I've Got Only My Bones

The waiters and waitresses must have thought I was an anomaly. Every day at the same time, I came in, sat down in the same table, and randomly picked something new off the menu. Every day, I loved it. Every day, I was cheery and tipped lavishly. Every day, I looked like I had crawled out of the sewers. And every day, once I had enjoyed whatever random crap I had ordered this time, I would sit at the table and suddenly look gravely concerned and suddenly didn’t want to talk about it. Doing this once wouldn’t be shocking, but six days in a row? That was unusual.

That was what struck me when one of the waiters came up to me and asked what I was smiling about. Normally, by this time, I was quite dour. “I’m sorry, I was just, thinking about a joke I heard when I was a filly.” I sheepishly explained.

“There’s no need to apologize for being happy, ma’am.” The waiter politely said. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was the joke?”

I tried to remember the exact wording, but I had heard this all the way back in elementary school. “Boreas gave the griffons intelligence so that they could know evil.” I began cautiously. “Arcturius gave the griffons war so that they could know doom. Eyr gave the griffons bodies so that they could know pain. Maar gave the griffons death so that they could know that it wouldn’t last forever. Why do they revere the trinity, but hate Maar?”

The waiter frowned. “That’s rather grim, isn’t it? Why do they hate Maar?”

I tried to give him my friendliest grin. “Because everyone knows you can’t cheat death!”

He grimaced, and then against his wishes he smiled. “I’m afraid I can’t repeat that to other customers. Is there anything you would like? More water? A second dessert?“

“Oh, was this a dessert?”

He looked down at the remains of the cake-like meal I had finished some fifteen minutes ago. “Yes.”

“Well, I guess it was awfully sweet…” I chuckled nervously. “But no thank you, I’m fine. Oh, there’s one thing, although I don’t expect you to know the answer. You know the Hellknights, right?”

“How could I not?” He answered dryly.

“How do you join them?”

He looked around, wrapped in thought. “I always assumed they came to you, rather than the other way around. At the very least, I never traveled in those circles. Why do you want to join them now, of all times? The city was just liberated. You could join the Royal Army quite easily.”

“I don’t know. It just feels like they’re right for me.” I said as wistfully as I could manage. “Thank you for your time, and please, don’t let me take up any more of it.” He bowed slightly and walked away. I returned to my thoughts. I had a rather horrifying possibility in my head, and that sense you get when you know you’re about to make a mistake.

The rest of my thinking was mostly uninterrupted. There was one incident where a waitress tripped and fell a few tables away, and another where a trio of drunken Equestrian soldiers barged in and had to be shooed out (not uncommon these days), but besides that I did my mental calculations in peace.

I paid for my food and left once I had had my fill of luxury. This was not an excessively fancy restaurant, but it had been so long since I could justify the expense that I took it for everything it was worth. Even if it had been the most high-quality of places, the view of pleasant Tall Tale was spoiled by the building across the street being little more than a skeleton of brick walls around a pile of rubble. Hardly a week ago, the Royal Army had driven the changeling invaders from the city, and the rancid stench of death still hung faintly in the air. Both the capture and the liberation exacted a toll on the city itself, both of a similar character, and if I only looked I could see that many of the ruins sat atop tombs where the residents had piled into basement shelters and been unable to come out. Despite this, everypony was far happier about the new battle than the old one, and the celebrations still continued in some parts of the city.

I pulled a shawl over myself to guard against the numbing air of the winter night, although really it was an oversized poncho I had taken off of a dead soldier, and made my way back to the hotel I was staying at. Occasionally, the revelry was loud enough for me to hear it, although in a few more days it would probably be over and normal life would have resumed, or something like normal life. I wondered where I would go to next. My work demanded I be near the frontlines, but as much as I wanted continued victories, I didn’t know enough about the war situation to honestly tell whether Equestria would keep pushing north or if it wouldn’t or if it would be pushed back to the south soon enough. I heard something and saw the three drunken soldiers had run into me, and were catching up.

