She trot from the relative safety of the small room out into the wider world. Stairs led down about a story to a sight that filled her with a strange joy to see. It was a bonfire, but it wasn't lit. The coiled sword pierced the earth, as it had in the other bonfires that could provide her succor.

It felt like the most important thing in sight and she hurried for it in a quick scurry down those winding steps. What surrounded the fire was not comforting. Spikes, skulls, and strangest of all, entire bodies impaled on poles. Each body was emaciated. Many were reaching wantingly for nothing in particular. Some up towards the sky, others for each others. The area had the look of ramparts. She was on a wall, battleworn with rubble and ruin, but a stout wall it remained.

She held out a hoof to that unlit flame, bidden by forces beyond her to want to feel its warmth.

It was enough. The ashes beneath the sword burst into brilliant light, shedding blessed warmth across the area. She felt safer for its presence. "Alright, now where to...?" She looked left and right and saw two major options. Both were flights of stairs sloped downward. They seemed equally viable in the end, so she picked at random. Left.

The stairs were not long, opening out into a courtyard. There were more impaled people, but they were not as interesting as the 'living' ones. Just as thin and pallid, they worshiped in near-silent devotion to the ones that were impaled, as if being lanced had somehow given them divine properties.

Twilight approached carefully, expecting one of the genuflecting beings to turn hostile. "Excuse me?"

They didn't respond, but another creature did, coming from around the corner with an axe clutched in both hands. It had no love in its dead eyes.

Twilight squeaked in surprise, even if she felt silly as she did it. She knew such things would come, though it still surprised her. Her horn glowed brilliantly as she fired bright purple beams into its torso, rocking it before it fell to the ground in a clatter, its axe falling off to the side.

It was dead, the not-moving kind. She could feel its power slipping into her in that seductive way. It wasn't a large pouring, as the guardian of the gate had been, but it was impossible to ignore. She eyed that axe. It looked far stouter than the club she had been using. Sure, it was rusted and pitted. It was still a step up from the small slab of wood she had. She hefted it in her magic grip.

As she gave it a few test swings, another dead person made its presence known. It was dressed in dark rags and held a lantern in one hand. Most important, it screamed. It screamed a haunted wailing that sent all the bowing and groveling undead into little balls of fear.

"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to..." Her words died off as she saw the screaming was drawing the attentions of another combatant. Her words were falling on deaf ears, likely due to that wailing. She smirked to herself at her little joke.

It was a chance to try that axe out. She could blast it, but she only had so much magic. Holding something in her magic expended it far more slowly than arcane bolts. She gave the aged metal a firm squeeze along its hilt, hoping things went well.

The creature did not give her much time to fret as it came rushing at her, a dagger pointing its way forward. It was an enthusiastic but clumsy lunge that Twilight easily jumped to the left to avoid. The undead seemed eager to end her, but had little real ability to do so. They were mindless and awkward. She brought down the axe in a cruel arc. Somehow, she hadn't expected the metal cleaving into flesh to create such a spray of moldering blood.

She cringed and shuddered. Such outright violence was not her usual operation. Was this how things really had to be? The lantern holding undead was approaching, malignance etched in its features. It seemed, yes, that was how things had to be. With a wild swing, she stilled the once-man. The form tried to rise up again and Twilight's lips peeled back in fright as she sank her new blade into the thing's back. It did not move again.

Twilight could feel the faint whispers of power in her. With every thing slain, more 'soul power' brimmed in her... dead body. She shivered from her hooves to her ears at the thought of it. "This is a terrible world," she complained to nopony in particular. "I just want to go home." But asking nicely wasn't going to get her there. She had to find her own way back. She tucked the sword away at her side and let out a slow breath.

"You can do this..." She had done it. She had wielded a great terrible axe. It was surprisingly... easy. She was an axe murderer of the most literal sort. "They aren't... really alive..." They wanted to kill her, but they didn't seem to have any other drive.

She turned to one of the curled up balls of frightened undeath. "Hello?" She reached out and nudged the almost skeletal figure. "I'm not here to hurt you. Can you talk?" No answer was forthcoming but faintly whispered whimpering.

Twilight decided no answers were forthcoming and began looking around. She squealed in surprise when she came face to face with a dragon! It was huge, compared to Spike. It was also dead. Dead dead, not the half-dead of most things she'd run into. "What happened..."

