LYRA HEARTSTRINGS ― REANIMATOR
A My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic/ H.P. Lovecraft Crossover Fanfiction
By Norman Steel
I
FROM THE DARK
OF LYRA HEARTSTRINGS, WHO HAS BEEN MY FRIEND SINCE WE MET IN COLLEGE, I speak of with some apprehension. Now that is not because she is an inherently bad or evil pony, but because of the nature of the experiments we have performed together. I suppose I should start with where the story truly begins ― in a little known town called Arkham in the Miskatonic Valley. We met at the Miskatonic University Medical School, where we both noticed that we were the only ponies there without medicine-related cutie marks, and as a result, became close friends. However, one day, Lyra was overtaken with a strange obsession, namely, the resuscitation of the dead. The things she did were sometimes shocking even to me, and I was her assistant in these strange endeavors.
It started when Lyra began to have strange ideas about the nature of death itself. Theories of the possibility of reanimation were nothing unusual when they came from Lyra’s mouth. She believed that life was mechanical in nature, and had come to the conclusion that it could return from the abyss of death through chemical means. Naturally, these views brought her much ridicule from the professors for how fantastical it all sounds. For some reason, I, foal that I was, always supported her in her arguments. Oh how I wish I had left her when the ideas came forth, perhaps my sanity would have been spared! But I could not abandon her, for she was my closest and dearest friend. A shame that even after all those years… well, I shall get to that later.
In any case, the dean, Dr. Allan Stallsey, barred Lyra from any laboratory work with cadavers, for fear that she would use her profane potions to restore life to them. At first Lyra wanted to bring ponies back from the brink of death, which the professors allowed. But when she realized that she could not do that, she began experimenting on truly dead animals, hoping for very fresh corpses so as to prevent brain damage. She was only barred when she requested a real deceased pony to reanimate. Needless to say, this did not stop the pair of us, and I say us because I was her inseparable laboratory assistant.
I remember well the first time we tried to bring a pony back to life. He was a young, strong recently deceased unicorn stallion who had died of sudden cardiac arrest after working himself far too hard on his farm. We went to the Potter’s Field the night after he was buried. We dug him up and carried him to an abandoned barn ― a location I had decided on. We laid him out on the table we had set up during the day. Lyra injected the chemical she had prepared directly into his brain. We waited. It was an hour before the visible signs of life began to return to the handsome stallion’s face.
Lyra excitedly exclaimed “Bon Bon my friend, we’ve done it! We have changed the field of medicine forever!”
Unfortunately, Lyra had become excited too soon. For when the body displayed consciousness, we could see that its intelligence was somewhat below that of a sentient being. We were stunned as the living corpse ― for truly that is what it was ― lifted itself up and staggered out of the barn. We considered catching it, but that would draw far too much suspicion.
The next day, the morning paper reported that the young workpony’s grave had been disturbed, lightly scratched as if somepony had tried to dig it up with their bare hooves. We had restored a pony to life the previous night. Granted, it had been severely brain-damaged, but it was a start, and especially surprising considering that it was the first pony we had ever tried to resuscitate. Lyra was convinced that we only needed two things: an improved serum and fresher specimens. But there was one detail of the experiment that I left out, for I was afraid to write it. This part haunts my dreams even today, all these years later, so I hope you will forgive my hesitance to tell you. We actually saw the body open its mouth and heard it utter a sound. But it was not a sound that any pony or other living thing should be able make; rather, it was the hellish cry of the dead!
II
THE PLAGUE-DAEMON
The summer after our terrifying experiment with a dead stallion, a plague broke out in Arkham. This was no ordinary epidemic, however, for this disease was none other than the dread Black-Hoof Fever. The disease is not so much of a threat today, but this breakout was the last before a vaccine was invented. Lyra and I were still at the university that summer, doing post-graduate work in the medical school’s hospital.
Earlier in the school year, the dean, Dr. Allan Stallsey, had put a stop to our grotesque work, at least on university grounds. We still continued in our pursuit of my companion’s strange goal of achieving full reanimation of the dead. We continued to slaughter many small creatures for the sake of the mint-green unicorn’s tests. I saw my dear friend inject the elixir into the veins of these dead animals, and I saw them partially alive again, and only after we had fully brought a little white bunny fully back to life did we test it on a pony. The results came short of our expectations, but Lyra was convinced that the body just was not fresh enough, causing the brain to be too decayed to restore sentience. Ever since then, however, Lyra had become a bit paranoid, she frequently looked over her shoulder as if she thought somepony was following her. I figured she was just getting paranoid that somepony would discover our continued experiments. For a while, Lyra dropped her obsession with reanimation, as if that damned bellow we heard the corpse cry had frightened her out of her passion.
