Chapter Two

“You live in a library?”

“Well... yes. Yes I do.”

        It was twilight in the Equestrian wasteland. In a small settlement stood a house, inhabited by a small filly and her parents. Smoke rose from the chimney as the mother cooked a meal of radhog and various preserved foodstuffs, the soft light coming from the fire and only adding to the atmosphere of homeliness and comfort. The father and the filly sat in the living room, telling his daughter stories from when he was younger, of his days as an adventurer.

        Just before he regaled a particularly bloody scene, the filly's mother intruded in his tales, telling the storyteller and his one-mare audience that dinner was ready. The small family made their way into the kitchen and began enjoying their meal in a comfortable silence, glad to be with each other and to be able to share the moment. It would be heartwarming to say that this was the necromancer's family, but it would also be a complete and utter lie. These were just his closest neighbours; they did their best to ignore him and all the sights and sounds that came with his (in their opinion unfortunate) existence.

=#-#=

        Several miles outside of the small town, the necromancer and his unwilling companion stood at the door of a dilapidated shack. After walking silently together for several hours, they had made it to the necromancer’s home. After looking at the small, ramshackle building, his companion had been disbelieving, to say the least.

        “This is it?” He asked. “Just a shack? No spires, no zombie guards? Just a shack?” He continued looking around, trying to find some sign of the necromancer's evil. Some sort of secret entrance to an underground lair, or a monster guarding the house from the shadows.

        “Yes, this is it,” the hooded pony answered. “I haven't really needed anything more than this. It does fine in holding my possessions, and it stops ponies from asking about my 'evil schemes'.” Pulling the door open with his magic, he ushered his companion into the unlit building. After entering, the necromancer fumbled around for several minutes, searching for some light source. After slamming his back knee into a table three times he found what he was searching for, and a dim light illuminated the room.

        To say it was messy was a gross understatement. Everywhere the reanimated pony looked, there were piles of objects. Some were stacks of scrolls and tomes, and others were mountains made of clothes and ancient food boxes, all of which were empty. His eyes were pulled to one corner, where he could see something that may have been some type of edible substance at one point. It clearly hadn't been touched in a very long while. He wasn't quite sure what it was, or whether the movement that had drawn his eye had been real, or just his imagination. His investigation was cut short by the clearing of a throat. The wastelander turned to see the necromancer looking around embarrassedly, as if just now realizing how much of a mess his home was.

        “Yes, well... I didn't expect my minions to be sentient, so I didn't exactly prepare a room for you. I don't think the guest room is too bad; you can probably stay in there.” He pointed down the only hallway in the house, to where three doors stood closed. “I hope you wake up early, because we have a lot on our plates for tomorrow.”

        With that the necromancer walked down the hall and into his own room, closing the door quietly behind himself. After looking around at the abyssal mess of a front room for a few minutes more, the stallion made his way down the hall to his own room. Opening the door, he began to wonder what “bad” was to the necromancer. Throughout the room were piles of odds and ends, from tin cans and milk bottles to ammunition clips for anti-machine rifles. If he looked from just the right angle, he could see a bed along the far wall, covered in old robes and what looked like piles of scrap metal. Sighing, he began to clear a path to the bed, vowing to force the necromancer to clean up at least a little on the next day.

        After doing some moving around, he had cleared an area on the bed that seemed large enough to hold him. Forcing himself down onto the cleanish mattress, the reanimated pony closed his eyes and attempted to sleep. He shuffled a bit, trying to find a good position. Then he closed his eyes a little harder, trying to block out what little light there was in the room. He shifted again.

        Falling asleep, it seemed, was easier said than done. Try as he might, the stallion simply couldn't get comfortable. Either the bed was too lumpy, or there was too much light, or the wasteland was making too much noise. It was unnerving, how hard this was for him.

        Eventually, though, he did fall asleep – though what awaited him in his dreamland was not something he was looking forward to in the least.

-=+-+=-

Run. He had to run. No stopping. He couldn’t stop. If he stopped, then they caught up. He couldn't even look back to see his pursuers. That would mean slowing down, and slowing down meant they could catch him.

Dark, dead trees whipped past him, whipping at his skin and pulling at his face. But he couldn't slow down to find a less dangerous route. The things behind himweren't making a noise, passing soundlessly between the trunks and branches. The silence scared him more than the sound of a thousand raging hellhounds.

