Dr Whooves MONSTER

Chapter 5

I quickly snuck down to the morgue, collecting both the needed suplies. and Stygian's remains. Luckily for me, the preparation for his bariel was not yet executed. He still remained intact. His brain was there, his heart, his torso, and skull. Despite its shredded look, all it really needed was a few replacements at best.

And what better place to find such replacements than the morgue itself? There in jars sat organs that were kept for replacement to those who needed them. Who needed it more than Stygian, though? I found a decent-sized stomach and a spleen. There were buckets and buckets of blood, of which I could fill his brain and arteries. Flipping open my book, I found whatever I needed. A pancreas—I chose the cleanest looking one I could find. Lungs were a hard find. Stygian had one that was collapsed and the other one missing. That would not do at all. I searched for a pair, or even just one would do, but came up empty-handed among the jars. With a frustrated groan, I growled at the struggle, only to remember where I was. There, sitting in the morgue, was the body of the recently killed manticore. Manticore's lungs were definitely bigger than a pony's, but certainly they would work. Pulling a knife, I quickly dove into the body of the beast and extracted what I needed, carving it out easily, I Ignoring the blood splatter across my clothes as I did so. The smell of it was so putrid, rotten, and strong that I would have vomited if it weren't for the fact that my mind was on other things.

Then I had another issue, didn’t I? I needed skin to replace what Stygian had lost. The hide of the manticore would do just fine. And I effortlessly ripped that away as well. But would it be enough? Of course not. As I stumbled back trying to find more, there I saw in the distance out the window a freshly dug grave. With a crazed laugh, I ran out towards it, finding a casket. Inside, the perfectly preserved deceased Mr Buckbeak. Certainly he wouldn’t mind if I took just a bit of flesh, would he? He didn’t need it after all. I soon quickly preserved his wing and left arm. I needed a right leg, and to my surprise, there sat in the next grave the dragon that died nearly a month ago. Gathering its leg would be simple. And so I did so without hesitation.

Gathering what I could in the old cart, I quickly tied it to myself and began treading up out of town and into the forest just as a thick fog began to sweep in.

Tracking through the woods, I stumbled onto a divided deer; its antlers a perfect substitute for Stygian's horn. I also took its left leg, as it was in good condition and Stygian had none at the time.

I traveled three days and three nights endlessly searching for the old ruins. As I went through the forest, the shadows and the fog only seemed to thicken, despite the changes of day to night. It didn’t matter the hour in here. It was so thick that it was always dark.

I cared not for the scary sounds of alligators and owls. Nor did I for the swirling crows and frog croaks. I only had one thing on my mind, and that one thing led me to my finale destination.

There, standing just above the trees, sat an empty ancient tower. The led down to a decrepit stone castle. Its only entry was the rickety old bridge over a grand and furious river. It sat on the edge of a cliff surrounded by trees and overgrown plants that took it as its own.

Stepping onto the bridge, the first step easily bent under my weight. It didn’t break, but the cracking sound from it told me that that bridge was never going to make it. No, instead I would have to carefully take each piece of the body one by one over the bridge myself. And so I did just that without hesitation. It took me a whole day to finally get everything I needed inside. But once there, I traveled to the higher room in the tower. It looked to have once been the sleeping quarters of royalty.

The castle itself was grand and yet simple, with basic rooms and basic structure. A throne room sat at the end of a hallway, a bathroom on the first left door, a kitchen and dining room on the right followed by what seemed to be an ancient garrison and a grand library. Its walls sat stories high above me. And up the steps were several bedrooms, including at the highest what must have been the king’s or queen’s royal chambers. The place was filled with spiders and webs; vines of plants and broken stained glass scatterd the old black stone walls and floors. Even so, tired of moving all day, I fell to slumber on a mattress so soft I was surprised it had ever existed.

The next day, though, I began my work patching up the body. I needed a way to gather energy from the skies, and so I used parts of the cart and my own intellect to devise a pulley system out of its wheels and created a rising and falling table. Along with creating two large lightning rods using metal poles from the cart's structure. They could be lifted into the air, drawing the necessary energy from the lightning down through a wire that I hooked up to the body. It could be easily activated with a simple switch when ready. Now that everything was ready, the hard part began.