Eventually, however, the reanimator’s scientific zeal had returned. She asked that she be able to use the laboratory for her continued experimentation, but Stallsey’s decision was inflexible. However, when the plague broke out, it meant two things as far as my partner’s work was concerned. The first thing it meant was a ready supply of fresh bodies for testing. The second thing it meant was that Lyra and I could sneak into the laboratory of the school and try to combat the death toll in our own way, as all the professors were to busy to monitor the university as they all raced to find a cure or a preventative measure to the dreaded Black-Hoof Fever. We significantly improved the serum to the point where Lyra believed it was perfect, and that the only problem was that the bodies were not fresh enough to allow for full reanimation. We began to seek extreme freshness in the bodies, to get them as quickly as possible to rescue them from death’s icy grasp. We were, however, ultimately failing.
The research team, on the other hoof, was making good progress, and had come up with the vaccine to the fever after two months of the outbreak. A week afterwards, the last victims of the disease had died, for everyone else had already been inoculated against the infection. This however, was only a precursor to the true horror which would come the very next day, however, a horror which I helped to usher in!
The very last victim of the fever had been an enemy of Lyra’s propositions and worked at the university. We had to admit, that even though he had been our opponent, he had a brilliant mind and it would be shameful to let that go to waste. So we acquired his body as quickly as we could and dragged it into the attic of our small home. The green-coated reanimator injected her serum into the corpse and hoped it was fresh enough. An hour later, our former opponent began to stir. He did not, however, have anything coherent to say, rather, he merely uttered a horrible moan and attacked me. My golden-eyed companion tried to fend off the monster, but it managed to knock us both unconscious and take several bites from our flesh. We woke up the next morning in hospital beds, covered in bandages. There were two morning newspapers on the table in between our beds. It read as follows:
Cannibal Monster Attack Last Night
Late last night, a madstallion attacked two recent medical graduates, Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon, who are currently recovering in the hospital. The insane pony then wandered outside and devoured a young filly and her mother. Soon enough the whole town was in uproar trying to apprehend the fiend. The monster was eventually captured and placed in Arkham’s local asylum for the insane. It was however, when the crazy stallion’s face was cleaned that the horrible irony of the situation was realized: the madpony bears a striking resemblance to Arkham’s late hero, Dr. Allan Stallsey, who died of a weak heart caused by overworking himself to develop the vaccine which saved this town from the dreaded Black-Hoof Fever. It is not known where this pony came from, or who he is, but we will probably never get an answer, as the monstrous stallion seems incapable of speech.
What I heard Lyra say after she read the article was almost as disturbing to me as the article itself: “Confound it. It wasn’t quite fresh enough.”
III
SIX STOMPS BY MIDNIGHT
It is unusual for a pony to stomp on a skull six times when two or three is enough for the hard hoof to fracture it. Then again, when it came to my companion Lyra Heartstrings, many things were unusual. We had left Arkham after that strange summer outbreak and attack. We moved to a small town called Appleoosa, perhaps you’ve heard of it. Lyra and I had set ourselves up as the local doctors there. We were running a successful little office where we patched up injured ponies.
We chose the location of our house because of how close it was to the Appleoosa graveyard. We would often take fresh bodies and try to bring them back to life. However, the brains were always just too decayed to allow for anything more than a few hours (at most) of animalistic life. So far, we had only been successful in reanimating two specimens permanently, neither of which quite had pony-level intelligence. Our first attempt had warranted a resuscitated workpony with the approximate intelligence of a rodent, who had wandered off without either of us hearing from him again. After many failed attempts at bringing more ponies back from death’s gates, we had brought back a pony who had been a brilliant mind in life, but came back as a carnivorous monster with the estimated intelligence of a fish. This second “success” was currently locked away in a padded cell in Arkham’s insane asylum.
It had been hard for us to find work, for we were inseparable friends, and would have to work together in the same place. There were not many openings for two amateur doctors who did not even have medical cutie marks, but our university’s influence eventually gained us a home at Appleoosa, where we now worked.
Many a morning we injected Lyra’s miracle serum into the brains of ponies, continually failing, but we were convinced that we just weren’t getting the bodies soon enough. Their brains were too decayed to support the delicate living machine. One day however, in Appleoosa, we did achieve somewhat of a success. One pony who had died in an applebuck accident came back with sentient intelligence, but died again after a few minutes. The pony’s back had been broken by a fallen branch, so we believed that a body in more perfect condition would yield better results.
