over Equestria. Every single one of these murders had a bunch of things in common, like how all of these seem to take place at night so that the cops would find the mangled bodies in the morning and that all of the victims had a hideous criminal background. However, there is one thing that stands out and that is how they all died. The throats were severely slit to the point where you see bone with no blood coming out of the body. Their heads were hollowed out, leaving an extremely grizzly site behind that would even make ponies with strong stomachs vomit at the very sight of it. All of the cops that keep finding these grizzly murders would come to call them “The Undead Butcher Murders”. They were being caused by a monstrous being that both regular eyewitnesses and law enforcement kept seeing that shows no mercy to its victims called “The Undead Butcher”. Sightings and reports of these brutal killings done by it have been around from one generation to another stretching to the dawn of life itself. Specifically, since the start of ponies and other mythical creatures became the more dominant creatures. With the beginning of smartphones and other pieces of technology that have come around, used for documenting the massacres that it leaves in its way; it has given both law enforcement and normal ponies a chance to show what he has done. The weird thing is, that ever since the last three months of 2016 to the present, there have been more and more sightings of it than ever that nopony knows why.

All of the eyewitnesses say that it’s a tall-looking skeletal pony with a mane, tail, billy goat goatee, and webbing in its skeletal bone wings that look like they’re made out of a deep dark red colored ectoplasmic substance. It has demonic horns on its head and razor-sharp fangs like a vampire. It always carries around a very weird-looking sword with it. This “sword” is carved with a carved edge facing outward like what you would see on the end of a scythe and a weird-looking ball head on the other side. It also has the letters “R.I.P.” carved into the body of it.

Some ponies think that it’s a monster and others call it a vigilante who kills ponies like loan sharks, murders, rapists, drug dealers, black marketeers, and any other ponies who are evil and are rotten to the core or have done anything to violate the law. Either way, this thing clearly turns the tables on ponies that are pure evil and gives them a taste of their own medicine by killing them in the most gruesome ways possible.

Theorists and professionals in mythology around Equestria think that the reason for all of these sightings and reports is because of a being that works as The Grim Reaper’s Bounty Hunter to take down evil ponies and other mythical creatures who don’t deserve to live anymore. They call it a “Soul Hunter”. A Soul Hunter is passed down from generation to the next generation, like passing the torch from one to another but they don’t have to be related. That and the name “Soul Hunter” is meant to be a scare tactic, meaning due to how frightening it looks it may be mistaken for a demon even though it isn’t really a demon. Then it would be the last thing that an evil pony would see before they die.

How a Soul Hunter is made is when The Grim Reaper simply draws a name of a pony who has recently died out of a hat when the old Soul Hunter is ready to “Retire” which is a fancy way of saying them going up to heaven. When that happens, The Grim Reaper needs to find the next Soul Hunter to take his or her place, and it doesn’t really matter about gender when it comes to Soul Hunters. They must have what it takes to follow The Grim Reaper’s orders and do what’s right. They also have a second chance in life by being brought back to the land of the living. There is a catch to them coming back to the land of the living, though, they have to stay like they died when they come back. Their life span is much longer than any ordinary pony due to them having immunity to dying again from any fatal injuries, illnesses, and being poisoned.

Now the only question is, who is the Soul Hunter that all ponies see nowadays. A few ponies might have an idea. This pony’s backstory on how he got to be a Soul Hunter is dark, tragic, and gruesome in itself but it might explain a little bit about who this modern-day Soul Hunter is. So, let’s start at the beginning.

Ponies believe that this Soul Hunter is a stallion who was once named “Crimson Spellcaster” or “Crim” for short. Crim was born and raised in a small town northeast of “Appleoosa” and just north of “Dodge Junction” named “Topeclop”. He was born a unicorn with a jet-black fur coat and with a blood-red mane, tail, hoof, and eye color. His parents were both earth ponies but it’s really easy to know why he’s a unicorn, to begin with. It is unlike the Cake twins and how Mr. Cake had to explain the very complicated history of how Pound and Pumpkin Cake are both a unicorn and pegasus. How Crim became a unicorn is because his grandfather on his mom’s side is very experienced and an is extremely knowledgeable about magic. It skipped his mom because his grandmother is an earth pony too and was passed down to him. Even though his parents were really supportive of him being a unicorn and encouraged him to be as good if not better than his grandfather when it come to him using magic, they also taught him how to do tasks by hoof-like how earth ponies usually do work. This allowed him to grow up into a stallion that had a lot of physical power on his side. His grandfather was a great teacher for Crim because he went to the school of gifted unicorns along with Crim signing up to advance magic-themed classes in both middle and high school. He even had teachers comment about him saying that if he goes off to college, he should have a major in magic studies which would be an excellent choice for him due to him being so good at it. Everything seemed to be looking up for Crimson Spellcaster, he was an excellent student in school and he was looking forward to continuing his life with success on his doorstep. However, everything drastically changed since that fateful day.

