Heading east was unexpectedly easy. Rather than checking for a direction every now and again, Eclipse and Sagebrush simply kept running in the direction that townspeople were coming from. The town itself was filled with buildings that varied between one, two and three stories tall, occasionally with some business or store at the bottom with the upper floor or floors being the owner’s living space. The roads were either dirt or cobblestone, depending on what street you were on.

As for the people who lived in Braycover, there wasn’t a mass panic, but a smooth, slow progression away from the action taking place. Either it was ridiculously easy to get used to being attacked by undead, or the Braycover Guardsmen were really good at their jobs.

Hearing the sound of buzzing overhead, Eclipse glanced to Sagebrush, who nodded in response. The two looked up, seeing Thorn accompanied by a pegasus guard.

“We have found where the Guard and the undead have met.” Thorn relayed, landing as the pegasus he was with trotted forward. “The guard is setting up defensive locations while fending off the first few undead.”

The pegasus took a step back. “Can’t say we were expecting more mercs to arrive. If you’re as willing to lay the hurt on the undead as the last two are, the commander’ll likely give you some reward for the help.”

Eclipse nudged Sagebrush. “Maybe we can get some info about all this from those ‘other mercs.’ I don’t doubt that they’ve gotten more personal with the dead guys than most of the regular guard.”

At the pegasus’s glare, Eclipse raised a hoof. “Relax, I said ‘most.’ If you’ve fought them and are still standing, more power to you.”

The pegasus scuffed the ground with a hoof, looking away from Eclipse. “…Right. So, Thorn, which way to get there?”

The changeling took off, leading Eclipse and Sagebrush through the streets while the pegasus tailed them.

After several turns and streets, they finally came to the side of town. A handful of damaged or destroyed buildings looked as if they had been randomly dropped onto the area, and otherwise flat portion of land stretching away from Braycover. The guards had set up several quick defenses, ranging from palisade walls to short towers where crossbow firing members had been plying their trade. Two of the ruined buildings had also been turned into makeshift forts, with bows, crossbows and magic users taking residence on the roofs and poking out of the upper windows while ponies, griffins and minotuars guarded the lower levels with spear, sword and axe.

By rough estimates, there were around forty to fifty Braycover guards, with a only a handful more, if any, due to arrive. The undead horde outnumbered the guards almost two to one, relying on numbers where they lacked skill.

The undead were rather stereotypical in appearance, ranging from shambling, half rotted corpses to full fledged walking skeletons. They were of every species that seemed to populate Braycover, possibly even from the town’s own cemetery, if it had one. A few were grotesquely misshapen or sewn together, likely experiments of some twisted sort as their creator tried to enhance their power.

The first few undead had only just reached one of the makeshift forts the guards had made, most of them falling to ranged attacks while the few that survived were held off by the melee guardsman. Close to the edge of the emergent battle, Aranna and Dust Demon were hacking through the undead that were still shambling about, though the larger horde was beginning to close in.

It only took a few minutes to for Eclipse and Sagebrush to arrive, just in time for Aranna to lop off the head of a zombie pegasus that had already taken several stab wounds without falling. “Not going to lie, they like to struggle.” Aranna grunted, turning to the two earth ponies. “Watched a skeleton I killed put itself back together. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my sword barely did anything to it.”

Sagebrush turned to the approaching horde. “That doesn’t sound fun. Eclipse, think you can even the odds?”

“Pssh, easy.” Eclipse chuckled. “Wide scale destruction is way easier than just locking onto a single target. The only problem is that I don’t have the power to make a blast big enough to wipe out all of them, just small clusters. They’re way too spread out.”

Dust Demon threw off the zombie that had latched onto him, giving it a few good slashes with his wingblades before letting a pair of guards finish it off. “I remember Appleloosa. You made an entire storm appear over the whole town. You were using lightning to knock out pegasi like it was nothing.”