He ran on for what felt like hours, but when he chanced a look back he seen that the things were keeping pace. And where he was growing tired, they soldiered on, seemingly unaffected by the strenuous run. Panic pumped a newfound energy into his veins and he picked up his pace, putting a little more distance between himself and the things chasing him.

While he was busy looking backwards to gauge the distance of the nightmarish monsters, the stallion forgot to look at the ground for roots and low branches, a mistake that would prove to be his undoing.. His hoof caught on a root, and he went down hard. Oh, goddesses. He thought. Not like this. I didn’t come this far just to get caught now.

The things behind him began to hit trees and make noises, hissing like snakes and screaming like bloodwings. Bumping into trees and screaming, it was almost like they wanted him to know they were coming. He stumbled to his hooves and tried running away, only to slow down. If they’re gonna catch me, he thought grimly, they're gonna have t'fight to keep me. He quickly decided on a plan of action, sick of running away from the nightmarish monsters.

He turned around in a clearing, readying himself to face the monsters racing to capture him, and instantly blanched. The monsters were truly indescribable in their horror, made up of everything that went bump in the night. Here, a giant ant's head was attached to the body of a windigo, with the tail of a manticore poised threateningly over its body. Beside it stood a monster that’s horror put the ant-headed beast to shame. It was covered in pony heads, many screaming in silent horror, with others simply staring, having accepted their fates. The silent heads were somehow worse than the screaming ones, he thought.

The monsters behind the two on the forefront were even more horrifying than those closest to the earth pony, becoming less and less comprehensible and more and more outlandish the farther back from the center of the clearing they were.

Suddenly, staying and fighting seemed like a silly idea; the stallion's courage had sunk away from him like an anchor dropped overboard now that he could actually see what he was running from. He turned around with the intention to run and hide, or at least to put more space between himself and the horrors that he could now put a face to.

The monsters, though, didn't seem to want that to happen. Whipping its tail forward with lightning speed, the manticore-windigo-ant caught him in the flank, releasing burning poison into his veins. His backside went limp, and he stumbled once again to the ground, no longer able to stand.

The monsters slowly closed in around him, revelling in his terror. They began jostling for a position closest to him, preparing to tear holes into his flesh and feast on his organs.

-=+-+=-

The stallion was jerked awake by a rough shaking of his head. “Wake up, stupid!” The necromancer shouted. “It's time to get your lazy flank out of bed and do some proper servant type things!” He was still wearing a cloak, though whether it was the same one as yesterday was a mystery. In the last day he had been with the dark magician, he had never seen his body, other than his face and hooves. Letting go of the bleary horse, he trotted out of the room, shouting over his shoulder, “Meet me outside when you're ready to be useful!”

The stallion stood up, trying to clear his head of the nightmare. To him, it was far more terrifying than his death; while dying had been a harrowing experience, he didn't remember much of what had happened. All he could remember was life fading out, and then waking up with the zombie bandit and annoying necromancer. He couldn't remember what it was like to be dead; he could only remember dying and coming back. After he felt he could function without dwelling on the horrors that inhabited his dreamworld, he followed the necromancer out of the shack.

Outside, the unicorn stood staring to the village, his back to the shack. The stallion walked up and stood beside him, staring down into the village as well. It was a surprisingly well-built village for the Equestrian Wasteland, exceedingly so for one that he didn't know about. In the distance he could see the residents of the town begin exiting their homes, preparing for a day of hard work.

“I've always loved this town,” the necromancer said quietly. “It’s where I lived before I started my apprenticeship with the necromancer who taught me. They don't like me very much anymore, but I've always felt a pull here, like I need to help them more than anyone else.” Looking at the stallion's surprised face, he said, “What, you thought that necromancers were evil?” When the stallion's surprised expression did not change, he made a deeply amused sound. “Oh, goddesses no! Even though we necromancers deal in death and blood, we're actually the good guys. Most of the time. Some of the time. Well, good and evil are confusing. It's our job, more than anything, to keep balance. In the times when history books were written, this meant playing the villain. But now that death and evil are everywhere, it's our job to play the hero. We go from place to place, helping clear out black zebrican magic, and getting rid of zombies and spirits where we can.”

