The Resurrectionists

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 4
Epilogue

Chapter 1

Our story begins thirty years after the disappearance of the Two Sisters. It is the story of three young ponies and their souls. One soul stolen, one soul given, and one soul bargained for. Destiny (with a little bit of help) had brought them together at Smart Cookie University, outside the cold and windy city of Whinnyappolis.

—HRH Twilight Sparkle, The Flatline Incident

Skanky Biscuits levitated a can of Flim–Flam Light out of the pail of ice and yanked open the pull tab with her magic. She huddled against the back wall of the common room at Iota Beta Pi house, ears laid back against her skull. She wished she were somewhere else.

A large, rather plump orange unicorn slipped over next to her. “Hey, sugar coat. Can I get you something to drink?” said Smooth Operator. Skanky took a sip of her cider, looked at the can, and then looked at him. Smooth sailed right on with his routine. “You know, I think it’s okay that you’re here alone. Not every mare needs to be…”

“Smooth, if you start negging me, I will tear your balls off and shove them up your ass,” said Skanky.

“I was never here,” said Smooth, waving a hoof in front of his face and fading back into the crowd.

Skanky took another sip of her cider. It tasted vile. If she’d strung Smooth along for a little while, she could have gotten him to go out and get her something decent to drink.

“Hello, girlfriend!” Hearth and Home staggered towards her. The leggy pink earth pony mare reeked of cheap vodka. “You ready to get cray cray in the va jay jay?”

“Hearth, your va jay jay wouldn’t know cray cray if it was infested with it,” said Skanky. It was true. These Whinnyapolis Fillies thought heterosexual sodomy was a novelty. Skanky’s front half was happy to be out of Canterlot, but her back half would probably always miss it.

Hearth rolled her eyes. “Harmony, Skanky, why are you always such a bitch? I’m just trying to be your friend.”

Skanky sighed. “I don’t know. I was born this way. I don’t think there’s any hope for me.” She paused. “I am actually happy to see you.”

“Ah, you just need a hug.” Hearth lunged up on top of Skanky’s withers and wrapped her forelegs around her, nearly knocking her over. She pressed their bodies together side to side and held the hug for way, way too long.

“Easy, filly,” said Skanky, acutely aware of the casserole dish cutie mark pressed against her flank. Skanky had sounded Hearth and Home out about lesbianism to no avail. She was a carrot girl through and through. “Dammit, Hearth, I just wanted to get out of the editing booth, but anything would be better than this party.”

Hearth pulled away, but left a foreleg draped over Skanky’s withers. “It is pretty lame, I admit. Keg stands are so… like…”

“Sophomoric?” said Skanky.

“Yeah. That word. Especially when they’re being performed by actual sophomores.”

“Ladies,” said Ether Brew, stepping over to them. “How are you enjoying the festivities?” The tan earth pony’s slicked-back black mane, thick glasses, and Erlenmeyer flask cutie mark created a first impression that further interactions with him did nothing to dispel. He was being tailed by a reedy wisp of an undergrad in a red gingham dress that left everything to the imagination.

Skanky floated a cider out of the ice bucket, opened it, and passed it to him. “We aren’t.”

“Thanks,” said Ether, taking the drink.

“The cider is terrible. I’m giving it to you because I hate you,” said Skanky, deadpan.

Ether took a swig, cringed, and spat a twig out of his mouth. “This is an unusually bad batch.”

Hearth rolled her eyes. “What are you even doing here, Ether? Isn’t this your Oubliettes and Ogres night?” she said.

“I’m looking for help with an experiment. An experiment whose nature I’d rather not make public. I need volunteers who understand discretion.”

Skanky raised one hoof. “Um, I host a radio show?”

Ether smirked. “One that nopony listens to.”

Skanky fumed, but he wasn’t wrong. Broadcasting at 3:00 AM had its disadvantages.

Hearth’s eyes narrowed. “Is it a sex thing? Because if it’s a sex thing I’m not interested.”

“No. It is not a sex thing,” said Ether.

“Well does it involve mixing assorted chemicals?” said Hearth. “I like that type of experiment.”

“This is more of a psychological experiment.” Ether flicked his hoof at the two mares. “You’re always going on about how boring it is at SCU. I think what I have in mind will appeal to your jaded palettes. But by all means stay here if you prefer. There’s beer pong in the kitchen. And I hear Smooth Operator is making the rounds.”

Skanky scowled. Behind Ether, she saw a space clearing in the floor. One of the frat brothers climbed up on the couch with an acoustic guitar.

“Come on, Skanky, let’s do it,” said Hearth. “It can’t be any worse than this.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The four ponies struggled into their cold-weather things and headed out across campus. The moment Skanky stepped off the porch, freezing winds whipped across her body, tearing through her thick parka like it wasn’t even there. She steeled herself for the long walk uphill towards the Filly Sophia building. She’d come here for the documentary filmmaking MFA program — it was the best in Equestria, maybe the world. But living in Whinnyapolis was a sacrifice.

“It’s beautiful out tonight!” said Hearth, skipping ahead and packing a snowball with her bare hooves. “So warm!”

Skanky tried to duck, but her parka slowed her down and she got whacked right in the nose. “Hearth, you’re insane. It’s got to be ten below.”

“Twenty,” said Ether. “I went here for undergrad. Believe me, it’s usually much colder in December.”

Skanky wiped the snow crystals off her muzzle and trudged grimly forward. The quad was the worst — wind tore through the narrow spaces between the buildings and howled through the open square. There was no shelter, but going around would be five times as long a trip. But she had to admit, it was a very pretty night. Whinnyapolis was a small city and had nowhere near the light pollution of Canterlot or Manehattan. You could see thousands of stars, twinkling like crystal lights in the velvet sky.

“That one’s Betelgeuse,” said a sweet, shy voice behind her. It was that pegasus undergrad from earlier. Skanky hadn’t even realized she was still following them. “It’s a red giant. It’s huge — as big as half our solar system.”

“I’m sorry, which one?” said Skanky.

“The third one in Sharp Shooter’s bow. The angle of three stars?”

“I know the constellation,” said Skanky. She guessed that star did look a little bigger and more orange than the other two. Or was it just her imagination? “Are you an astronomy major or something?”

“Thanatology, actually. But I like looking at the sky. That there’s Sirius, there’s β Virginis, there’s Gilese 570, and there are the Hyades: Fomalhaut and Aldebaran, Hastur, Alar and Caracosa…”

“Okay, okay, I believe you.”

“That little one near the top of the student center is called Sol. They just discovered an exoplanet orbiting it that they think might be habitable! No signs of intelligent life, though.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Oh, I so want to meet aliens!" The undergrad pronked along next to Skanky. "That would be the absolute best thing in the history of ever!”

The corner of Skanky’s mouth twitched a little. “Yeah? What if they invade us?”

“Worth it,” said the undergrad. She laughed nervously. Skanky laughed, too — at or with, she wasn’t sure. There was something charming in the little pegasus’ innocence and openness. Skanky wished she were more like that.

“Are you two coming? I’d feel pretty bad if you froze to death, but I’m getting tired of holding this door,” shouted Hearth.

Skanky and the undergrad ran for the door. There was a security guard behind a desk in the lobby — a dark brown earth pony in a blue uniform with an EUP insignia on the shoulder. “Guests, Ether?”

“Yeah, Overly. I’m taking them down to the Bunker to work on one of my projects.”

Overly glared at them, and slammed a sign-in sheet down on top of the monitors in front him. “You two need to be accompanied by either Ether Brew or Firmament at all times. You are only allowed in the Bunker and on the ground floor. If you are found on any other floor, you will be arrested. Do you understand.”

“Sure. Whatever you say,” said Skanky, levitating the pen and signing in.

“He’s a charmer,” she said as they walked towards the elevators.

“Oh, Overly Suspicious is just doing his job. He’s a great guy once you get to know him,” said Ether.

“What’s upstairs that’s so important?” asked Hearth, racing into the elevator after them.

“Awesome things. Wonderful things. Amazing things. Things you aren’t allowed to see.” Ether pulled out a key, and inserted it next to the plate labeled “SB”. Skanky noted that every floor except “G” had a keyhole instead of a button. When the doors opened again, they were in a small foyer with an airlock at the other end. One of the airlock doors — a massive black metal thing with a wheel and multiple deadbolts — was open. The other was a normal glass security door that Ether opened with his badge.

“What is this place?” asked Hearth.

“It’s the Bunker. It used to be a vault for keeping classified documents and important research personal safe in the event of Nightmare Moon’s return. Now that that’s not a concern anymore, it’s been converted into lab space. Our lab is down at the end of the hall. Stay close!”

The floor was a metal grate that made their hoof steps clank and rattle. The walls were old concrete slabs that looked like they hadn’t been washed in decades. Dim fluorescent lights flickered overhead.

“Oh my Harmony, Ether, this place is totes creeps,” said Hearth. “How do you even work down here?”

“Because there’s nothing dangerous down here. It’s just a basement.” Ether opened the second to last door on the left. It looked like a pretty normal laboratory — baby poop colored walls, grimy tile floor, white cabinets, steel sink, a rolling rack full of electronic equipment, and some folded up gurneys against the back wall. A round folding table with five chairs had been set up in the middle of the room. An earth pony with green fur and a black mane sat at the table, reading a book. He looked a little older than them; probably a Ph.D. candidate.

“Ether! I see you have brought us friends!” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Eternal Enigma, but you can call me Ernie. Has Ether told you the nature of our experiment tonight?”

“No,” said Skanky. She glanced at Firmament as the young pegasus rolled the cart of equipment closer to the table. Her frumpy little dress wasn’t as conservative as Skanky had first thought — it was short enough that she could see tantalizing flashes of white cotton panties under her tail.

Skanky looked back at Eternal. “I thought thanatology was part of the philosophy department.”

“That’s old thinking. The land of the dead is a real place that can be reached by our souls, if not by our bodies.” Eternal had some sort of gooey old world accent that Skanky couldn’t place. “Her highness Princess Luna wrote much on it before her disappearance. A realm that neighbors the dream domain, but which remained a mystery even to her. It is a new frontier, and a frontier demands explorers.”

“You know, I think I left the stove on,” said Skanky.

Eternal laughed. “Don’t worry. Tonight’s experiment is strictly psychological in nature. Ether, if you would?”

