Author's Note
I'd like to thank Richard who supported my Ko-fi. At the moment he is the only supporter, but if you like my work and want to see me do more writing like this, then consider supporting me there: https://ko-fi.com/hatterthepony
Chapter 1
Petal Brass was dead, or that’s what anyone would assume upon first seeing him laid out in the undergrowth with a large wound in his side, blood spilling out into the foliage as sightless sky blue eyes stared at the canopy of leaves overhead.
Bandits, or maybe some kind of beast had gotten the better of him and left the poor earth pony for dead in the middle of the Everfree forest. Likely not a beast upon closer inspection of the wound however.
A brown pegasus had stumbled across the corpse of the poor stallion, her eyes were a dull shade of green, and her body looked like she needed a few good meals in her, but she didn’t seem bothered in the slightest to find a corpse in the middle of the forest.
Instead the mare stepped forward slowly and pressed a hoof to the neck of the stallion, giving a soft scoff as she removed the spiked choker that prevented her getting a good feel on their neck.
“It seems fate smiles on you today my friend, you’re only mostly dead.”
The pegasus didn’t explain anything further to the corpse, producing a black book with a yellow eye on the cover from within a set of saddle bags.
A hulking figure slowly moved up behind the pegasus, raising an eyebrow at the corpse. This stallion didn’t seem phased by the corpse either, although considering he was twice the size of it, and his entire body was coated in scars, that was more understandable.
“You sure this won’t overwork you?”
“No, this is going to hurt like hell, so I need you to make sure I don’t swallow my tongue or die,” The pegasus said as she worked on patching up the wound in the earth ponies side, bandages and stitching done with skilful haste “They’ve lost a lot of blood. They might have brain damage.” She commented, mainly for herself as the hulking figure behid her didn’t seem to understand the words in the slightest.
She moved over to the hulking figure and opened up his saddle bags, producing a ceramic pot with a rubber tube coming from the bottom of it. The tube ended in a spike and the area where it came out of the pot seemed to have a bulb of some kind on it. She stabbed the metal spike into the leg of the pony, giving a soft sigh as she passed the pot back to her colossal colleague.
“Hold that up,” She said, squeezing the bulb to create a funnel effect and drain the fluid into the pony. The hulking figure took the pot in one hoof and held it up in the air. His off white fur and the ragged way in which his purple mane was cut might have made him look like some dumb barbarian, but the genuine concern in his eyes for a pony he had not even known betrayed a far deeper understanding of the situation at hand.
As the pegasus flicked through the book, the large stallion known as Lavender the Barbarian spoke,
“Stabbed and left for dead, no signs of struggle. This is not an honorable way to go.” He made a religious motion with his hoof, before the pegasus seemed to find the page she was looking for, placing the book down on the body of the earth pony.
Within the book, there were two circles, big enough for a pony to fit their hooves in, covered in symbols and strange markings drawn in red ink. The mare known as Necrosis planted her hooves in the circles, giving a soft grunt as she begin to speak in a long dead tongue.
The hulking barbarian behind her took a single step backwards. Her tongue sent forth impossible sounds and her lips seemed to move in impossible ways, and for a few seconds, nothing seemed to be happening.
The chanting got faster, and the air around her seemed to grow cold, and then?
Suddenly, she wasn’t stood in the forest anymore, and it felt like a great weight had been lifted off her chest. Tall trees stretched infintely around her, so densely packed that they seemed to form a wall.
The path she had to follow was laid out before her, and she clung tightly onto her book, which seemed to have followed her through to this strange new place.
After taking a moment to steel her resolve, she begin to move forward along clearing that had been left. Leaves crunched under her hooves, and the path seemed to shift in unnatural ways as she made her way along it.
It didn’t take long for her to reach the end, or maybe it did, she couldn’t tell. But, she found what she was looking for. A large torii, (a weird Japonese gateway) stood before her in a clearing, the entrance blocked with a bright red doorway covered in metal lumps.
That was the first thing that grabbed her attention, the second thing was even stranger.
The dead stallion was no longer a corpse, and was instead sat against a tree staring towards the gate, looking somewhat contented with themselves. Necrosis walked over to to them calmly and sat down next to them.
