“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” —Albert Camus

Equus Mortis: Malevolence

Chapter One

Maero

The ghost was staring at me through the ice. At least, that’s what the grey pegasus looked like, locked in the frozen river. Within the murky water, the corpse screamed silently. Cloudy eyes half-shut, lips curled back in a toothy rictus. His black mane was spread out like spilled ink.

I had seen frozen bodies many times before back in Manehattan. As one of the many coroners working in the city, it was inevitable that I would have to deal with corpse-cicles popping up every winter. Some were drunks that stumbled into the bay. Others were suicides or mob hits.

In my new home of Ponyville, however, it was very unusual to find such things. One of the reasons why I moved to this quiet town was because of the low crime rate.

Trouble is never too far away from me, it seems. I thought I had left the trauma and drama of the city behind me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The body in the ice was proof of that.

My morgue assistant Flashbulb was taking pictures of the body. He shivered the snow off of his red body as he snapped away. My white fur and black mane and tail made me look almost as spooky as our icy companion, especially with my pony-skull cutie mark.

“Hey, Equus?” a voice inquired behind me.

I turned to see who spoke. It was Big Mac. He had several ponies behind him, all armed with saws, hammers and chisels.

“Yes?”

“Th’ boys are ready. Ah got some unicorns, too.”

I nodded. “Excellent. Let’s get started.”

“How’re yer legs doin’?”

“I’m almost done with the therapy, thank goodness.” Four months ago, I had fought my father, Ivory Mortis, whom Nightmare Moon brought back from the dead. One of the first things he did in his new life was kick me in the head and break two of my legs. After I and the rest of the Mane Six sent him and Nightmare Moon back to the moon, I had to be carried out.

Four months of casts, bedpans and living on a bed. The nurses called the process of getting back on my hooves P.T.. Officially, that stands for Physical Therapy. Unofficially, it’s known as Pain and Torture. The casts were off, but the biting cold made it hard to walk. I felt like an old, brittle mare some days.

Big Mac smiled. “Glad t’ hear it. So what do yew wanna do here?”

“Well, let’s see.” I walked around the body. He was about two hooves from the surface. I looked at the saws Big Mac’s crew had brought. They were crude, large-toothed tools, more suitable for clearing the woods than cutting ice.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “I am Equus Mortis. I’ll be examining this body at the local morgue, so you guys have to cut about three hooves all around the body.”

Several of the ponies moaned.

“I know, I know. Ice is a pain in the neck to cut through any day, but I need to make sure the body doesn’t get any saw-damage from you guys. That, and I don’t want any… bits falling off.”

“Eww!” said one pony, sticking his tongue out.

I keep forgetting that not everypony in town has a cast-iron stomach like mine. The further they dug into the ice, the uglier the body would look. I felt sorry for them.

“Once the body’s been pulled out, you unicorns will load the body onto the wagon by the river.”

The ponies started sawing, trying to not look too much at the corpse.

Big Mac waved me over as he walked away from the others. When we were away from prying ears, he lowered his head towards me.

“Can ah ask a favor?” Mac said.

I shrugged. “Sure. What’s up?”

“It’s Applejack. She’s just not herself no more.”

“I had heard she was really depressed.” Why wouldn’t she be? Her lover, Rainbow Dash, was murdered four months ago. I did Dash’s autopsy. I even attended her funeral, on a hospital bed, no less.

“Depression ah kin deal with. But she’s spendin’ more an’ more time in the graveyard than at home. AJ says she likes you. Mebbe you kin talk to her.”

I almost said that I wasn’t a grief counselor, which is what she really needed. But then I began to hear the desperate tremble in the stallion’s voice. He had just about reached his limit.

“Okay, I’ll have a chat with her. Flashbulb will take over. He’ll show your men where to take the body.”

Big Mac smiled. “Thanks. Ah sure do 'preciate it.”

I nodded and walked towards the graveyard.

While I was healing in the hospital, I would hear about ponies leaving bundles of Forget-me-nots at Rainbow Dash’s grave. Small, five-leaf flowers with petals as blue as the sky. Sometimes white Carnations, symbolizing remembrance, would be placed on her tombstone.

In the winter, neither of these flowers would be available, of course, but a few mourners placed plastic flowers in the snow. Leaving nothing seemed disrespectful to some, I guess.

As I walked through the cemetery gates, I spotted her at the top of the hill. A tiny brown speck amongst snow-capped trees.