Before she could ponder it long, a sword pierced her side in a flash of pain. She jerked away to find one of the unliving men had snuck up on her with a bloodstained sword. Was that her blood? It seemed likely. She struck it down with a bolt of pure magic and it fell backwards to the ground. Her eyes went quickly to her new injury. It hurt, but it wasn't bleeding. She didn't bleed at all.

Oh right... "You're dead..." She had blood, but it would not flow easily, even when she was stabbed. She pondered taking a sip of the liquid fire she had in that flask to make the pain go away, but she could only hold so much. While painful, it was not a terminal pain by far. She had to be strong!

Her attention slid back to the dragon. Its head rested in the courtyard. Its neck went upwards to a higher place, where its body could be partially seen, unmoving and expired. It was bone white/stone gray in coloring and it was huge and terrifying. In life, Twilight had no doubt it would be a force to be reckoned with. Was it a thinking creature? Did sapience once burn in those eyes? She couldn't know, but she wondered.

Seeing it made her curious. She looked for a way to get up to where its body was and found some stairs going upwards. There were many more worshipping undead, giving quiet worship to the dead dragon. On some small level, it made more sense than the ones that called out to the impaled dead people. The dragon was worth some consideration, even dead. Still, worship of a corpse was unlikely to result in much.

Twilight shook her head as she stepped carefully. She could see a man holding a lantern. He walked with a bit of a shamble. Twilight weighed her options. She could strike first before it shrieked, or she could try to talk to it. Talking had not yielded much in the way of results...

But she was still Twilight. She would not let this cruel world deny her that. She would try talking, even if it was doomed to failure. "Excuse me," she called out to it. "Where are we?"

The undead turned toward her and looked like it was ready to scream, but... it paused. It stared at her as if it had lost its place in life.

"Um, I didn't mean to alarm. Where is this?"

"Where," it gasped out in almost a death rattle. "Where..." It fell to its knees as if presented with a question that shattered its view of the universe. "Why..."

Twilight took half a step back. These undead were so fragile, however hostile they were.

The screaming began. On its knees with lantern held up, it called out to the hostile world as if demanding an answer to the question.

The answer came in the form of two armored and armed zombies that glanced at the screamer before facing Twilight.

"Oh, uh, I didn't mean to..."

They cared little for her excuses and came rushing at her. One had a sword and a shield, the other just a sword. A shield, she would have to consider using one of those, considering how she liked not being stabbed. She tensed in wait until they were close, then dove out of the way past them. They swung at where she once was, their rotting bodies slow to react. They hadn't even the chance to turn around before she brought the axe around in wild and powerful swings in her magic, knocking both to the ground, unmoving and still.

"Here," spoke the lantern holder, rising back up. "We are... here." It seemed satisfied with the answer. "You..." It drew a dagger and came towards Twilight, the question that had plagued it forgotten.

It was sapient. It was a broken sapience, to be sure, but it could speak, and understand. Twilight didn't want to fight it. She didn't want to before, but that feeling was redoubled then. She turn and fled away, back down the stairs. It didn't follow her long. It seemed happy to have chased her away from its starting point, having defending its home from foul invaders, such as Twilight.

She tried to calm herself, letting out a breath as she shivered.

There was something sparkling. Some faint whisp. She approached a body with that shimmer. "Are you alive?" It wasn't. It was very dead. She frowned and looked around. She was sure something was hidden there. She reached with her magic and began searching pockets and patting it down when it popped free. A small wispy thing that was smaller than her hoof. She held it up and peered at it. What was it?

She knew. She stared and she knew. It was a soul of some poor traveler that had met an unkind end. While it remained in that solidified wisp, it would be just as it is, but she could break it, 'kill' it, and then that soul power would be hers to use as she wished. It had little other use.

She tucked it away, unwilling to bring harm to it just yet. "Maybe if I really need it..." She hated the idea of it. When she died, for real, a long time away, maybe peacefully in her bed, she would hope nopony would come bothering her soul, especially in such a violent way. It was wrong.

"This world is wrong," she muttered to herself as she drew her axe free and approached the stairs heading down and into a building with it floating beside her.

She tried to steel herself. She would run into more undeath. She would have to fight. If they didn't attack her, she wouldn't attack them, but she couldn't afford to not fight. Next Chapter: 7 - Spike? Estimated time remaining: 57 Minutes