Vengeful Dead awoke, small green fires blazing to life in his eyes as he regained consciousness. He looked about the area and took in his surroundings, he was in the middle of what appeared to be a small, partially collapsed building. That was probably why his head hurt.

"What in the name of Celestia was that?" a muffled voice shouted.

Vengeful Dead quickly got to his feet. "Compromised," he hissed.

He heard a commotion outside, it sounded like people were attempting to dig through the rubble.

"Need to escape." he muttered, looking about for a way out. When it became evident that he was trapped he began to consider his options. He hadn't the physical strength to break out, nor did he have any truly viable spells for breaking though buildings. One option presented itself, but he didn't particularly enjoy the idea.

"Hello? Is there anypony trapped in there?" a voice shouted.

Time was not on his side, he had to make up his mind quickly. Wait.

"Anypony?" he repeated, pondering the strange dialect. He passed it off as a result of traveling dimensions, he couldn't expect everyone in every dimension to speak the same. Frankly he considered himself lucky he was in a dimension where English was spoken at all. The sound of shifting rubble brought his thoughts back to the situation at hand.

"Void Core." he began. He felt the power of the Well of Furies and the Netherworld coursing through him in a perfect blend of brutality and refined malevolence. "Final Judgment!"

The very stuff of the Netherworld erupted from his body. He could feel the unspeakable horrors of that place seeking to claw their way into reality from within his body, he relished the feeling. The blast atomized the debris around him and the ravenous vortex caused by the tearing of worlds devoured what remained.

Wasting no time once he was free he leaped into the air and activated Afterburner, shooting through the air faster than the sonic boom he caused. Glancing backwards he noticed an inky black blast wave radiating out from where he broke the sound barrier. To his dismay he noticed that he himself was trailing the same blackness through the air in some macabre facsimile of a rainbow. He made a mental note to never break the world barrier and the sound barrier in such quick succession ever again.

He flew as far and fast as he could for a full minute, putting an impressive number of miles between him and where ever he just was. Turning back he saw it had been some kind of city hanging from the side of the mountain. There appeared to be a palace dominating the cityscape, but it wasn't the palace he was looking for. This very clearly wasn't Praetoria.

He needed to find a safe place to settle down while he sent out a minion to scout the surrounding area. He flew for a while before coming to a rest in a small wooded area. A road wound through the woods and he camped out in a small, concealed clearing near the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of this world's inhabitants at some point.

For now, though, he would rest, get his bearings, and gather information.

"Anathema." he hissed, every syllable of the word dripping with malevolence and power.

The ground near him dissolved into a thick black puddle from which a figure began to rise. Once the Lich had fully emerged from the puddle it roared its displeasure at him.

"You dare summon me again? I will destroy you, Vengeful Dead! These pathetic bonds will not hold me for long and when they break I shall feast upon whatever pathetic morsel remains of your corrupt soul!"

"Silence, Lich!" commanded Vengeful Dead. He held out his hands towards the Lich, one enveloped in inky blackness and one enveloped in blood red. The spells impacted the Lich and empowered him.

"I do not need these pathetic powers to destroy you." Anathema remarked.

"Need you to be less pathetic." he grumbled. "Go, scout the area. Be discrete, do not attack unless confronted by hostiles."

"I will do no such thing!" Anathema yelled. "This task is beneath me! Why do you not send a Grave Knight?"

"It displeases you." Vengeful Dead said, bluntly. "Reason enough."

Anathema glared furiously him before ghosting off through the forest.

For several hours the Lich ghosted through the forest and watched the road, grumbling to himself about his master.

"That pathetic sack of flesh! How dare he treat me like some lowly minion!"

Anathema's rant was cut short when he noticed a humming coming from up ahead. He followed the sound and eventually came across its source. Anathema was sickened to his core by what he saw. It was what only could be loosely described as a pony. It was colored a bright white that hurt the Lich's eyes if he looked at it for too long and it had a meticulously styled purple mane and tail. Upon the pony's flank was some kind of tattoo of three diamonds. A multitude of shopping bags filled with all kinds of fabrics, gems, and feathers floated along side her.

He immediately decided that, provided the rest of this world's inhabitants looked like this, this horrid creature would be the first in a very long string of brutal murders. As he prepared to rip the creature's soul from its body he found he could do nothing more than imagine the act and soon realized why. His master had forbade attacking unless the target was hostile.