One night however, it seemed like our luck had changed. The mint-green unicorn and I were attending a boxing match between a large earth pony and a strong looking donkey. The match, however, was over when the earth pony’s back hooves struck the donkey in the head –CRACK– and the lesser equine was dead. Of course, Lyra and I did not allow anypony to believe this as we dragged the “unconscious” corpse back to our medical practice.
We injected the life serum into the donkey’s brain and watched as he came back to life. He seemed fully sentient as we let him leave. Or so we thought, so great was our excitement.
The next day came and there was no news of the revived boxing donkey. In fact, the only news for that day was that a young colt had gone missing. Naturally his mother was frantic, but the rest of the town figured he would be back before dinner time. While Lyra was busy reading a book, I decided to look for the donkey whom we had saved. He was nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t until that night that we saw the boxer again. The door to our study was broken down as a reanimated creature walked in. He was certainly no longer the rational being we had released from our office the previous night. Apparently he had suffered some sort of lapse into insanity, probably as a result of the damage he had taken to his brain before we revived it, and devoured somepony, judging by the blood around its mouth and the small hoof hanging out. I felt sickened as I realized what had happened to the young colt. I had little time for pity, however, as it was now attacking me!
However, before it could approach me, a mint-green hoof smacked it in the back of the head, stunning it. Lyra then proceeded to knock it down with a second stomp. As it lay on the ground, dazed, Lyra reared up and stomped on its head a third time with both of her front hooves, which was almost certainly the blow that killed it. However, Lyra proceeded to stomp on the now bleeding head three more times, and after the sixth blow, the skull was crushed under my friend’s hooves. I noticed the cold, saddened look in her golden eyes and resolved not to ask her why she had been overly brutal, for I knew her reasons.
IV
THE SCREAM OF THE DEAD
After the incident in Appleoosa, too many accusing hoofs were pointed at my companion Lyra Heartstrings and I. As a result, we decided to move to Canterlot. We did not know what to do once there, for there were already multiple successful doctors working in the city, and two recent doctors with a lyre and candy for cutie marks simply could not handle the competition, even with the influence of a school like Miskatonic.
Fortunately, however, we did not have to wait very long to find livings, because Lyra had found a lead that related to our “other” studies. Apparently, my companion had overheard Twilight Sparkle, the personal student of Princess Celestia, talking about the fabled Elements of Harmony and gallop off. Intrigued, my mint green friend followed her back to her library-home and overheard her talking about the return of the dreaded Nightmare Moon in the now well known town of Ponyville. You have probably heard of Ponyville by now, given all of its recent publicity, since the ponies wielding the powerful super weapons the Elements of Harmony, have defeated multiple major threats in that town in which they live.
Lyra, knowing who Nightmare Moon is, as well as knowing Twilight Sparkle’s reputation as the most intelligent pony in all of Equestria, decided to follow her to Ponyville, inferring that such a pony like Nightmare Moon would produce a high body count for us to experiment with and hopefully restore to full life. However, the black coated villainess had not killed anypony, and Lyra and I were stuck in Ponyville, lacking sufficient funds to return to Canterlot.
There was already a doctor’s office in Ponyville and my green friend and I decided it would be best not to try to compete with it. Instead we started working jobs that coincided with our cutie marks, Lyra becoming a street musician, and I a candy maker. Soon we had enough bits to purchase a house with a basement sufficient to support our secret research. Unfortunately for Lyra’s purposes, there was very little death in Ponyville, so we simply had to live a humble existence there as normal ponies. Lyra, however was determined not to forget about her all important research, began working on an embalming fluid to preserve the brains of the deceased so as to prevent decay.
Overall, it was the most normal few months I had lived since meeting Lyra Heartstrings. At least, it was normal until one day when a workpony by the name of Big Mackintosh was struck dead by a fallen tree branch. By some miracle, I had been right there along with my green unicorn friend. Nopony else had been around, for it was early and he had been trying to get a head start on the day’s work. Lyra immediately rushed over and injected the embalming fluid into his brain, and we dragged him back to our home, with nopony seeing us. It was all very fortunate, but our good luck was not over yet. For an hour after being injected with Lyra’s life giving compound, he came back to life, completely and rationally. He even screamed in fear and exclaimed, “Where am I? Who are you two? What happened?” We explained that he had been struck by a falling tree branch and we had brought him back here to let him recuperate, as well as assuring him that we were licensed doctors.
