The small town of Woodswatch sat on a fold of land just below a small hill just beyond Fort Horn, and by in large it had escaped the ravages of conflict during the civil war with relative ease. The town had been mostly isolated by the position it held in a relatively peaceful pocket of the Whitetail Woods, and the greater areas of conflict mostly held to the south between Moon and Star, Earthborn and the spider-like intrigues of WhiteGold. Still it had felt the touch of the worst of what had been brought by the conflict, disease, famine, crop failures and banditry had run rampant across the whole of Equestria, and the roads no longer proved to be exactly safe for travel without guards. Asides from desperate groups of refugees and the occasional mercenary band the town did not get much traffic anymore. There had once been a doctor in the region but he had long since disappeared when Moon and Star had conscripted the younger generation for another life-consuming war with the Earthborn, which doubtless ended up getting them no more than six foot of territory. [i]Still, for both sides of the conflict that was enough, another six foot for the corpses to be buried under after all! And the general’s drinks cabinet moved a couple of inches closer to New Ponyville! Progress![/i] The whole town clung to a sense of waving optimism in their peace, a false hope that things improve or change for the better. They had hoped for help from the gods when they had returned, but those that appeared seemed completely disinterested in attempting to create any semblance of the peace once found under the Celestial Diarchy. For Nocturne it was inescapably boring. The Diarchy had once had positions for well verse researchers in the sciences, and Struttgart University had continued in that valiant effort a further decade into the war, but with its conquest by Moon and Star that no longer the case. With the rise of the Moon and Star and its all-but-in-name Theocracy, the sciences had been given a distinctively unicorn centric bent to them, or had their budget redirected to something suitable for the unicorn war effort. Then there had been a mass purge of non-unicorn researchers because they were Untereinhorn or something, which was the reason Nocturnes tufty ears were in a backwater village, rather back in one of the nations prestigious universities. [i]Mind you, that might also have to do with her attempting to vivisect a racist inquisitor and some primitive experiments with electrical currents and illegally acquired severed limbs.[/i] Regardless, the bat pony researcher was stuck dealing with night watchpony duty rather than researching the magical sciences or equine biology. Of course the village had suddenly decided that her purpose would be as a night watchpony on the realisation that bats were both nocturnal and could see in the dark, so she was stuck with it digging into his free time whilst having to wait until day before even getting access to any of the village services. The only upside to this was the fact that the local inn stayed open late and she could get easily plastered due to the low prices of booze, although the sullen environment hardly lent itself to enjoying ones liquor. So she was currently doing her rounds with a bottle of moonshine, wandering around like a drunken bumblebee with no apparently course of direction. A pleasant warm feeling had spread out to the very tips of her wings and she had a goofy smile on her face, pleasantly humming a tune from the Old Country which had something to do with dragons. To call this the most suitable state for a night watchpony to be in would be pushing it, but nobody had bothered to bring it up, and her pay remained stable so she guessed they didn’t really care. Why should they anyway? The town hadn’t been touched much by the war the past twenty years, and even the cult hadn’t turned up to spread its sick “parties” like in some many other towns, it seemed safe. Of course, that night fate decided to spoil what would have been a peaceful night of flying around town until she hit a tree and send her a sudden green lightning bolt and a small scale explosion. She let out a sonar “Eep!” and tumbled out the sky, landing roughly on her back as exploded pinewood began to fly through the air like wooden stakes. She lay there a while, pinned to the ground by a mixture of surprise and fear, simply staring into a murky shadows as a foul smelling fog rose into the air. “What the hell was that?” Her drunken stupor was quickly wearing off due to the adrenaline rush which had coursed through her system. She got back into her hooves, took one look at the glowing green mist and decided it would be a good time for another swig of moonshine. “Maybe it was a meteorite of some kind…” she hypothesised, although she doubted that it could have been anything of the like. Meteorites don’t glow green… or emerge from lightning bolts. As the mist cleared she began to discern shapes in the darkness, as she drew a little closer she suddenly realised they weren’t pieces of wood or broken flaming meteorite debris. They were ponies. Nocturne decided to take a deeper draught of moonshine. They started to advance towards her through the fog and she took one step back, then another, then another. Eventually the first of them breached the fog and she breathed a sigh of relief, it was just a pony, nothing too nightmarish. He had a heavily scarred face, with one eye dulled to a milky orb and a stern frown etched across his face. If he had been dressed any differently she might have mistaken him for a common bandit, but the clothes spoke of some level of wealth, even though they were rather worn down by continued travelling. [i]Some sort of nomadic aristo?[/i] She wondered. The other two figures emerged behind the well dressed aristocrat, a huge cloaked earth pony which looked twice the size of even the biggest of the tinpot chargers of the Earthborn, and a small beige unicorn foal in a wheel chair. Another long drink of booze was needed. The aristo hadn’t noticed her yet, doubtless it was too dark and gloomy, and for a moment she considered just going on her way and ignoring the whole incident. [i]… Nah fuck that, this is the most interesting thing to happen all year.