The Night Princess and the Graveyard Shift
The Night Princess and the Graveyard Shift
“Because, your highness, you are a princess of Equestria! You can't drop everything at the last minute to work at a minimum wage job!”
It seemed absurdly backward to Luna that, as a more-or-less absolute diarch of the Equestrian people, worshipped by some as a goddess – not that this was necessarily desired but still – she had pretty much zero control over her own schedule. Some of this was a natural extension of her duties; with exception, the moon had to be raised and lowered on a regular schedule, with the odd exceptional event such as an eclipse. Other aspects...
“Ah, but as a princess of Equestria, surely you would agree that my duty is first and foremost to my people...”
House committee meetings. Finance and treasury meetings. Special hearings for matters too sensitive for Night Court. Were it not for the dozens upon dozens of paper-pushing secretaries and administrative ponies that saw to it that 'i's got dotted and 't's got crossed, Canterlot would likely have vanished under a pile of paperwork within a week. Luna felt a rebellious surge within her, as a paraphrasing of an antiquated line of poetry sprang to mind; Hell is empty, she mused, and all of the bureaucrats are here.
“It's the eve before the wedding of Princess Cadence and Shining Armour! Ambassadors from seven neighbouring countries are going to be in attendance! You can't just up and leave!”
For her part, Luna had discovered that she wasn't above throwing her personal secretary, Paper Weight in front of the cart to save herself from self-important paper pushers. The blue unicorn was there to aid and assist her in dealing with the modern world, after all – the least that she could do would be to protect her sovereign from officious pains in the royal posterior. Particularly when those pains condescended to tell Luna Implaccabilis the Unrelenting Moon, She Whose Whims Moved the Tides what She could and could not do.
Paper Weight rallied gamely. “Princess Luna is fully aware of her responsibilities.” Mostly true. Luna still had trouble with some of the more absurd state functions, from time to time. No need to undercut her secretary though, particularly as she built up a fine head of steam. “She certainly does not require your dubious 'assistance' in recalling them, much less your 'permission' to fulfil them as she sees fit to.” Luna almost applauded – the disdain that Paper Weight had managed had taken months of training, the usually timid social secretary not naturally quick to stand up for herself.
The aristocrat that had seen fit to take issue with Luna's blatant shirking of her responsibilities. Well, that was fine – there was nothing mandating that Luna actually listen to him. She had received an invitation – it would have been breathtakingly rude to have snubbed one of the Celestial Diarchs for a state wedding – but what little she had seen of this Mi Amore Cadenza had failed to impress. She had met Captain Shining Armour before, but why had no one ever mentioned that the captain of the guard in Canterlot was the brother to her sister's prized pupil? It really had all seemed to have come out of left field, and between the stress of the wedding and the strangeness of the whole affair,Luna had been reluctant to attend whatsoever. Receiving word from Soggy Grounds, the manager over at StarsBucked that a couple of their night time shift workers had taken ill at the last minute had provided a flimsy pretence to slip away.
Perhaps a trifle too flimsy, if this quill-pushing aristocrat had seen through it. Ah, well; the course of true procrastination never did run smooth. Mildly distressingly, the aristocratic undersecretary seemed to have missed the part where he was beaten, and was rallying to try and make another counterpoint. Luna decided to finish the conversation.
“You are right though, of course, Lord House.” She gave Paper Weight a smile as she addressed Lord Clearing House, the officious, aristocratic pain in the flank. Lesser nobles that had grasped any sense of real power did need a little reminder now and again that paper-clip audits would not provide them with fodder for a popular revolution. “I do have many responsibilities, some of which I have been neglecting.” The bureaucrat preened, pompous ass that he was. “It would be irresponsible for me to go and assist my friends and co-workers without completing the look through the books on some of the discretionary expenditures that your department has filed. I should not wish to be remiss in my duties.”
The stallion paled impressively, and Luna made a mental note to actually take a look at those books. There was bound to be a little graft – the oil that made the bureaucratic machine work – but that reaction seemed in excess of what a fairly routine once-over of the books should evoke. He was actually stammering as he replied, “N-no, that won't be necessary I'm sure, Princess Luna. Why don't you go and... do... that thing?”
