I. What's Past is Prologue

“Good evening, officer! And what a lovely evening it is! Jon Quill, reporter. I’m here to ask you a few questions about the fire!”

Clarissa frowned. She took a sip from her thermos of coffee. It was mixed with just enough of her favorite whiskey to make her feel warm without too much risk of putting her to sleep. She had hoped she wouldn’t need the extra fortification, as she thought of it, tonight.

Eyeing the reporter she decided that her hopes were, in this case, destined to be dashed. She settled her wings more comfortably against her sides.

“You may report to the precinct office during regular business hours to receive a copy of the official press release. Please move along.”

Moving along would offer a number of benefits, Clarissa thought. First, she would avoid a topic of conversation she was forbidden from commenting on – officially or unofficially. The force had already let one mare, a relative newcomer named Bea, go for “sundry minor offenses.” Bea’s real crime had been talking to the press without permission, all of the constables knew that.

Of course, Bea had also been the first pony to report to the fire. Rather than put it out, she had frantically added to it – and worked with those present to seal the door shut. Clarissa hoped she was getting the psychological help she clearly needed.

The other benefit from Jon’s moving along was that he was rather handsome. Watching him walk away would provide Clarissa with a pleasant view.

Jon smiled, “Oh, there will be plenty of time for that later! Right now, I’m more interested in the aftermath. The clean up. The personal stories of the ponies who have been tasked with keeping the area safe and secure. There are some historical sites of importance among the graves, I understand?”

Clarissa let out an aggrieved sigh. She took another sip of her coffee. This looked like it wouldn’t be a quick conversation. On the plus side, at least Jon was cute. With a long night ahead, keeping fillies and colts from poking around the scaffolding out of morbid curiosity, any pleasant distractions were welcome.

“Look, Mr. Quill …”

“Please! Call me Jon!” He did have a distracting smile. For the moment Clarissa didn’t suspect he was using it specifically to distract her from what was going on a few meters further down the walk.

“Jon, there’s nothing I can tell you, love. The official story is handled through our precinct’s press office. I wasn’t there myself, and couldn’t comment on it even if I was.”

“Ah, but I don’t need anything official. And, while ... while you weren’t there yourself, I’m sure you must know ponies who were. Have they shared their observations? What of the cemetery afterwards? Have have there been many visitors? How are the repairs coming along? Have any notable figures arrived to see to the restoration? Which graves were affected?”

Jon Quill hoped the constable hadn’t noted the brief stutter in his flow of questions. At least his smile hadn’t wavered.

Jon was in the Whitstable cemetery just off Millstrot Rood, at the start of the public hoofpath leading towards the oldest graves. It was just past the chapel, and the way ahead was blocked with bright yellow caution tape. In the distance, a lone lamp provided a puddle of light. And Cantor had just limped quietly through that puddle. Jon supposed it was marginally better than trying to hop over the low, pointy iron fence … Cantor really didn’t seem the “hopping over” type.

So it was good for him that he had Jon running interference!

Past the lamp, Jon could barely make out a mausoleum, overgrown with scaffolding, and with piles of lumber and cut-stone around it.

Clarissa looked a bit surprised. “That’s a lot of questions, love. I doubt I can answer any of them officially.”

“Unofficially is more than fine, Mrs. Sources Say!” Jon readied his pencil and turned the charm on his smile up a notch.

She grinned. “It’s Miss, not Missus – and it has been busy. Lots of restoration work to do. And with the stories that have gotten around, workcolts don’t want to be anywhere near the mausoleum. If it was day, I’d say they were just being lazy. But night duty here? Gives one the creeps, it does! Downright spooky. Oh, and they brought in some historian bloke from Queen’s College. A unicorn. ‘e wouldn’t even go inside. I hear he suggested walling in the entry with marble.”

“Fascinating! They are still wanting to restore the mausoleum to its former glory, yes?”

“Well, of course! It’s a bit of history – maybe not that well known, but every year Whitstable does receive tourists from Equestria, all wanting to visit the final resting place of Admir-“

A loud crash from the mausoleum in question cut Clarissa off mid word. She switched from holding her thermos to holding a flashlight in the blink of an eye and, with wings half-unfurled, she turned to shine a light over the tomb.