When I got closer, my ears flicked. Applejack was talking to herself.

No. She was talking to Rainbow Dash.

I didn’t want to interrupt her at this intimate time, so I kept my distance among the nearby trees.

“Hey, darlin’.” AJ said. “It’s been a while since ah was able to git up here. Can’t help but notice that yer still gettin’ flowers. When spring comes, yer gonna get a big bushel of 'em from me. Ah… ah know you’d like to see that.”

Applejack was brushing the snow off of Dashie’s tombstone with care. “Everywhere ah go, somethin’ or somepony reminds me of you. If ah go to enough places that we’ve been to, it’s almost as if yer still right beside me. Ah guess memories are always at their strongest when yer hurtin’.”

She was right about that. The idea of going back to Manehattan repelled me. Too many streets reminded me of too many bodies in dumpsters and gutters. My father’s corpse, lying in a puddle of his own blood in his apartment, flickered in my mind. I shook that grim memory away.

“It’s a colder world without yew, sugarcube. Ah wake up to an empty bed. Ah sit next to an empty chair in the kitchen. Some days ah find m’self cryin’ and don’t even know it.”

My healed legs were protesting again, so I flexed them a few times. A leg joint popped. AJ’s ears swiveled behind her.

“Is that you, Equus?”

I blushed. “Uh…yeah. Listen, I wasn’t snooping or anything…”

She sighed and gestured me over. “It’s all right. Ah could use the company.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Only Granny Smith’s bones creak like yers. She came up here with me once, before the snows came. Not no more, though. She hates the cold.”

I sat down next to Applejack. We both read the inscriptions on the tombstone.

Rainbow Dash

Always In Flight

She sighed. “When ah sit here long enough, it’s like the world’s in a freeze-frame, y’know? There’s just me and her. Nothin’ else.”

“Big Mac sent me here.”

She looked at me, a brow raised. “Seriously? Did he visit you in the morgue or somethin’?

“I…uh…hate to tell you this, but Apple Bloom found a body in the Sweet Apple Acres river.”

Her eyes widened. “What? When did this happen?”

“A few hours ago. Big Mac and a few volunteers are cutting the body out of the river now.”

She shook her head. “Oh, mah poor sister. Bet she needs some company.”

I thought for a moment. “How long have you been out here?”

“Since dawn, ah guess.”

“He’s really worried about you, you know.”

She studied Rainbow’s tombstone again, as if looking for clues. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m worried about you, too. I know Dashie’s death is hard for you, but…”

“You know why she’s dead?”

“Uh… because Nightmare Moon mind-controlled Pinkie Pie and made her kill Dash?”

AJ shook her head, a circle of snow drifted from the brim of her hat. “It’s because ah wasn’t there.”

I could only stare at her. “What?”

“Ah was supposed to meet Dash in town for dinner. She had been plannin’ a date for us for weeks. Problem is, ah had been workin’ extra hard that day. About an hour before ah was supposed to meet her, ah dozed off in mah bedroom. If ah hadn’t done that… ah…”

She sniffed, wiping away tears. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “Ah shoulda been there!”

I put one arm around her. “There’s no way you could have known what would happen. You can’t…”

“Lovers are supposed t’protect each other! Rainbow Dash meant as much to me as any member of mah family!” She was stamping her hooves, kicking up bursts of snow.

“You can’t torture yourself like this,” I said, rubbing her shoulders.

She glared at me. It was then I noticed her eyes were bloodshot. When was the last time she slept? “Yeah, ah can! My little nap cost me mah girl!” Applejack calmed a little. “Maybe ah deserve to be alone. Ah screwed up…”

AJ looked at the tombstone. “An’ now she’s gone.”

When I lifted my other hoof, she saw what I was doing and beat me to the hug. I could feel her shiver, her tears on my neck.

“Babe, ah’m sorry. Ah’m so sorry.” She whispered.

When she started sobbing, she hugged me even tighter. Those substantial farmer’s muscles made my ribs creak, but I didn’t mind. She had all the grief in the world bottled up and the cork was finally pulled off.

“Death is our life” was my family’s old motto. But death couldn’t stay a part of AJ’s life. Or anyone’s, for that matter. My job as a mortician was to help the living walk away from the graveyard. But how in the world was I going to get Applejack to walk away from her lover’s grave?

When we finally broke off the hug, she sat down in the snow.