It occurred to Luna, not for the first time, that a half-decent poker player could probably swiftly accrue a small mountain of bits if they could convince the Canterlot aristocracy to come to the table.
As Clearing House cleared the room, Paper Weight turned to her monarch. “Your sister did ask you to try and be in attendance for at least part of the wedding, your highness.” Paper Weight managed what Clearing House did not – Luna began to feel the slightest pangs of guilt.
“I shall be there! At least for part of it.” A pause. “Barring a threat to the peoples of Equestria or Canterlot, of course.” It never hurt to leave a little bit of wiggle room, and it was hard to argue with the old 'clear and present danger' routine. If needs must, a crisis could be arranged, to escape the sticky social anxiety that always came with a wedding to a two-and-change millennial spinster. “But how likely is that to crop up in the course of a night shift at a university coffee shop?”
* * *
Luna had raised the moon before heading out to meet up with Soggy Grounds at the small StarsBucked on the University campus. A far less impressive edifice than the palace, the high walls of the university's main building nevertheless towered over the comparatively small coffee shop. The bells of the clocktower rang the hour, and Luna allowed herself a little sigh of satisfaction. This was a hallmark of Celestia's rule; care had clearly gone into the construction of a system of learning that had bettered the lives of hundreds of thousands of ponies over the centuries, and would continue to do so for years to come.
As she stepped into the air-conditioned building, Luna smiled – this was familiar ground. Along with Soggy Grounds were two ponies that Luna did not recognize – presumably part of the usual night shift, a mare and a stallion, pegasus and earth pony respectively – and a unicorn that Luna had worked with before, the laconic Daunted Hex. Well into the sixth year of his doctorate, it seemed unlikely that the unicorn was ever going to publish his dissertation, and he wore the coffee shop like an old coat – comfortable if unexciting, worn in and warm.
“Princess Luna!” Soggy Grounds smiled at her, and Luna smiled back – it was nice to have someone genuinely glad to see her. “I'm sorry for the short notice, but you did say to call if we were ever short-hooved, and...” The much put-upon manager shook her head. “Well, let's just leave it at 'we definitely are'. I don't know what I'd've done if you hadn't been free.”
“It is my pleasure to lend a hoof when I can – or four, as the case may be!” No one laughed, so Luna cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I imagine it will be a fairly slow night. I have difficulty imagining that many ponies will be in the mood for a coffee much past midnight.” Still, the coffee shop had to have some kind of overnight trade – otherwise, why bother being a twenty-four hour establishment?
“Oh, it's usually quiet.” Soggy Grounds reassured the princess. The stallion standing back and to the side, greying in the muzzle and with grey and white making his mane a salt-and-pepper affair, cleared his throat pointedly. Soggy smiled weakly, and reiterated, “Usually.”
The mare standing next to the stallion seemed to be the more friendly of the two, giving Luna a slightly disbelieving smile with wide eyes. Luna sighed inwardly, although she maintained a professional demeanour – if this one turned out to be a Nightmare Moon cultist, she was going to hit something. It was a tossup between them and the astrologers, as to who irritated the princess of the moon more. She had designed night skies that she had thought comely and attractive; they had tried to use them to predict the future.
Ugh.
“H-hi!” The pegasus mare was speaking. “I'm Stargazer, an astronomy student at the university, and this is Doc Chalk Duster! We just call him Doc.” Luna's eyebrows flickered upward; why would a physician be working here? “He used to be a professor at the university, but the stress started getting to him, so...”
The stallion, Chalk Duster, cut her off. “I don't think we need to bore her majesty with the details.” He gave Luna an appraising look that, despite her thousands of years of seniority, left her feeling as if she had been measured and found wanting. “You sure you're cut out for the graveyard shift your highness?”
That was novel. A pony asking her if she could handle the night shift. It was to laugh. “I have watched over the night since before your ancestors, however far back you can trace your lineage, were in diapers. I am constant as the North star, and I watch over the night.” She sniffed derisively.
Chalk Duster seemed unconvinced. “Yeah, and that went so well a thousand years ago.”
Luna could feel her head starting to throb. “This is going to be a long night, I have this feeling.”
The former professor took a sip from the coffee that sat next to him on the counter. “If we're lucky, yes. Although I suppose that's mostly up to you.”