“Hello.” She said.
“Hello.” The stallion respond simply.
“I am terribly sorry to tell you this, but you are dead.”
“I did notice. My friend killed me.”
Necrosis fell silent. She certainly hadn’t been expecting that.
“Your own friend killed you?”
“Yeah, figured it might happen though. So, are you like… My angel or a demon, or something?”
Necrosis shook her head, “Nothing like that, I’m from the living world, and I cam to bring you back. But, if I do, you might have brain damage, and you won’t remember any of this. You will suffer, and it will hurt like hell, you might not even make it. But, you will have a chance, and I will do my best to save you.”
After a few moments, Petal looked towards the gate.
“And if I choose to stay?”
“Then you will have time to come to terms with your life, and your death, before that gate opens and you move beyond… I have no idea what lies beyond the first gate, maybe it’s peace, maybe it’s some kind of afterlife, maybe its just the end… Once you go beyond that gate, even I cannot reach you…”
“Do many people take that option?” Petal asked, looking towards the mare with those dark blue orbs, they were made up of several different shades of blue that formed an intricate and beautiful sight.
“No, normally if they’re at peace, they’ve already gone beyond the first gate and there’s not much I can do. But, the fact you’re here tells me there’s something you aren’t quite content with… Likely the fact that your friend murdered you. Still, I like to see myself as a doctor, and I need to make you aware that it might just lead to incredible suffering and you expiring again…”
Petal shrugged, “Well, let’s get it over with then. Petal can take it.”
Necrosis gave a laugh, holding out her hoof, and when Petal touched it, she flipped open her book once more.
The brown pegasus awoke. Her body was numb, her muscles felt impossibly heavy, and everything hurt. A dry, wheezing wretching sound escaped her lips, before she found herself emptying the contents of her stomach all over the ground.
One would think you’d get used to using magic to tear into the spirit world, but it never got easier. She felt just as shitty as she had every other time she had done it. In fact, this time felt even worse then normal. She wiped her mouth and attempted to stand, but her legs felt like jelly.
To Petal, dying had been like drifting off to sleep. It was a cliché thing to think, but after the initial panic of his wounds, everything had gone numb and tingly, and then his life blood had leaked out to the point his brain shut down and he left his mortal shell behind.
Living again was agony. Necrosis explained that the fluid he had been filled with was meant to stop his body from shutting down again and serve as a temparory replacement for the blood he had lost from his fatal stabbing.
He was alive again, and he would be thankful for it if he lived through this. For the moment agony was ripping through his every nerve ending and he could do nothing but lie in bed and cry to himself as he tried to piece everything back together.
Everything was wrong, alien, he was confused, angry, upset. Hours blurred into days, days blurred into one week, then two weeks.
The hulking figure of Lavender the Barbarian sat by his bedside. He liked when Lavender came to visit, he understood how Petal felt. Necrosis, despite apparently being a powerful healer, despised violence of any kind, and when Petal had stated he planned to get revenge, she had simply scoffed at him.
“Are you able to stand?” Lavender asked, and Petal nodded. It was a lie, but he wanted to act strong for the hunky barbarian. It was a lie he had told before, every day for the past week he had attempted to stand, before his hooves buckled under him and he was left writhing on the ground like a worm.
This time, he was going to do it. His body moved slowly, sluggishly, but this time it felt like his body, his muscles still burned, but he didn’t care. He had been stuck in bed for weeks, Petal felt an intense need to get out and do anything.
His hooves attempted to take his weight, and pain ripped through his nerve endings. His muscles felt weak, he felt like he was dying all over again. The barbarian stepped up to help him stand, offering one of those tree-trunk hooves to use as a brace.
Pressing into the warmth of his battle hardened form, Petal found his own strength, and his hooves held beneath him with only a few minor screams of agony. But he could stand!
It would have been a prideful moment if the sudden shift in direction after weeks of almost dying caused his stomach to turn, and he suddenly spewed bile out of his mouth and onto the barbarian’s chest.
His throat burned, his eyes were watering, but the barbarian didn’t seem to care in the slightest, using a damp towel that had originally been to fight off Petal’s fever to clean the vomit from off of his chest and the floor.