He struggled in vain to find some kind of exploitable loophole in the command, to rationalize the brutal killing of this sickeningly adorable creature. But in no way could he find a way to consider this creature in any way hostile.

Furious that Vengeful Dead had thwarted him again, he sent a mental signal to his master and continued to stalk the pony. Hopefully Vengeful Dead would see the wisdom in removing this white stain from the universe.

Within twenty minutes Vengeful Dead silently flew into the brush concealing the Lich.

"Report." he growled.

"Observe the road, master. One of this world's inhabitants." the Lich explained.

The necromancer did so, but Anathema could discern nothing from the expressionless skull mask the necromancer wore.

"So shall we do the universe a service and erase this abomination, master?" Anathema suggested.

Vengeful Dead was silent for a moment before answering. "No."

"What?" Anathema asked, stunned.

"No." repeated the necromancer.

"Well why not? You kill everything! You're Vengeful Dead, vengeance against the living is what you do!" the Lich ranted.

"Vengeance for sinners. For those that deserve it. Never the innocent." he rasped.

"Oh don't you feed me that crock!" complained Anathema. "No one is innocent, I've heard you say as much on countless occasions!"

"Correct." said Vengeful Dead after a moment. "Nobody is innocent. But I never said "nopony.""

Anathema stared at him for a while as if he'd sprouted another head.

"I know what evil feels like." the necromancer continued. "This creature, this entire world contains not even a suggestion of it. There is nothing here deserving of my ire."

"Of course I would be bound to a master that has a soft spot for ponies! You know you're just as bad as that Corruptor you insist on hanging around with. Well if we can't kill it can we at least torture it for information?"

"No. Would like to try something new." Vengeful Dead said.

"And what would that be?" asked Anathema.

"Asking politely." he replied.

"You can't be serious." Anathema deadpanned. "Since when does the Reaper of the Rogue Isles ask politely?"

"When honesty can be expected. There is no deceit in this creature, it will answer truthfully. Tell me, Lich, what have you observed about this creature?"

Anathema wanted nothing more than to tell this pathetic excuse for a necromancer just where he could shove his ponies. "The creature talks to itself incessantly, if you'd been a few minutes longer I'm sure I'd have its life story by now. It is a female that calls itself 'Rarity' or something. It seems to be some kind of dress maker and is returning from purchasing supplies from a city called... " here the Lich cringed, "Canterlot."

Vengeful Dead turned to stare at the Lich. "Canterlot? Like Camelot?"

Anathema nodded. "That's not even the worst of it. It rambled on about selling dresses to places called Manehattan and Fillydelphia as well."

Vengeful Dead turned back to look at the pony. "If I were a less principled man I would gladly join you in the destruction of this world."

"Yes, thank the Nether for your staunch upholding of your principles." the Lich remarked dryly. "The pony also seems to be a high society type, the perfect match for you. Better get your fancy suit on."

Vengeful Dead grumbled to himself. He hated that costume, but it was necessary to dress respectably when dealing with upper class contacts, they generally found his usual raiment unsettling. He suspected it might have something to do with the number of skulls he wore, but wasn't totally sure.

Vengeful Dead slowly got to his feet, not at all happy with what he was about to do. He rapidly spun around on his heel and, with a flash, his armor and skulls were replaced with a sharp business suit, a stylish wide brimmed hat, and yet another skull mask, there were some things he just wouldn't compromise on. He took a moment to remember how to deal with the upper class, mostly the bits about not killing them.

"Oh I do so enjoy watching you squirm." the Lich remarked as Vengeful Dead tried to get comfortable in the suit. "If nothing else this should at least be worth a few laughs."

"Didn't say you could come." Vengeful Dead replied, straightening his tie. "Continue scouting, no attacking unless hostile."

The Lich scowled and took his leave. Vengeful Dead cleared his throat in preparation for the coming conversation. Oh how he hated conversation.

"Show time." he muttered.

Rarity trotted happily along the path back to Ponyville, talking to herself all the while.

"Oh Rarity, you simply are amazing!" she congratulated herself. "These fabrics are absolutely stunning, everypony will be talking about these dresses for ages!"

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts about dresses and sales that she neglected to pay attention to the road. She was taken by surprise as she walked head on into something in the path, bouncing off of it and scattering her bags of supplies.

"Apologies, thought you would see me." a voice rasped.