How droll. A length-of-night joke. Tasteful, too... but then, nothing that a half-dozen nobles of Celestia's court hadn't insinuated, covertly or obliquely, over the years. It really was water off of a duck's back at this point. An immortal, nigh-deific duck with a historically bad record for being scorned, but then, turning them into something small and unpleasant would really not be dispelling rumours of having no sense of humour, now would it?
Luna sighed. “Let's just get to it.”
* * *
As it turned out, the night shift was really a lot like the day shift, albeit considerably slower. This, according to Stargazer, was the busy season – coming up on end of term, more ponies were burning the midnight oil, and needed delicious chemical assistance to stay wakeful. It wasn't exactly news to Luna – she had a general idea of how many ponies were asleep at any given time – but it did help to contextualize a little bit. Over the course of the first few hours, ponies half-immersed in tomes both eldritch (one she was fairly certain had been bound in leather, ew, ick, etcetera) and mundane, gathering the supplies of stewed bean juice and baked goods that they would require to make their way through the evening.
Doc – and with Stargazer and Daunted Hex both referring to him by the sobriquet, it was next to impossible for Luna to hold out – had mellowed over the course of the evening. Initially, he had seemed tense; given his apparent political views, this had not been wildly surprising. It was something of an inevitability that some ponies would rankle in her presence, mostly the monarchists, and Chalk Duster had seemed to fit that particular archetype to a 't'.
Still, a light workload and deficiency of patrons had meant that the standard 'time to lean, time to clean' tasks usually intended to keep a StarsBucked employee from sitting around looking idle had all been completed, and barring someone stopping in to use the washroom, were unlikely to bear repetition. It took four for a good hoof of poker, and the dour pony had actually gone so far as to crack a smile. Really, the only question still vexing Luna had been why Soggy Grounds had needed her there at all; three ponies could have done the job quite capably.
The smell that assaulted the poker-playing ponies all but defied description. Sickly sweet and sour, but with chemically undertones, and corresponding with the bell on the door ringing the opening of the self-same portal, Luna was inclined to entertain the possibility that it was yet another late-night student out on a coffee run. If the smell had been anything but as pungent as it had been, she would even have believed it to be 'exam funk', - a product arising from the lack of hygiene observed by students of magic obsessively revising. Some memory in the deep recesses of Luna's mind brought to bear sepulchral thoughts, but what really got her to turn and look was Stargazer's reaction.
The pink pegasus had been about to take a bite from a muffin, but the baked good had fallen from her hoof, mouth still hanging open and eyes comically wide. She seemed to be stuttering to say something, but nothing resembling complete words were escaping her. “Z-z-z...”
Luna looked. A mixed product of decay and the undertaker's art stood in the doorway, semi-preserved flesh decaying and staggering into the coffee shop. She winced, as Stargazer managed to finally get the word out, several decibels louder, Luna thought, than were strictly necessary.
“ZOMBIE!”
The reactions were mixed. Daunted facehooved, and muttered something that sounded distinctly like 'I wasn't even supposed to be here today'. Chalk Duster, Luna noted, looked more or less relieved – not the relief of a desired outcome, but more akin to the sense that the other shoe had dropped, and not as hard – or in so delicate an area – as he had feared. Luna sprang to her hooves, the nearest weapon-like object (a mop) highlighted by her midnight-blue telekinesis and pointed threateningly at the undead visitor.
The zombie in question looked mildly put out. “I assure you, that's really not necessary.” The voice was gravelly and expressed muted emotion at best. Upon closer examination, Luna noted that the visitor – a mare of middling years before death and decay had done their merry dance – was wearing the remnants of a tweed jacket.
This reassurance failed to have the desired effect on Stargazer. “ZOMBIEZOMBIEZOMBIEZOMBIEZOMBIE!” Apparently forgetting that she possessed wings, the pink astronomy student galloped from one end of the room to the other, overturning appliances and implements, and Luna briefly wondered if there were an eccentric foley artist hiding somewhere in the coffee shop, as increasingly unlikely sound effects sprang from the increasing chaos of the kitchen area.
Doc glowered at the increasing chaos. “I had a feeling something like this might happen.” The stallion growled. “It's tenure season.”
