Ponies stood about one another in formal wear, delicately eating small things from plates. The things bore some resemblance to food, which is why they were being eaten, and were carried about by waiters dressed as waiters which is why they were trusted to carry trays covered with small things resembling food. There were also glasses of fizzy, alcoholic grape juice which could not legally be called champagne because no such region existed in Equestria.
Twilight Sparkle lay in the middle of it all, quite sufficiently dead that no one felt obliged to address her in conversation, which was good because her swollen tongue, hanging out of her mouth like a pink slug, would have made speaking difficult. Also she was dead. Being dead makes conversation difficult.
Instead, the guests wandered about, speaking to one another as if by accident.
“I really feel as if there are things going on about which I which I should have an opinion.”
“I can see that being the case.”
“And if I don't feel strongly about these things, then who will?”
“Who indeed?”
“And if we don’t have a fair and open discussion of things that are going on, why, who knows what will happen?”
“A discussion certainly won't happen unless we have one.”
“Things, yes, things are to be done.”
“Many things.”
“After discussion.”
“Of course. In that order.”
Order and protiens were both being broken down in Twilight Sparkle’s body as her gut fauna--no longer restricted by a living immune system--went on parade. Her corpse swelled with gasses as the organisms which had once broken down grasses for her broke her down. Fortunately, Twilight was dead at the time, and so no one commented on their princesses bloated and incontinent form.
“--cleaning is what they get paid to do,” Blueblood said.
“But when they do a good job of it, they deserve a little extra. I always tip one bit.” The progressively minded heiress speaking to Blueblood emphasized her miserly tip with a nod of her head.
“I am paying them. I pay the hotel, and the hotel pays their wage. I shouldn't be expected to give them anymore of my money.” Blueblood’s voice grew louder as he protested the unfairness of it all.
Twilight Sparkle’s corpse sighed dramatically and farted. If she were still capable of imagining possibilities for herself and choosing which of those possibilities she desired to realize, she would not have chosen to realize being here surrounded by these ponies. Instead, she could only sigh and fart to express herself. Twilight farted again, and several ponies vomited at the smell, then cleaned up their vomit using whatever hair pieces, ascots, or tablecloths were in reach.
“--Canterlot is just getting worse and worse.”
“Oh, I know, I know. There was a panhandler hanging out a block away from the apartment building where my daughter’s personal chef’s aunt lives. At least that’s what I heard.”
“I can’t even believe it. Ponies existing without my permission!”
“Breathing our air!”
Their conversation was briefly interrupted by a fit of coughing and gagging as they accidentally breathed Twilight’s air.
Princess Celestia and Luna were notably absent from the events around Twilight’s corpse. Unable to endure these bores for yet another evening, they had sent Twilight in their stead. Twilight, momentarily distracted by the fact that she was dead, had been unable to protest as the royal heralds had dumped her in the center of the ballroom, announced her presence, and left.
Zesty Gourmand loudly opined that putting food in your mouth before you eat it was a boorish, peasant fad that had quite outlived its charm. Everyone hastily agreed that there was nothing more disgusting than the sight of someone placing uneaten food inside their mouth, and then turned to regard their soup in silent confusion. Some attempted to drink it through their nostrils. Eighteen ponies drowned in gazpacho that night and joined Twilight in being dead.
Having fulfilled her quota of unnecessary pronouncements for the day, Zesty Gourmand rewarded herself by vomiting an hors d'oeuvre she had eaten earlier back into her mouth, chewing with some satisfaction, and reswallowing it.
The waiters busied themselves preparing soup IVs and finger sandwich suppositories for the now tight-lipped guests.
Twilight Sparkle’s horn glimmered periodically. This effect, known as corpse fire, was once considered a sign that the unicorn or alicorn in question was a vampire. Modern ponies, such as Twilight would have been had she been observing the corpse instead of playing the corpse herself, knew it to be a reflex reaction caused by the decomposition of the brain, including those parts of Twilight’s brain that had once known about corpse fire.
Prince Blueblood had moved on from discussing lazy maids, and was now lecturing a hired lackey named Lickspittle. What, exactly, Lickspittle had done wrong was unimportant, what was important was that it gave the bored noble a chance to show off his homespun wisdom and demean an underling before a crowd.
“We can't all be martyrs, Lickspittle. At least not until someone perfects a mechanism for allowing two ponies to burn each other at the stake.”
“Ms. Glimmer said she'd nearly cracked it, your lordship, but she was making an omelet at the time.”
“And you believe she might have been referring to the eggs?”
“No, your lordship” Lickspittle said, “but as a rule, I consider the judgment of ponies who eat omelets to be suspect.”
For the first time in his life, Blueblood considered a prejudice and found it wanting. “She might have been making the omelet for someone else. Not everyone eats everything they cook, look at chefs for example.”
“I did once, and I didn't like what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
“A chef, your lordship.”
“I find that story highly suspect.”