“Yeah, and afterwards I passed out. Only a few days later and five different people were giving me hell about it. Using magic until you feint can have serious consequences, both for the user and everyone around. Considering what I dish out, unless the people of Braycover would like to take a chance on their town either being replaced by a crater or turned into Discord’s wet dream, dropping a magical bomb on those guys shouldn’t be something I do.”

“We would like to avoid both of those situations.” A nearby minotaur said, raising a hand.

“Yeah right.” A unicorn scoffed. “Nothing against earth ponies, but last time I checked, magical talent isn’t one of their -- what happened to my armor!?”

“It’s a clown costume.” Eclipse said, stating the painfully obvious. “I thought you’d like being a clown, now.”

“Turn it back!”

Eclipse gave the idea some thought. “Hmm… no.”

As the guard ran off to replace his armor, Eclipse looked around. “Didn’t I hear that there were mercenaries around here? Why is it just us?”

The minotaur from earlier pointed towards the other building that had been turned into a fort. There, a heavily armored unicorn was wielding a massive lance on their right side. Swinging the weapon in a wide arc, the unicorn scattered the last remaining skeleton. They were fully covered in armor from head to hoof, including a small plate over the front of their horn, with a metal spike over the tip. It was impossible to tell the gender of the warrior from here. The pitch black armor did little to help.

After the warrior was done, another unicorn stepped out. He was white with a dark yellow mane and a tattered brown cloak covering most of his body. Casting a few spells, the unicorn gathered what salvageable remains he could of the undead and reconstructed them, turning them into support for the Braycover guards. All the guards put some distance between themselves and the new undead, but they had obviously been fighting alongside them for some time.

“The necromancer is a good guy!” Eclipse said, hoof pumping up, into the air. “Dark isn’t inherently evil and light isn’t always good! Now we just need to find out where the evil undead are coming from. My money’s on some priest gone crazy, who’s with me?”

“Might want to grab that cash back, before someone else snatches it up.” The minotaur said, pointing to the far side of the undead. “Whoever they are, they always sit and watch the show, but we’ve never managed to take them down and nobody’s come back from tracking them to their lair.”

There, sitting behind the horde of walking corpses sat a figure obscured by an unnaturally thick shadow from a tree. Some few hundred feet behind the figure stretched the forest that bordered Braycover, as well as serving as a natural barrier between the Coalition and the Minotaur Kingdom.

“They’ve been using that forest to hide out in.” The minotaur grunted. “Who ever they are, they spent some time learning the area. The one time someone got close, they damn near got gutted. Still a gamble on whether they’ll survive.”

Eclipse scratched his head. “I have an idea. It’s simple, but…”

“You’re going to just charge right through the undead, aren’t you?” Aranna deadpanned.

“Indubitably!”

Thorn opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it.

Eclipse glanced at the group around him. “Just gonna go charging in…”

“Kay.” Sagebrush said, rolling one of his shoulders.

“Uh… no one’s got any other ideas?”

Thorn shook his head. “None I would like to share at the moment.”

“Just going to let me go, huh?”

None of the Braycover guards dared say anything.

“Are you guys sure about--“

Aranna pointed at the horde. “MOVE IT!”

“For Narnia!” Eclipse screamed, sprinting full tilt towards the horde. He was pumping magic energy forward, turning himself into a very powerful bulldozer.

Several bones, severed limbs and even a full zombie minotaur were sent flying as soon as Eclipse hit the first ranks of the horde, plowing a path by trampling what he couldn’t bash out of his way.

“I want to meet Narnia.” One of the guards muttered.

“Sounds like a hell of a woman.” Another agreed.

Aranna frowned. “Who is Narnia, anyway?”

Dust Demon shrugged. “Heard him yammering about it to Feather Duster a while back. I think it’s a game or something.”

“He told me about it.” Sagebrush added. “It’s a book series that later got a few movies.”

Aranna turned to Thorn. “You were going to say something earlier?”

Thorn smirked. “Our observer is not sitting under that tree. Eclipse is charging into a trap.”

The guards jumped. “What!?” One screamed. “We have to help him!”