“Petal is sorry.” Said Petal, trying to focus on not collapsing in a heap, wobbling about on her hooves, “I’ll clean it up.” He offered sheepishly, but at the moment he wasn’t able to walk, let alone clean.
The barbarian just shook his head, “Just focus on standing, I will get something to smite this mess.”
Going back to Ponyville was a strange feeling. Petal himself didn’t live near the town, but it was where Hatter lived. His heart was racing. How exactly did he go about fighting him?
Did he just walk up to them and then beat them? That seemed bad. Petal wasn’t a violent person, but Hatter had done a lot of bad things and had to be held accountable for them.
Petal wasn’t intending to kill him. He was going to beat him up and bring him into the local guard outpost. The damn guards were so corrupt that they’d never catch Hatter if he just called it in.
Necrosis had given him a bundle of food and a map through the Everfree forest, along with a lantern. The area around Necrosis’ home was incredibly light, but deeper into the forest it got dark.
He didn’t fully remember what he had been doing travelling with Hatter, but it had likely been at least partly illegal. He was no saint, but he had never killed anybody.
Making it out of the forest was uneventful, the smell of foliage was thick in the air and the pittering patter of rain against the leaves above told him that once he made it out of this forest, it was going to be unpleasant weather.
The ground beneath his hooves was soggy. The air was cold, and the burlap saddle bags with a rope strap between them were digging into his back.
He loved every second of it. Just a few weeks ago he had been dead, lying by the roadside. And now here he was, living once again.
It was frankly a miracle. He wanted to take a few moments to appreciate that, considering there was a very real chance that he could die once more in just a few hours.
His lantern clinked softly against his side. Just up ahead, he could see the exit to the forest. His heart was racing, but he pushed forward and stepped out of the forest.
The sunlight was bright, at least compared to what the light in the forest was like, dazing him for a few moments and forcing him to squint in an attempt to let his eyes adjust.
Fear was a natural response to what he was about to do. The rain was coming down hard in thick fat droplets that hammered against his flesh. He wasn't a killer, but he was about to face off against one.
His body was still covered in bandages and plasters from the final lesson he had undertaken and failed, but the wounds hadn't been all that bad and had mostly healed up. The rain still lashed against them like the tips of a cat-o-nine-tails whip however.
He would be glad to put this grim state of affairs behind him. His hooves dug into the moist earth as he tried to remember where the hut of his would be killer was.
But it wouldn't be all that difficult to find. He was on the right side of the Everfree forest and if he kept wandering in something close to the right direction he would end up finding his way.
The rain didn't make the task any easier and he was certain that once this was over he was going to get sick. Petal himself had been through a lot in his life, when your special talent was music and life didn't cut you a break, it was a hell of a way to live. He didn't even remember the last time he had touched an instrument.
But that adversity had given him a lot of grit in his gut. The kind of grit he called upon now to keep himself moving and drive away the fear. The jeering laughs, the hunger, being driven to crime... Hatter had been through the same and worse. The stallion was suffering from a prion infection that had twisted his mind. He had been forced to send his own daughter away.
This was no time for doubt. This was no time to go overthinking things. He had attempted to murder him, and in the past he had killed other ponies as well. Petal had always felt disgusted for working with him, but he had been too scared to do anything about it.
That had been before he had died however. Or, mostly died. Now that he had already faced the grim reaper once, he found himself filled with a new, nearly unbreakable brand of resolve. He was going to do this, and then with the reward for bringing Hatter in he was going to follow through on his dreams and finally make something respectable of himself.
Water dripped down into his eyes, off in the distance there was a small tin hut with no markers of any kind, bolted together with rivets and likely still insulated with old news papers.
This was it. He took a moment to unwrap the iron gauntlets from his saddlebag and pulled them on over his hooves. The weight was comforting and they made a nice sound as the rain fell against them. Hopefully they would. Be enough to drive the stallion to surrender.
He made it next to the hut without issue, the rain reducing the sound of his approach to a whisper. In this weather Hatter would be inside for sure. He liked the rain, but in a storm like this he'd be settled in by the fire. So, how did he go about entering the hut?