[/i] So she plucked up her courage, put her best smile on, and waved at the figure through the darkness. “Hello!” [center]***[/center] The teleportation had occurred without a hitch apparently, and hopefully the basic intent behind the ancient language hadn’t transported him anywhere strange. It seemed as if he had been blasted through the sky into some sort of pine forest, which hopefully was where Woodswatch was, as he remembered there had been a pine forest there too. The thick smog caused him to cough a little as he emerged and scanned the surrounding area, but it was making it somewhat difficult for him to get a clear idea where he was. He could see lights in the distance and presumed it was some sort of local town or village of sorts, hopefully the right one. Only then did he realise he was still using his magic to levitate what was left of the unicorn horn, he promptly ended the magical stream and what was once a cone shaped pile of dust flew away on a nightly breeze. “Hallo!” The shout startled him out of his revery and he looked around panicking for the source, his eyes scanning the surround woods. Eventually they picked up on something, two huge luminous eyes which stared at him curiously from the darkness. [i]Oh lord please don’t tell me that Nightmares have learned long range teleportation spells since I was gone.[/i] He shot up an orb of light at the location of the eyes and the figure let out a small bat-like squeak of surprise. To his relief he the orb showed nothing more than a bat pony, temporarily blinded by the sudden source of light. [i]Wait… a bat pony?[/i] “Oh by Celestia’s golden tits please don’t tell me I accidentally teleported to the Deep North!” “Vhat? Nein you are shtill in Equestria you silly pony, dis is Voodsvatch.” “Oh thank goodness me, I thought I’d gone right off course… speaking of directions however, how come a Bat pony is in a small town like this? I thought your people had retreated to the mountains after the sisters disappeared.” “Ach, I ended oop shtuck here after de purging af Struttgart University und Medical School, de outbreak af de Var made travel unsafe und I couldn't find a flock to go back to de alt Country vith.” “How far did you get in to your degree? “I vas a third year shtudent at medical school, vould haf finished if not for ze var und an incident vit an inquisitor vich ended op expelling me before de purges.” “What was the incident?” Nocturne chuckled, “Vivisection.” Scalpel gave her a look, trying to figure out whether she was serious or not. Realising she was his face lit up in a warm, if slightly creepy smile. “I think we will get on just fine… say… are you looking for employment?” [center]***[/center] “Well this escalated quickly” mused Nocturne, slightly amused at the turn of events. “Indeed.” “So explain to me again why we are digging up fresh corpses in the town’s local graveyard?” queried the Bat Pony as she dug into the earth with a spade next to the gigantic figure of the Earth Pony. The giant hadn’t said a word since she had met the Doctor – who actually hadn’t given her an actual name besides his title- and she was beginning to doubt the actual living creature of the robed creature. “Mostly because you happened to follow me, and weren’t averse to lending a hoof, otherwise because I seem to be your new employer” replied the Doctor, who seemed to be readying certain serums and chemicals injecting into the corpse. “Are you sure this corpse is fresh?” “Winters? Sure, fresh as a daisy, they only plumbed him in a couple of hours ago.” “Fantastic.” “So, what? You are some sort of Necromancer?” “Necromancer? Ha, no. Necromancers just seek to reanimate the flesh with a predetermined purpose, there is no conscious decision making being done in the creatures they raise, only simplistic the directives fed to it by the creator. What I wish to do is more complex, I want to return some level of individualism and consciousness to the body and not have it rely on my magic alone to sustain it, in essence I guess am a resurrectionist, among other things.” “Still sounds like Necromancy to me.” “Suit yourself, I used to do it through other means, but the dust just got everywhere and they tended to get antsy and rebellious” grumbled the doctor, levitating one of the needles and letting a fountain of serum spout forth to check for damage or blockage. “If you didn’t sound so serious there I’d swear you were pulling my wing.” “Please, I am terrible at jokes.” With a loud thud the spades hit the coffin and Nocturne and the big pony began to clear away the last of the dirt. The Doctor levitated both of them crowbars and they quickly began to rip out the nails with little effort. With the finally nail removed the doctor unceremoniously lifted the coffin lid and cast it aside. The doctor eyed up the corpse critically, To Nocturne it seemed to be in good condition, if a bit pale, she assumed tuberculosis was what had finally done the young pony in. Whoever had prepared the corpse for burial had done an excellent job, perhaps she’d look them up sometime. “Hmmm… Yes, this will do nicely.” [center]***[/center] Scalpel kicked in the door to his old laboratory and walked in with the corpse lying horizontal over his back. He looked around his old abode and felt a twinge of nostalgia for past experiments and better times. The place looked quite dusty, and for a moment he hoped for a sudden appearance of that bonkers Alicorn some ponies worshipped who was a supposed god of cleanliness… still, at least this proved that the old defensive spells were still active. Scalpel wandered over to an old dissection slab, casting a minor cleaning spell as he did so and levitated the corpse onto it in preparation for future experiments. The Bat Pony was busy looking around, relatively intrigued by the complex and seemingly insane contraptions of this older version of his Trottingham labs. She had a dark grey coat, which was highlighted by a pair of bright green catlike eyes and a cream coloured mane, her cutie mark seemed to suggest she was also a surgical practitioner, although there was suggestions of biochemistry as well. Silver had to admit however, she did have cute ears, for some reason the tufts made her look sort of adorable, in a weird sort of “hiding-the-fact-that you-tried-to-cut-a-pony-up-alive-for-science” kind of way. She hadn’t even blinked once when he offered to hire her, not even when they started digging up grave and he talked about resurrectionism and necromancy. This sort of stuff usually sent ponies running for the hills, but she had just sort of shrugged impassively. Something told him that they were going to be best of friends. “So Vhat happens now?” she queried, slowly circling the lab by wing in apparent interest, trying to familiarise herself as much as possible with the new location. Silver crossed to a metal lever built into the wall, and enveloped it in the glow of his horn. “Now?” He pulled the switch suddenly and slowly the lab generators and machinery began to power up again after a year of silence. He was glad that he had gone to the trouble of creating those long term crystal batteries now. “Now we practice science!”