“Bugger!”

A part of the scaffolding had given way. The flashlight’s beam showed that the now open stone door leading into the mausoleum had jarred some of the surrounding wood loose.

“Wait here, sir. I need to check this out.”

“After what you said about spooks? No thank you! I’m sticking to you like your feathers!”

Jon’s heart was beating rapidly. But with excitement rather than fear. Cantor had said that whatever arcane disturbance was active in the tomb would be well worth looking at … and that regardless, after getting his look, Cantor would come clean with Jon about his so-called madness.

The two ponies approached the open door cautiously. As they did, both felt a disturbance in the air – the tomb seemed to be drawing it in, pulling loose leaves and dust and light debris. There was a soft sound, low … something felt in the bones more than actually heard. A faint, silvery light began to flicker somewhere inside the mausoleum.

Somepony hadn’t even bothered with the multiple pad-locks, they had simply cut the chains. The bolt cutters lay discarded, half buried beneath the new pile of lumber and rope. The bars which had been pressed against the door to hold it shut were stacked to one side of the entry.

Jon and Clarrisa looked inside. She let out a strangled gasp, dropping her flashlight and clinging to Jon. He drew in a breath for a scream that he couldn’t choke out around the sudden lump in his throat as he, in turn, clung to her.

The room was stone, the walls lovingly carved with scenes from the admiral’s life – many of them blackened and damaged from the recent fire. His sarcophagus, again lovingly carved, lay in pieces around the floor. It looked like something had exploded out of it. In the center of the room, directly over where the sarcophagus had stood, a vortex of dark magic swirled and hummed, sucking in dust and leaves like a small tornado. Leaves, twigs, and scraps of paper decayed in the darkness there … the blackness slowly eating away at them like a creeping fire.

The walls were cracked. The cracks were bleeding. And somepony … something … had been clawing at them, the desperate marks of iron horse-shoes were everywhere: on the floor, the walls, even the ceiling.

Cantor stood directly before the vortex. His horn was glowing silver. Streamers of silver light lifted from both it and from his body like wisps of fog from a lake on a cold morning. The light, aurora like, drifted slowly into the swirling darkness.

Hovering there, in the center of the magical disturbance, was the fire-blackened skeleton of a pegasus. It flared its bony wings and turned its eyeless skull to gaze directly at Jon and Clarissa.

Clarissa fainted.

Jon froze, his scream still building.

The skeleton opened its jaw … no sound emerged, just the clicking of fire-blackened bone on bone.

The Trotting Dead.

It was one the Trotting Dead.

At the moment Cantor’s own eyes were as black and empty as the skeleton’s. No sign of his earlier blue iris’, it was all pupil now. A small part of Jon’s mind wondered if that was how he could see in the dark. Most of his mind, on the other hoof, was screaming at him to run … or, barring that, to kill the dead thing with fire.

Although, judging from the shape of the room, “killing it with fire” had been tried with considerable enthusiasm by whoever first found the awakened corpse. While the bones (and the room) were scorched, the whole “killing it” thing clearly hadn’t taken.

Cantor was singing. His full attention was on the floating skeleton. There was magic in his voice, golden and sweet, like honey dripping from a comb or a warm shaft of sunlight shining through stormclouds. The skeleton turned its gaze from Jon back to Cantor, tilting its head as though listening to the lullabye.

It slowly reached one skeletal limb, chipped and cracked from both fire and from weeks of fruitless, desperate pawing at the interior of its sealed tomb, towards Cantor’s own outstretched hoof.

The scream finally forced its way out of Jon’s throat. And his hooves, which had been trying to run away in all directions at once, at last settled on directly away from the undead pony. The sound of his scream faded into the night.

“Well, ‘e’s gone.” Magpie sounded rather satisfied.

“Keep an eye out. If somepony else shows up, we’ll need to let Cantor know. And we’ll need a quick way out.” He, in turn, was all business.

“An’ you?” Magpie was curious.