Ether pulled a wooden box down out of one of the cabinets. He opened it and removed a nasty-looking black revolver.

Hearth put her hooves to her mouth.

Skanky took a small step backward. “Holy Zacherle on a dildo bicycle! If I’d wanted to be hazed, I would have stayed at the frat house!”

Ether flicked the chamber open. Empty. “We don’t even have any ammunition for it.”

“What the gun is,” said Eternal, “is a symbol. This model is no use for hunting — it is a machine meant for one purpose alone: the killing of ponies. Please, sit.”

“I don’t know about this,” said Hearth.

Skanky smirked. “Whatever. I’m not going to pussy out now. Let’s at least see where he’s going with this.” She pulled out a chair and climbed up onto it.

“Our goal tonight is to collect data on what goes on in the minds of ponies when confronted with a symbol of their own demise. The device behind me is an electrothaumatogram, or ETG — first developed by her royal highness Twilight Sparkle for her investigations into earth pony magic. We will simulate a round of griffon roulette, and the ETG will record your responses to symbolically facing death.” He smiled. “If you wish to back out of the experiment at this point, I will quite understand.”

Skanky snorted. “Bring it on.”

Firmament attached electrodes to Ether’s head. Then she kissed him on the tip of his snout. Skanky felt a sudden, irrational flare of jealousy. She shouldn’t feel that way. Taking advantage of horny, emotionally immature undergrads was one of the perks of grad school. She had her own department to pick from. And she did. Oh, did she ever.

Firmament hooked up Eternal next, and then Skanky, then Hearth. She had very gentle hooves.

“Very good,” said Eternal. “Firmament, if you could get the consent forms and liability waivers before you hook yourself up?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Ether lifted the revolver off the center of the table and turned it towards himself. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, pressed the muzzle against his soft palate, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber. click

“Safe for you, Eternal,” said Ether, passing the gun to Eternal.

Skanky make a pouty kissing face at Ether. He sneered at her.

click

“Your turn, Miss Biscuits,” said Eternal, holding the gun towards her grip first. She levitated it out of his hoof and looked at it. It was ironically beautiful in the way that weapons sometimes are. Light gleamed on its smooth metal surfaces. It smelled like steel and oil. There was a rose engraved on the wood of its grip. She looked down the barrel, making sure it was really not loaded. There were spiraling lines on the inside, twisting down into darkness.

“What’s the matter? You wimping out, tough filly?” said Ether.

“Ether, please be respectful of our test subjects,” said Eternity warningly.

Skanky shoved the barrel in her mouth, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.

click

Nothing. Still here. She felt elated, almost high. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her hoof shook as she passed the revolver to Hearth, who was shaking. Skanky leaned over next to her ear. “You don’t have to do it just because I am, you know.”

She shook her head. “Harmony, Skanky. I’m not trying to impress you. That would require me to think that you were cool in the first place.”

Skanky grinned. “There’s the Hearth I know.”

click

“Woo! That is how we do it down on the farm!” said Hearth, slamming one hoof down on the table and sliding the revolver to Firmament.

“Hearth, you’re from the suburbs,” said Skanky.

Firmament scooped the revolver up with her wing and pointed it at her mouth. Skanky struggled to suppress the urge to pluck the gun away from those pretty little lips.

Don’t do it, Skanky, she thought, She’s not gonna appreciate the gesture.

click

Firmament passed the gun back to Eternal.

“Very good,” he said, opening the revolver’s chamber. “Now, we will make things a bit more realistic.” He pulled a single bullet out of his pocket and loaded it into the chamber to the left of the barrel. “There are five of us. This bullet will not be fired. You are, of course, welcome not to participate in this round. Miss Biscuits, if you would like to start?”

Skanky sighed. He’d be last, this way. A nice gesture, she supposed. She levitated the gun hesitantly. She knew enough not to point a loaded gun at anypony she didn’t intend to kill. Well. She jammed the muzzle against the roof of her mouth and pulled the trigger.

click

Hearth pulled the gun out of Skanky’s magic with her hoof. She turned it and passed it grip first to Firmament. “Not this time. I know a thing or two about guns, and this isn’t safe. The first time wasn’t safe. This is idiotic.”

Eternal smiled at her benignly. “Quite all right. Firmament, if you would?”

Skanky closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She would not jerk the gun away from her. She would not she would not.

click

Ether and Eternal pulled the trigger in turn.

“Very good," said Eternal. "This will provide us with excellent data.” He opened the chamber and unloaded the gun. “Plastic, by the way,” he said tapping the bullet on the table. “Quite safe.”

Skanky decided that she hated Eternal Enigma more than anypony else she’d ever met.

Chapter 2

Smooth Operator was pressed into a back corner at the frat party, feeling sorry for himself. He’d tried to pick up on every mare at this party, and he’d come up dry. How was he ever going to get laid if mares were going to be so stuck up?

Or their coltfriends so overprotective. He rubbed the fresh bruise on his cheek. It hurt.

He’d read so many guides. Watched so many videos. None of the techniques worked. Not the negging. Not the peacocking. Not even just coming on to every mare in sight.

There was no hope. He was going to die a virgin.

“You.” Skanky Biscuits was suddenly at his side. She was wearing her parka.

Smooth jerked away from her instinctively, his back knees closing in around his balls. “What? What? What did I do?”

“I just had a terrible experience. It made me want to utterly degrade myself. I thought of you,” she said.

“Buh buh wha?”

“Also I’m pretty sure you’re not going to give me a disease. Unless you’ve found one you can get from your own hoof. Which I wouldn’t put past you.”

Smooth’s lower lip began to tremble. “Why are you so mean?”

Skanky sighed and facehoofed. “I’m sorry. Listen. I really can’t be alone right now. Or around my friends. And I’m pathetic enough to be willing to trade my body for some comfort. And you’re safe, if only because I know I could take you if you tried anything. So do you want to fuck or not?”

“I’ll get my coat.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky woke up to a chorus of moaning and squelching noises. She ascertained that none of them were coming from her own body, and looked around. She was in a dorm room that smelled like dirty laundry and microwave burritos. Smooth Operator was next to her on the bed, watching porn on his laptop.

“Seriously?” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Shut up,” said Smooth. “This is what I do every morning. I’m not changing my routine for you.”

She squinted at the screen. “What is that? Old Farts and Young Tarts?”

Smooth looked surprised. “Yeah. #17. You know the series?”

“Nice to see Dad’s still in good shape.”

Smooth’s eyes grew wide with an expression somewhere between fanboy awe and total mortification. “What. Wait. What? You’re… you’re not… Studly Biscuits is your dad?”

“My given name is Skanky. You think my parents are normal?”

Smooth’s horn glowed. So did command-Q on his keyboard. “Oh my Harmony I’m so sorry.”

Skanky waved a hoof at him. “Don’t be. I’m used to it.”

Smooth shut his laptop anyway. “No. It’s weird, now.”

Skanky laid her head back down and closed her eyes.

“Do we need to talk about last night?” said Smooth, “I mean… I don’t know…”

Skanky pulled a pillow over her head. “No, we’re not a couple now. Yes, you were good. No, I don’t have any diseases, and no, you can’t get my face pregnant. Anything else?”

Smooth’s eyes brightened. “I was good?”

For a brief second Skanky’s face softened. “Yeah. I was impressed you were willing to go down on your first time. That takes guts. You’re going to make some lucky mare very happy one day.”

He blushed and ran a hoof through his mane. “Really?”

“Yes. But not me.”

“Right. Can I… um…”

“No.”

He ducked his head. “I only wanted a hug.”

Skanky scowled. “Do you promise to cut the pick-up artist routine and start treating mares like real ponies?”

“I’ll try, I guess?”

She squeezed him and patted him on the back. He kissed her on the lips. She kept her mouth closed.

“I’m taking a shower, now.” She tip-hoofed across the floor, opened the door, and tossed Smooth his red sock. “Oh, and Smooth? Before you have any more mares over?”

“Yeah?”

“Clean your damn room.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Things were business as usual for the next few weeks. Skanky didn’t see her friends much. She was busy with teaching, and with working on her film, and Hearth and Ether were wrapped up in their own research. When she ran into Smooth, things were more cordial than they had been in the past, and weirdly, less awkward. He was dating some mare now. If she didn’t know better, she’d say she’d done a bit of good in the world by making a stallion out of him. But that would be absurd — Skanky didn’t do good, it wasn’t in her nature. She knew she was evil, she could feel it, like a disgusting grub wriggling in her chest when she closed her eyes at night. She didn’t know why or how, but there was something gross about herself that no number of good deeds could undo.

She didn’t see Firmament at all. She often found herself wishing she would. She’d glance sky-blue out of the corner of her eye, mixed in with a crowd, but it was never her. Skanky was surprised at these feelings. They were grade A, top-of-the-line schoolfilly bullshit, and they had no place in a hard and wrinkled heart like hers. Then one day she stopped at the student center on the way to class for a coffee and a break from the cold.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” said Firmament.

“Oh! No! Of course not!” Skanky scooted sideways on her bench with maybe just a little too much eagerness.

“I wanted to give you… um… a picture of your brain.” She opened her saddlebags, and handed Skanky a printout. “I don’t know if it means much to you… I know you were pretty freaked out at the end, there.” Firmament pushed her curly orange mane back from her eyes, and looked away.

Skanky looked it over. A wrinkly gray oval, with some parts highlighted in red and blue. “A picture of my brain while pretending to kill myself. That’s pretty metal. Thanks.”

Firmament’s eyes darted towards Skanky. “Do you like heavy metal? I mean, not that I do.”

The faint note of hope made Skanky want to giggle. Maybe she wasn’t the only silly schoolfilly. By way of an answer, she opened her parka to reveal the PWAR T-shirt underneath.

Firmament clapped her hooves together. “Oh, have you seen them live?”

Skanky grinned and nodded. “They really have to be seen to be believed.”

Firmament bounced up and down a little. “I haven’t, but I so want to!”

Skanky noticed that her heart rate had increased. An opportunity was presenting itself. “If you let me buy you coffee, I can tell you all about it.”

“Oh, I have to get to class,” said Firmament.

Skanky’s heart went from a million beats a second to a dead stop. She made a mental calculation of how much alcohol she had in her apartment. It wouldn't be enough. She would need to buy more.

