Eraser

Creek...

The old wooden door opened as the two ponies entered the town hall.

"Hello, old stal-jankins! (Old man jankins)

I know it's been years since I visited, but... Here I am, hehe..." He awkwardly laughed, as if he was embarrassed.

Kesu could only look at him in disbelief and just shrugged it off for now.

The place was dark and filled with cobwebs; the air was stagnant and disgusting. If the outside was already putrid, it was no match inside; if Kesu hadn't used her abilities, she would've already died from the smell, which surprisingly Rockhoof didn't.

"You seriously can tolerate this smell?"

"Is it really that stinky? I mean, we haven't had visitors for a while, so I guess the old stallion didn't bother cleaning the hall up," he suggested.

Her face had a look of disbelief. "When was the last time you HAD visitors? A year?" She jests.

"Probably a decade already."

"... Your mayor is dead, Rockhoof... He's dead." She deadpan said to him.

"I will never die." A creepy old voice spoke behind her ear.

Kesu would bolt into Rockhoof's hooves and scream in fright. Meanwhile, Rockhoof was flushed red, as he felt Kesu's body pressed onto his.

As she clung to Rockhoof, she looked back and saw a cloaked-up old stallion standing there.

"...What do you want, Rockhoof?" Rockhoof's daydreaming would be interrupted as the old stallion asked.

"Oh, uh, old Stal-jankins, I'm just giving our new friend a tour of our farm."

Kesu gave a sigh of relief knowing it was just the mayor. "O-oh, sorry. She then let go of Rockhoof's flustered head and approached the mayor to give a hoof shake.

But the mayor just stared.

"I see... Then why are you here? Have I not told you to leave them once you showed them to the hall?"

This placed Kesu in an awkward position as the two continued talking without her.

"Yes. But I... I just wanted to be with her?"

"The tour allowed inside the hall is for one pony only; no exceptions. Leave now, Rockhoof."

This disheartened the stallion, and he could only sulk and obey.

Meanwhile, Kesu would rather leave than continue the tour to this creepy hall.

"Wait! I'd rather stick with Rockhoof then; it's a nice place and all, but... yeah."

But before she could leave, the wooden flooring would lift up, making Rockhoof slide out of the hall and blocking the entrance, and there, revealed the mechanism that moved the floors; it was a bunch of disfigured corpses.

"...Oh shit."

The creatures began crawling out of the floor, trying to detain the frightened mare.

But instead of freezing up, the mare went into a blind rage. "R-ROHO MBALI! ROHO MBALI!"

Her flurry of strikes would crush the corpses through the wall.

"A shaman... How troublesome."

The cloaked stallion began to run away in a way that is not appropriate for his age.

Meanwhile, Kesu was busy pulverizing the corpses.

"Kyaaa!! MBALI!!!..."

As she got back to her senses, only the twitching remains of the corpses remained.

Goosebumps still crept at the mare as one of the hooves still continued to move towards her.

"Uuhhhggg... Why must it be the occult..."

She took her horn from her bag and zapped the crawling severed hoof.

"Cool..." Rockhoof spoke behind her.

"AAH! SHIT... I almost killed you!" The alarmed Kesu scolded, as she was inches away from zapping Rockhoof.

"Hey, hey! Friendly, friendly! Watch where you point that thing!" He worriedly replied as he saw how it evaporated the hoof.

Kesu started to calm down once more but still gave a punch on Rockhoof's shoulder, which just barely made him flinch. "What was that for?"

"Don't sneak up on me like that again, okay!?" She said with a heavy sigh.

"Sorry... But you were so cool! You punched the leaving... Well... Punched them dead again into oblivion! Double dead! And that wand, what is that?" He excitedly and curiously asked.

Kesu quickly hid her horn and began to stutter and make excuses. "O-oh this? Is. A wand, yes. From Zebrambwe! Where a witch doctor taught me occult stuff and magic... Yes... Even without a horn," she explained.

"Cool..."

"... I like how simple you are sometimes..."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing. And what took you so long to rescue me!"

"... You seem to not need it, and I'm afraid that I'd get hit as well with all that flailing."

"Oh, right, you saw that... Just forget you saw that, and why aren't you surprised by the zombies!?" She questioned and distanced a bit from him. "Don't tell me you're a zombie too!"

"No! No, I'm not. To be honest, I've always thought of him as a bit weird and never interacted with him much, plus do I look rotten?"

"Okay, you only considered him weird?... Just weird. Fine, but we've got to stop that necromancer; he is definitely up to no good."

The sun gives its final glare as it descends at Comfy while she laments the demise of her trusted Shadow. There, in front of her, was a giant tree made of darkness, and at the center of it was Madeline, disfigured and her face distorted by horror.

She tries to honor her by looking at her demise, but she could not; it was too horrible to look at. "Ahk! Who did this to you?" She cried.

"What the hell happened to her! This did not happen to the rest of the shadows who died by the abomination's claws. This... This was something else."

Her fellow Shadow could not reply, as she too was horrified at what happened to her fellow.

She gave a moment of silence and prayed for her.

"You will be avenged. Will you assist me?"

"For you and for her, I will not rest."

"Thank you, sister."

The two looked at each other and began a ritual where both stabbed their hooves, and black mists of shadow would engulf their bodies.

"Now how do we go about this, sister?"

"First we must put our fallen sister to rest; I do not like to see her like this. And second, a promise: she has a little sister. She needs to be taken care of."