He could take the door right off the hinges if he so wished, it wouldn't take more then a swift hind kick to send it flying and buckle the hinges or he could knock, but Hatter would get his weapon ready for sure, getting visitors in this weather. There was also the third option of sneaking in, but getting the drop on a unicorn like Hatter was nearly impossible under normal circumstances, wearing iron gauntlets that chance may well have been zero.
It seemed that fate had decided to take any choice out of it, as Petal found herself faxed with a gray unicorn stallion who had been out to the wood storage shed just within the boundaries of the Everfree, a few logs bundled in a sack tossed over his shoulder.
He was just as terrifying as Petal remembered, a battered black top hat that looked like it had been stolen from out of deep storage framing a pitch black mane. His emerald green eyes were a picture of shock, yet still gleamed with a terrible mix of intelligence and insanity.
A thickly padded red trench coat made out of red felt hugged tightly around his gray form and completed his terrifying visage. Beneath that padding the stallion was frail, his digestive system just as warped as his mind, yet that weakened state had only made him more ruthless and dangerous then before.
He was a stallion who didn't fear anything. The clock had already run out for him years ago, but the borrowed time kept on coming. Hatter had already accepted his fate, and was driven by a bitter hatred to drag as many of those that had wronged him down with him to the grave.
It didn't take long for him to brush the shock of this impossible situation off either, his horn glowing a sickly shade of green as he drew a wood handled straight razor, unfolding it in one swift motion in the short time it took the sack of logs to fall to the ground. It might have seemed like a strange weapon, but it wasn't one to be underestimated either, the cruel enchantments on the blade made wounds from it bleed heavily and heal slowly, something he had discovered when he had startled the stallion while he was shaving.
There weren't any words exchanged, questions asked or even signs of acknowledgement. They both knew that they were here to fight and that was all that mattered.
Hatter made the first move, the shimmering steel of his razor cleaving through the rain with the same ease it cleaved through flesh.
The sickly green glow that held it allowed him to move it from a distance, meaning that blocking it would be hard, although shattering the blade would end this fight quickly, but for now he stopped back.
Hatter was a unicorn. If Petal wanted to win he needed to get in close, that sickly frame wouldn't stand a chance against the strength of an earth pony.
His hooves found grip against the sodden ground as he lunged forward, aiming to close the gap quickly, charging through the rain like a possessed steam train. He got in range for a blow, and then the unicorn tipped himself over backwards. It might have seemed stupid, but he formed his body into an upside down U and then followed through in an incredibly acrobatic and flamboyant backflip.
His razor danced around of its own accord as if a separate entity from the stallion himself, diving in to attack him and then twirling away before he got chance to hit it.
This was how Hatter killed his victims, either getting the drop on them and cutting their throats before they had chance to react or toying with them like a cat would toy with a mouse.
Petal wasn't scared of him anymore. The damage that razor could do was an annoyance at best provided it didn't hit him in the neck or his leg tendons. Just like the hunky barbarian had taught him, he didn't need to overcomplicate things. Sometimes that was exactly what your enemy wanted.
Hatter seemed surprised when he simply ran through the first razor blow, cartwheeling and dancing about with the rain swirling around him as he carved through it. Even with all the fancy hoof work his hat stayed firmly atop his head as if it were glued there, and that confident madness painted across his face never wavered even as Petal closed in. His razor was getting more reckless however, the cut-throat razor trying to live up to its name.
The wounds burned, sending crimson fluid spilling forth to join the rain in pouring off his coat, but he never let up, charging forward and eventually forcing an opening, getting a grip on Hatter's leg.
The effeminate bastard couldn't hop around now, and he swung him forward towards the ground, before the razor went for his eye and forced him to release the stallion or lose an eyeball.
Hatter still got slammed into the ground faster then he was able to react, bouncing with all the grace of a sack of potatoes, hat flying off and horn sparking out, but not before his razor had buried itself about an inch into Petal's forehoof.
Tears stung at his eyes as he ripped the razor free, hot blood bubbling up from the wound as he tossed it to the floor and stamped on the flat of the blade, crushing it.
The wounds burned and screamed hatefully at him, blood mixing with rainwater and feeding the soil below. He didn't have time to rest. He needed to finish it now.