“Did you know ah see her in mah dreams?”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Only sometimes it ain’t her. Ah sometimes see that… thing we saw in front of the castle. The one that only looked kinda like Rainbow.”

I try to not think of that ghastly murder-puppet that Nightmare Moon sent out to frighten and demoralize us. The specter sounded like Rainbow Dash (albeit with a glob of phlegm in her throat) and sort of looked like her after her murder.

Skinned head, glistening, bloody nubs where her wings used to be and a hollowed-out gut that she displayed to all of us as if she were showing off a new dress. For the first month of my hospital stay, I had to take sleep-meds in order to keep that ghost from visiting my dreams.

Clearly, Applejack didn’t have that pharmaceutical luxury.

“Oh, the not-Dash.”

Applejack looked at me quizzically. “Not-Dash? Is that what yew call it? Appro, ah guess.”

The subject of ghosts brought back one of my most private memories, one that I never shared with anyone. When I and the rest of the Mane Six got past the not-Dash, I met my father in Nightmare Moon’s castle. When Dad kicked me in the head, I almost died.

Rainbow Dash met me in the outskirts of the afterlife, however. Before she sent me back to the living, she asked me to not tell the rest of the Mane Six that I talked to her. They needed to move on, she reasoned.

After four months, telling Applejack about Dash running interference for me might make things worse. AJ would ask me why I didn’t tell her this ages ago. What would I say to that?

“There’s somethin’ ah’v been meanin’ to ask you, Equus.”

“What’s that?”

“Since we’re talkin’ about the best pony, ah was thinkin’ of somethin’ ah heard after yer daddy popped you in the head.”

“O-kay. And that would be?”

“Yew mentioned Rainbow Dash’s name. And that yew had to… what was it… to tell her something?”

The muscles in my neck clamped as I tried to not swallow, making myself look guilty. Oh, crud. How much, of what was supposed to be the most private conversation anyone could ever have, was heard?

Think fast, Equus. But not too fast. Applejack could sniff out a lie faster than any cop I ever knew. Remember to look her in the eyes when you tell her… anything but the truth.

“I almost died, Applejack. Should have been dead, in fact. Ten percent of my… er… clientele consists of fatal head injuries. I must have had my brains scrambled. It had to have been just crazy talk.”

I blinked.

She blinked.

And then looked away. “All right. If you say so.”

I felt like a dirt-clod for lying to her, regardless of the reason.

The snow began to fall even harder now. She shivered, her teeth rattling. AJ got up and placed a hoof on the tombstone. “Ah’ll see you later, babe.”

We walked out of the graveyard. But only she would be returning.

I don’t visit the graves of anyone anymore. My father’s grave is a distant country, much like my memories of him. I used to love him, or at least respect him. But then he sacrificed himself to Nightmare Moon, leaving me alone. Then, when the dark goddess of the night returned him to Equestria, he tried to kill me.

After he was banished to the moon, I would sometimes look at the now-furious Mare in the moon and wonder if he could see me staring back at him.

I chose to fight my father, to avenge Rainbow Dash’s murder. He chose to fight for a monster who promised to bring my mother back from the grave. He fought for the past. I fought for the future.

We are not defined by what we choose to leave behind, but by what we choose to keep.

As we walked in silence, I could tell that Applejack was returning to that awful night her lover was killed. She chose to keep those memories close to her, to punish herself for a crime she didn’t commit.

And I didn’t know how to snap her out of it.

We parted ways soon afterward. I had to get to the morgue, and she had to go home. She didn’t say goodbye. All of her goodbyes were used up at Dash’s grave. I left AJ alone in her grey misery and I went to go examine another dead pony. Death was on both our minds.

* * *

Some ponies believe that you can just leave a frozen body in living room temperatures to thaw like a tub of ice cream. Well, no. My latest case had to be dealt with in a very specific way. The pegasus that Big Mac and company delivered was placed in a refrigeration unit recently installed in the morgue.

The body was stored in a constant thirty-eight degrees. It would take about a week for the body to thaw. If the thawing process is done too quickly, the outside of the corpse will start to decompose while the innards are still frozen. Any evidence the body might be hiding will be destroyed.

Six days later, Flashbulb and I hauled the now-thawed pegasus out of the fridge. I noticed the grey pony had a flask with a lightning bolt for a cutie mark. He might have been a scientist.