* * *
It took a few moments to calm Stargazer, and to straighten out the mess that had sprung into existence in her wake. Once the (mostly but not exclusively figurative) fires were out, attention returned to the late-night visitor. She was, as expected, still dead.
Well, mostly at any rate.
Chalk Duster, as it happened, had known the too-formerly departed currently helping herself (itself?) to the contents of one of the insulated coffee pots sitting under a slow-drip machine. Tenure Track, he had explained, had been a professor emeritus of Magical History at the university – and like most of the professors, had been buried in the university crypts upon passing, in her case not two years prior. Tenure, for her part, graciously allowed the coffee shop staff to refer to her in hushed tones as if she were not present.
The elephant in the room had to be addressed however. “So, Professor Track...” The pause was palpable, as Luna considered the most delicate way to ask the question that had emerged to the forefront of everyone's minds. “What brings you... out and about, on a night such as this?”
Tenure arched a decaying brow, and gave Luna a Look that warranted its own capitalization. “Necromancy, I should imagine.”
That proved a difficult answer to respond to, though a few possibilities sprang to Luna's mind for options. The first few were pedantic, having to do with 'necromancy' being a form of rather gruesome (if surprisingly effective) fortune telling rather than having to do with undead armies, but Luna was aware that the term had shifted in meaning over the centuries. The next few were incredulous, and working her way through them, Luna selected the one that seemed most appropriate.
“You don't know? For sure?”
Tenure offered a skeletal grin. “I wasn't consulted prior to sudden and unaccountable re-animation, but I'm willing to suggest this might be some form of grant proposal project. Nice wings, by the way. Who are you supposed to be, Celestia's sister?”
Luna boggled a little. “What.”
Chalk Duster looked awkward. “Well, you see Princess... education in Equestria can be a bit of a cut-throat business at times.” Explanations followed.
Once upon a time, the honorariums and annuities that had been set aside for the Canterlot University had been sufficient – more than, in point of fact. The scholarship within the college's walls had been of the highest calibre, and the ideas that the school's leading minds had turned out had revolutionized the Equestrian world every few decades. As peace had persisted under Celestia's rule, the university had grown, establishing new, exciting places of learning and entire new branches of enquiry. The school had grown from hundreds to thousands of students, and the cream of the academic crop had truly risen to the top.
The problem that had initially arisen had been a matter of 'too much of a good thing', in fact – there was more cream to rise to the top than there had been space in the figurative bucket. Wealthy or not – and the university had been quite wealthy indeed – there had only been so much room to grow within the girdle that the walls of Canterlot had become, and the university had reached its maximum capacity. The top positions for scholars had all been filled, in any other light an unquestionable good thing... save but that the university was continuing to generate top scholars, with new, even brilliant, innovative ideas. As many of these scholars had specialities in magical theory and practice, this had led to rather explosive competition for those few positions as became available.
Eventually, Celestia had stepped in. The princess had argued passionately for peace. She had noted that there were other fine institutions of higher education in Equestria. She had pointed out the fruits of academic collaboration rather than competition. She had threatened to throw Mandelbrot the Mighty out of a window if he wouldn't cut it out with trying to set the Dean on fire. Through a combination of appeals to reason and thinly veiled threats, the Princess of the Sun had brokered an uneasy truce between the scholars of the university, and abolished the 'Dead Pony's Shoes' mechanism of academic advancement.
Overtly, at least.
What had actually happened had been something less than Celestia had been vying for. While outright warfare between the staff and staff hopefuls had ceased, the level of 'magical accidents' had jumped through the roof, with suspicious tragedy rates rising around the time of year that tenured positions were being considered. There had been the 'Want it Need it' fiasco of 856, the 'what if everything were suddenly on fire' spell test that had gone predictably 'awry' in 922, and in recent history, the opening of a toxicology department in Canterlot U's organic alchemy research labs had driven young professor Chalk Duster into such a state of paranoia that he had retired to go work at a coffee shop rather than face an uncertain future of stomach complaints and hemlock tea.
In short, 'publish or perish' had ceased to be a binary choice.
It should be noted that many of the ponies that lived in Canterlot were nice. Nice was not the same as 'good'.