Before I even mention that awful day. There was an event in Crim’s life that would light the match that led to that day. So, let’s start by talking about that first.

Ever since his second year of middle school, Crim really liked going out of town on spring break trips with his parents and grandparents on his mom’s side. For Crim, his spring break was in mid-March. But on this spring break trip that he took when he was a senior in high school, he wanted to head to Applewood for the week he had off due to spring break. They did have a great time at Applewood, but the way back home was the starting point for the unfortunate event that was yet to come. Ever since he was a colt, he was an ever-curious pony and it didn’t go away as he grew up. You know the old saying “Curiosity killed the cat.” Well, what happened to Crim was a clear case of that because, without the knowledge, he got cursed for it. He stuck his nose in somewhere that shouldn’t have belonged and now he will pay the price for it in time.

It was slowly getting dark outside as Crim and his family were heading back home from Applewood. They decided to rest for the night at a hotel a few miles west of The Ghastly Gorge.

During the night, he couldn’t sleep so he looked out his hotel window. He noticed smoke rising from a thick woody area, so he was curious and went to see what is causing it. What he found at the source of the smoke is a horrific sight, there were mangled bodies around a campfire. The scent of death that is all around Crim made him want to vomit, but then he heard the sound of a fallen tree limb cracking that was right in front of him across from the campfire. His eyes went wide in terror knowing now that he wasn’t alone. The next thing Crim saw walking out of the darkness into the light of the fire is a unicorn mare in a very old and burlap-looking clock. She had a mask on made out of leather that he swore he had seen in a horror movie at one point. Her eyes were a sickly yellow color with crimson iris. He noticed that her horn had a bunch of holes in it and was clearly rotting. The one thing that stood out among all of that was that she looked like a walking corpse.

“Oh, would you like to hear a story too?” she said with both a sinister grin along with an evil expression on her face beneath her leathery mask.

In response to what she said, Crim quickly looked around the campsite at the mangled corpses, “Did she do all of this? Did she kill all these ponies?” he fearfully asked himself. All Crim did immediately after saying that to himself was scream in abstract horror at what happened to the ponies that were now mangled bodies and at this walking talking corpse that was staring right at him wanting to tell him a story of all things at a time like this. He insulted her with many harsh commits like

“Why is a rotten corpse like you walking around, you’re supposed to be in the ground,” and “Your nothing but a good for nothing freak of nature!”

to the point where it started to really get under her skin. The one insult that stood out to her was when he flat-out called her a freak in the cruelest of ways possible. In her eyes, Crim finally has gone too far.

She was shaking in pure rage from all of his insults. Finally, reaching her breaking point, her eyes shimmered crimson and as she looked up at Crim with a look of pure rage on her face, she yelled out to him from across the campfire

“You will burn for saying all of that!!!”

After she says that, Crim walked a couple of steps back with a shocked and fearful look on his face and ran a few feet away while starting up his horn, and teleported himself back to the hotel where his family was resting for the night. Even though he was a big strong stallion, he was still really intimidated by what just happened. Everypony that was on this trip besides Crim was all fast asleep, he didn’t want to wake them all up to tell them about what just happened. So, he decided to keep what just happened to himself and he hoped that clocked mare was just making empty threats. What happened did scare him half to death. However, unknowing to Crim at the time, it just took one encounter. One encounter with that unicorn mare, sealed Crimson Spellcaster’s fate even if it would be delayed.

Two months passed by and Crim completely forgot about that encounter, all he was focused on now was finishing high school, graduating, and start going to college. Everything was all set for him, but it quickly changed on that fateful day.

It was May 22nd, 2016, the day started out like any ordinary day, but by 2:05 p.m. the sky above Topeclop started to get really dark. A rouge storm was forming just outside of Topeclop that was getting more and more severe by the second. The weather ponies in the Appleoosa, Dodge Junction, and the Topeclop division were trying everything to wrangle this storm to help calm it down to the point where it will be a gentle rain cloud, but this storm was getting more powerful and getting bigger as they tried to mess with it. This storm acted like it both had a mind of its own and was on a mission. The weather ponies in that division had no choice but to warn everypony in Topeclop of this dangerous storm. Just as they send out the alert, it hit Topeclop. Luckily there were no reports of tornados, but there were signs of hail, dangerous wind, and lightning bolts that could be deadly.