When Flashy took X-rays of the body, we found something lodged in the back of the pony’s brain. It looked a bit like an arrow-head. That alone made this a homicide investigation. There was a solid mass of foreign material in his stomach. Since the X-rays couldn’t penetrate it, I had to assume it wasn’t food. Did this guy swallow a lead ball?

After taking his hoof-prints for the records, we hauled him up onto the autopsy table. We turned him over onto his back. After putting on our masks and gloves, I turned on the tape recorder. After giving the time, date and our names, we got started.

“Subject name: Unknown. Sex: Male. Age: unknown, presumed to be middle-aged due to bodily features. Marital status: unknown. Race: Pegasus.”

Was it just me, or were pegasi dying a lot more often on my watch?

“Fur color: Grey. Wing and feather color: Grey. Cutie Mark is that of a triangular flask with a lightning bolt in it. Mane and tail color: Black. Weight: One hundred twenty pounds. Height: Five feet.”

Flashy took a few more pictures.

“Occupation: Unknown, cutie mark signifying possible scientific occupation. External examination: subject was discovered frozen solid in river ice. Currently body is thawed, but time of death remains undetermined. Bloating of the body suggests subject had been submerged for a week or more.”

I studied round bite-marks around his hooves. Did fish nibble on him? There were carnivorous fish in the Equestrian Ocean that could make these kinds of wounds. It would take about a week for him to float from the ocean to Sweet Apple Acre river, however.

“X-rays indicate a foreign object in the subject’s brain,” I said as I propped up the pegasus’s head with a large block of wood.

I picked up a scalpel and cut a line behind one ear, around the forehead to the other ear. I divided the incision over the top and peeled the skin away from the skull. The front flap drooped over the pegasus’s face; the rear flap went over his neck. His skull was now exposed.

A small electric saw was used to cut a groove around the skull. I carefully pried the skull cap off with a small tile chisel. It may seem odd to some that I was using house-building tools for this, but medical examiners are often forced to work on a budget.

After severing the spinal cord, I pulled the dull grey brain from the skull. I carefully sliced around the brain’s wound. Prying apart the wrinkled hemispheres revealed a shiny aluminum arrow-head. Some of the arrow’s wood remained in splinters.

“An inch-long arrow-head was fired into the rear of the subject’s skull. Water damage to the arrow’s wood suggest that the arrow had broken off in the water.”

Why would anyone shoot this pony and not retrieve the body? Well, my line of work largely consisted of bodies made from crimes of passion. Everypony imagines winning any fight they get into, but no one ponders how long it takes to hide the corpse they made. Much of the time, the body is simply left to rot where it fell.

The wooden block that propped up the head was placed under the body to make the next procedure easier to do. After cutting a large Y-shaped incision that went from the shoulders to the pubic bone, I peeled back the pegasus’s skin. I then grabbed a large pair of pruning shears and cut through the ribs.

I said, “Internal examination: organs are intact with no visible damage.”

The last time I examined a pegasus in Ponyville, it was Rainbow Dash. Her internal organs were yanked out by her killer. This time, I had to do the removal. Once the larynx, esophagus, arteries and ligaments were severed, the organs were trimmed away from the spinal cord and the other organs. After that, it was a simple matter to remove all of the organs at once.

This part of the autopsy always reminded me of those “invisible ponies” fillies get when their parents want them to play with something educational that’s not too disgusting. The plastic organs always end up everywhere except back in the clear plastic body.

“Examining stomach contents.”

I carefully trimmed along the stomach’s side, wary of the gas that had built up from weeks of internal decaying.

What had spilled out stunned me.

After Flashy snapped a picture of what was oozing out like putty, he asked, “Equus, that’s not stomach acid, is it?”

“Nope.” I grabbed a nearby sample jar and filled it up with the stomach’s contents.

“That’s definitely not river or sea water either.”

“I think that’s a safe conclusion,” I replied as I screwed the jar’s cap on.

“Why does that stuff look like liquid rainbow?”

I held the bizarre fluid up to the ceiling lights. It almost seemed to glow. Like magic.

“I have no idea.” I smiled. “But I know someone who might.”

I turned to my assistant. “Twilight Sparkle. I think we need to bring her down here.”

Author's Note

Latin lesson #1 Maero (to grieve, sorrow). Be sure to take notes as these lessons count as half your grade.
Soundtrack for this chapter: "In The Hall Of Ice" by Aghast.