“I’m still trying to see if there’s anything about this vortex that’s substantially different from the one we found you trapped in, Magpie.” From the frustration in his voice, Magpie guessed he wasn’t seeing anything particularly useful.

There was a brief silence. Magpie eyed the drifting, whimpering spirit of the Admiral, watching as the vortex surrounding it slowly began to fade under the influence of Cantor’s spell. Individual bones were dropping away as the ghostly haunt that had been wrapped around them relaxed. The shade, unstuck from its mortal shell … no longer clutching at it in terrified desperation, was still shuddering. Cantor held him gently in his fore-legs and continued to sing songs of reassurance and peace, his magic flowing from the living into the dead.

“I … I wasn’t that far gone, was I? I don’t … I don’t really remember it. Just ‘is voice … singing the screams away.” Magpie sounded unusually subdued. Even a little scared.

“You weren’t that far gone,” the old scholar lied. Both he and Magpie knew it to be a lie, but she was reassured anyway.

“I’ll sing out if somepony comes,” and away she went. Out the door rather than through the walls. Somepony had thrown up all sorts of wards of containment and forbiddance around the mausoleum probably just as soon as they had realized it contained one of the Trotting Dead. Magpie had bounced off of those magics once already. It had stung.

“Where … where?” the Admiral’s voice was deep and a little gravely. It suited him well. He sounded like somepony struggling to wake from deep sleep … or terrible nightmare. Perhaps both.

“We’re in your tomb, Admiral. Yes, you’re dead. You have been for quite some time. But that’s something we can deal with later.” Cantor’s voice no longer dripped with power and compulsion. It was still reassuring. Cantor helped the ghost of the admiral find his feet.

“He is dead too.” The admiral looked at the spectral unicorn standing by one wall. The admiral looked at Cantor, “You are not.”

“Quite right! Oh, and how rude of me, introductions are in order.” Cantor swayed slightly. He had used quite a lot of magic in calming the spirit, and was feeling drained in more ways than one. Cantor took a deep breath. “I am Cantor Mortalis, spiritualist … medium in training … speaker for the dead. Most of the living can neither really see nor hear you now that you’re out of your bones, so if you need something told to them, I’m afraid you will have to use me as your messenger.” Cantor’s smile was pale and wan. “At least until we can find someone else with my sort of magical gifts who is better suited to the job.”

Across the room, the ghostly unicorn snorted and rolled his eyes.

“That shade over there is the scholar, linguist, enchanter, and historian Morari.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Admiral Fairweather.” Morai’s soft, low voice, with its pleasant burr, managed to sound both polite and interested while Morari himself was clearly distracted by his studies. Morari ran a spectral hoof over one of the cracks in the walls. It had stopped bleeding. They all had. Indeed, the blood was drying up and vanishing away. So, some sort of ectoplasmic residue rather than true blood. That was somewhat reassuring. But only somewhat.

“You know me, sir?”

“But of course, Admiral. In this modern day the Wonderbolts are still ‘soaring higher’, and they are still based from the barracks you built for them back when you headed the squadron. Your name and deeds are remembered.” Morari cracked a smile, “Without my biography, which Cantor assures me can still be found tucked away in some of the less reputable libraries, the same could not be said for me.”

“Outside, keeping watch, is what remains of a young mare – we know her as the Thieving Magpie. Her manner may be rough, but her heart is golden.”

“One wonders who she stole it from,” Morari muttered. Cantor shot him an exasperated look.

“Right now, Admiral, I must humbly beg your pardon. I confess I am not entirely sure about the … manner of your … awakening. With your permission, I would like to conduct a thorough investigation of your tomb to see if I can determine how it was done.”

“You mean you didn’t awaken me?”

“No! I would never!” Cantor didn’t sound insulted so much as horrified. “I speak to those risen, I help them return to their rest. Disturbing the long sleep of the dead is … is …” words failed Cantor. His face spoke of his abhorrence eloquently enough.

“My apologies, sir. I meant no offense.” Fairweather’s tone was sincere.

“Cantor – best if we’re not interrupted, yes?” Morari gestured towards the unconscious constable in the doorway.