“He will be fine.” Thorn said, motioning for the guards to take a seat. “Stay and observe.”

“That has got to be the craziest fool I’ve ever seen.” The necromancer muttered to his lance wielding companion.

The darkly armored paladin shifted on her hooves, grumbling under her breath.

“I can get behind the black armor, but giving someone the death glare I can feel you giving that stallion isn’t very fitting for someone so heavily focused on light magic, now is it?”

“Don’t give me that rot.” She responded, a minor threat underneath her words. “You’re a necromancer devoted to protecting life. You have no room to judge.”

“Maybe.” He chuckled. “Doesn’t change the fact that you tried to kill me a few days ago. 'Something something, all who desecrate the sanctity of life, blah blah, die in holy fire.'”

“I do not sound like that.” The mare indignantly decreed. Though she added “…and it was ‘be purged in holy fire.’” as an afterthought. “Besides, do you not feel the energy roiling off of him?”

The stallion cast a brief glance towards the charging stallion before returning his gaze to the paladin. After a second long pause where he processed what he had seen in that glance, the necromancer turned back to the stallion currently tossing aside every undead in his path as he made way towards the figure behind the horde.

“Stars above!” He muttered, saying a short incantation and firing off a magical detection spell, instantly finding the energy the paladin had been speaking of. “…Chaos magic. That must be fun to have.”

The Black Paladin shivered in her armor. “First a necromancer, then a changeling and a chaos user show up with three other mercenaries, and they all seem to have good interests at heart. This world has truly gone mad.”

“Take a close look at that griffin.” The necromancer, Vitamort, replied.

Sacred Lance, a.k.a. ‘The Black Paladin,’ fixed Vitamort with an angry glare, then turned her attention to the griffin. It was difficult for her at first, but when she finally felt it, she jabbed her lance into the earth and loosed a stream of curses and obscenities.

Vitamort rolled his eyes. “Pure of heart my tail.”

Eclipse charged forward, ramming a skeleton and scattering it’s body from the impact. He was almost through to the other side and hadn’t even broken a sweat yet.

“Just gotta make this quick.” He grunted, blowing aside a pair of undead that had ended up in his path. “Just be smart, yeah? Don’t scream about inevitable victory or you’ll embarrass yourself. That’s the rule.”

A skeletal griffin appeared in front of him, firing a bow just as Eclipse registered the undead. Having no time to dodge, Eclipse crossed his forehooves over his head, lowering them only when he heard a sharp ptang as the arrow bounced off of his bracers.

“Wow. These things just immediately started earning their keep.” Continuing his charge, Eclipse knocked the skeleton archer’s head off as he passed.

He broke through the last few ranks of walking corpses, turning just slightly to make sure he was headed directly for his target as he continued forward with only a few dozen feet to go.

He pulled a hoof back and leapt forward, jumping the gap between himself and his target, still obscured in the unnaturally thick shadow. His back hooves touched the ground first, digging into the dirt as best they could while Eclipse sent his upper body into a twist as he punched, hoping to maximize force.

His hoof passed cleanly through the target, dissipating the illusion it had been composed of and sending Eclipse off balance, as he had been expecting resistance. He tumbled and fell to the earth, coughing and shaking his head as the dust he had stirred up settled.

Standing up, he had only a split second to notice the glowing runes that had appeared underneath his hooves before the ground erupted in a deafening explosion.

His eyes blurred and the world went silent for a moment, followed by a flash of pain through his body as he presumably landed on something.

When he came to enough to make out shapes and colors, Eclipse realized that he was laying in a pile of wooden debris. It was the remains of a section of palisade wall the guard had set up, now in splinters across the ground.

Eclipse groaned as the pain returned, his body slowly recovering from the blast. He made out someone waving something in front of his face. Shaking his head, his vision eventually cleared enough to see Dust Demon standing over him, waving his hoof in an attempt to get Eclipse’s attention.

The stallion’s lips moved, but it took some time before Eclipse could make out any words.

“…out of …You can do it. Just listen … ya hear? You ain’t dead yet and you ain’t gonna be.”