After bandaging his wound, we let Big Mackintosh leave without telling him that he had actually been dead and was now alive and thinking! After we were sure that the red stallion was out of ear shot, my companion and I squealed in delight, for we had successfully brought a pony back to life. He is still alive today, with no signs of mental deterioration! It was the luckiest thing that ever could have happened to our studies.
V
THE HORROR FROM THE SHADOWS
Lyra and I stayed in Ponyville for two uninterrupted years. During that time a total of twenty deaths had occurred in the small town, two of them by one Granny Smith, and five of them during the return of the villain Discord. Needless to say, we saved all of these ponies completely without any suspicion that they had died and been reanimated. We were doing the most good we had ever done in our lives. Lyra had even figured out a way to grow a vat of live dragon tissues to aid in preservation speed up the recovery (but of course, we always took them out of the vat before they regained consciousness). We stayed up until shortly after that strange occurrence of changelings flying through the air all throughout Equestria, away from the direction of Canterlot. One changeling had crashed into our house and been killed, but we resuscitated it in an experiment to see how many creatures the magnificent compound could work on. About a week later, a war broke out between Zebrica and Gryphinland. Lyra, eager to save more lives, rushed over to Zebrica ― with myself of course ― in the hopes of lowering the amount of war fatalities on the side of our fellow equines.
Of course, Lyra also saw an opportunity to improve her serum even more, to allow for increased mental capacity in reanimated ponies. More importantly, she also meant for the improved serum to restore life to ponies who were too seriously injured to be revived with our current serum, and potentially even reverse the effects of brain decay, which would have prevented the three mindless abominations we had created in years past (one of which we lost track of and never learned its fate, one of which we knew was still alive, and one of which Lyra had personally killed).
Lyra and I were given our own medical bunker in that war, which allowed us to save many zebras throughout our stay in Zebrica, many of whom were merely injured and needed surgical help, and many of whom had actually been killed. Unfortunately, many of the deceased zebras were too seriously injured to restore to life, which only caused Lyra to work on a compound that would heal these mortal wounds as well as revive the dead. Eventually, she had the right serum and we were able to save hundreds throughout that four month war.
But one day, a zebra medic by the name of Surgical Stripes that my mint green friend and I had grown quite fond of was decapitated by a gryphon’s talons. Lyra did not think not think it possible that we could heal him, but I convinced her that we needed to try. I held the head on top of the neck while Lyra injected her life giving potion into our dead friend. The serum seemed to be working, seeing as the skin between the head and neck was starting to close up. However, not long after the neck had seemed healed, the bunker was hit with the fiery breath of a dragon mercenary working for the gryphons. Our makeshift hospital crumbled around us.
Lyra and I were rescued from the crumbled bunker, but of Surgical Stripes, there was not a trace. The papers containing our recipe for the improved life compound were also missing. I realized that the Zebrican medic may very well have gone mad from the interruption in the delicate reanimation, and shuddered to think of what he might do with a life restoring serum if indeed he was mad. I did not share this worry with my friend however, for she seemed to believe the same thing, judging by the way that she looked over her shoulder as if we were being followed from that day up until two days before I started writing this account of our experiments.
VI
THE TOMB LEGIONS
As for what happened a few days ago, I am still in a bit of shock. I had never expected to come face to face with the things I saw that day. After we returned home from the war, about four months after we had left, we decided to go back to Ponyville. Naturally, we could not sneak into town without that strange pink earth pony, Pinkie Pie, turning our quiet arrival into a town wide celebration, something, neither of us had wanted, for there was too much for us to think about.
Lyra had begun showing signs of acute paranoia, constantly looking over her shoulder, as if she believed we were being followed. Of course, she tried to hide it beneath her usual overenthusiastic smile, but I, her closest friend, was genuinely worried by the green unicorn’s constant alertness. Eventually, out of the corner of my eye, I began to see them too. Strange and monstrous silhouettes were fleetingly spotted by both of us. Neither I nor my companion ever spoke a word about them, but instead tried to focus on our chosen means of living: Lyra as a street musician and I as a candy maker, our doctoring days probably forever behind us. Of course we each grew more and more fearful every day. Was this some kind of supernatural punishment for interfering with the natural law of death for so long? Were they monsters created by our enemies to torture us? Of course, we did not know for sure that we had enemies, but it was possible that ponies with our chosen past time would get heard of by ponies who would doubtless respond with hatred.