As the storm was raging outside, Crim was in his last class of the day which at this time was at 2:30 p.m., halfway through the class, Crim asked the teacher if he can use the restroom, and the teacher let him go. As he walks out of the classroom, he teleported his mp3 player to him and headed on down to the restroom. As he got into a stall, a minute passed and Crim smelled what he thought was smoke but he brushed it off by thinking it was coming from one of the cooking classes. Unknowing to Crim, outside on the other side of the school, a powerful lightning bolt struck the school’s boiler room causing the furnace and the whole boiler room to blow up and catch fire. The principal of the high school immediately pulled the fire alarms. Almost everypony heard the alarm go off, evacuated the school, and were forced to stay outside in the rain and hail so that the fire department can tame the flames.

Meanwhile, with his earbuds in his ears listening to his mp3 player. About three minutes later, Crim walked out of the stallion’s restroom to find that there was no sign of life in the hallways. He turned off his earbuds to hear if anypony was around but tried to hear the sound of other teachers teaching their lessons to fellow students but they were all gone. Crim heard loud noises of crackling and he turned around just in time to see fire quickly advancing towards him. He screamed loudly in terror and started to run in the opposite direction of the fire. As he kept running, Crim never thought about teleporting himself out of there because of two reasons. One, his parents are both earth ponies, they raised him not to use magic all the time and do stuff by hoof. And two, he was just too scared to think straight throughout the entire time this all happened.

He tried to open every door that was not in the fire’s path, but they were all locked from the outside. Meanwhile outside in the rain and hail, the principal was asking all the teachers if all of their students are accounted for. One of the teachers then realized that one of her students was missing and she knew exactly who it was. The principal begged the fire department to go in and rescue him but the captain on duty said that they were certain that the flames would die out shortly, he was wrong. Even if it was pouring down raining with hail thrown into the mix, the fire didn’t let up at all, it was unnatural seeing that. The principal decided to call Crim’s parents about the awful news that Crim was in and they both immediately came down to the high school that was now 90% covered in fire.

There was only one room left for Crim to try to escape from and that was the metal shop classroom. While he was running down the stairs to get to the large garage door and another regular metal door right next to it, he accidentally slipped and fell onto gasoline. The gasoline covered his whole right hind leg that led up to the right side of his rump, his right side, his right side of his horn that went down past the right side of his neck, his right side of his shoulder, and his whole right foreleg. He immediately got up and ran towards both doors. He tried his hardest to open both doors with his power and brute strength but they didn’t budge. At this point, Crim was starting to get really tired, really angry at himself, feeling like this is the end for him, and on top of all of that, he was coughing so much and so badly that he was suffocating on smoke. As he saw the fire quickly creeping upon him with his back against the wall and on his hind legs, he heard a loud hissing noise coming from his right, he turned his head just slightly to his right to see him leaning up against the wall which was one and a half inches away from him was a very flammable and very big gas tank.

“OH FU!!!”

before he even had the chance to finish what he was saying, the flammable gas tank blew up right in his face. In a matter of seconds, the right side of his face was now on fire to the point where it melted his right eyeball, it quickly went down the right side of his neck to the bottom of his right foreleg. His right hind leg was on fire at the same time. It quickly burned off fur, skin, and muscle leaving nothing but the bone in the spots where there was gasoline. It boiled his blood throughout his body once he got caught on fire. The fire even burned off the right side of his cutie mark. He tried to scream for help just hoping that there was anypony outside that could hear his cries for help, but the roar of the fire was so loud that it blocked all of it out. He then got too weak and just collapsed to the floor with his back still against the wall. Even though he didn’t hear anypony outside the high school, he did however hear two muffled voices screaming and yelling at each other that sounded like it was outside the metal shop. They sounded like they were verbally and physically fighting with each other because he heard a bunch of banging coming from outside the metal shop classroom. It felt like it took a century but in reality, it was five minutes, as he lay on the ground with his back against the wall, burning. He heard something coming from above him with his left ear. He had enough strength to look up to see that the roof of the high school was starting to collapse. As the roof started to fall, it was another “OH FUC!!!” moment but Crim didn’t say that out loud. Thankfully the roof didn’t crush him, instead the door that he sat up against acted as a way to cushion the fall of the collapsing roof onto Crim. He was however now on the concrete floor of the metal shop classroom. After the roof collapsed, it left behind a path of rubble for him to get out but the only problem with that is that he was too weak from the injuries that he suffered through. But he ignored that and decided to crawl his way out through the rubble. As the principal of the high school and the fire captain had a back-and-forth talk, a random student saw Crim crawling out of the rubble and shouted out

“Look, there he is!”.

