Desire is clinging to my back with her muzzle in my neck to comfort me during breakfast as she knows I hate having that dream.

"What's the matter, Damien?" Twilight asks me with a worried expression at my slightly depressed mood.

Desire sighs and looks at her. "He had a nightmare, one which he hates."

"Oh..." Twilight just replies and looks down at the bread in her hand.

I smile at her concern for me and pull her against my side making her yelp quietly.

I notice Luna and Selene giving me sad expressions, most likely they saw my nightmare.

"I'm fine, I've gotten over it, though it still makes me sour in the mornings," I tell the purple succupony.

She smiles and snuggles up to me while eating her breakfast again. I yawn and close my eyes, then something is stuffed into my mouth and I look to my right to see Desire pushing a muffin down my throat with a grin.

I just give her a deadpan stare and she giggles before kissing me and shoving her tongue into the mix. I notice the others with mixed expressions but then ignore them and return her affection.

Once breakfast is finished, we pack up and then continue on our way. Along the way we come across a corpse of some strange looking wolf like creature, its fur is a dark green and it's missing a good chunk of its leg muscle and belly.

I hear someone throw up behind me as I frown at the body. Whatever killed it was quite big, maybe bigger than us. The tracks leading away from the corpse show four pawed claws on the ends of its feet, and judging from the pattern, it's a quadruped, most likely a cat species.

"Argh, that's nasty," Rainbow Dash comments as I look towards where the tracks are going. Fortunately, they're not where we're going.

"Let's keep going before whatever did this decides to come back," I say aloud and walk around the body.

The others agree and I look back to see it was Rarity who threw up as she's wiping her mouth with a napkin.

We walk for about four hours before a harpy calls out to us. "Some kind of beast is heading this way!" she says facing behind us.

I turn around and glare at the quadruped, it looks like a four foot tall undead tiger with rotten chunks of fur and muscle hanging off its bones. The face is missing its left half showing its skull while the right side is missing an eye.

I ready the Iron broadsword and shield the alicorns made for me while waiting for it to get closer. I move in front the group ready to intercept it.

Once the tiger reaches me, I swing my shield and bash it in the face mid leap. It tumbles along the floor and quickly twists itself into a standing position. I swing my blade around, feeling the weight in my grip waiting for the tiger's next move.

It starts circling me but I follow it along so it can't get past me to the others. It snarls before suddenly lunging at me where I retaliate with a swing of my sword. I connect and sever its head clean off, which rolls towards the others making Rarity shriek as it surprisingly tries to snap at her.

I look back to the body to see it stumbling to stand up without its head. I drop my sword and summon Thanatos where I quickly impale the body. Thanatos tries to suck out the soul trapped within the corpse but nothing is happening... there's no soul in this body. I frown and decide to reduce both the body and head to ash with my darkfire.

"WHAT WAS THAT!?" Rarity yells hiding behind Spike.

"An undead tiger... I'm thinking it's not the only undead we'll be seeing around here," I tell her and dismiss Thanatos before reclaiming my sword.

"You mean there's m-more of them out there?" Fluttershy asks with tears in her eyes. I guess seeing animals in this state upsets her.

"Most likely," I reply and sigh. "Let's keep moving."

We continue on and the others are now on edge, not only are there predators out here, but undead ones. I guess I see why this is called the Plaguelands now.

It's now nightfall and we've been attacked one other time by an undead gryphon, who seemed more feral than sentient. Desire put it down quickly and I tried to take its soul, only to find this one doesn’t have one as well. I burned the corpse to make sure it stayed down. Now we've set up camp for the night and had dinner.

---

I'm awoken during the night by one of my shadow wraiths.

"Master, a group of undead are coming towards your camp," it tells me in a raspy voice.

I frown and quickly get up, leaving my coat in the tent. My sudden movements wake up both Twilight and Desire.

"Damien? What's going on?" Desire asks me while rubbing her eyes.