“Anyway, I prefer tea. Tea and cake. You can buy me some later.” She grinned at Skanky, blushing. She had this amazing, wide, pure smile.

Skanky’s heart started beating again. “You could meet me back here at eight o’clock tonight. You know, if you didn’t have anything better to do.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

She didn’t have anything better to do. The little Queequeg’s in the student center was closed, so they went down to Grounds for Celebration on Mulland street, which had much better coffee anyway. Firmament was fluent in all varieties of loud, ugly music. She was conversant in the language of cinema. She could talk for hours about science things. Skanky was not especially interested in science things, but she’d learned long ago that the best way to get somepony to like you is to ask them a lot of questions about themselves. And she found she wanted Firmament to like her very much.

She was surprised when she noticed the cafe staff were putting up the chairs and giving them irritated glances.

“I think we need to get out of here before they put chairs on our heads,” she said.

“There’s something important we need to talk about,” said Firmament, looking serious.

Skanky nodded. “I’ll walk you to your dorm?”

The wind was roaring downhill into their faces, rendering their hoods useless and shoving their words back into their mouths. They made it about a block before they had to duck into an alley.

“This is horrible!” said Firmament. “Don’t they have weather ponies in this city?”

“Listen, I don’t want to sound tacky, but my apartment is a block from here,” said Skanky.

“I’m dating Ether Brew,” said Firmament.

Skanky nodded. “I knew that. I asked you out anyway. I’m kind of a shitty friend, I guess. Let’s go talk about it someplace warm, though.”

Skanky’s apartment was a studio, with burgundy walls, many more books than bookshelves, and mismatched furniture mostly acquired off of curbsides. Firmament took off her coat and sat on the brown plaid couch. She was wearing a plain yellow dress that was just as modest as the one she’d been wearing when they met. Skanky had thought she’d been wearing long underwear, but with her legs pulled up under her on the couch, she could see that they were thigh high stockings.

Well.

“Can I get you something to drink?” asked Skanky.

“A cider would be nice,” said Firmament.

"Totally unrelated question. What year are you?”

Firmament beamed. “I’m nineteen.”

Skanky levitated two bottles out of the fridge and popped them open with a churchkey. “Okay. Just checking. I like to know exactly what crimes I’m committing.”

“I’m legal!” chirped Firmament.

Skanky narrowed her eyes. “Not to drink.”

Firmament giggled. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“You look good for your age, grandma.”

Skanky levitated a cider into Firmament’s hoof. Firmament took a sip. “Oh, this is good! Wait, so all cider doesn’t taste like stale piss?”

Skanky sat down next to her on the couch. “Listen, I may live on peanut butter sandwiches and pot noodles, but when it comes to alcohol, it pays to shell out for the good stuff. So. What was this we needed to talk about?"

"We need you to help us on our project. We need to record interviews about subject experiences, and we're just terrible at it. Like, amazingly, astonishingly bad at it. Who knew recording videos that don't look like total crap was so hard?"

"I know this. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who don't know how to do something think its easy. Like scientists who think art is easy."

Firmament pursed her lips. "Okay. So we admit art is hard, which is why we're even having this conversation. So will you help us?"

"That depends. What experiments are you doing?"

Firmament cringed. "Can't tell you. It's kind of super secret. Probably against school rules, and maybe illegal."

"Well, all right," said, Skanky laying her ears back. She had complicated feelings. She felt used, for one thing. Saying 'no' to this little filly was going to be nearly impossible for her. But she didn't want to go back to that lab, ever. But she was also not the type of pony who could turn down a chance to ply her trade. "I'll think about it."

Firmament raised an eyebrow. "And what kind of thoughts will you think?"

Skanky sighed. She couldn't lie. "That I want to do it."

Firmament beamed.

"My turn. The elephant in the room. Ether?”

“First coltfriend.”

“How’s he working out?”

Firmament drew her mouth into a tight, narrow line.

“That good, huh,” said Skanky.

“He’s fine, really. He's just... fine. But I really want to work on this project, and… no, don’t look at me like that! That’s not why I got together with him! It was after we started the project! I’m just afraid if I dump him in the middle of it, it’ll be awkward.”

“I know I’m biased, but he’s gonna know something’s not right,” said Skanky. “Listen, I’m really into you. I don’t know you that well, but I’d like us to be more than just a hookup. But I can’t do that if you’re…”

Firmament kissed her. She started slowly; a sensual brush of lip against lip. But it escalated. Before Skanky knew what was happening, her tongue had been lured into Firmament’s perfect little mouth.

Skanky broke the kiss. “You don’t kiss like a filly who just lost her virginity.”

Firmament fluttered her eyelashes. “I said he was my first coltfriend.”

“Oh.” Skanky knew she was supposed to be strong, here. Yes, Ether was an asshole, but he still deserved better than this. She should get up off the couch, and she should go to sleep. Alone. Her futon was five feet away. She was sure she could make it without Firmament following her there like an unusually seductive lost puppy.

Oops. They were kissing again. So much for that. Then she was helping Firmament pull her frumpy-assed dress off over her head. It was always satisfying to get a pony who wore clothes naked, especially when they dressed so badly. The body underneath it was delicious — she was slim and graceful, but her thighs and tummy were plump with dining hall pudge. And yes, she was wearing white cotton panties. Skanky kissed her on the neck. Then the chest. Then lower.

An hour later, they were curled up together on Skanky’s futon. Firmament’s slim body was nestled against the front of Skanky’s sturdy little barrel. Her panties were back on — she seemed to like them on no matter what, and not just as a sexual thing — but she didn’t mind when Skanky rolled them down on one side to get a better look at her cutie mark. It was rather complex — a blue dome, shaded to show depth, traced with a curving grid of lines that met at the top. Inside it, a crescent moon and three stars orbited around a stylized sun, like a planetarium inside a snow globe.

“It’s scientifically inaccurate,” mumbled Firmament, her eyes struggling to remain open. “Just like my name. I hate it.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Skanky. “How is it inaccurate?”

“Th’… the ancient earth ponies and unicorns thought the sky… the sky was a crystal dome. Pegasi knew better. Always knew better. But my parents thought it was a pretty idea, so they named me after it. Apparently, the universe thinks so… thinks so too. So cruel.”

Skanky giggled. “It’s all right, sweetie. It’s all right.”

“I want… I want the moon and sun, but it’s inside out. It’s inside out. I’m going to get in the rocket ship.” And she started snoring. Skanky pulled the blanket over them and went to sleep herself.

Chapter 3

“Do I just look into the camera, or…”

“No, genius. Start licking the lens and we’ll go from there.”

Ether Brew reached hesitantly for Skanky’s little digital camera. She batted away his hooves. She readjusted the tripod it to get him framed properly again, then sat down in the folding chair across from him. They were in the same lab as they’d done the griffon roulette experiment in. The ETG had been joined by a pony-sized glass tank and a cart-like medical device that Skanky was pretty sure was a heart and lung machine.

“Can you introduce yourself, please?” Skanky floated up her pad and pen, glancing through her list of questions.

“I’m Ether Brew, a Masters student in the Thanatology program at Smart Cookie University. I’m working with Eternal Enigma on a…” Ether hesitated. “A very special project.

“And what is that?”

“We’re trying to find out what happens after death.”

“And why would you want to do that? It seems like something that might be better left alone.”

Ether smiled. “Haven’t you read your Princess Luna? ‘In this darkness dreams continue, even after a heart is stilled’. We know there’s an afterlife, but Luna wasn’t willing to tell us much about it. But I think it’s something we all want to know. Something we all need to know. I certainly do.”

“I have a Luna quote, too. ’Death is jealous, and does not give up her secrets lightly.”

“I think Luna had an interest in keeping others out of her domain. Our preliminary experiments have indicated that upon death, the soul enters a state similar to REM sleep for an undetermined period of time. But nopony actually dies in our experiments — we just trick the soul into going off on its own for a little while.” Ether hopped out of his chair onto his four hooves. “Would you like to see our setup? I’ll explain to you how it works.”

Skanky sighed. Ether was already going off script. She detached her camera from the tripod and levitated it after him. A dolly would have been preferable — shaky cam was so over. She’d have to try and address it in editing.

Ether ran his hooves lovingly over the edge of the tank. “We call this baby Persephone. Or Sefie, for short.”

“No clever acronyms?”

“It's based on a setup doctors call DHCA -- Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest, also known as the "standstill procedure". The subject is anesthetized and lowered into freezing water, inducing hypothermia. This allows her to be 'dead' for up to an hour without causing brain damage. We then stop her heart. Brain activity ceases, causing the subject's soul to leave her body.”

Skanky raised an eyebrow. “And this is safe?”

Ether laughed. “Well, Eternal and I got through it okay. I wouldn’t try it at home, though.” He patted the ETG machine. “This baby keeps track of brain activity, but of course once the soul is gone there isn’t any. So we’re thrown back on anecdotal evidence. Which is what we need you for.”

“Right.” she turned off the camera. “Actually I really like this shot; let me get my tripod.”

“Do I just stand here?” said Ether.

“Yes. This will literally take a second! Okay. So. Filming again. Have you been in Sefie? What did you see?”

“Hey, does my mane look okay?” said Ether.

“It looks fine will you answer the question?”

“All right. Well. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, to be honest. It was like a dream. I was in an observatory with many other scientists. Way, way more than you’d need for anything. The telescope was a huge, old-fashioned one, all purple with gold dials, like something Twilight Sparkle would have used when she was young. Neighton was looking through the telescope and calling out co-ordinates, and Great Explainer and Imitation Game were charting them on a whiteboard.”

“Star-studded,” said Skanky.

Ether raised an eyebrow. “You recognize the names? Also, I see what you did there.”

“I’m not a total ignoramus,” said Skanky. “So what happened then?”

“Great Explainer noticed that the stars locations and parallax were consistent with them being located on a dome-shaped screen, rather than arranged in three-dimensional space. Everypony took it pretty well, considering what utter bullshit that is.”

Skanky had a sudden feeling of deja vu. She’d been spending a lot of quality time in the vicinity of Firmament’s cutie mark, over the past couple of days. That was an odd coincidence.

Ether continued. “Imitation Game suggested they needed to gather more data before they came to a conclusion, and so they cleared the whiteboard and started again. They went through the exact same process again three times before Eternal and Firmament brought me out. It was like they just kept forgetting.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Eternal and Ether cranked Hearth's body out of Sefie. Icy water dripped down her sides. They lowered her onto a waiting gurney, and Firmament pressed the defibrillator paddles against her soaked chest.