Due to the storage amalgamation of limbs and body features that I had, it wasn’t easy stitching the body of Stygian back together. My medical prowess and supplies of string were all I had to make it work. The final collection was, in a word, ugly—very ugly. After stitching and properly patching it, Stygian, who was actually quite short in life, was now leathery and tall due to me having to rearrange some of the organs to fit. Simply put, he was now slimy and weathered if not ridiculously so. The hardest part was actually reconnecting the tendons and arteries, especially since none of it came from the same being. But after hours of surgery, I had finally made it work. All that was left was his right arm. I forgot the right arm! And where was I going to find one on such short notice? I scrambled furiously with myself that I could forget such an appendage, only to find the remains of the manticore.

With the sight of it, I grinned as I recognized a sense of irony in it. Thinking that the hand that had killed Stygian would now become his, I thought. And so I did what I could to attach it to the body.

I couldn’t care about a horn, so I just plunged the manticore’s horn into the skull, making sure not to touch the brain at all. I also added a goat horn so I could use it to draw the lightning into the body. Perhaps once he was alive again I could remove it, but for now, it was a necessary additive. Once it was all said and done, I sat back and looked at my hard work from the past three and a half days. And then I remembered the date. It was finally Nightmare Night of all nights. Thinking, I realized this could be the end of my horrific nightmare.

Oh how I was wrong; this wasn’t the end, but whether it was just the beginning.

As the night began to tremble into the day, I was able to make makeshift candles thanks to the leftover wax and stickers found in the castle's throne room. I soon began to read the book and make out the spell that was nearly for the process. The problem now was, I wanted to know Stygian. I was no unicorn. I was only an earth pony with no horn to direct and focus magic—assuming I had any in the first place.

With a sigh, I remembered mine and Stygian's last conversation about how all forms of life had magical energy. I could feel my heart twist as I remembered my crude words to him about not passing his religious propaganda to me. Oh, how foolish I truly was.

But even so, if I were to do this spell and achieve the objective, I would have to believe my friend's words, as they were the only chance I had to bring him back to life. Science did all it could; using it, I stitched back a functioning body for him. Now I needed to breathe life back into him. It was, as I said, a simple charge of his batteries so donated. I just needed to give him enough of a magical charge to reinvigorate his brain. The science was there, but the question was, was the magic.

I looked at my hooves, realizing it had been a long time since I ever tried to attempt anything like this. It was said that just like a muscle, magic had to be trained to become stronger. Mine was secretly weak at best. Still, it was what I had.

With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and breathed out. Upon opening them, my gaze was now fixed on the spell before my eyes. Though I couldn’t make out what I said,*specifically. There were letters that I could possibly form a spell with. The question now was, would it work? Raising my hoof in the air, I began with all my might to call upon whatever energy I had in my body.

I then did as the photos depicted, using my medical syringe to make a small cut on my hoof and Stygian's flesh. The candles flickered as the wind and fog began to spiral around the room. I then conjured the thunder spell to create the necessary storm for the work. And then I began to finish what I started with the transfer spell.

What I had said, I couldn’t tell you. But at first, after saying it, I felt nothing at all. Believing it to be a dud, I tried again, saying the spell in a different way. It seemed to do the same. Finally, after three more tries, on the fifth one, it seemed to finally activate. I had finally made the right words. And as I did, I could feel for the first time in my life my own magical energy. My own life force. To my surprise, however, it began to drain out of not just the cut on my hoof but every pore on my body.

Soon it gathered into a bright white light and seemed to shift into the form of Stygian. As it did so, I could feel my body grow weaker as if I was aging quickly. Soon, before it was too late, I grabbed the crank of the table and rose Stygian's body up in the air and through the hole in the roof of the castle. Along with it, I then felt my heart come to an abrupt stop as I stared at the lever that would activate the lightning rods.

There I stood, staring at the lever. And yet, despite all my hard work, despite the crimes I committed—grave robbing, the sins I have endured—as I stood at that final moment, of threshold, I sat there hesitating as to whether or not I could pull the trigger.

It was as if all my senses that had been lost the last few days finally returned to me in that very moment. The pulsing of my hoof drew my gaze to the cut, and then to the rest of the room, and up to the body now extended in the air.

“What have I done?”

“I defiled a body; I cut apart and defiled not only the remains of my best friend but the remains of others just to put him back together, and for what?”

I came crashing to my knees as the tears filled and erupted from my face—tears I had been holding on for far too long. Soon I raised my head, and a cry I could not recognize erupted from my throat. It wasn’t just a cry for what I had done but of the pain and suffering I had accumulated in my life, and all the pain and suffering I was about to cause.