Luna found herself awash with warring emotions. On the one hand, there was horror, real and raw; the admiration that she had found for Celestia's work was being undercut by ponies who had started out as ambitious – a venal sin, here or there – and had progressed to a state of academic shadow war, simply to squabble over the diminishing returns on a limited budget. On the other hand... well, there had been a time when ponies had been forced to war. More, she reflected, that outside forces had brought war to them. In some senses, it was nice to see some of the old skills being trotted out.(1)
In other, more immediate senses, it posed a problem.
Chalk Duster did a quick walk around, examining Tenure Track from all angles, while the undead mare watched with an expression that flitted from 'amused' to 'annoyed' on her face. Luna noted that even though there was a certain wanting for flesh where the collegiate zombie might once have had her stomach, the coffee that she drank still seemed to have vanished. Curiouser and curiouser – or, she reflected, as her secretary was wont to correct her, 'more and more curious'.
“I think I know what they did.” Chalk Duster took off his apron, and tossed it over a nearby chair. “Not simple animation of dead tissue, this bears all the markings of a mass invocation.”
Daunted looked at Chalk Duster. “You seem to be waiting for a straight line, so I'll provide it. 'Meaning what, doctor?'”
Chalk Duster favoured Daunted Hex with an old-fashioned look. “Meaning that everyone buried around Tenure here is likely to get up for a walkabout as well. And given that she was buried in the University burial grounds, that would be hundreds, if not thousands of scholars from the lifetime of the university.” He shook his head. “Worse yet, it looks like they're being powered by minor demons. Lockbolt the Blue's Greater Invocation, if I'm any judge.”
“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” Stargazer apparently had something to contribute. “I think I read about that in one of my classes! It was developed by Starswirl the Bearded, right?”
The room's silence was palpable.
After a moment, Tenure Track cleared her throat. “... No. It was a spell developed by Lockbolt the Blue. Hence... the name.” She shook her head. “Retired for ten years and dead for two, and freshmen still think Starswirl the Bearded did everything in bloody history.”
Luna had not come to be a Princess of Equestria by collecting bottle caps. “If this ersatz scholar is animating the dead in an effort to bump off all of the competition, why is Tenure Track here so... reasonable? It hardly seems worth raising an army of slightly curious and incredibly pedantic undead if they're likely to just... behave themselves.”
Tenure rubbed the remnants of her chin. “Come to think of it, I do sort of remember a suggestion that nobody wander off. Magic-like, really.”
Daunted looked at the former academic. “So why did you?”
Tenure Track gave a grim rictus of a smile. “I wanted a coffee.”
Stargazer's mind appeared to have wandered. “Maybe that could be a new ad campaign! 'StarsBucked: coffee so good that the dead thirst for it!'”
Daunted gave Stargazer a look. “I suppose the efficacy of the slogan might depend a little on whether or not an army of dead scholars overruns Canterlot on the night before a royal wedding. Might be bad public relations, really, if they succeed.”
Luna groaned. “Oh, right. The wedding. I suppose that does make this crisis a trifle more pressing.” The princess shook her head. “All I can say is, this must be the worst possible thing to happen in the run up to a royal wedding ever.”
* * *
Elsewhere, in the abandoned crystal mines deep beneath Canterlot palace, a pink alicorn sneezed ferociously and moaned, wondering if she was coming down with a cold in addition to having an imposter marry her dearest love and, for that matter, being locked in a mine.
* * *
“Look,” Chalk Duster was saying. “I'm all for some high spirits in tenure season, but this is really going too far! Casting forbidden spells out of forbidden tomes, binding an army of darkness to their will, disturbing the rest of countless ancient scholars... Is this any way for a Canterlotian academic to act?”
Daunted Hex considered the evidence. “Yes?”
Luna shushed Daunted with a look. “It should not be. Very well, Doctor Chalk Duster. We have a very short time before this necromancer whips his or her arisen scholars into an undead frenzy.” There was a pause as Tenure poked at a muffin and took another long, audible slurp from her coffee. “Present company excepted. Do you have some manner of plan?” It wasn't that Luna couldn't, in a pinch, probably mow down the legions of the dead, but vast displays of alicorn strength and power were gauche in this day and age; it never did to remind the noble class that their ancestors had sworn fealty not to figureheads but to warrior queens.
Chalk Duster glanced over at Tenure Track, currently poking at the new-model coffee maker in a ponderous effort to refill the pot and consequently her cup. He smiled faintly. “As a matter of fact, I might just.”