"Undead are coming. Get up and get ready for a fight!" I tell them making them both scramble. I step out of the tent and whistle loudly making many of the demons yelp or jump. "ALRIGHT YOU LOT! GET UP AND GET READY FOR BATTLE! WE'VE GOT UNDEAD INCOMING!" I yell very loudly making the others move and arm themselves as I summon Thanatos.

Thunderhorn and Ironhoof step out of their tents wearing crude iron armour and wielding hammers. Scarlet then follows Ironhoof out wielding a cutlass.

Fluttershy's animal demons are now on alert and ready for battle ready to protect her. Shining Armour is wearing a crude iron chestplate and has a sword and shield made from his demonic energy.

The other demons are out and armed waiting for the incoming enemy.

"They're here!" a harpy calls down to us.

In the darkness of the night with just the moonlight to illuminate the land, I see glowing red eyes coming towards us. Barely visible are the silhouettes of gryphons, some ponies, a couple of minotaurs, and many different forms of wildlife.

"Try to destroy their heads! And don't use arrows! They won't be effective against them!" I order my demons and I get a roar of cheers, as well as an eep from Fluttershy.

I hear the snap of Pinkie's fingers and a bunch of bear traps appear on the ground between us and the undead.

The undead suddenly pick up speed and charge at us, the first one -a male minotaur- reaches me and I swing my scythe, impaling its torso through the right side of its rib cage to keep it still while using my left hand to spray it completely in darkfire, getting a horrid screech as it turns to ash.

Ironhoof is next and swings his heavy iron hammer Luna made for him into the other female minotaur whose head explodes from the force.

A lot of the undead step on the traps, setting them off and either breaking their ankles, or cutting off their foot, paw, hoof completely.

Applejack is next and swings a large battleaxe Luna and Selene made for her, the blade slices through an undead gryphon’s head like butter.

Twilight is using her magic to lift up the lighter undead and repeatedly slam them into the ground to break their limbs so they can't move. I take advantage of this and burn all those crippled. Luna and Selene are using their energy made swords to slice the undead up easily while avoiding all their attacks and blasting others at a longer range with their magic.

Desire is using her razor energy whips to dismember her targets.

Shining Armour is using his energy to create barriers and shields to protect Gilda, Rarity, Fluttershy, Dusk Shine, and the harpies as they'll not do much and would be easy to injure or kill.

Spike is using his tough scales as armour to block attacks from the undead horde while using his darkfire breath to turn a lot of them into ash.

The lesser demons are holding their own but a lycan named Fido gets bitten on his left hand by an undead diamond dog, though he continues to keep fighting even with the injury.

I start to conjure darkfire dragons and fire them into the still oncoming horde, they detonate on the grouped up undead, blowing large chunks from some and reducing others to ash.

The battle continues to go on as Luna, Selene, Desire, and I wipe out the majority of the horde while the others finish off what little remained.

Once done and all the corpses reduced to ash, I hear a panicked scream from the lycan that was bitten as his hand is twitching.

"I can't move my paw!" he yells as his hand seems to be moving with a mind of its own. I then realise that's how the undead here work, just like the games and movies back home, one bite and you slowly start to turn due to a virus, fungus, or bacteria.

I take a cutlass from one of the orobas and quickly slice off Fido's infected arm from the elbow down. Everyone gasps at my action and the lycan screams in pain while clutching his elbow.

But to everyone's horror, the hand is still moving and trying to claw its way towards Twilight. She screams as it gets closer as she then blasts it with a bolt of magic destroying the hand while panting with wide eyes.

"So, I think we found out why it's called the Plaguelands..." I say with a frown.

"What?" Twilight asks confused.

"These aren't true undead. They're reanimated with a virus, fungus, bacteria, or possibly an animation spell, it's why Thanatos couldn't take their souls, they don't have one," I reply.

"So you mean if we got bitten, we'll end up like them?" Applejack asks me wide eyed.

"Most likely. Seemed that way with Fido's hand. By cutting it off I prevented it spreading to the rest of his body," I tell her and walk over to said lycan who is now whimpering and use some of my energy to help heal his wound.