Hatter was still down on the ground, and Petal rushed to end it before he had chance to climb back to his hooves, but bringing him down wasn't going to be that simple, Petal knew it, but Hatter turning and throwing an entire draw worth of kitchen utensils at him was not what he expected, bringing up his good hoof to block, but running with a bad leg had slowed him down and he only managed to dodge half of the volley.
Thankfully Hatter's magic was a far cry from being strong enough to replicate the full force of a stab, but he still got a kitchen knife in his good leg and a fancy griffon made carving fork buried an inch into his chest.
It hurt. But not as much as it hurt when Petal finally got his hooves locked firmly around their neck, cutting off their oxygen and blood supply with a shocked gag. Normally the pain would slow someone down, but he didn't care.
Blood leaked from his wounded leg and dribbled over the unicorn stallion as he writhed against the mud, splattering some of it across his cheek as he tightened the choke hold. Hatter's hooves went to his own and desperately tried to pry them off by digging into the gash on his leg, sending waves of pain tearing through him as he hissed down at them, splattering their muddy face with spittle.
Hatter didn't look the slightest bit scared throughout all of this, that endless hatred burning as bright as ever even as he fought for his life, striking out against her in a desperate final struggle, before one of his hooves gripped her wound and squeezed it like he was trying to juice an orange. Blood leaked out and for a single moment the choking loosened, Petal finding her focus again a moment later but at this point he had folded himself up enough to kick his hind legs straight into the underside of Petal's jaw. The blow wasn't all that hard, but it rattled his brain around like a marble in a tin can, making him drop the hold and driving him back as Hatter slipped free.
He couldn't give up. He couldn't let it end here, but as he tried to force his body to take another step forward the whole world span around him, stars dancing before his vision as the black void of space closed in from the edges of his vision.
Desperately he tried to push his body forward one final time, but the darkness was closing in, and the strength had faded from out of his body.
He tried to take a step forward, but his hoof wobbled about, threatening to give out at a moments notice, but he didn’t listen, he was strong, he could do this. He pressed his body weight down onto his hoof.
Unfortunately, heroism and strength could only get you so far, and his body had been pushed well beyond its limits. Petal crumpled down onto his knees, her vision fading slowly as he drifted off into that final sleep once again.
Petal couldn’t. He couldn’t give in. He couldn’t let this be the end. Visions of all the training that Lavender had given him filled his head, the happy times that they had enjoyed together, the time that he had almost had his head crushed by the giant, the time he had thrown up on their hooves, along with that feeling of his heart being filled with butterflies.
He had fallen for Lavender. It wasn’t just a horny feeling by the fact the barbarian had saved him, it was a deep feeling of respect for his strength and his kindness…
And he would never get to see Lavender again.
Hatter strolled forward towards him, laughing at his desperate attempts to drag his weakened form back to standing.
“Blood is the currency of life. No matter how fancy you are, how big you are or how tough your body is, your brain runs out of enough blood and you can’t fight any more. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times before, they’re always so confident, and then it all drains out of them…”
He took a deep sniff of the air and pulled out a knife, pressing it against Petal’s neck firmly. “I don’t know how you came back to life, but I’m going to kill you again old friend.”
He drew the knife back, and for the briefest moment Petal’s life flashed before his eyes as he prepared to meet his end once again, before images of that hulking barbarian flashed before his eyes, and then settled on the moment where he had first begin training Petal, when he had shattered a boulder with his bare hooves.
He found a final burst of strength, pulling his hoof back and swinging it forward in almost the exact same motion that Lavender had made. With their guard down, his hoof smacked straight into their throat.
It didn’t collapse, so much as explode or rupture within their throat. It didn’t even hurt Petal’s hoof, he was far too numb to feel anything, he collapsed onto his back.
All his strength was spent. Hatter’s eyes widened with shock as blood bubbled from out of his mouth, a strange rasping, gargling sound rolling from his lips as both his hooves went up to his neck.
He crumpled, writhing around on his back as he dug about in his jacket for something to save himself. His entire windpipe had been ruptured however, and there was nothing that he could do to fix that.