Stygian wouldn’t have wanted this. He wouldn’t have wanted me so fixated on something that it drove me to not only sin against him but to sin against nature itself. Life was precious; I knew that, and yet here I was wasting it away on the dead. My work was for the living, not the dead. The memory of Miss Apple rang into my mind. My patient.

The last time I had seen her, as I sat with little faith in myself, she—who was dying—set aside her tea, her beliefs in the magical arts, and told me, “I know you will; my life is in your hands.”

How could I sit there for days, working on the dead when a patient dying—[b]someone who was alive,[/b] someone I could prevent their death—needed me most? “Stygian,” I stumbled over my words. “Stygian would have wanted her to live, not him. I have betrayed both her and Stygian for my own selfish desire of wanting him by my side.”

“This was where I went wrong… and I have to stop it before it’s too late.” With that new knowledge, I arose to my feet as best I could. The problem was I felt extremely weak and stumbled forward, falling flat on my face—catching myself on the lever. Pulling it down, along with me.

“And so I was wrong. This was where I went wrong.”

With a loud crack of thunder, lightning struck the two towers. I looked up in horror as I saw the remains reanimated and shake above my head.

“It was too late,” I stumbled as I watched the body for a few moments until then lightning and thunder died down, leaving smoke and the smell of burnt fflesh in the air. I leaped back, scared out of my mind, as I watched the body jump from the surge of electrical charges. I was nearly blinded by the flash, but as the lightning came to an end, the wind blew out the candles as I heard a mighty thump from the body smashing into the table below.

Despite my newfound clear mind, my curiosity got the better of me once more. And I soon grabbed the crank and began to bring the table back down to the ground.

But to both my dismay and relief, when the body was back in my sights under the table, it sat as a burnt-up corpse under a sheet. No sign of life in it.

Even so, despite my relief, the sadness of losing my friend came crashing back to the forefront of my mind, and my heart ached as I stared at the body before me. For a moment, I silently said goodbye to Stygian, turning away from him, about to leave and never come back to this haunted place ever again.

Bump! As I turned away, a thump echoed through the deadly silence that made my heart stop and my eyes widen as the fur on the back of my neck stood up.

Another thump, followed by an animalistic groan, startled me into action. I spun around as I heard a loud thud of something making a chill run down my spine. My eyes popped nearly out of my skull. I began shaking as I could feel a cold, cruel tension building up behind me. Suddenly, another bump made me jump, and I chanced a glance over my shoulder.

I watched as the dragon tail raised and thumped on the ground again, only to fall cold and lifeless.

With a chuckle, I realized it was just some leftover nerve charges. “For a second there, I thought you were a-

Before I could finish the sentence, a groan came from under the sheets of body parts. I watched in amazement as the head raised from the depths and tore off the sheet with a mighty swipe of its lion claw. The figure didn’t move naturally. It kept its movements twisted and jumpy as it struggled to its feet.

“St-Stygian,” I stammered, as a warm feeling spread in my heart. I should have known not to have hope. I should have been more terrified. Yet, despite that, the very notion my friend was alive— the very idea—brought happiness that overshadowed my fear. Big mistake.

The figure stood towering over me as it stretched its elongated neck, its unconscious ways cracking the bones into proper place.

“Stygian, say something!” I asked with a shuddering breath.

The creature before me turned its head to me and snapped its eyes open. I leaped back, screaming in horror, as I stared into its demonic state. Whatever I had done, whoever I brought back, was not Stygian. It was not my friend. It was a malformation of science and magic. It was evil and ominous. It had blood-red iris that were small in comparison to the massive amber glow of its eyes.

It groaned loudly as it tried to approach me. I could see saliva build up in its mouth. A giant fang, that protruded from its lips, dripped with the substance as it tumbled forward my way. Its bat-like dragon wing and feathered one flapped, propelling itself into the sky as I ducked for my life.

I knew in an instant what it wanted. It was a hungry beast, one that was starving for food. It would stop at nothing to get what it wanted, and I was it. Racing through the old barn-style doors of the crumbling castle, I tore through the forest as quickly as I could in hopes of getting away—far, far away. I ran all the way back to Ponyville, a disheveled mess. My clothes were torn into pieces from them catching onto branches and splitting apart due to the force of my escape. My hair was a disgusting mess, and I smelled like I hadn’t showered in weeks due to the stench of the rotting corpse that I brought back to life.

Once back in town, I ran home and cowered under my bed, shivering, hoping that it wouldn’t come after me. Hoping that I would never see those demonic eyes ever again.