“Uh … yes. Right.” Cantor considered the fallen mare. Then his eyes brightened. “Hang on a tick.”

A few moments later she had been carefully dragged to one of the wrought iron fences in the cemetery. Cantor hoof-cuffed her to it. He used one of her kerchiefs and her belt to gag her. It was an inexpert job, as Magpie pointed out, but it should keep the constable from raising too much of a ruckus when she came too. He also removed her whistle and keys and set them carefully in her hat, which now lay some ways out of reach. Magpie seemed to find the sight of Cantor tying up the unconscious mare a little too amusing.

Hopefully Jon Quill wouldn’t go running straight to the police. With luck, they might have an hour or more of uninterrupted examination. Cantor only hoped that this time around, they’d find some hint as to why the dead had begun to rise in this unprecedented … and most distressing … fashion.

With a sigh, Cantor dug a well worn book of spells out of his satchel and flipped it open to a series of rituals designed to allow the perception of magical auras.

A few minutes of concentration later, and Cantor set about a search of the fire-blackened tomb with determination.

“A question, sir. Can you return me to … sleep?” The Admiral was frowning at the state of his tomb. He poked experimentally at one of his fallen ribs. It shuddered slightly at his touch, sliding an inch or two across the floor.

“I can try. It … well, my usual methods haven’t worked on Morari or Magpie. I may not be able to help you.”

“If you can not? What then?” Fairweather was curious.

Cantor winced.

“Then … well … then we would need to go get help.”

“From your mysterious friends in Albion?” Morari made no effort to hide his interest.

“Yes. They’ll have resources that can be of great assistance. Horsepower, money, contacts, access. They can help search for leads, for other disturbances, for information and solutions. And they might even be able to keep us safe during the process.”

“Safe from what, sir?” Fairweather frowned.

“The living have an unfortunate tendency to want to lock our dear friend Cantor away in madhouses.” Morari explained.

“What? Why?” Fairweather was startled.

“He talks to ponies who aren’t there. Ponies like you and I. Oh, we know we’re here. He knows we’re here. But they? They don’t know we’re here. And given the choice between believing Cantor is mad and believing Cantor talks to the dead, most find the former hypothesis more comforting. Wouldn’t you, if you were still alive?”

“Most like.” Fairweather frowned suddenly. “If this is the case, then can we trust these friends of yours not to lock you away, too, Cantor?”

“We can. Well ... that is ... even if we can't, it's not like we have a lot of other options. Or any other options, really. My friends in Albion are … uh … exceptional in a number of regards. Some of them would do almost anything for me. Far more than they should, in truth. And all of them already believe. Indeed, my special talent is how Dozy and I first met. No, belief wouldn't be the problem ...” Cantor, his eyes glowing faintly under the influence of the ritual magic he was employing, blinked twice. He continued thoughtfully, “And speaking of believers …” as glanced out of the open door.

“What? Oh no. What do you have in mind for Jon Quill?” Morari's tone was one of worry.

“I have an obligation to check up on him. Most of the living react … poorly … to encounters with the dead. If he doesn’t get his head around the idea properly, he could wind up in jail. Or Bedlam. I wouldn’t want that.”

“Obligation? Cantor, he jumped into this with all four hooves! You couldn’t have beaten him away from this story with a stick. You don’t owe Jon anything. Meddling with him could put you in danger. You take on enough work as it is, you don’t need to help him come to terms with what he saw here tonight.” Morari did not sound pleased at all.

“I don’t see it that way, Morari. Once we finish here, we’ll go check up on him.”

“I see sir is a Gentlecolt. Gentlecolts repay their debts and follow through on their obligations.” Fairweather gave Cantor an approving nod.

Morari sighed. “Very well. Admiral, it has been … some time … since either of us were alive. I have been working hard to catch up on recent events. If you like, I could help you to understand some of the changes the centuries have wrought. It will make your transition a bit easier.”

“Many thanks, sir …” Fairweather suddenly blinked in surprise. “Did … did you say centuries? As in more than one?”

“I did indeed!”