“Hey, girly!” One of them shouted energetically. “What’sa cute little thing like you doing in a dump like that?”

Under better circumstances, I would have adored the compliment. My unhealthy lifestyle had left me with some obvious issues that a simple shower couldn’t fix. My mane was often tangled and knotted, and my pale purple fur was discolored in many places. The skin underneath was as pallid as a corpse. My clothes were mostly ill-fitting and mismatched, too. I did not want to be the object of affection for three boozers, though, especially if they were all bigger than me.

I sped up without looking back, hoping they would get the hint. They called after me. Then they began to run after me. Their inebriation counteracted their superior fitness enough that I could just barely outrun them, but I thought I recognized one of them, a tan-brown earth stallion who I knew very well. It was an illusion, and the distraction had caused me to stop and my heart sank as I realized the error. One grabbed at my poncho and ripped it off. I ducked into a nearby alleyway and they followed me. One tackled me and I barely squirmed free, but the second got me from the side and forced me into a wall. By the time I was back on my hooves, they had surrounded me. Two earth stallions and a pegasus mare, all so drunken that their intestines must have been medically sterile. I could barely outrun them, but I absolutely could not out-fight them.

“Lookit this!” The stallion in the front barked. “We’ve been fighting for weeks now, and this is the thanks we get? We’ve been dying for you worthless civilians!” I was backed up against a wall. As a unicorn, I couldn’t fly, and I had neither the power nor the presence of mind to teleport or use any other spell that would get me out of here, save for a few very bad options. There was one trick I had, though, one which had been up my sleeve when I entered the alley but was now on its own. The other stallion was hanging back, swaying unsteadily on his hooves, so wasted on cheap hooch that he wouldn’t notice my scheme.

”You ever see what the changelings do to our guys out there? You ever see what they do to those they take alive? We’ve been putting everything on the line for you!” The stallion in the front roared. Neither he nor his companion noticed their third friend kicking a back leg instinctively as he was bitten by a rat. “And now we try to have a little fun, and it’s all, ‘oh this is a fancy restaurant! This is a nice establishment! We don’t want dirty soldiers here!’ Well, we oughta teach you damn civvies some respect!”

“Yeah!” His marefriend shouted, jamming a hoof into my chest roughly and knocking me to the ground. “We’ll show you how you ought to treat your heroes!”

“Hey, Bailey!” The lead stallion called. Even through the haze of ethanol and indignation, he could see something was wrong with his comrade, who had a thin string of drool hanging from the side of one mouth, and a glazed look in his eye, among other issues. “What the hell, Bailey? Did you crap yourself?”

The stallion named Bailey launched himself at the pegasus, biting into her wing with more strength than even an earth pony should have been able to muster. She screamed and started kicking and jumping furiously to get out of his grasp. Her friend threw himself against the rampaging stallion, striking him with hooves and his body to try and get him off of the pegasus as he too yelled in confusion. Bailey extracted himself from the pegasus and next sunk his teeth into the remaining stallion’s neck before pulling him to the ground.

The pegasus tried to escape, but her flight was abortive and she simply tripped and fell. She stood up and tried again, this time with even less impressive results. She kept attempting to get to her hooves and failing until, shaky and unsettled, she managed. She looked at me as the other two soldiers scrabbled up and did the same, the unnamed stallion ignoring the blood running from his neck into his uniform. “Wh.. What do… What… do you want… Mistress?” The mare asked.

I stooped down and let the zombified rat crawl back up my leg and into my oversized shirt. Did I have any use for them? No, they were evidence. If ponies could tell they died of zombification, a ponyhunt would begin and it wouldn’t be long until I was captured and forced to give up my studies, or burnt at the stake depending on who found me first. “First, give me all the bits you have on you,” I demanded. The standing corpses hesitantly reached into their pockets, pulling out coins and bills from their wallets and offering them to me graciously. “Thank you. Now, I want you all to tear each other apart. And if one of you is still standing afterwards, eviscerate yourself, too.” I ordered the zombies. They nodded, and the alley was once again filled with the sounds of fighting as they tore into each other, their muscles animated by magic and their primitive minds unable to worry about overexerting their bodies and ripping themselves apart from the inside.