Rarity shook her head, irritated, and looked up to reprimand whoever it was that had walked into her.

"You-" she began angrily, but looking up into the hollow eyes of a skull mask she felt her irritation dissipate. "... should really watch where you're going." she finished weakly, staring wide eyed at this new arrival.

"Sorry." the figure said hoarsely. "Like I said, thought you would see me."

"It's quite alright, darling. It was my fault." she said, somewhat flustered. She looked around, noticing her bags laying everywhere. "Oh dear, what a mess."

A purple glow suffused the eye sockets of the creature's skull mask and the ground beneath its feet appeared to melt into a pitch black puddle. Numerous black tentacles emerged from the puddle and wrapped themselves around the handles of her shopping bags, lifting them over to her.

"Here you are, miss." the creature said as the tentacles held the bags out to her.

"Why thank you, darling!" she said, letting her magic take hold of the bags. "Well you certainly are quite the gentleman."

She watched as the tentacles retreated back into the black puddle. The glow faded from the creature's eyes and the puddle disappeared, leaving only normal dirt behind.

"My, what strange magic." she remarked. "I've never seen anything like that before."

"I expected as much, this place doesn't seem like it would have any practitioners of this kind of magic." it replied.

A short yet slightly awkward silence followed. Finally Rarity worked up the nerve to ask the question she'd been thinking since she saw the creature.

"I apologize if I seem terribly blunt, but what exactly are you? I've never seen anything like you anywhere in Equestria before." she asked.

"I'm a human." it said. "So this land is called Equestria?"

"A human?" she asked, recognizing the word. "Well it would seem that I owe Lyra an apology then."

She couldn't see the creature's expression, but she had evidently lost it with her last statement.

"I'm sorry darling, yes. It's called Equestria, are you new here?"

"You could say that." it said. "My companions and I were on a mission to another dimension. There was a malfunction with our portal and we were thrown off course and ended up here. Do you know of any mages with access to portal magic?"

Rarity blinked. "Well I've certainly heard stranger stories in my day. I personally know very little of magic, but a friend of mine in Ponyville should be able to help you. I can't think of anypony else in the world that would know more about magic than her."

"Could you possibly introduce me to her?" the human asked.

"Of course, darling, just come along with me and I'll take you to her. My name is Rarity, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

"I'm called Vengeful Dead. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Oh, what an... interesting name." she said, as they began walking. "I absolutely love your suit, whoever designed it really knew what they were doing."

"I designed it myself." the human said.

Any doubts Rarity had about this creature were instantly dispelled. Anything that could design a suit like that couldn't be all bad. She was going to get along with this human just fine.

Anathema glided through the forest, held aloft by necromantic energies. He scowled at his master's desire to be civil, of course he had to grow a conscience right now with all these horrid ponies around. Gliding deeper into the forest, he hoped to find something that would be hostile to him.

The Lich stopped in a clearing and looked around, tying to decide where to look next. He was shaken out of his reverie by the sound of thundering foot steps. He turned about just in time to catch their source come crashing out of the undergrowth. A titanic, bipedal, and extremely heavily armed robot came stomping into the clearing. He couldn't quite place it but he knew he'd seen this robot before.

The Lich and the robot stood staring at each other for a while before the robot broke the silence.

"Recognition: You are Anathema, slave to the rotting meat-bag known as Vengeful Dead."

Anathema stayed silent, evidently he'd been right about having met this robot before.

"Inquiry: Have you forgotten me so quickly? I must say I'm disappointed, I remember you very well."

Suddenly the Lich remembered. "Aquila Ignis."

"Exclamation: Ah, so you do remember me! I was beginning to worry the information may have slipped right through your frail meat brain. Frankly I'm impressed that you meat-bags can remember anything with such an inferior memory storage device."

Dark energy began to swirl around the Lich as he began to draw on the Netherworld.

"Explanation: I have been given very strict orders not to attack anything unless my target is hostile. Knowing the history between our respective masters, I am sure I will be justified in destroying you."

"Come then, tin man." Anathema growled, bloated with the energy of the Netherworld. "I will send you back to your master in pieces!"

"Exclamation: Prepare yourself, Lich! Your screams will deafen the black powers you serve!" Aquila Ignis ignited the pilot light on his flame thrower and charged his plasma cannon. "Continuation: There will not be enough of you left for your master to resurrect."
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