“CLEAR!”

Hearth’s eyes snapped open.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“Why did you do it, Hearthie?”

Hearth and Home was draped in a blanket, and holding a mug of hot coffee between her hooves. “I wanted to find my mom.”

“Zacherle, Hearthie, I’ve met your mom. She lives in Saddleton. You could have just driven there.”

Hearth rolled her eyes. “Wing Dings is my stepmom. My real mother died before I was born.”

Skanky gasped. “Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn’t even… wait, that’s impossible.”

"Gotcha." The corner of Hearth’s mouth twitched. “But I’m not just messing with you, it’s actually true. Car accident in the third trimester. They cut me out of her dead body. Everyone said it was a miracle. Except I never got to know my real mom, so I don't know, that seems like a pretty sucky miracle to me.”

Skanky’s horn glowed. The green light on the camera turned red. She hugged Hearth, then started the camera again. “So. Tell me what you saw.”

Hearth took a sip of her coffee. “Okay. So. Everything went black, right? And there was a tunnel of white light.”

“Pretty boilerplate.”

“This is hard to remember, Skanky. Please shut the fuck up before I forget it all, okay? Anyway, I felt it calling me. I went through, and I was in an office full of cubicles. Everything was gray. I mean, everything. The floors, the walls the windows, the ceiling, they were all gray. Even the light was gray. Everypony was sitting in from of screens, just typing and typing. And I was pulling this cart full of paperwork, and dropping piles and piles of it off at every cube. And no matter how many piles I drop off the load on my cart never gets any smaller. After I’d been doing this for a while, a gray pony…”

“I thought they were all gray ponies,” said Skanky.

“This one was especially gray. Anyway, she came and told me it was time for my weekly face to face. Though she didn't really have a face, so that was an interesting way of putting it. So the next thing I know, I’m in an office. A pretty normal upper management office, you know, motivational posters, drinky bird, Neighton’s balls, the whole deal. And naturally…”

“Gray?”

“Really gray. And there’s a mare at the desk. She’s hard to look at because she’s just blindingly gray. Like, gray light radiates off of her and makes everything around her that much more gray. And where the gray light hits, things get dry and flaky. Including me. She tells me that my work just isn’t getting done, which I have to admit it wasn’t. She holds out her hoof to me, and suggests a performance improvement program. I feel… like, compelled to reach out and touch hooves with her, but when I do, I see cracks start to form on the wall of my hoof, and it starts, just, flaking away. So I say I have to use the little fillies’ room. I get there, and I start washing my hoof, but the more I wash, the more of it comes away. Then I look up in the mirror, and my face is caving in. It’s gray on the outside, but the cheeks and most my forehead are gone, and there are… like… millions of little worms, or veins underneath.” Hearth stopped to take a sip of coffee.

“What happened then?” asked Skanky.

“Then I felt a pain in my chest, and I was soaking wet and lying on a gurney.” She shrugged. “It was an awful dream, but I’ve had worse. And I’m already starting to forget it all.”

“So no mom.”

Hearth leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “But that’s just the thing! Skanky, what am I studying?”

Skanky blinked. “What is this, a friend test? You’re in social work.”

“Exactly!” Hearth thumped Skanky in the thigh with her coffee cup. “A cube farm’s not the type of work environment I ever expect to find myself in. But my mom, my real mom? She was a clinical data manager! That would have been her life!”

Skanky wiped coffee off her leg. “Hearth, you’re getting out of frame.”

“Sorry.” Hearth sat back and adjusted her blanket. “But I think I might’ve been in my mother’s afterlife! I’m going in again as soon as Eternal with let me. I think I can find her.”

“Is it okay if I’m skeptical?” said Skanky.

Hearth grinned and took a sip of coffee. “I wouldn’t expect any less of you, honey.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky took a walk around the Bunker to clear her head — it didn’t work. She saw Ether and Firmament coming out the stallion’s room together. Ether just grinned at her. Firmament wouldn’t meet her eyes. That little whore.

Skanky wriggled out of doing any more interviews that night, packed up her things, texted Smooth Operator, and headed for the closest bar.

Is this a booty call? wrote Smooth.

No. Bring your girlfriend if you want.

Three way. I like it.

Fuck you. All my friends have gone crazy. I need to talk. Or get drunk. Or both.

Skanky was well into her fourth cider when the others got there.

“Hey, Skanky. This is Wild Oats. Oats, Skanky.”

“You… you can… I saved you seats.” It might’ve just been the alcohol, but Skanky instantly coveted the round little brown mare, who had ‘earth pony party planner’ written all over her in neon magic marker. Metaphorically. Skanky wanted to write other things on her in real magic marker.

“I see you got started without us,” bubbled Oats, scrambling up onto the bar stool. “Don’t worry about us, though. We’ll catch up. Barkeep! Bring me something with an umbrella in it!”

“So what’s this about your friends being crazy?” said Smooth, climbing up unto the stool next to Oats. He put a tender but possessive hoof on her jiggly croup.

“I can’t… hic I can’t even tell you. I signed an NDA.” Skanky waved her hoof. “They’re doing experiments.”

Oats bounced up and down on her stool. “Oh, that’s exciting. What kind?”

Skanky snorted. “Science. They’re doing science.”

“Neat!” Oats took a sip of the brightly colored cocktail the bartender had just slid over to her. "But I meant more specifically what kind of science.

Skanky shook her head. “Weird science. Disturbing. Maybe even unfriendly.” She took a long gulp of her cider.

Smooth ordered a cider and laughed. “What are they doing? Trying to raise the dead?”

Skanky sprayed her cider across the bar top.

“Wow. First, guess,” said Oats. She bumped hooves with Smooth.

Skanky sighed, avoiding eye contact with the bartender as they swooped in to clean up the mess. “Not exactly. They’re like resurrection ponies from an old novel, stealing knowledge from the grave.” That was good. She should write that down. She waited until the bartender had gone, then looked around, and leaned towards the other two, eyes darting around. Wild Oats smelled like frosting. “Promise not to tell?”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a jello shot in my eye,” said Oats. Smooth nodded in agreement.

So Skanky told them.

“Whoa,” said Smooth.

“Oh, gosh, I always wondered about will happen to me after I die!” said Oats.

“Where do we sign up?” said Smooth.

Skanky’s left lower eyelid twitched. “Are you two serious?”

Wild Oats nodded. “Oh yeah, it sounds like a trip! I mean, I guess I couldn’t talk about it right away. That would suck. But oh my Harmony, once I could? I’d be telling that one for the rest of my life!”

“Yeah,” said Smooth. “How often do you get a chance like that? I mean, death is what everypony’s afraid of, right? But if we could go and see what it’s like… I mean, even if it’s not that great, at least we’d know?”

“Yeah, exactly!” said Oats. Skanky wished she hadn’t wasted all that cider on her spit take. She waved down the barkeep for another. Oats and Smooth turned to whisper to each other.

“Do you want to?”

“Do you want to ask her?”

“You ask her. You know her better.”

“I can hear you!” Skanky rubbed at her temples. “Listen, I’m sure they can use more subjects. I’ll ask, but for fuck’s sake keep the secret better than I did, okay?”

Smooth and Oats hoof hugged each other and kissed. Skanky sighed and looked away. Everypony around her was going insane.

Chapter 5

Skanky Biscuits was a filly again, alone in her room. It was dark outside. She had her dog-eared copy of Pinkie Pie’s What it Was Like in Ponyville clutched against her chest. Her little pink human doll Ralphie was curled against her side. Her Twilight-Sparkle-as-a-pretty-ballerina nightlight cast a soft purple glow over the room.

Except for the closet. Something was moving in the closet, coming out of it, closer and closer. Its dark wings enfolded the room.

It offered her a gift.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

And then Skanky woke up dead.

Well. Not really dead. Mostly dead maybe.

Her hooves landed on a hill covered in green grass and yellow daisies. The sky was so blue it hurt her eyes. The clouds were fluffs of white cotton. A gentle breeze tugged at her mane. There was a small town in the distance, cradled by trees and mountains, dominated by a crystal castle. She recognized this. Every Equestrian who’d been a public school student in the last eighty ears would. The Ponyville of Pinkie Pie’s memoirs; as iconic as it was historically inaccurate.

Skanky would never tell a living soul, but she loved Pinkie Pie’s book. More than Monster Heart’s short stories, more than Cut Up’s Clothed Lunch, more than Kawaii Corpse’s magic realist horror. It might be her favorite book of all time.

So then, this was definitely her afterlife. How was she supposed to find Smooth here? He didn’t seem like the type for Ponyville, though she could be wrong. She watched the town for a while. Friendly ponies pranced through the streets, singing and working together. She imagined she saw Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy amongst them, though they were too far away to tell for sure. At last, she turned away — if she didn’t stop looking, she’d never leave this place.

“Hey! You’re not from around here!” said Rainbow Dash, who was hovering right behind her.

Skanky squawked and jumped back.

“Sorry to scare you," said Rainbow. "We just don’t get a lot of living visitors, here. And… I mean, it’s great you’re here. Pinkie’s Ponyville is one of the nicer places to be dead; most ponies are pretty lucid here. But… you’re not dead. So what’s up with that?”

“How do you know I’m not dead? And are you really Rainbow Dash?”

“Well, you’re breathing, that’s a dead giveaway. Plus I can smell you. Dead ponies don’t really smell like much. But you?” She waved a hoof in front of her nose. “Woo! Take a shower!”

Skanky turned pale.

“Naw, I’m just jerking your chain. You smell nice. And darn tootin’ I’m Rainbow Dash! In the flesh! Or… not in the flesh actually. Just my soul. But it’s an awesome soul. So who the heck are you?”

It took Skanky a moment to respond. One of history’s most iconic bisexuals had just said she smelled nice. It was a lot to take in. “I’m… um… I’m Skanky Biscuits. I’m here because my friends have been transgressing the boundary between life and death. One of them got lost here, and I’m trying to track him down.”

“Oh, wow. I used to get up to shenanigans like that with my pals when I was your age. Brings back memories. Good times.”

“His name’s Smooth Operator, he’s an orange unicorn about this tall and he’s kind of a douchebag. Have you seen him?”