On the streets, I grabbed my shawl and kept on walking.

My name is Festercast. I was 27 years old in early 1012, and I am a dark magician. A necromancer, to be exact. Typically, what draws ponies to dark magic is the allure of power, and while this is sort of true for me, there are some caveats that have helped and hindered me on my journey to unlocking the secret to immortality. For a necromancer, it might seem obvious that the path to eternal life can be found in lichdom, but it’s a bit more complicated. I don’t want to live forever, or, well, that’s not my ultimate goal. What I want is the ability to bring someone else back from the dead.

I grew up in Whinnyapolis. I went to the nicest public school in the city, which should tell you about my family’s wealth. My early life would have been typical for an only child had it not been for my attitude. Nothing ever felt like it mattered. I didn’t know why it was important that I be well-prepared for my life, since it seemed like it was just a big slog which ended in a funeral. Despite this, I assumed my parents knew best, and I kept mostly out of trouble and in good academic standing.

In school, I sometimes studied and I sometimes got B’s. Some other foals studied harder than me for worse grades, and some didn’t study at all and got straight A’s, but I was just going through the motions. While I wasn’t dead-last when it came to sports, it was only the fact that I got along well with other ponies that saved me from ever being the final pick when the teams were decided. Everyone treated art class as a second recess, a time to have fun and express yourself, and I excelled at this because I engaged with the projects the teacher gave us rather than starting impromptu hoofball games whenever she was busy. The artistic students confirmed my suspicions that what I produced was not really top-level material, but the teacher appreciated that I tried at all. I had many acquaintances, but looking back, that’s all they were. Even if they felt otherwise about me, they were never my friends, merely entertaining ways to pass the time.

My first year in high school, the death-march that was life finally revealed what the end goal was. I met another student named Graham Cracker. We talked, then we talked some more, then we started stealing moments outside of school to talk more, then we hugged, and kissed, and we did things that the sappiest romance novel wouldn’t dare show. I was more than happy. I knew what it was supposed to be like, the sensations which filled the other kids that made them get up in the morning and not idly wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to simply stop breathing now. From the sounds of things, I completed him as much as he completed me. Soon, we were inseparable.

He provided me with an endless supply of sweets, some normal and others experimental, and even the most horrid ones I tried with absolute relish. I was quite a late bloomer in the cutie mark department, and I went out often to try different things to see where my talent was, and he was there to help me brush myself off if it got kinetic. Anything you can imagine, we did it together. When I ran from the math teacher for putting a tack on his seat, Graham was there. When Graham broke his leg while helping his little brother put up a treehouse, I was there. When I, who had never broken a bone, was freaking out over whether he was in any danger or not, Graham was there. When Graham tried to get out of the hospital bed and fell so hard he re-broke the bone, I was there.

I later found out that, when the bone broke again, marrow seeped into his bloodstream and his heart, killing him. After nearly a year together, I had stood there, smile on my face, and watched him die, not even knowing that’s what I was doing. I couldn’t have helped him. I couldn’t have saved him. All I could have done was been more comforting during what turned out to be his last moments alive, and I didn’t do that. I stood there, and I watched.

After the funeral, I went into my room and didn’t come out for three months. The period isn’t a coherent narrative in my head, just a chaotic jumble of pain and misery. I hardly ate or drank, and when I did, whatever I had taken in soon left my body in crushing waves of sadness and tears. I was inconsolable, and I was immobile. By the time I could be coaxed out again, I had become emaciated. The malaise and hopelessness was back and stronger than ever before. I knew my destiny, and it was suffering.