“It seems you’ve caught me out in yet another lie, your lordship.”
The blood pooling in Twilight Sparkle’s face had given her cheeks a rosy and healthy glow. This glow was somewhat marred by the remains of her last meal, vomited up and now crusting across her mouth and chest. Still, her bright red, swollen cheeks would have been positively cherubic on a face that did not feature featureless white eyes bulging out like tennis balls.
A group of entrepreneurs were debating the solution to homelessness, and had come to the brilliant conclusion of making ponies steeple their hooves over the head like so and classifying the gesture as a townhouse. The main problem became how to charge rent for this service, which the newly housed were technically administering to themselves.
Unbeknownst to them, a similar solution had been arrived at by a so far unnamed party who had created a city out of bones beneath Canterlot. So far, the under city with its twisting alleyways and towering spires was mainly spoken of in rumor, but it was undeniable that the city was growing, and growing upward to the surface. A clocktower made of tibia with mandibles decorating each corner had severed a sewer pipe, causing a flood of waste in the basement of a tenement. Streets paved with teeth leading deep into the recesses of the earth were revealing themselves to curious foals who were never seen or heard from again.
So far the, under city had only antagonized the lower part of Canterlot, but anyone could see the speed with which the city of bones was growing. Whether the rumors or the temple made of pony skulls that whispers of secret delights buried deep, deep in the darkness would reach high society first was so far uncertain.
Twilight Sparkle’s own city of bones was becoming home to a thriving ecosystem. Her brain, which once interpreted itself as a source of knowledge, was now remixed as a food source by maggots who feasted with equal regard upon both her cerebral cortex and pituitary gland. Millipedes crawled under her loosening skin, like writhing tendons. The swarm of insects crawled in and out through Twilight’s nostrils.
While Twilight’s body was exchanging energy with the world, a griffon delegate and a noble were having a time honored cultural exchange.
“I don’t know why you always serve meat at these things,” the griffon said, pushing away yet another salmon filet. “I can’t stand the smell.”
“Well, because griffons are … you know.”
“We’re herbivores.”
“That can't be true.”
“Have you ever seen a griffon eat meat?”
The stallion thought for a minute. “No, I guess not.”
"But you're eating your fifth filet right now."
"Well, because they served it ... for you."
"Because you're in the presence of a vegetarian, you feel the need to eat fish."
"Because something was placed in front of me I need to eat it," said the stallion as he chewed on a table cloth.
In truth, the griffon and the stallion were both barely paying attention to their conversation, as they were preoccupied with a similar problem. Namely, that their brothers had joined cults. The similarity of their problem was not coincidental, beyond the coincidence of it happening to both of them.
The stallion’s brother had joined a cult created by an earth pony who claimed to have found god buried deep beneath the ground. This god was a vast, flaring anus. Although the god was otherwise incorporal, it was also very definitely a vast gaseous ass of fleshy and soft material, so large that it could not be seen in one glance. When a pony died and was buried, the chthonic god sucked their soul into its flaring, mucus lined orifice and digested it. Eventually, after every trace of memory, thought and identity was destroyed--an agonizing process where the soul was trapped in the crushing darkness of the great Colon for 13 months--the now stripped soul was shitted back to the surface where it entered a new body, until the cycle repeated.
The only way to escape this fate, so the cult believed, was to be burned on top of a mountain, so that one’s soul could escape into the sky.
The griffon’s brother had joined a cult founded a few decades later by a griffon who had found an identical god in the sky. The only way to escape being devoured was to be buried in the lowlands.
That the griffon cult leader had been born 13 months after the pony cult leader had been burned by his followers, was something that the few who knew about both cults did their best not to think about, as the prophet's soul was ping-ponged back and forth eternally between two anuses so large they defied comprehension.
Also not a good thing to think about was the sister city of the city of bones, a city made entirely of ash and growing out of the sky far in the north. The city of ash wouldn’t enter anyone’s attention for many years, not until it at last pierced the clouds and reached its outskirts out to block the sunlight as its tallest spire stretched down toward the tallest spire of bone.
Twilight Sparkle did not have to worry about not thinking about things, because she was dead. She also did not have to worry about the green hue of her stomach clashing with her remaining hair color,or about her distending and rot filled stomach finally rupturing and releasing a torrent of pus, water and rotted flesh, or about the insects crawling out of her ruptured intestines and filling the room. She also did not have to worry about the waiters sealing the exits from outside.
No one else worried either. This was a fashionable occasion, and no place to talk about ass gods, or the way the room was now filling with methane from the busily rotting corpse, or cities of bone or ash, or swarms of insects laying eggs in Fancy Pant’s brain, or Blueblood igniting the air as he lit a cigar and starting a fire that could be seen throughout the city, or ponies pounding on the doors begging to be let out.
But there was no escape. There never had been. Not for anyone. And Twilight Sparkle was dead at a fashionable occasion.
Author's Note
Mostly just a pile of words I like.