“Can’t say I have. But maybe you can help us, while you're here. There’s something wrong with Pinkie.”

Skanky’s heart, which had been flying, suddenly took a nosedive. “Oh no.”

“We could use a hero. Wanna fly back to town with me?”

Skanky scowled. "I’m not a hero, and I can’t fly."

“You can totally fly. Death is like a dream — you can do anything if you think you can. I mean, you’ll never be as good a flier as me, but, why don’t you give it a try.”

Skanky looked at her hooves. She tried to visualize them rising off of the grass, and they did. “Holy mother of buck it's working!”

Rainbow laughed. “See? I told you. Would I lie to you?”

“Can I do a sonic rainboom?” said Skanky, floating up next to her.

“Let’s not get carried away, kid.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Rarity and Fluttershy waited by Pinkie Pie’s bedside. Rarity was sewing an infinite blue dress that trailed out the bedroom window and across town. Fluttershy was mopping Pinkie’s brow with a damp cloth. The cloth came away gray.

Skanky walked over next to Pinkie. She lay there, eyes focused at a point kilometers away, coat graying and brittle. Her mane spread across her pillow and sheets, as straight as wire. She wasn’t breathing, but then again none of them were, so maybe that wasn’t a problem. Skanky felt her throat tighten — she’d never met Pinkie; in fact, she’d died before Skanky was born. But she’d read her book so many times that it felt like she was at the sickbed of a friend.

“How long has she been like this?” she asked.

“Oh, we have no way of knowing, darling,” said Rarity, looking up at Skanky over the tops of her little red glasses. “Time doesn’t work for us the way it used to.” Rarity’s magic didn’t miss a stitch as she spoke. Needle went in, needle went out, like a sewing machine.

“She says things, sometimes,” said Fluttershy. “Horrible, horrible things.”

“Like what?” said Skanky.

Pinkie’s jaw creaked open, and a voice like an avalanche playing a glass harp reverberated out of her mouth.

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons, even death may die.

Pinkie’s mouth creaked closed again.

“Things like that,” said Fluttershy.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Rainbow and the others had suggested she move towards the light. Fair enough. That seemed to be the way things worked around here. A gray light rose in the western sky as she walked. It looked like a sun, but larger than the yellow one over Ponyville, and twice as bright. That must be the light they were talking about.

Skanky walked until her legs felt like jelly. Then she flew for a while, but that wasn’t any easier. She touched down, fell to her knees, and flopped onto her side. She was in a forest. Ants were already crawling on her recumbent body. The trees were green and leafy near her, but grew more monochrome as she looked west. There was a strange noise, quiet at first, but growing. A clattering and rustling like old celluloid running through a film projector. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to stand again. No time for rest. She had to find Smooth and get out.

The trees grew more withered as she walked, and the ground cracked and dried into rough hexagonal chunks. The not-sun beat down on her, making her sweat.

After walking a very long time, Skanky came to a valley full of metal spikes. They loomed over her as she walked, glittering in the light. The ground was growing more treacherous — sometimes it would cave in under her hooves, creating a massive sinkhole that she'd have to fly over.

At the lowest point of the valley was a bulkhead — two massive stone slabs with no apparent means of opening them. A massive painting of Smooth’s cutie mark — a red pill — on the slabs made it look like this was a place she needed to go.

But how to get in?

She laid her hoof on the doors and noticed how the stone crumbled like sand. A few solid kicks and she was through. So that part had been easy.

She crawled through the hole into a wide corridor. It echoed with voices from below. Moans and screams. But not bad moans and screams. Skanky was from Canterlot; she knew an orgy when she heard one.

The ramp went down to a large, domed room. The walls and ceiling were covered in mirrors. She had no idea what the floor was made of because it was totally covered in mares. Skinny, pink, big-bottomed porn mares, all with sex-related cutie marks. And in the middle of them, twisting amongst their bodies like a salmon trying to swim upstream, was Smooth.

No wonder he didn’t want to come back.

A horrible pain crackled through Skanky’s chest. She fell to her knees, gritting her teeth. No. They were trying to bring her back! It was too soon!

She pushed herself to her hooves and wiped spittle from her lips. If they were using the paddles, that meant she had been in for almost an hour, and they needed to revive her to avoid brain damage. Well. She had half a mind to leave the poor horny bastard to his eternal rest. Then she saw something blindingly gray in the mirror across the room.

In the mirror, a pony made of gray light was descending the walkway. She looked behind her. Empty corridor. Freaky.

The gray pony stepped out of the mirror like that wasn’t a big deal, and waded into the porn mares, who exploded into dust where she touched them. They screamed and tried to run, but there was no place to go. Skanky leaped into the mass of panicked mares, trying to reach Smooth. She didn’t know if the porn mares were real pony souls or not. She hoped they weren’t, but there was nothing she could do for them. She was here for Smooth.

She’d almost reached him when the pain hit her chest again. She stumbled and was soon covered in a sea of roiling pink flesh.

“What’s happening?” shouted Smooth “Skanky, where are you?”

Skanky glanced up at the ceiling mirrors. Smooth was a few feet away. The gray pony was closing in on them, slow but implacable. “I’m here to save your soul. Come on!”

“I can’t find you!”

Skanky kicked a mare out of the way. She squealed like a foal, and Skanky felt terrible about it, but she had to do what she had to do. Another porn mare pushed in front of her, and Skanky surprised herself by biting into her neck. She tasted like white chocolate and copper. Skanky let go, shocked, and the mare scurried away from her, pressing other mares back in her paniced flight.

When Skanky reached Smooth, he didn’t look happy. His fur was matted, his eyes dark and hollow, his posture slouched and exhausted. Apparently death-world orgies sucked almost as much as real ones. The gray pony loomed behind him, light dulling his outline. It climbed onto his back and sunk its teeth into his neck. Skanky thought all was lost, but he didn’t turn to dust.

“Help!” he wailed.

“Hold still!” said Skanky. Sparks bloomed in her chest again. She jumped forward, grabbed Smooth with both legs, and… sort of… opened herself to the pain in her chest. Everything melted into gray.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

It was 3 AM the next night.

Skanky slammed her head back in forth in time to the music. The mic was off and nopony else was in the WSCU radio station at this hour, so she sang along, making up in rage what she lacked in any kind of musical skill at all.

FATAL!

FECAL!

FACIAL!

FROTTAGE!

That was practically the whole song, over and over again. By the time it was done, Skanky’s neck ached and her head felt light. It was a good feeling.

She flicked the mic back on. “That was The Dementors with ‘Fatal Fecal Facial Frottage’. So. Real talk." Skanky took a deep breath. Publicly asking for help like this was embarrassing, but it was the only way she had to reach out. But whatever, nopony listened to her show anyway.

"This is a message for Twilight Sparkle. Are you out there? Because I need your help. There’s literally no way to contact you; I looked everywhere online. I can’t talk about the details on the air, but something really bad is happening. Your friends — yeah, I talked to your friends, the dead ones — said they believed in me, and that I was the only one who could save them. Which is bullshit. Sorry. I’m not supposed to swear on the air. Anyway. But I could really use your help. So call me or whatever it is you do.

"Anypony who isn’t Twilight Sparkle that’s hearing this? I’m on drugs right now and you can totally disregard this, ‘kay?”

The studio door opened, and Firmament came in. Skanky nearly choked.

“Aaaaand here’s Public Servant with ‘Emergency Services are Underfunded in Your Town’.” She started the song and switched off the mic. “Firmy, what are you doing here?”

“Just checking on you,” she said, setting her bags by the door. She pulled out a stool and climbed up on it next to Skanky. “How are you doing?”

Skanky grabbed her by the mane and spent the next two minutes trying to lick Firmament’s tonsils. When she pulled back, Firmament’s legs were shaking.

“Can Ether do that for you?” said Skanky.

“N-no,” mumbled Firmament.

“Anyway, how’s Smooth doing? He all right? The gray pony actually caught him. I’m surprised he made it out alive.”

Firmament nodded. “He’s fine. He says he’s fine, anyway. He says his cutie mark means he’s good at accepting difficult truths.”

“That so. I thought it just meant he was a pretentious ass-hat,” said Skanky.

“You’re pretty mean,” said Firmament.

“I know,” said Skanky. “I don’t think I was always this way? I was such a sweet little filly. But in this case, I’m also right.”

“Skanky, I’m scared,” said Firmament. “The things we’ve seen… I’ve talked to Ether and Eternal. They want you to go in again.”

A wave of bowel-loosening fear swept through Skanky, but she tried to keep it cool. “I don’t know, Hearthie’s pretty keen to go looking for her mom. I don’t wanna stand in the way of that.”

“You could go with her,” said Firmament, laying her hooves on Skanky’s foreleg. “We know that’s possible now — that we can find each other in there. Something bad is going on, and we need you to help us.”

“Why me?” growled Skanky.

“Because you brought Smooth back. You’ve got a gift. You can save us.”

Skanky gritted her teeth, and cued up a long set — KMFSS, Crazy Train, Parasprites will Eat Themselves, Daisy Age. “Firmament. Look at my flank. What do you see there?”

“Um… a film reel?”

“Does that suggest dominion over the land of the dead to you?”

Firmament ducked her head and laid back her ears. “No?”

“Secondly, whatever's happening is happening to the dead. It sucks, but they’re already dead. There’s nothing worse that could happen to them!”

Firmament’s tight frown grew deeper. She went over to her saddlebags and came back cradling a broken coffee cup in her hooves. “I carried this here in bubble wrap. It’s from our lab.” She set it on the stool that she’d been sitting on.

Skanky glared at the cup. It was dusty, and small cracks ran away from the large chip on the rim. “So?”

Firmament gave the cup a tap on the handle. The whole thing fell apart into a cloud of gray dust.

Chapter 6

“I know about you and Firmie,” said Ether Brew, as he fastened electrodes to Skanky’s chest.

“I’d begun to suspect,” said Skanky. Hearth was already being anesthetized — they were going to send her in first, and then send Skanky in after to find her. Because she’d been able to do that. Once. “That’s why you send her to me whenever you need something from me, right? You must really love her.”

Ether scowled. “Listen, she can lesbian around all she wants, as long as at the end of the day she remembers she’s mine.”

“You’re a prize, Ether. Put me under, I don’t want to listen to you any more.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky came to in a toilet stall.