Both the fire captain and the principal ran to Crim’s side where the principal took a good look at Crim and then threw up behind the fire captain. The fire captain ordered the EMTs to get a stretcher to take him to the hospital. They put Crim on a stretcher and rushed him back into an ambulance where his parents got into the back of the ambulance and tried, but failed to hold back tears An EMT tried to stick an IV into him while saying

"Everything will be ok as long as you stay with us!”

as soon as she said that he passed completely out.

He did briefly wake up a while later on a stretcher in the hospital with so many ponies speaking and taking him to emergency surgery. All of the ponies’ voices running around the stretcher were all muffled out, he didn’t know what they were all saying because he moved his head to his left to see that the storm was finally out of Topeclop with a bolt of lightning far off in the distance to prove it. Out of all the ponies who were talking around him, the only thing he could hear was somepony saying

“He’s a mess, he’s barely hanging on to life by a thread.”

He then passed out for the second time.

He woke up again, in a room in the hospital where they performed emergency surgery, where he heard the head surgeon say to him

“Don’t worry son, will get you out of this.”

After the doctor said that, Crim passed out for the third time.

Immediately after he passed out for the third time, Crim didn’t hear anything other than a loud ringing that blocks all other noises. But, in reality, the doctors were panicking over the fact that they were losing him. They tried everything to put him back together, the surgeons tried enhancements, flash and fur replacement spells, appearance alteration spells, and even old fashion plastic surgery. But every time they tried to put replacement skin and fur on him, it would immediately melt and literally burn off him, it was like some sort of supernatural force was not wanting him to have everything burned off him be replaced. It was painful for the surgeon to do this, but after they tried everything they just flat out gave up. Immediately after they gave up, the head surgeon and his team heard something that would be a nightmare for doctors to hear, a flatline.

On May 22nd, 2016 Crimson Spellcaster died at 9:01 p.m. from his injuries on the operating table, the cause of death was him dying from smoke insulation and basically being cooked alive. He was only 18 years old.

A week and a half later, there was an open casket visitation for him. Crim’s family got the information ahead of time that the surgeons tried everything to put him back together, but they failed. With that information out, the visitation itself was not a good sight to behold. Everypony that went was appalled at what he looked like in the casket; they were trying to hold back their urge to throw up at the sheer sight of his dead body in that casket.

The funeral itself was both sad and depressing, to say the least, it did however give his friends and family away to say their last goodbyes to him. They laid him to rest right next to where both his grandparents on his dad’s side would be buried and where the uncle that Crim never met was already buried at. However, for his family seeing him before they shut the lid on his casket was not going to be the last time, they would see him. In five months’ time, he would return to the land of the living.

As the blue flame that represented Crim’s soul flutters down the black empty abyss known as purgatory, a pink unicorn mare with a black mane with a white streak in it watched as it was fluttering down as a feather falls to the ground just waiting for her to grab it. She was so close to grabbing the blue flame that was pure soul energy until something weird begin to happen to it. The blue flame began to turn into a light mossy green color. The pink unicorn mare was now at eye level with the now green flame of soul energy, she had a confused look on her face and started to walk toward it when all of a sudden, the green flame darted off in the opposite direction from her.

“NO!!”

the pink unicorn mare shouted in horror and shock as she tried to catch it while also trying to use her magic to grab it before it was too late. However, the green flame was too fast for her and her magic somehow had no effect on it. Before she had the chance to catch up to it or use her magic again, the green flame was gone. The pink unicorn mare began to cry because one soul got away from her. As she continued to cry her eyes out, she could have sworn she heard an intimidating ghostly male voice echo around her say

“That soul isn’t yours to keep.”

That alone sends a shiver of fear down the pink unicorn mares’ spine.

As the green flame of soul energy was darting off it was leaving that pink unicorn in the dust, the soul energy started getting rid of its green color flame appearance and turning back into Crim after getting burned alive in the fire, he then fell onto a wet ground with a thud. A few seconds after he landed, Crim’s left eye opened, he gasped for air and coughed without the feeling that he was suffocating and that loud ringing was finally gone. He quickly noticed that he was in a dark, damp, and swampy area with nopony around. He looked around in confusion at where he was when all of a sudden, he heard a ghostly sing-song voice say his name behind him while in the darkness of where ever he was. Crim got back to his hooves, turned around, and saw the silhouette of what looked like a throne. Sitting in the thrown was a stallion that was clearly wearing a long flowing cloak, he could have sworn he saw his face that was nothing but bone. He also saw the silhouette of what looked like a mare standing next to the throne. Crim asked the cloaked figure,

“Who are you and where the hell am I?”