        This information, though semi predictable, was a lot for the stallion to take in. Though, looking at the stallion beside him, some of it began to make sense. Looking at the unicorn beside him, it would be hard to see him as evil if he ran into him in the wasteland randomly. In all honesty, he looked more like one of the priests of Unity than anything. But still... if necromancers were good, then was this pony a hero for bringing him back? And did being “good” give him the right to bring him back from beyond the grave? All this and more was spinning in his head, but at the base of all of that was one main question: “What's your name, anyways?”

For a minute it seemed as though the entire wasteland went silent. And then the necromancer broke out in raucous laughter. “I drop all that information on you,” he gasped between laughs, “and you ask for my name? I'm glad you're funny; I would've hated to be stuck with a zompony with a stick up his arse for the rest of my life.” After finally fighting down his laughter, the necromancer sighed. “But seriously, my name's Dark Heart. It sounds really terrible, but I’ve made a habit of not going with what people expect me to be like. What's yours? I never actually had the chance to bother asking, what with you breaking an unbreakable spell and me having to dispel my only other potential minion.”

        After a little thought, the stallion decided that Dark Heart was trustworthy enough to tell his name. “Name's Ammo Surplus,” he said. “Reflects pretty damn well with my cutie mark.” With that he pointed to his flank, where a small calibre round was present. “I tend to be a little... zealous with my ammo when I’m fighting.” Looking back towards the town, Ammo Surplus started to think about what Dark Heart had said earlier, about necromancers only playing whichever side needed balance. “Wait,” he said, startling the unicorn, “If you're good, why'd you bring me back? That seems kind've evil to me.”

        Dark Heart sighed, knowing that question would be asked sooner or later. “Well,” he started, “I needed a companion to help me in what's to come, and I felt that bending the rules like this would be better than trying to convince a living person that not only are most necromancers actually the good guys right now, but that I would need their help to keep the wasteland from being overrun by the undead.” Dark Heart turned to look at Ammo Surplus, trying to gauge his reaction to this news.

        For a minute that seemed longer than it was, he was silent. Then, in a very silent voice, he asked, “What do you mean, 'overrun'?” It was clear that the earth pony was having more than a little trouble digesting this new news.

        “It's... hard to explain. Essentially, one of the other necromancers, Evil Intentions, has decided that he's done going with the status quo of the necromancers, and that he's going to rule the wasteland.” Dark Heart grimaced, hating the need to explain this to someone. “It wouldn't be so much of a problem if he was just a necromancer. But Evil Intentions also learned quite a bit of other zebrican magic. We don't know how he did, but now... he's more powerful than us, and the others are too scared of him to fight back. But I'm not giving up.” With a determined look, he turned to Ammo Surplus. “Which is where you come in. I've decided I'm going to go out and learn some more powerful magic myself. On my own, I would undoubtedly die. It's extremely dangerous where I need to go, and I need a bodyguard.” His determined gaze softened into something nearing a pleading stare. “I can’t cast that spell again, not after what happened with you. I don’t need to deal with both Evil Intentions and a band of rogue zombies. Please, I... I need your help.”

        Ammo Surplus turned from the settlement to Dark Heart. “Of course I’ll help. The ponies of Equestria shouldn’t need to deal with necromancers and dark magic, and if you have a way to stop them from ever having to see those horrors, I’ll follow you to hell and back.” He stared hard into the unicorn’s eyes. “But I swear to the goddesses, Dark Heart. If you’re lying, and taking advantage of me to further your own goals... you’ll have more to worry about than an uncontrollable zompony.”

        Dark Heart wilted a little under the threat, but then jumped in excitement when he realized that Ammo Surplus had agreed to help him. “Okay,” he said enthusiastically, “First we’re going to need some information! And I know exactly where to look...”

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added (Ammo Surplus): Ghoulish Resilience (1)

Thanks to your new presence in the undead world, you can now take more damage before becoming injured, and have a natural resistance to unicorn magic. Every level taken in this perk reduces your charisma with those without this perk.

Quest Added (Team): Hunt for Power!

A dark force is growing in the Equestrian Wasteland, and it is up to you and your teammates to save everyone! While in this quest, experience gained in quest locations doubles, and select items become available to your team in quest locations.