A skull crying tears of blood had appeared on my flank.

For years, I hated my parents for disowning me and kicking me out of the house as soon as they saw it. I was a fool then. Now, I know that they probably should have killed me on the spot.

The dark arts are a pathway to abilities which are considered “evil” for a reason. The nature of dark magic is such that it attracts the worst in pony-kind, and then it amplifies their bad impulses to be worse still. Just using dark magic takes a tax on your soul, many of the most useful things you can do with it are things that only a psychopath could see no issue with, and to top it off, the fastest route to power and knowledge involves coercing and tricking others into going along with your scheme. There are layers of ways it tries to make you a bastard.

The truth is, those three soldiers? I didn’t have to kill them. There were plenty of tricks I could have used to get around them. But then there would have been living witnesses to my dark magic. If I thought it was acceptable, I could escape, turn myself in as a dark mage, and be sent to a rehabilitation center of some description. I would be forced to give up my quest, but I would be alive and frankly I would probably be better-fed than I have been. But I don’t want to give up my quest, it’s the only thing giving my life meaning, so I killed three ponies to protect my secret and didn’t feel an ounce of sorrow.

I should mention that I’m the nicest dark magician I’ve ever heard of, and I have read about a lot of dark magicians. The problem with dark magic should be pretty obvious.

And I can’t bring back Graham, too. His spirit has already passed on, and his remains are so rotted away that I can’t even raise a hollow simulacra from the material parts of his consciousness. I’m doing all this on the off-chance I meet someone who revives those feelings in me so that I can spare them from death. It’s the only way I can think of to keep going, because if I can’t experience happiness without the all-consuming terror that I might randomly lose it all once again, then that’s not true happiness. And if that one period of true happiness is all I will ever be allowed to have, then I might as well admit that everything afterwards has been and will be a waste and end it now. It’s certainly seemed like a good idea after a few nights on the streets, trying to sleep on a park bench and not sure if I’m shivering from hunger, the rain, or some new illness, and also not knowing when I’ll next be able to get away from any of that. Yet that one period, less than a year total… if I could experience it again, even for only a day, it would all have been worth it.

I make my way through an abandoned dry-cleaner’s. One of my black arts is the ability to sense death, and I know there are a number of bodies underneath this building. The back half of the structure has collapsed, and I find a hatch to a basement under a few layers of bricks. I climb down the ladder and find myself in a pungent hole once more. There are four corpses down here, two large and two small, surrounded by empty cans that once held preserved fruits and vegetables. The smallest body is the only one which doesn’t have bite marks on it. All of them are little more than strips of leather-like flesh barely attached to the structure of aged bones. They’ve been sealed down here ever since the bugs took Tall Tale a year ago.

I find which of the boxes held their jewelry and other valuables, brought down here to keep it from being lost in the bombing raid or stolen by soldiers or looters, and dump it all into a pocket of my oversized pants. I had to run a lot of energy through my thralls to make the zombification happen so quickly, and I used a lot of physical strength to clear the rubble blocking the hatch, so I’m in no mood to play with these bodies. And besides, it’s late.

I pawn the jewelry at a shop on the brand-new seedy side of town and consider my chores for the day complete.

I drag myself across the city, into the elevator and up to the hotel room that is registered in my current pseudonym. Black magic of any sort is extremely illegal, and I change identities every time I enter a new town to avoid being caught. It doesn’t always work, I found out the hard way that every morgue in the country has a file on me so they know to call the police if I show up asking for a job again, but it’s enough that I can live between the lines. With my most dire crimes being self-defense cases where I was overzealous, I’ve avoided a nation-wide mare-hunt that would get me for sure. This room is my reward. Two beds, a small bathroom, a smaller closet, a desk, carpets and regular cleaning. To the common pony, it’s nice enough to spend a week in. It’s downright opulent compared to my normal living standards. I plan to be here for at least a few months.