She listened for a moment, and when she decided she was alone, she opened the door. The bathroom was posh, corporate-looking, drab, clean, and gray.

Skanky galloped back into the bathroom stall and slammed the door behind her. No. No no no. Nope. This was Hearthie’s mom’s office. This was a bad place. The Gray Pony was here. Skanky was going to hide here until they revived her. Then she would transfer to another school. In another country, if possible.

The restroom door opened and closed. Hooves clicked on the marble floor. “Skanky? Skanky, was that you?”

“Faust damn it, Hearthie, keep your voice down!” she hissed, opening the stall door and rushing her inside. Hearth hugged her until started to turn blue.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said, pushing Hearth away. Being with her in a restroom stall was a bit too exciting, even under the circumstances.

“Finding my mom, and saving the world from the Gray Pony, I guess? In that order of importance,” said Heath.

Skanky gave up trying to be good and slumped against Hearth’s side. She was soft, for such a skinny mare. “Hearthie, I love you.”

Hearth kissed her cheek. “I love you too. No homo. We need a plan. Eyes on the prize.”

The whole building shook. The was a horrible thump, accompanied by the shriek of steel beams pushed past their tolerance. Then a second thump, noticeably closer. Skanky gulped. “Yeah, I don’t think hiding in the bathroom is gonna do it for us.”

“Run away very fast. How’s that for a plan?” said Hearth. Skanky nodded once, firmly.

They tumbled out the bathroom door. Something was coming around the corner — the Gray Pony, grown huge, mashed into the corridor, shaking with rage. She shoved a glowing hoof forward, shattering windows and denting the corridor wall. “You!” she bellowed, the building reverberating with the power of its voice.

“Go! Go!” shouted Skanky, body checking Hearth’s rump to get her moving.

“But mom!”

“I don’t think she’s here!” Skanky proved she wasn’t that much of a hero by taking off at full speed, without waiting for her friend. Hearth followed her.

“What do you mean?” shouted Hearth

“We go where our desire is! Not… where… the thing really is? I think? Fucking RUN!”

Hearth’s longer legs soon brought her up next to Skanky, then past her. In a fluid, natural motion, Hearth turned, scooped Skanky onto the back of her neck, and began running again. Skanky gripped Hearth’s neck as tightly as she could.

They hit the end of the hall. Behind them, the building was twisting under the gray pony’s weight, sending ripples through the floor and walls. Steel beams groaned with stress. There were elevators doors. Hearth hammered at a button.

“No!” screamed Skanky. “The stairs! Always take the stairs in an emergency!”

Hearth looked behind her, kicked backward, and knocked the stairwell door open. Galloping down the stairs on her back was like the worst amusement park ride imaginable. Skanky’s belly jerked up and down, half a second out of time with her body. Behind them, the doorframe shattered as the gray pony forced her way through. Stairs came away under her tread and fell past them.

“Why does she have to be so big?” yowled Hearth, leaping over a piece of displaced railing and skidding onto the next landing.

“I don’t know! I guess she lost her temper! If she was smaller, she’d probably go faster! Meep running!”

Half a flight of stairs came down behind them, smashing through the landing they’d just left. Above them, the gray pony leaped from fragment to fragment like a giant jungle cat.

“How far down do these stairs go?” screamed Heath.

Skanky’s throat choked up. If death was like a dream, these stairs could go on forever. She remembered what Rainbow Dash had told her about flying. That was true, so what else could she do? She closed her eyes and drew her magic together into a formless spell — the ‘basic’ pre-spell all unicorns learned in magic kindergarten. She held it in place and visualized what she wanted. If this was a dream, then the stairs could end…

"Here's the door!" shouted Hearth.

"Oh thank Harmony!" shouted Skanky, letting the magic go out of her.

Hearth kicked open the ground floor door. They ran through a steel and glass lobby. With a horrible groan, the ceiling began to tumble towards them, all at once, at first, then breaking into hundreds of crumbling drop tiles as it fell.

“Close your eyes!” shouted Hearth as she leaped towards the glass front door, forehooves out…

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky let her eyes slip open the tiniest bit. They hadn’t been torn apart by broken plate glass. They hadn’t bounced embarrassingly off the door and been smashed under a falling ceiling. They were alive, and in…

“A tunnel,” said Skanky.

“With a light at the end,” said Hearth. “You can get off, now. The Gray Pony is gone, and my back hurts. You’re heavy.”

Skanky glanced behind herself. Just more tunnel back there. Her hooves clicked on the glass of the tunnel floor. Outside the glass, glowing gray mist swirled, like in Eternal Enigma’s story. Well, that was good. Skanky wanted some answers.

“Hearth?” she said.

“Yeah, girlfriend?” said Hearth.

Skanky looked up at her friend. “I think this is a place Eternal Enigma told me about. A bad place. You might not want to go any further. There’s something up head you might not be ready to see.”

Heath stomped her hoof. “Seriously? You think I’m going to chicken out now?”

“I’m serious, Hearthie. Go look for your mom or something.”

“No.”

Skanky sighed. “Fine. Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The glass tunnel went on for a very long time. Eventually, they came out into a massive chamber. Black iron bands supported building-sized glass panels stretching up in a dome above them — a dome so big they couldn’t see the other side. The floor… ground… whatever… was done up like a park. Green, neatly trimmed grass, gravel paths, piped in birdsong. Skanky leaned down to sniff at the grass. Astroturf. She bet the trees were fake, too.

All of this more or less lined up with Eternal Enigma’s story. What he hadn’t mentioned, though, was the massive crack running through the glass of one side of the dome. Gray mist seeped out of it. Skanky narrowed her eyes, her heart boiling with rage. Maybe he’d forgotten about it. Maybe it hadn’t been there when he’d come. Or maybe there was another reason. Whatever. Skanky was eager to have another reason to hate Eternal, so she assumed the worst.

They walked down one of the paths, following it across a bridge over a small steam with a perfectly semi-circular bed. There was a large hill across the stream; they left the path to climb it and get a look at what lay ahead — miles and miles of artificial parkland, with something small and red in the distance.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Celestia had far too many organs, thought Skanky, as she waited for Hearth to finish vomiting in the bushes. The pillar she’d been impaled on was covered in them. Not any organs she recognized, either. Skanky’s undergrad had been a BFA. She’d always had an interest in figure drawing, so she’d been to the anatomy lab. She wasn’t an expert, but she knew when she was looking at real organs, and when some smart ass was making new ones up to make a point. She looked up and met Celestia’s violet eyes. Eternal had said she looked in pain, but at peace. Well. That had been a while ago. Right now she looked crazed.

“This is horrible,” said Hearth, wiping her mouth with the back of her cannon.

“I warned you,” said Skanky. “Didn’t I warn you? Eternal saw this.”

“The moon is out of order,” said Celestia.

Skanky looked up. There was no moon, and no sun, just gray light everywhere.

“Is there anything we can do for her?” said Hearth, tears in her eyes. “To make her more comfortable?”

“She’s doing this for us.” Skanky raised her voice “You’re doing this for us, aren’t you? You’re protecting us, from the Gray Pony.”

“Well, I’m not doing this to cheese my taco, am I?” said Celestia.

“What?” said Hearth.

“Humor her,” said Skanky.

“I would do anything for her. I would take her place.” Hearth began to step forward. Skanky stepped in front of her.

“They Gray Pony is getting out,” said Skanky. “It might be our fault. I don’t know.”

Celestia began to cry. Skanky felt like she’d pissed on somepony’s birthday cake. “No, no, no! You’re doing a good job! Really! We can take care of this! We just need a little help.”

“Find the one outside,” said Celestia.

“Twilight?” said Hearth. “We’re trying but she’s not the easiest pony to get in touch with. She’s really busy.”

“I want the moon and sun, but it’s inside out. It’s inside out,” said Celestia.

Skanky’s insides lurched. She’d heard somepony say that before. Somepony very important to her. Oh no.

Electric current surged through Skanky’s chest, and she came out of the ice bath screaming.

Chapter 7

Smooth Operator lay squeezed into his narrow dorm room bed next to Wild Oats’ sleeping body, staring at the drop tile ceiling. Strange thoughts were in his mind.

They weren’t his thoughts.

He was pretty sure they weren’t his, anyway. It felt like another pony was in his head with him. A pony who had many ideas about how the world ought to be. And they were compelling ideas. Smooth Operator had to admit that they were sketchy, even by his very limited sense of right and wrong. But maybe they were worth a try anyway.

He poked Wild Oats in the butt his hoof. “Oats. Wake up.”

“Buh?” said Oats.

“You wanna do some crimes?”

Oats rolled herself over and flopped on top of Smooth. “You can always wake me up in the middle of the night to do crimes, Smoothie.”

“Okay. This one’s a little radical. But hear me out,” said Smooth.

“I’m listening.”

Smooth took a deep breath. “How do you feel about starting a death cult?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky hadn’t asked Celestia about Eternal. Why hadn’t she done that? She thought about his smug calm as he’d revived and debriefed them. She’d felt scared and hurried and obsessed with Firmament and now she wouldn’t know something important until it was too late. It was starting to look like she might have to be a hero, like Rarity or Twilight Sparkle. If she did, the world was doomed, because Skanky Biscuits, daughter of Studly Biscuits, was not hero material.

Firmament had left with Ether while they were still drinking their coffee. Skanky felt frustrated — she needed to talk to her. But she couldn’t really do it with Eternal around anyway. She’d have to corner her later.

“Let me do the talking,” Skanky had hissed to Hearth, while Eternal was busy with his clipboard.

“Why?” said Hearth, genuinely incensed.

“Because reasons. It’s starting to look like I’m some sort of death chosen one or something. I need to take the lead on this,” said Skanky, wishing it were any other way.

“If anyone were going to be a death chosen one it would be you, Skanky, “ said Heath.

“I’m as surprised as anyone, really.”

Hearth kissed Skanky on top of the head. “Knock him dead. No pun intended.”

So she’d skipped the stuff about Firmament, and she’s skipped the crack in the… firmament? And she glossed over talking to Celestia, just saying she was incoherent. Which was true. What was left was kind of a pointless story, but as a documentary filmmaker she was wise to the tricks of deceptive editing, had made what she could out of the gore and the chase scene and hoped for the best. Eternal had remained unreadable throughout the interview.