"So what do we do about them from now on?" Rainbow asks with her arms crossed.

"We demonlords will deal with them from a distance. I'll use my darkfire to reduce them to ash while the others will do what they can to cripple or destroy them," I reply and head back to the camp after Fido's wound is closed. When we get back to Fel Haven we'll have to figure out a way to either replace his arm or attach a blade to it at least.

I get back into my tent while Rainbow yells at me in protest. "What!? You're just going back to bed when there could be more of them out there!?"

I frown and poke my head out at her. "Yes. My shadow wraiths will warn me if more are coming. Now go to sleep, we're picking up the pace tomorrow!" I order her and she growls at me before stomping off back to her tent.

Desire and Twilight then enter the tent where Twilight looks worried.

"Are you sure we'll be fine?" she asks me.

"Yes. While these zombies are a pain, if I go all out, I can wipe out a lot of them at once and burn some souls to replenish what energy I lose," I reply and lay down. They both snuggle up and don't say another word.

---

---

We've travelled a long way during the past twenty-three days. We've seen some very old ruins of gryphon villages, nothing has really survived out here and our resources are running low. The only reason we still have fresh supplies is thanks to Celestia giving us more food with Pinkie's portal power. Though we had to pay compensation with gold from Desire's pack.

Celestia is also delivering mail from the girls families and receiving new letters from the girls as well. Every time she looks at me with distrust and I honestly couldn’t give a shit.

Our group has also been attacked four more times by large hordes of zombies. I used my darkfire dragons to decimate the majority of them from a distance while Desire, Luna, and Selene used their magic to burn and or cripple the ones I missed.

There were also a few lone zombies or small packs that we came across as well, but they weren't much of a threat.

We did lose Fido though to a large burrowing worm like zombie as it burst from under him and swallowed him whole. We destroyed the worm and Fido's body with it as it would most likely be infected even if he was still alive. The other lycans grieved for the lose of their friend.

Rarity and Spike are getting more and more affectionate in front of us while Twilight is more and more open with Desire and I. She's no longer nervous or shy when she feeds off me now and openly enjoys every "meal" with much enthusiasm.

The succupony named High Tide told us she thinks she's pregnant since she forgot to apply the spell to herself one time. Desire checked her over and she is indeed one week pregnant.

Rainbow Dash is still uncooperative and rebellious, but a good threat of turning her into a mindless zombie gets her in line.

Dusk Shine has decided to become a demon to get his magic back after a lot of convincing from Luna. Unlike Rarity who was awake when her horn was cut off, Luna put Dusk to sleep and then removed his horn. She also asked to be the one to turn him, to which I let her. She bit his arm and poured her energy into him. His fur turned black and his mane midnight blue while his tail lengthened with the heart shaped tip. Two horns grew on his head and his eyes turned icy blue and slitted. For now, he's a lesser demon.

Once he woke back up, he found he could use his magic again as well as start learning to use his demonic magic as well. As for his need for oestrogen, just hugging a female will feed him enough until he's about sixteen when his body will be needing more to survive. So for now, he’s sleeping with Luna and Selene in the same tent where he can feed from them over night while he sleeps.

So, after our long journey, we arrive at what must be the Gate of Tartarus, a large twenty metre tall red double stone door with demonic looking heads along the sides standing in the middle of nowhere... Except there's no guardian defending it.

"Where is the Guardian?" Luna mumbles to herself and I can't help but wonder that myself.

"Dunno, but it doesn't matter. We just need to open the gate and go in!" I say and walk over to the gate.

I place my hand on the rough and ancient stone door and can just feel the energy of Tartarus behind it. Before I could try to open the doors though, a loud ragged roar echoes throughout the Plaguelands.

Looking up, I see a dragon that looks like it's been dead for centuries with bones and muscle showing under some missing scales.

"WHO DARES TO OPEN THE GATE TO TARTARUS!?" it bellows out in a deep raspy feminine tone as it comes in for a landing.

Next Chapter: Chapter 40: Home again Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 53 Minutes