Slam!

A corpse would hit the wooden walls of the town hall as it flung towards it.

"There's no end to them. Wait, is that you, Bob?" Rockhoof asked, but the zombie only moaned in response and attacked him.

"AHHHH!!!" He quickly smacked the zombie on the head, which flew off to the other room, leaving the body to collapse where it stood.

Rockhoof was stunned at what he did. "...I-I… I killed Bob!?" He panicked.

"Get yourself together, Rockhoof; he's already dead!" She replied as she fended off the other incoming zombies.

"Kyaa! No touch!"

As the two fought off the incoming waves of zombies, the old hooded necromancer was on the next floor above them looking at the veranda. "Rockhoof, you fool, you have doomed us all!"

"Why me!?" He asked.

"I should've abandoned you, tsk," the old stallion's reply as it continued to flee above.

"Rockhoof, you gotta hold them off." She then bolted upstairs and left Rockhoof.

"Wait, hold on, aaand there she goes." As he turned back around again, a horde of zombies was creeping in on him.

"Uhhhh—well—" he then punched the flooring and destroyed it, dropping everyone from that floor, including himself.

Kesu paused and worried as she looked below from the veranda.

"Rockhoof!... Damn it, that's not what I had in mind..."

"Cough... I'm okay! Go on ahead, I'll, uh... find a way going up there... On second thought, I think I need to run!" He scurried away as he was still being chased by the zombies.

Worried, she has no choice but to continue on.

"My love... We must not delay. It's now or never."

Slam.

The door where the hooded stallion was in was slammed open.

"You mad horse! Your terror ends here."

And there at the top of the town hall, the two faced off. It was a large round wooden room; it looked empty, but looking up, she saw contraptions by the dozen unknown to her, dangling from left to right. Parts of bodies hanging from it.

Seeing this, her resolve to kill was settled.

She let out her horn and quickly zapped him.

His body drops, and complete silence permeates.

"Now that that's done, the dead can finally rest."

STAB!

"UHK..." Blood drips from her stomach as a spike pierces through it.

It was one of the machines above the ceiling that moved and pierced her.

Her look of confusion was apparent on her face as she looked at her stomach.

The pain starts to introduce itself as the machine begins to lift her up.

"Aaa..." Her scream was muffled as the pain was unbearable.

Creak.

The hooded stallion she just shot began to stand up, revealing a hole through his chest. No blood could be seen.

"A foal you are." He spoke to the dangling mare.

A machine with a screen would go down and light up in front of the stallion, and he began reading through its texts.

"You will be my final subject, a worthy one, might I add." He grinned while Kesu struggled for her life as it hung in the balance.

"You... You are the one I've been looking for... Your magic is INCREDIBLE! For an earth pony... No. A hornless unicorn? Incredible... With you I can finally bring back everyone to life!"

To Kesu, his voice would only trigger irritation and anger to the point of hearing a certain stallion's voice, Storm Bringer.

"Khakk uurkkk khaa!" She tried to speak, but her blood was drowning her voice.

"Rest now and do not worry; your sacrifice will not be in vain, for I will use it for the better of ponykind!"

"You will never use me." A voice he heard from the corner of his ears.

He quickly turned, but no one was there. He also looked up to see that the mare was gone too.

"What? No! Come back! I need you for this to work!" He frantically searched for the mare, but there were no clues or trails to find as to where the mare could have gone.

"You..."

The stallion fell to the ground.

"Ouff! You cheeky little—!?" As he tried to stand up, he noticed that he had no hooves to stand on.

As he struggled to look up at the mare, he saw that her wounds were gone. "Impossible."

"Says the stallion who murdered hundreds." She then points her horn directly at his head.

"You cannot kill me; I am tethered to everyone in this village. I can simply go to another host." He grinned.

"Try it then."

His grin turned into a frown as he looked around and saw nothing but void.

"Wait, what? No! Stop! You cannot kill me! My work! Everyone is counting on me! Spare me! If I die, all my work... Everyone that I brought up will vanish, hmp!?" His mouth vanished as he pleaded for his life.

"You're already dead; why beg for your life? What of the ponies you robbed of their lives? No... You deserve... Death?"

A necromancer cannot turn himself into a zombie.

As her rage began to subside and her thoughts began to clear, she noticed her mistake and began to be cautious.

But we are both erased from the world; he cannot abandon this body and relocate to someone he has tethered. And if he is a zombie, then the necromancer who controls him should have lost his connection.

"Why do you still speak? Zombie?"

His mouth returned as Kesu ordered it.

"Gasp! My mouth... It's back?"

"Speak undead! Where is your master?"

"Master? Undead! You mock me. I am a great necromancer. I am not an undead!"

"No necromancer can turn himself into an undead unless another necromancer has arisen you." She then stabbed her horn into the stallion's head.

"Lies erased... And... a barrier from your memories? It has been tampered with? I knew you were dead... Now show me who your master is..."

The stallion began to jolt and flicker.

"Dead? I am... I could not bring my wife back to life and my daughter. My experiment failed... I—I died... Then... Pebbles... My youngest daughter..."

He cried and smiled.

"I am so proud of you..." His last line as he suddenly became lifeless.

"Pebbles?"

The void where they are began to shift and crack.

"What? How!"

Crash!

Kesu fell back to reality and into the top floor of the town hall, where Pebbles stood from the other side.

"You... You gave him a reason to leave." The angry filly glared at Kesu.