Daunted's eyes widened. “No. No way. There is no way that you are sending me out there into the Night Shift of the Living Dead. I wasn't even supposed to be here today!”
* * *
“And that's why I think the Gilligan Cut is overused by modern-day Equestrian filmmakers.” Daunted concluded. It was later, and persuasion had happened – the prospect of being left alone in the possibly soon-to-be-overrun coffee shop had overwhelmed his desire to remain within it. “It's a cheap go-to joke, and no substitute for good writing. The only possibly worse 'easy money' joke is metahumour, which is never funny.”
Stargazer gave Daunted a Look. “As opposed to what? Puns, the poor mare's wit?”
Daunted Hex tended to ramble when he was intimidated, and Luna supposed that amble reason for that. In truth, the red-coated stallion was inclined to pedantically ramble about anything, given the least excuse. The discussion after the plan had been explained had wandered to the subject of Roaming Arrow, the Manehattan zombie movie filmmaker, and then discussion of films in general. Following Tenure Track's directions, they were still five minutes or so away from the area that the undead academics were gathering in, and it didn't hurt to have a little bit of a back-and-forth going, to take the edge off of the moment.
Chalk Duster had taken point, and held up a hoof. “Carefully now. The plan will work best if we have the advantage of partial, or complete surprise.” All of the employees had come, but Tenure Track had stayed behind, to keep an eye on the coffee shop, temporarily sworn in by Chalk Duster as a part-time employee.
Slowly, the coffee shop workers advanced on the graveyard, hearing the moans and groans of the restless departed. The cloud cover allowed only glimpses of star and moonlight through, and despite herself, Luna felt a shiver run through her body as she advanced toward the graveyard. Don't be absurd. the moon princess told herself. You're the Princess of the Night, Guardian of Dreams, the Inscrutable Luna Implaccabilis. You've been a monster more frightening than anything you're likely to face in this boneyard. Yet the eerie light, mingling with an unhealthy green mystical glow around the figures of the arisen dead still put a chill into Luna, however she chided herself for it.
Not far away, the four ponies heard chanting in a tongue not commonly spoken in the lands that were now Equestria in well over two thousand years. A mystical tongue, most commonly used to raise and bind demons to the caster's will. A sepulchral tongue, the misuse of which had cost many incautious would-be dark lords their lives. Old Eponian.
Luna wrinkled her nose in disgust. Her accent is atrocious.
The incantation was nearly done, to Luna's trained ear – raising the dead had been comparatively easy, but most of the scholars in the Canterlot University graveyard had been mostly peaceful sorts, less likely to wander around noshing on the grey matter of the living than they were to mutter and complain when someone used 'this begs the question' to mean 'this raises the question'. Binding the risen zombies to the caster's will had thus been a necessity if there was going to be any sort of mayhem caused this evening.
A sudden shift in cloud formation allowed the light of the mostly-full moon to spill onto the raised area of earth upon which the necromancer pony stood. With their hood pushed back, the face of the caster was thrown into full relief.
I have no idea who that is. Luna thought to herself. It seemed unfair somehow – as if, in a case such as this, the malfeasance should be forced to issue forth from a character already known to the protagonist. Of course, that somewhat assumes that I'm the protagonist here.
Doc Chalk Duster had a ringing voice that had served him equally well in telling customers that their order was ready as it had when he had been a professor, lecturing full classrooms of modestly-engaged-at-best ponies about magical theory. Unlike Luna, he certainly seemed to recognize the spellcaster, and he addressed her directly.
“Dark Intent!” The former professor projected from the diaphragm. The spellcaster looked their way, briefly ceasing her chanting. “By the power vested in me as the night-shift manager at the on-campus StarsBucked, I charge you with raising the spirits of the dead, disturbing their slumber, and grand ill will with an eye toward grant money!”
The unicorn mare sneered. “And what will you do, old stallion? You have no power here!”(2)
Doc smirked. “That's what you think. I hereby ban you from any and all StarsBucked franchises in or about the college campus!”
Dark Intent paled. “N-no! You wouldn't! How am I supposed to survive without my coffee!”
Luna looked nonplussed. “You might have considered that before raising an army of the dead.”