Skanky and Hearth hurried back to her apartment after they’d wrapped up. They stopped at Hearth’s on the way to get some of her things. Skanky had insisted she’d be fine on her own, but Hearth wasn’t having it.

“I’m your sidekick, ‘chosen one’. Suck it up,” Hearth had said.

Skanky growled. “Stop calling me chose one. We don’t know if it’s true, and it’s a stupid trope anyway.”

“Nope. You said it first. Chosen one, Mistress of Death. That’s your nickname for the rest of your life,” said Hearth with a smirk.

“Bitch,” grumbled Skanky.

When they got to Skanky’s place, they locked all the doors and windows, broke out the beer and hard liquor, and stuffed their noses into their laptops. Skanky abused her administrative privileges as a teacher’s assistant to get a look at Firmament’s schedule, then opened up her interview videos and started scouring them for anything useful, starting with Eternal’s. She had her headphones on, so when Hearth found something, she had to thump Skanky on the shoulder to get her attention.

“Look what I found!” She said, waving her laptop at Skanky.

“You have a computer. Very nice.”

“No, look, there’s a reporting page on the PEMA web page for potential end of world scenarios!” bubbled Hearth. “Maybe we can get through to Twilight!”

“Wow,” said Skanky. “I bet that one gets pranked a lot.”

“Still, we can write a letter.”

“Is there a contact number?”

“I can’t find one. They really ought to take this type of thing more seriously.” Hearth sighed. “What should we write?”

Skanky grinned. “Start it with, ‘Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle…’”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

They caught Firmament coming out of her Issues in Mortality lecture, and closed in on either side of her, steering her out the doors of Final Sleep Hall and towards the Cob Busier building.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” said Hearth. “We just need to talk to you.”

“Um, okay,” stammered Firmament. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“Only a little bit, Firmy. This is about the project. We need to talk.”

“Okay. You could have just asked.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The Cob Busier building had a cafe in the basement that was open all night for architecture students pulling all-nighters. It was closed during the morning, so it was a good place to talk privately. The sat in a corner booth, letting Firmament sit on the outside edge of the table so that she could leave if she needed to.

“What do I dream about?” said Firmament, leaning back away from them. “This is getting a little personal.”

“We found some things in the death world that we didn’t tell Eternal about,” said Skanky. “Some things that relate to…”.

“Well, we don’t want to introduce a bias, here,” said Hearth, cutting Skanky off. “But if there’s anything you can offer us?”

Firmament tapped her hoof against the table. “I don’t really dream.”

“Everypony dreams,” said Skanky.

Firmament glared at her. “Everypony’s different, okay? Some ponies dream in color, some ponies dream in black and white, but I don’t dream at all. I’m not saying I never enter REM sleep. I’ve never been tested. But if I do, I don’t remember anything about it, okay?”

Skanky slid back against the hard vinyl seat and pressed her hooves against her eyes. “So we’re at a dead end.”

Hearth shrugged. “We don’t know how much of what we see in the world of the dead is real. It could all be a hallucination.”

“One we both had?” sneered Skanky.

Hearth raised her hooves. “Search me. Science is hard. Ponies can just say, ‘well, it was magic’, and they’re not wrong.”

Firmament stared at them suspiciously. “So what did you see?”

Skanky suddenly had an idea. “Firmy, have you ever undergone Eternal’s near-death procedure yourself?”

“It’s not really a good idea for researchers to experiment on themselves,” said Firmament. “Scientifically or ethically.”

“So you don’t know where you go when you die,” said Hearth.

“So far we’ve only had two ponies go in twice — you and Skanky. Not enough data to generalize from. There’s no indication that most ponies have a predetermined destination when they die.” Firmament leaned on the table towards them. “So what are you hiding from Eternal?”

Hearth and Skanky looked at each other.

“Tell her?” said Hearth.

“Will you tell tales to Eternal?” Skanky asked Firmament?

“Eternal Enigma is a great researcher,” huffed Firmament. “I will tell him anything you tell me. And I’ll tell him you’ve been keeping data from him.”

Skanky felt her chances of ever getting Firmament into her bed again withering. Undeterred, she launched into a detailed description of what Hearth and her had seen yesterday. Firmament tapped her hoof on the table edge with increasing impatience as Skanky’s story progressed. When Skanky got to the bit about wanting the moon and stars, Firmament lost it.

“What? That’s it? You’re wasting my time because pretend Celestia said something similar to what I said falling asleep? I was having a hypnagogic hallucination. It’s not important.”

“I thought you said you didn’t dream,” said Hearth.

Firmament pushed her chair back from the table, the legs squeaking across the linoleum tile floor. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

Skanky reached out a hoof, eyes desperate. “Firmy. Please. We just want to see if taking you to see Celestia…”

“Pretend Celestia. I doubt it’s really her,” said Firmament, staring at Skanky’s hoof, butt halfway off her chair.

Skanky nodded. “That’s fine. You can believe whatever you want. But maybe this will help us stop the gray pony.” Skanky laid her hoof on top of Firmament’s agonizingly slowly, like she was trying to catch a spider.

“We can ask Eternal,” said Firmament, cautiously.

“Eternal’s gonna say no, and then his ears are gonna be up,” said Heath. “Listen, I like to walk the straight and narrow, but there’s something fishy going on here, and he’s in the middle of it. Sure, this Gray Pony’s been causing trouble in the realm of the dead for a long time — decades, maybe longer than that. But there wasn’t any sign of him in the real world until now. Eternal might be a bad pony, Firmament.”

“No!” Firmament snatched her hoof away from Skanky. She hopped down from the chair and galloped out of the cafe and into the hall.

“Firmy!” Skanky’s voice cracked as she bolted off after her.

“Skanky!” yelped Hearth. “Let her go!”

Skanky ignored Hearth and followed Firmament out onto the quad. Firmament had stopped there, staring at a crowd that had gathered there while they had been talking. Smooth Operator was at the center of it, standing on a park bench. Her first thought was that Smooth had finally crossed a line and the other ponies wanted to lynch him. But no. He was talking, and they were listening. That alone was enough to chill Skanky to the marrow, but what he was saying was actually worse than what she would normally expect from Smooth.

Which was saying something.

“But the Gray Mother loves us. She wants to enfold us in her light. She wants us to abandon our chains and our struggles. Twilight Sparkle had led us astray with teachings of friendship, kindness, and consequences. Our own Will is paramount. It is Will that will usher in the coming of the Gray Mother!”

Heath stepped up beside Skanky. “Smooth’s gone insane. Should we help him?”

A mare in the crowd spoke up. “But Smooth Operator. I have so many responsibilities. So many things I have to do. How can I come to the Gray Mother like this?”

Smooth smiled a smarmy smile. “But you don’t. You totally don’t. You’ve been taught to think that you do, but you don’t. Come away with us. If we worship the Gray Mother together, she’ll be here before we have to deal with any of that bullshit!” He changed the pitch of his voice, addressing the crowd as a whole. “So. Are you sick of life?”

“Yeah!” shouted the crowd as one.

“You wanna have some fun?”

“Yeah!”

“You wanna watch the world burn?”

“Hell yeah!” Ponies in the crowd started leaping and waving their forehooves.

“Who’s up for a ritualistic orgy in the student center?”

“YEAH!!!!”

Smooth pointed a hoof at a random stallion in the crowd. “You. You’re the pony sacrifice. C’mon!”

The sacrificial stallion’s confused protests were drowned out by the cheering of the crown as they scooped him up and headed for the student center.

“Leave it to undergrads to be easy marks for nihilism,” said Skanky.

“We’d better call campus security,” said Hearth.

Firmament turned around to face them. “It’s real, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Skanky. “Will you come to the lab with us? Right now?”

Chapter 8 Author's Note

Serious warning for self harm in this chapter. If you're feeling like hurting yourself, call Samaritans. Don't ask me how I know to do that. :twilightsmile:

Chapter 8

“The Gray Pony must’ve done something to Smooth. He’s a dickhead, but he wasn’t the cult leader type before he went in,” said Skanky.

Firmament was rushing around the lab, filling the ice tank and setting up the prep area.

“Okay. So. Hypothesis,” said Hearth. “We bring something from the Gray Pony through when we go in and out. Like being possessed,”

“Yes. And… dust.” Skanky ran a hoof across the back of a chair, and it came away covered in gray dust, leaving a noticeable divot in the top. The whole lab was covered with a thin patina of gray. The omnipresent decay seemed to be giving Firmament a great deal of trouble with the equipment.

“So Firmy hasn’t been under, and Ether didn’t meet the gray pony,” said Hearth. “They’re not compromised.”

Skanky frowned. ”But you and I have. And you haven’t been acting any differently.”

Hearth thumped the left side of her chest. “Pure of heart, baby. I’ve been having bad dreams, and I’ve had to double up on the dandruff shampoo. But I’m okay.”

Skanky’s frown deepened. “I’m not pure of heart.”

Hearth patted her on the withers. “Sweetie, you’re the purest. You don’t even hide it well.”

“But what about Eternal Enigma?”

The lab’s door opened, and Eternal stepped through. Ether was behind him, holding the revolver in his mouth.

“It is loaded, this time,” said Eternal. “Please explain why you are here.”

“We need to stop the Gray Pony,” said Skanky, turning towards them. Eternal looked angry. Ether looked like he wanted to pee himself and run. “We think if we bring Firmament to Celestia, that will help.” She gulped. “Somehow.”

“I knew there were things you didn’t tell me about your last experiment. Firmament, please step away from the equipment.”

Firmament raised her forehooves and stepped away on her hind legs.

“What are you going to do, kill us?” said Skanky.

Eternal shrugged. “If I need to. It would difficult to hide the crime, but I may not need to. Smooth Operator responded to the experiment better than I could have hoped. The situation at the Student Center is escalating. There are things I need to accomplish here, if you’ll allow me. Then this world will be open for feeding.”

“You’re working with the Gray Pony,” said Firmament, her voice shaking.

“No,” said Eternal Enigma, “I am not working with her. I am a part of her.” He shrugged out of his lab coat and dropped it to the floor. Where his cutie mark should be, there was nothing but cracked, flaking gray hide. “I am a thanatovore — a predator that feeds on the souls of the dead. Your world’s death realm looked especially delectable! Such life! Such energy!