It didn’t stop him from trying however, writhing about on his back as blood bubbled from his lips, spilling various objects and weapons on the ground around him.
Petal was the first one to fall still, there was no way for her body to keep going with everything that had happened to it.
Darkness closed in, his head felt light and then begin to slowly spin away. His head lulled forward as if he was dozing off, and then blackness took him.
Drifting away, he found himself once again in that clearing, trees crowding around him as the path guided him along to that great gate. This time there was a bench, and he felt that same feeling of lightness that he had felt before, like all his worries and troubles had melted away.
It had been a good life. He hadn’t done everything he had wanted, but he had killed Hatter. There was no way that the stallion could worm his way out of a completely destroyed wind pipe.
The gate, his gate, stood as tall as the first time he had seen it. It hadn’t opened just yet, and he sat down on the bench, staring around at all the trees.
A soft whimper sounded from the forest behind him, breaking apart the peace and slightly startling him. Last time he had been here, there hadn’t been anything else here.
He drifted up to his hooves and moved to investigate the sound, the grass was warm, the air was light. Another whimper sounded from up ahead and he moved deeper into the forest to investigate.
The sun pierced easily through the leaves up above, brightly lighting up the forest.
Set into a clearing was what appeared to be a bundle of chains to begin with, but as Petal stepped closer, she recognised the form of Hatter, crushed underneath the weight of double irons affixed with massive locks, oversized to the point that they would have almost been comical, and the poor stallion couldn’t hope to move from beneath them, sitting in the middle of the grass with glassy unfocused eyes that peered straight ahead.
Petal stepped closer and poked the bundle of chains with her hoof. A dreadful, mournful wail sounded from the stallion. A sound that should have been impossible for any normal pony to make, and it startled him into stepping backwards. The chains rattled and tightened, biting into his flesh and leaving red marks as those locks clattered. It was like the chains were alive!
They coiled protectively around him like snakes, and Petal was even more startled when a voice spoke from behind him. “Weighed down by the pains of those he hurt in life. He won’t be able to move on until they come to terms with what they did to him. It’s poetic, in a tragic way.”
Necrosis had once again made it into his head. “Can we help him?” Petal asked.
“No, he made his mistakes in life and now it is time for him to pay for them. Just the way it is.”
“Are you here to drag me back into my body again?”
The brown mare scoffed, “No. I bring people back and give them a second chance at life. If they throw that second chance away on violence, I don’t own them a third chance. I abhor war and bloodshed, but so many ponies seem so very desperate to waste their one chance at life in a vain attempt to obtain what they call glory!” The mare slammed her hoof into the ground “And if I give one of them a third chance at life, then I’d have to give them all a third chance to get killed! I’m not a judge, I’m a Doctor! I can’t do that!”
Petal blinked at her softly, taken aback by the outburst.
“So why are you here?”
“Because a certain Barbarian is quite taken with you. You wormed your way into his heart and he gave me the whole ‘if you don’t help them then I will never forgive you. What he’s doing is right and you’re so scared of making the wrong choices you refuse to make any choices when they matter’ speech,” She ground her hoof into the ground, “But no, I’m still not going to drag you back, he is.”
A hulking figure he recognised all too well stepped up next to him. Lavender the Barbarian, in the spirit. Here his body still had those scars, unlike every other pony he had seen in the spirit realm. His mane was a brighter shade of purple and his off white body seemed to glow softly.
“I’ve never done this before, but if you would like to come back with me, we still have a lot of things to be doing.”
His deep purple eyes seemed to be filled with a strange feeling he couldn’t fully identify.
“Of course. Let’s get going.”
Lavender pulled him in close and gave a nod to the Doctor known as Necrosis. The brown mare simply stared at him. “Oh no, you’re on your own. Why don’t you see how hard it is to get someone’s soul into their body if you think it’s so easy.”
Hatter let out another soft mewl, but didn’t move.
After a few moments of just standing there with nothing happening, Lavender let out a scoff.
“Look Necrosis, if you’re not going to help them, then help me out”
Necrosis sighed, then gave a slow nod. “You tell anyone about this Barbarian, I’ll see you pay for it.”
And then once again, Petal’s world tumbled apart.