The fact that she had just been called out by a princess of Equestria seemed to lack any real weight in Dark Intent's mind. True, there was no formal law against necromancy on the books in Equestria, but really the absence had been to prevent ponies from thinking to try it in the first place. Most ponies were squeamish at the sight of blood, and the cost of such magics were too high to even bear consideration. Given the evening's events, it occurred to Luna that such a shortcoming of legislation might have to be remedied.
The necromancer stood up, her shadow cast upon the faintly glowing army of zombies that she had raised. “You can hardly enforce that rule,” she declared, “if you have been torn apart by my hordes of the undead! Go, my minions!”
Luna braced herself as the zombified scholars turned upon the small group of coffee shop workers. She had hoped to resolve the conflict bloodlessly, but it appeared that Dark Intent's chanting had afforded her at least some control over the raised generations of academics, and she could not allow her colleagues to be hurt. She began to muster her magics to counter the zombie armies as swiftly and efficiently as possible, when she was struck by inspiration.
Dark Intent's chant had been interrupted. She had considerable – but not complete – control over her legion of undead academics.
And academics had ever been the same.
“StarsBucked is offering a 60% discount on all coffee products sized Tall or larger to undead who come in today, without harming or maiming anypony, and then return to their graves!” The Royal Canterlot Voice was still useful for something, it seemed – and the zombies were still subject to authoritative pronouncements. Dark Intent's control spell shattered like an egg hit with a sledgehammer.
As the legions of the undead converged upon the small coffee shop and its promised discount, Stargazer looked over at Daunted Hex. “It's gonna be a long night.”
* * *
It was a long night.
It was most of the day, in truth. Hundreds of zombified scholars had to be served, ancient currencies converted, and incident reports filled in. The university groundskeepers had stopped in as well, and it had taken what felt like forever to make sure that almost all of the decaying legions of coffee-swilling undead were squared away in their graves, crypts, and mausoleums. The coffee shop managed to make a small profit even, discounts notwithstanding, but it was late afternoon by the time that anypony was able to leave.
There was the sounds of other things going on in the city as well, but nopony had time to investigate. It couldn't possibly be as important as what they were already doing.
Tenure Track, for her part, hadn't wanted to go back to her grave. Unlife was too exciting, she said, and she had filled out an application to work in the coffee shop for the 'graveyard shift'. Luna supposed Soggy Grounds had hired worse over the years, and she wasn't about to deny someone the right to apply for a job that felt right for them. After all, it had worked for her.
Weary and worn-out, the night shift workers had gone home. Luna had a moment alone, before heading to the palace, to speak with Chalk Duster. “Is it always like this? The night shift, I mean.”
Doc had just looked back at her, with something that resembled the ghost of a smile. “No, highness.” He shook his head. “Some nights, it actually gets a bit hairy.”
* * *
Luna sheepishly came out a bit late to the wedding. There was still dancing going on, and nopony seemed to have noticed that she had missed the entirety of the ceremony. Downtown looked a bit like a war zone, and Luna wondered how hardy the citizens of Canterlot had to have partied in order to do that sort of damage. She'd probably find out all about it when she sat down on Monday to look over the damage reports and allocate repair budgets.
The moon princess slid the present that Paper Weight had picked up for her to give the happy couple onto the gift table. After all, everyone needs a juicer in their life. Sidling up to Celestia and the Ponyville six, she managed a bright smile that hid her tiredness.
“Hello everypony! Did I miss anything?”
1: It was sort of like seeing an artisanal castor oil being sold at the local market. It was nice to know that somewhere out there, traditions passed down from generation to generation had survived, and that those ponies who remembered the old ways were at least modestly financially successful. You didn't buy the foul stuff, but there was a certain charm in knowing that it existed, at least in 'theoretical food product space'.
2: It might interest the reader to know that while this dramatic confrontation was taking place, a conversation was transpiring between Stargazer and Daunted Hex, sotto voce to the effect of: 'Dark Intent? Who names their child Dark Intent?'
'You were the one who said metahumour was never funny, Daunty.'
Author's Note
And la voila, the sequel to The Night Princess and the Day Job. Day Job had originally been intended as a stand-alone piece, and this isn't so much a spiritual successor as it is another story that happens to take place in the same continuity.
I hope that all readers enjoyed!