A zombified rat crawls out from the sleeve of my shirt as I collapse down at the desk. I named it ‘Deadmouse’ after its impeccable music taste. It looks at me, imitating the mannerisms of the rodent it once was. Its hairs are starting to get thin. I need to dispose of it and find a new one. Perfumes strong enough to cover the dead rat smell cannot be found on a whim, at least not on my budget. I’m already behind thanks to my eating and tipping habits. I must stop going to that restaurant. Or really any restaurant. I’ve celebrated with everypony else, now I have to get back to work.

Hopefully the Military Police have calmed down their search for lost changeling soldiers who were left behind in the liberation. I do not need more oversight from the authorities.

The obvious next step for me is to try and make up my spent money by going and getting more. That shelter was the last one I know about where I can get in without arousing suspicion, and getting jewelry from the expedition is rare, usually I just get corpses, or another pile of rubble. Getting a job is not out of the question, but it would take up a lot of time, and odds are that if I spend too much time outside I will get press-ganged into a salvage crew clearing rubble. There are a limited number of ways to get paid and do my research into mortality at the same time, and remember, every morgue and funeral home already knows me. So that leaves my current source of income.

Between my activities of the day and my surprise encounter, I am exhausted. I do what I can to scrawl out a map for tomorrow’s adventure, and then I take a shower, crawl into bed, and rest. It feels so nice to be indoors.

I don’t know whose bike it was, but now it’s mine. It’s not built for off-roading through the forests around Tall Tale and I feel it. The device itself is durable enough to manage it about as well now as it did three months ago. The bigger issue is my eye. Singular. My right eye can see just fine, but my left eye is blind. For the moment, I have traded away sight in that eye for the ability to see death. I have it covered in a bandage to make it look like it’s an injury since having one normal eye and one pale one would draw attention, especially if I’m spotted by the same person with both eyes perfectly fine later. It might not be an elegant solution, but it works, especially these days since bombs and shells often hit everything except their target. I’m rarely the only injured bystander in the room.

My left eye sees a haze, and I slow down, barely avoiding a tree. The earth here is more freshly-churned than elsewhere, and the underbrush has been displaced. I lie down and meditate. There are around four or five bodies in a shallow grave right here. Across my back is my staff, and I let my energy flow through it. The remaining energy inside the dead mingles with the tendrils I send out, and as I wrap my essence around the right puffs of theirs, they greedily inhale life. The staff draws some of it from the world around me, but its biggest role is to keep me from getting overdrawn accidentally. After a quarter of an hour or so, my mind drifts back to the mundane world. With a thought, the earth wriggles and writhes, and five decayed corpses pull themselves up. They all wear Equestrian uniforms. I explain to them what I want, and they start by offering me all the money in their wallets. Four hundred bits is more than enough for me to survive for a week, unless inflation goes wild again. They don’t have anything else useful for me.

I don’t know who buried them like this. In war, time is always a luxury. Both sides would like to properly dispose of the dead, but it is often a privilege to bury your own, and neither side wants to give up that privilege for the enemy. Most often, they stick all the remains in shallow, communal holes next to where they died to keep them from stinking up the place or spreading disease. What’s lucky for me is that ponies do not like looting the dead, and even if they take everything useful, they can rarely bring themselves to take personal effects without a reason. So they leave the wallets and purses behind. The changelings are similar, only instead of not wanting to disrespect the dead, they have nothing to spend bits on.

With that out of the way, I can focus on my current research. Bodies are complex mechanisms, and when the immaterial aspects get involved, they become incomprehensible. Yet by poking and prodding them, you can learn patterns that underlay them, and what those patters might mean for you. This is one of those areas where the best way forwards is to take advantage of everyone around you. There are an incredible number of different bodily fluids and you’ll need to know how all of them react to dark coercion before you can start summoning simulacras rather than simple zombies or skeletons. The highest levels of dark excellence require you to experiment on creatures with souls, so if playing with stomach bile was too enjoyable, be ready to do it to someone who’s still alive and screaming. I’m guessing that it’s that, and the need for secrecy, that are the reason dark cults have few ex-members.