Before it had the chance to respond to his question, the cloaked figure got up from his throne and started to walk toward Crim. The cloaked figure grabbed a big black stick with a curved blade on the end of it. Crim knew right away that it was a scythe and that this can only mean one thing, Crim was looking eye to eye with Death himself, The Grim Reaper. A shiver went down Crim’s spine after realizing this, got really scared that he was going to take his soul. Crim cried out,

“If you want my soul, please have mercy on me!”

The Grim Reaper then looked at Crim with a confused look on his face,

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The Grim Reaper paused for a second

“Oh, I get it, just because I’m The Grim Reaper then it automatically means that I’m here to take your soul.”

With a rather annoyed look, he rolled his eye sockets. The Grim Reaper started to explain why he was summoned to him in the first place.

The Grim Reaper told Crim that he did feel bad for Crim’s untimely and premature death, but when Crim died, The Grim Reaper had another plan in mind for Crim instead of just sending him off to heaven. He told Crim about being a Soul Hunter and introduced Crim to the then-current Soul Hunter named “Thorny Rose”. Thorny Rose was a middle-aged-looking, pale white-coated mare with a black mane and tail that the style of it reminded him of when Pinkie Pie’s mane would deflate. Her cutie mark was a black rose with a ton of thorns coming off the stem with blood dipping off a few of the thorns. The most noticeable thing that stood out was that she was covered in bullet holes and her neck was severely slit. The Grim Reaper and Thorny Rose told Crim about how being a Soul Hunter means that they are meant to be The Grim Reaper’s personal bounty hunters to hunt down bad souls who clearly have no right to live anymore. They can even kill demonic ponies or other related beasts. They do so by slicing into the bad with their scythe in which the green-colored soul energy will be absorbed and locked inside the scythe until the Soul Hunter in question will deliver the soul to The Grim Reaper personally. The Grim Reaper will then take the soul or souls out of the scythe and send them to their own personal purgatory that he created. They both explained the major benefits of being a Soul Hunter like how a Soul Hunter can’t die again until it’s time to, as what The Grim Reaper called it “retiring”. Getting this second chance to go back to the land of the living lets a Soul Hunter have a much longer lifespan than most ponies due to a lot of immunities they have, and how a Soul Hunter’s soul is fully protected by The Grim Reaper. Not only that, but their youth is still intact, meaning that a Soul Hunter will look like they’re middle-aged if they have been one for 50 years or more.

Soul Hunters have powers from beyond the grave like necromancy; The Dark Arts, Death Manipulation, Death-Force Manipulation, a Death Sense like Spiderman’s Spidey sense, an unbelievable regenerative power, Darkness, and Soul Manipulation, Soul Removal, holy powers that are useful for taking out demonic ponies or other related beasts, and a sonic scream that is the of all of the soul that is damned all at once just to name a few.

The Grim Reaper explained to Crim that Thorny Rose has been a Soul Hunter for the past 92 years and now she feels like it’s time for her to retire and give the torch to a new generation. That’s where Crim comes in. The Grim Reaper and Thorny Rose see potential in Crimson Spellcaster by becoming the next Soul Hunter in line. The Grim Reaper lent out his skeletal foreleg at Crim and said

“Do we have a deal?”

Crim did think about it for a second and looked at Thorny Rose who gave him an encouraging look back at him.

“Deal,”

Crim said as he was extending his foreleg out to The Grim Reaper’s skeletal foreleg. The Grim Reaper and Crim shook hooves to certify the deal, Crim looked to his left and saw Thorny Rose fade out, telling The Grim Reaper thank you for everything and goodbye.

After Thorny Rose faded out, The Grim Reaper told Crim that there were two conditions that The Grim Reaper almost forgot to mention to him. One, as the new Soul Hunter, Crimson Spellcaster’s name has been changed to “Gravedigger”. He also now has a new cutie mark too that matches the death theme. In Crimson Spellcaster’s case, his new cutie mark will now be a horse skull and crossbones. The second condition is that even though he is going back to the land of the living, he’ll still look the same way he looked after he died.

The Grim Reaper also did warn him that talking to him this long is equivalent to being dead and in the ground for five months. He told Gravedigger to not be surprised to know that he is desperate for food and drink and that he’ll find a way for fate to resurrect him back into the land of the living. The Grim Reaper simply wished him good luck and that if he needs help with anything to let him know, then he can help Gravedigger out in any way.

In the meantime, Gravedigger was simply waiting for the signal that will resurrect him back to the land of the living.