Yet, even without these strange shadows following us, we did not wish to do any more reanimating regardless; as we were frightened by the possibility that our last attempt at resuscitation may have resulted in a mad genius with the knowledge of how to make the life serum. This possibility was enough to convince Lyra and myself that Equestria was not ready for our studies yet.
One terrifying day, however, our deepest fear had been confirmed. A story from our home town of Arkham had reached even the newspapers of Ponyville, so strange was this tale. Apparently, a zebra wearing a Zebrican military medic uniform walked into the Arkham insane asylum with a modified saddlebag so that one side held a large black box instead of a bag. Upon closer inspection the deskpony noticed that the zebra’s head appeared to be made of wax, and when questioned about it the military zebra replied that some nameless accident had befallen him, his voice seeming to come from the black box on his flank. The strange striped visitor requested custody of the cannibal monster that had attacked six years ago, offering a handsome sum of bits. The asylum agreed, and turned over the pony Lyra and I knew to be the once-brilliant Allan Stallsey to the headless medic. Of course, the Ponyville newspaper treated the story humorously, denying that such an outrageous thing could ever happen. Lyra and I understood why the ponies of this region could not believe, but this article informed us of four things: Surgical Stripes was not only a reanimated maniac as we had suspected, but a headless living maniac, through some miracle of science; our most blasphemous creation was now walking free; and we had, in fact, made a very dangerous enemy.
For the next two weeks, my companion and I stayed in our home as much as possible, leaving only once, and with great fear, when we had to acquire more food. Then one day, the mailmare Derpy Hooves delivered a package to our door. It read: To Lyra Heartstrings, Ponyville. From Surgical Stripes, Arkham. With great apprehension, we opened the package. Its contents, though not wholly unexpected, filled us with the utmost horror. There was a bottle, filled with a liquid that we recognized only too well, even with the slight difference in coloration. The bottle cam with a recipe that entailed instructions on making a different potion, one which would cause those you reanimated with it to be your mindless servants. And if these first two contents were not enough to cause my friend and I to start in horror, the next one caused us both to scream in pure terror. It was a letter. It read as follows:
Dear Lyra Heartstings,
It has only been a matter of months since I saw you last, and yet, that time has been sufficient for me to discover a great deal about the story of your experiments. To save my reanimated hoof from writing a long letter, I must ask you to join me outside the Miskatonic University Medical School, where my studies have led me to believe you started your hideous experiments. Meet me outside the front doors at midnight in two days, and I shall show you how I have improved upon your studies. Bring your companion Bon Bon as well; I feel she deserves the same reward as you.
Sincerely,
Surgical Stripes
I believe Lyra went mad after she read that letter, her mind finally snapping under the extreme weight of this news. She insisted that we meet our former associate despite my unwillingness to go and the obvious dangers involved. She believed that it was the best way to end the madness that had ensued since we returned to Ponyville. Unwisely, I eventually conceded, and we took the next train to Arkham.
Midnight came the next night, and Lyra waited outside the front door of our old school with me. Not a word was spoken, for we well knew that we had most likely walked into a trap designed to exact some sort of crazed revenge. But for some strange reason, Lyra had a large smile on her face, as if waiting for something horrible, yet at the same time enjoyable, to happen.
Eventually we saw them. They were the most grotesque army I had ever seen. Some of them seeming natural, some of them seeming slightly altered, and some of them blasphemous analogous monstrosities. The most unnatural of them being made from parts of all kinds of sentient creatures. I saw ponies with dragon hands and minotaur horns. I saw donkeys with changeling heads and manticore tails. I saw gryphons with mule hooves and cattle udders. There were other horrible hybrids, but I dare not write of them. I even recognized two of the creatures as ones created by Lyra and myself; one was Allan Stallsey, the once great medical dean reincarnated as a mindless beast, and the other was a sluggish, but handsome workpony, the very same one that had escaped us all those years ago, and I had no idea how the creature had been located.
Finally, we saw their leader. A militant looking zebra with a waxen head and a black box saddlebag whom we recognized as Surgical Stripes, a zebra we had once worked alongside with during a war, but lost track of after reanimating his decapitated body.
These next details are the most shocking of all. Every one of the grotesque creatures was cheering. They were cheering for Lyra. The headless zebra gave us a warm welcome and offered to by us grass sandwiches at a nearby 24-hour restaurant. Lyra was spared the full impact of those details, for she was already mad. I, however, went mad right at that moment, for I am most certainly mad now.
But I might not be if those accursed tomb-legions had not been so friendly.