I feel around the insides of each of the undead standing before me, letting my sense of magic find what it wishes and making mental maps of everything that could possibly be the way the soul exited the body. These soldiers died recently enough that the trail should still be visible, but there are so many pathways and I don’t know what most of them are. I brought a notebook with me and I fill it with diagrams of each area, marking not only the leyline burns, the vitae circulars, and the thought-channels, but also ‘Mystery Residue A’, ‘Mystery Residue B’, ‘Mystery Residue C’, ‘Strange Pockmarks A’, and other unknown patterns. All of these ponies were killed by shrapnel, and I am lucky that shrapnel doesn’t kill everyone in the same way, and that there are other ways ponies die in war. Before this conflict started, I was quite overstudied in the effects of drug habits and diseases on the pony form, simply because that’s who I had access to.

After some time, I have the zombies crawl back into their grave and re-cover them. I will think about what I learned later. I have some theories about technical details of what these different diagrams mean. I pedal back to town. I feel like I have learned very little. My work is primarily concerned with the movement of souls, and there’s only so much you can learn from looking at the very-alive and the very-dead.

On the way, I hit up a small library whose owners went into hiding during the changeling occupation. The windows are boarded up because they haven’t replaced the glass yet, but it has a decent selection of books for what it is. I ask the librarian for “true crime novels about dark magicians,” and she obliges. For ponies who find celebrity gossip too palatable, true crime is their vice. Thank Celestia for them, and for the true devotees who are addicted to the mystery and depravity of the dark artists. As someone on the other end of the pen, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to engross themselves in my world, but so be it. They mean I can do scholarly research in peace.

Tall Tale has a long history of petty blood magicians and rumors of cabals. Of course, respectable authors don’t want to teach the reader the secrets of attaining evil power, and their works are written accordingly, while the more sensationalist ones will take any rumor and hearsay at face value and publish it. Both confound me in different ways. I check out a few books that might have useful information.

I take a ride by the local “river” to let the day start winding down. One of the advantages of being a homeless vagrant is that you set your own hours and timetables, and I don’t like my research stressing me out with deadlines, so I can take time to enjoy scenery like this. Well, “enjoy” is the wrong word. The creek that runs through Tall Tale is not large, but it was infamous for how many bodies the mafia used to dump into it. After decades of gangster activity, I counted a dozen corpses. After the battle for the city, it was closer to 30. After running the place for only a month, the changelings had gotten the number up to over 200, most of whom were avid patriots, outspoken harmonists, and suspected stay-behind agents. I admire their dedication, but not their results, and I’m talking about the victims as much as the perpetrators when I say that. The ones who survived were vicious monsters like the Hellknights whose true character wasn’t known to anyone until they took up arms to fight the invader. The creek reminds me how being distant and hard-hearted isn’t always a bad thing.

Also, I always suspected that the mountain of corpses in the local water supply was responsible for the cholera outbreak that ponies and changelings both got to experience. It’s a lesson in unexpected consequences, too.

By that point it is getting to the evening, and the cheese-sandwich-and-other-cheese-sandwich breakfast I made has run its course. I stop off at the Wee Baguette and engross myself in another dish I can’t pronounce and overtip yet again. Cursing my lack of self-control, I go to my hotel room. At least this time I didn’t tell an ethnic joke to the waiter of a fine dining establishment.

In the lobby, I am stopped by a well-groomed earth pony. I blink once. I blink twice. It’s Graham. I blink a third time. It’s not Graham. “Excuse me, miss. Are you Pernicious Poison?” He asks politely.