Eclipse groaned loudly. “Painkillers. Ice. Soft bed. Hot nurse. All of them. Now.”

“He’s fine.” Dust demon chuckled.

“The hot nurse may be any gender of any species.”

Dust Demon pulled Eclipse up, much to the chagrin of the latter.

“Auuuuugh. I won’t be walking in the morning.” Grimacing, Eclipse felt his back pop several times as he stretched it. “Might not even be moving at all.”

To one side of him, Eclipse saw Sagebrush, Thorn and Aranna, while at his other side stood the necromancer and armored warrior he had seen earlier. Members of the Braycover guard were scattered around, though most of them were watching the undead horde fall back, into the forest.

The necromancer was struggling to contain a fit of laughter, but the warrior standing next to him seemed to just seethe quietly.

“Any gender of any species, he says.” The white unicorn guffawed. “You could learn something form this one, Lance.”

“I told you to call me by my full name or first name only.”

The necromancer mockingly saluted. “As you command Paladin Sacred Lance.”

Eclipse had been too preoccupied with rolling his jaw to check for damage to notice this exchange. Luckily, he had caught the tail end of it as he had finished and heard the paladin’s name. “H -- Oh, fuck ow that hurts… -- hey. I’m -- I think I have a splinter in my spine -- Eclipse.”

“Vitamort.” The necromancer greeted. “And Lance.”

The paladin gave Vitamort an angry glare, but otherwise ignored him. She stepped forward, taking off the armor on her lower forelegs. This exposed a pair of light gray hooves that were crisscrossed with darker skars. “Where is the pain greatest?” She asked.

Eclipse grit his teeth. “It’s, uh, pretty even all around. A perfect confection of hurt that any baker would be proud of.”

Vitamort started laughing again.

Sacred Lance gently pressed down on Eclipse until he lowered himself to the ground. She muttered a few words under her breath and her horn briefly lit with a light blue aura. The energy traveled from her horn to her hooves, before it slowly faded into Eclipse’s back, where she had made contact.

Eclipse shivered, feeling like the magic was tickling him as light blue streaks stretched over his body and faded to nothingness, leaving only a chilled sensation in their wake.

Stretching his hooves and body, Eclipse was pleasantly surprised to find that the only pain he felt was a dull throb, though it still covered most of his body. “What was that? I’ve had a few healing spells cast on me but that was something different altogether.”

Sacred Lance didn’t say anything, just put her armor back on and started walking into town.

Sighing, Vitamort shook his head. “She’s just like that, I think. Haven’t known her very long and she isn’t gonna make small talk with me anytime soon.”

“Why?”

“Necromancy, even for a good cause, isn’t something she holds in high regard.”

Eclipse frowned. “Then why’s she treating me the same way?”

Shaking his head, Vitamort chuckled. “Your chaos magic. I actually think she has it out for almost any kind of magic that has a bad reputation. Might just be paladin training or something. Don’t let it get to you. Instead, come with me to the hotel I’m staying at and maybe we can talk some more.”

Sagebrush shrugged when Eclipse looked at the group. “It’s not like we have anything else to do.”

Nodding, Thorn voiced his agreement. “I concur. This could be an excellent information source for us.”

Seeing that Aranna and Dust Demon didn’t have any input, Eclipse nodded. “Hotel it is.”

Vitamort grinned. “It’ll be nice to have someone who doesn’t look at me funny just for the magic I practice.”

Dust Demon chuckled. “With the stallion we’ve got as the closest thing to our leader, we can’t really judge anyone, now can we?”

Author's Notes:

Seriously, chapter 50. And with a 3/1 like-dislike ratio.

Honestly thought I'd end up shutting it down before chapter ten. Whelp, now the plot's gone convoluted and I'm still pretending it all makes sense. Let's see how many give up when the big bad of the story finally gets face time in a few chapters. (Hint: they technically already have and Eclipse is going to have a fit when he realizes who it is. No, not Feather Duster.)