“Yes,” I reply, trying to hide my nervousness. Ponies rarely look for me without being law enforcement. I have no regular contacts, no permanent residence, and officially I don’t even exist. Yet here is someone. And if he is a cop, I will soon be cursing myself again for not thinking of a less disconcerting pseudonym. I knew at the time it was a bad idea, I just couldn’t think of anything better and figured I wouldn’t be stuck with it for over a year.

“I have a business proposition for you. Is it okay if we talk somewhere private?” He asks confidentially. My heart rises back from the depths. Either he doesn’t actually know me, or he is an incredible moron. He’s far safer where he is than anywhere I could possibly take him because here there’s witnesses. I nod and show him the key to my hotel room.

He made himself comfortable on my bed. “I hear you want to join the Hellknights.” He starts, looking at me. I check around, making sure I put all my incriminating notes away before leaving that morning. To the untrained eye, I did.

I realize that he was waiting on me to say something. “Yes.” He keeps staring at me, and motions for me to keep going. I recall what lie I’ve been using to explain it. “I think that my talents would possibly be better suited for them than for the- Equestria’s- the Royal Army.” I get out, stumbling over my words.

He looks at the ground and I can’t tell if he’s upset or just disappointed. “I want you to join the Hellknights, too.” He says clearly.

“Okay.”

He stares at me. Then he sighs. He pulls a badge from his back pocket. “Agent Sea-Eye Hay, SMILE.” He barks. “As you might know, the Hellknights been growing in popularity ever since the bugs took Tall Tale. Back then, eviscerating anyone who got in their way was permitted, but not commendable. Now that we’ve retaken the city, it’s a problem. They won’t lay down their arms or join the Royal Army. They won’t apologize for the nasty things they did. Now they’re getting worse. Yesterday, MP’s were hot on the heels of three of our soldiers who had had too much to drink and were causing a scene, and when they found them, the trio was in pieces in a dark alley, and still warm. Miss, that’s not three changelings or three ponies who were probably collaborators, that’s three Equestrian infantry they just killed. That’s a declaration. And worst of all, the desk-jockeys have started throwing the phrase ‘similar to dark magic rituals’ in their reports. Suddenly, my bosses want to know what’s going on inside the Hellknights and it’s a real problem that the last two agents we sent got sniffed out and booted instantly.” He leaned closer towards her. “So I’m asking you. Do you want to serve your country? Because there’s a gang of lawless terrorists running around and now they’re Equestria’s problem.”

“You want me to… help you deal with your own allies?” I hesitantly ask.

He shrugs. “Well, we don’t know if we have to dismantle them. If possible, we’d like to get them in line and keep them around for in case they’re needed again. But if we can’t…” He slides a hoof across his neck. “The war is no excuse for bad behavior.”

I note that his organization felt otherwise when Tall Tale was owned by the enemy.

Yet his idea holds some merit. The truth is, I’ve been following the Hellknights not out of patriotism, but because their extreme results do indeed look a lot like the aftermath of experimenting with the dark arts. In this field, mutilated bodies are part of a balanced research project. And since Tall Tale has been plagued with theories about secret magical cults, I’ve been wondering if they were real, and this is them finally revealing themselves, and doing so for the good of their country. I’ve often wished that I could convince someone in the military to let me use my powers for Equestria, not to simply use the war as an endless source of cadavers and hiding spots. Is that their plan? Has this war brought out the best in pony-kind’s worst offering?

Can I finally find a group to teach me so that I don’t have to do everything myself?

“Of course, I know I’m asking a lot of you on short notice. I’m willing to give you a few bits to make it a bit more worth your time. But we do need this done sharpish.”

“...How many bits?”

“How many do you want?” He asked.

I could be funny and ask for a massive amount, but I decided not to waste both of our times. “Fifty per day.” I offered.

He cocked his head at me. “If that’s what you want, then by all means. Do we have a deal?”

“I guess we do.” I held out my hoof, and we shook on it. Poor bastard didn’t know I would have settled for twenty-five.