“But then your princesses traveled to the death realm to oppose me. The light-colored one sacrificed herself to lead me into a trap. I thought all was lost, and that I would storage there. But then I was able to send a part of my consciousness into the body of the dead foal, Eternal Enigma. I saw an opportunity. An opportunity that took half a pony lifetime to realize, but what is time to me? My experiments have weakened the boundary between life and death. Soon, I will taste a delicacy few of my kind have ever sampled: the energy of a living world!”

“What do you need to do to complete the ritual?” said Skanky.

“I merely need to enter the tank myself, reconnect with the rest of my consciousness, and tear through the opening Smooth Operator and his followers are even now creating. My victory is almost complete.”

Behind Eternal, Ether’s eyes filled with the horror of the gradual realization that he was holding a gun for an extra-dimensional horror. “Mghn?”

Skanky concentrated. Her telekinesis wasn’t strong, but a lot was riding on this. She tugged on the sides of the immersion tanks with her magic. They creaked but remained intact.

“Let me get that,” said Hearth. With two powerful earth pony kicks, the first tank’s side shattered. Water poured onto the floor. Firmament scrambled to shut off the flow.

Eternal clucked and shook his head. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing. If you break the other one, there will be consequences.”

Skanky smirked, balled her magic into a sphere of force, and smashed the glass side of the other tank. “Fine. Do your worst. We just saved the world.”

Eternal looked over his shoulder to speak to Ether. “Please murder your cheating whore of a marefriend.”

Ether apparently hadn’t come prepared for this. He’d backed into the corner by the door, eyes darting around, hooves scrabbling on the floor tiles as though he was trying to crawl inside the laboratory wall. Eternal’s scowl deepened. “Fine. I’ll do it. Give me that gun.”

Skanky thought he seemed awfully calm for a pony whose evil schemes had just come to naught.

Eternal reached out for the gun with a hoof. Ether bit down on the gun, and it went off. Eternal fell to the floor with a hole in the back of his head.

Ether dropped the gun from his mouth. “I killed him. I killed him. Oh, my Faust I killed him! I didn’t mean to!” wailed Ether.

Firmament rushed to his side. “It’s all right. It’s all right. You did the right thing,” she said, stroking his head. He buried his face in her chest fluff and sobbed. Firmament turned to Skanky and Hearth. “Cover Eternal up. Please?”

Hearth scrambled to drape Eternal’s lab coat over his body. Skanky stared, wondering how they were going to explain this to the police. Suddenly the room was bathed in purple light.

A voice Skanky had previously only heard on the TV news rang out, pure and sweet and clear. “I’m sorry I’m so late, my little ponies. I didn’t even see your note on the PEMA web site until I saw the news reports about the ritual at your student center.”

Skanky turned around. Twilight stood there, glowy and shimmery, so probably a hologram. Tall and thin, her purple and indigo mane floating around her head. Stars shone in the darkness of her hair.

“Y-your highness.” Skanky, dropping to her knees.

“We really don’t have time for that, and anyway just ‘Twilight’ is fine. Now, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified, so don’t spread it around. You’re dealing with is something called a Thanatovore, and…”

“We know, already, actually,” said Hearth, from behind Skanky.

Twilight blinked. “Really?”

Hearth and Skanky started to give Twilight a rundown of Eternal Enigma’s research and the things that had happened over the past few weeks, but Twilight cut them off halfway through. “Okay, this Eternal Enigma sounds pretty fishy. I think he might be working with the Thanatovore, or he might be a tulpa or emanation of the creature itself. Whatever you do, don’t let him flatline, and don’t let him die. If he can’t get to the realm of the dead any other way, he may try to trick you into killing him, and… Why are you all looking at me like that?”

For the first time, Twilight’s eyes focused on Eternal’s corpse. She stepped back, and turned pale. “Okay, how did I not notice that before?”

Skanky’s throat felt tight. “We fucked up,” she said, her voice trembling with guilt and sorrow.

“No. I did.” Tears began to well up in Twilight’s eyes. “You’ve done so well. Better than I could have hoped. I’m the one who messed up. I was too late.” Twilight’s image flickered. “There are things coming through into Equestria from the Void. Horrible things. Spike and I have to deal with them before we can take care of the Thanatovore.”

Her horn flashed. Skanky heard the bulkhead down the hall slamming shut. With her magic senses, she felt magical fields stronger than steel enclosing the Dungeon.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” sobbed Twilight.

“We understand,” said Hearth.

“Yeah,” said Skanky. “Go.”

"I'll come back for you, I promise!" whimper Twilight.

“Go!” shouted Skanky, charging at the hologram.

Twilight vanished.

“What do we do, now?” said Hearth.

“Same plan as before,” said Skanky. “We didn’t get a chance to ask Twilight about it, which sucks, but she didn’t say not to send Firmy to the realm of the dead.”

Firmament frowned and tossed her head towards the ruined immersion tanks. “Well, that’s going to be pretty difficult, thanks to you guys,” she said, still holding a sobbing Ether.

Skanky smacked her hoof against her forehead. “Oh my fuck, why is nothing ever easy?”

Hearth sighed. “Hey, you have duct tape, though, right, Firmy?”

Firmament snorted. “It wouldn’t be much of a lab if we didn’t.”

“So you can fix it with that.” Heath walked over and nuzzled Ether. “You go help Skanky fix the tanks. Firmy and I will move the body somewhere we don’t have to look at it.”

Skanky and Ether spent the next half hour covering the broken side of one of the tanks with trash bags and duct tape like the back window of a hillpony’s pickup truck. It didn’t look like much, but when Ether ran the water, it held.

“Great!” said Ether. “We might be able to actually do this!”

Skanky looked around. She’d been really absorbed in the repairs, and only now thought to wonder what was taking the other two so long. “Um… Ether?”

“Yes,” he said, looking up. His tear-streaked cheeks aside, he was beginning to look cheerful again. But when he saw the way Skanky was looking at the wall clock, his expression changed. He looked around the room with wild surmise. “Where’s Firmy? Where’s Hearth?”

Skanky levitated up the gun. “Stay here. I’m going to go check.”

“Like buck you’re going alone,” said Ether, crowding in against her rump. “I’m coming with you.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Hearth and Firmament were standing at the end of the hallway, looking into the open door of an empty lab. Skanky’s heart lifted with relief when she saw them, and then crashed back into the gutters of depression and anxiety when she realized they weren’t moving.

“Guys?” she said, her voice weak. “Guys?”

They didn’t answer.

Behind her, Ether made a strangled noise, and charged forward, shouldering Skanky’s smaller body aside to tear down the hall. He connected with Firmament, and the young mare flew apart into motes of dust.

“Ether, no!” screamed Skanky. He turned to face her, backing into Hearth, whose body crumbled like a sandcastle as he blundered into her. “Get away from there,” she wailed, voice choked with grief and fear, but her warning was too late. A gray-green predator that had once been Eternal Enigma stepped from the door, all striated muscles and raggedy hide. Ether met his gaze and froze. Eternal bit him, and the life went out of him. Skanky fired, and missed. She fired again, taking out Ether’s sandcastle husk. Eternal turned to grin at her at her with desiccated lips and cracked teeth. Skanky backed away, gun trembling in her magic. The next shot would have to be closer if she wanted to hit. Really close — it was a miracle she even knew how to shoot one of these things. To really hit him she’d have to be close enough for him to touch her, and she didn’t want that. She ran. She heard his hoof beats on the metal grate flooring behind her. She dived into the lab and slammed the door behind her.

“Little pig little pig let me in,” said Eternal, leering at her through the door’s glass window.

“You killed them,” said Skanky. She looked at the door. It was holding for now, but the metal was losing its shine, becoming a duller shade of gray.

“Not killed them. Devoured them. I ate your friend’s souls, little piggy.”

“Bullshit,” said Skanky. “If you could do that, why bother with all this.” She swept her hoof around to gesture at the lab equipment. “I don’t think you’re strong enough yet.”

Eternal hissed. “Open the door, bitch!”

“You’re just clinging to life, aren’t you? Look at you. You’re a mess. You killed all my friends, and you’re barely holding yourself together.” Skanky backed herself into the corner of the room as cracks started to form in the metal of the door. She looked at the gun. How did you even hit anything with one of these? She’d watched every western, crime drama, and war movie ever made; you’d think she’d know how guns worked. The little bumps on top! Those were sights, right? One bump over the… the place where the bullets came out, and two over the back. You lined those up, right?

The metal of the door screamed. Eternal jammed a hoof through it, sending shards of weakened metal scattering across the room. Skanky fired, forgetting all about aiming. The revolver jerked in her magic. She’d missed, of course.

Eternal tore the door open enough to come through and leaped across the room towards her. Skanky lowered the gun as fast as she could. Eternal’s mouth was hanging open, inches away. She stuck the gun in there and pulled the trigger.

The monster pony’s body rippled as the bullet slammed through it, coming apart in a shower of dusk and rags. Skanky pulled her hind legs up against her belly as the dust settled to the floor, afraid to touch it. Something shimmered in the air where Eternal had been and then vanished.

Skanky dropped the gun and sobbed. Every time she tried to catch her breath and get her wits together, she thought about Hearth and Firmy crumbling to dust in front of her, and the racking sobs came back harder than before. What was she even supposed to do now? She took a deep, gasping breath, and wiped her eyes and her nose, trying to pull herself together. The flatline tank? No, a shard from the door had broken another plate of glass. It was hopeless. And anyway, how would she put herself under? And who would take her out?

The only way to go to the world of the dead was to die. She looked down at the gun on the floor.

“Fuck, you bitch. You always wanted to anyway,” she snarled, levitating the gun and turning it towards herself. How many shots had she fired? She could see the… roundy thing in the middle was empty, except for maybe the one behind the barrel. That was what it was called, the barrel.

She opened her mouth and took the barrel between her lips like a lover’s cock. She tasted metal and oil. She tried to pull the trigger. She couldn’t do it! For all the times she’d dreamed of it, dreamed of ending her life and ending all her problems, her she was. She HAD to do it, and she was too. Damn. Scared. Because she knew there was no rest. Death wasn’t the end, and something even worse than death was waiting for her on the other side. Her friends were probably fighting it already if they weren’t already devoured and gone for good.

“What have you got to live for, now, anyway?” said Skanky. The answers came to easily — her friends. The best of them were dead, but there were others. Her parents. Her brother. Her films. Fuck, she’d met Twilight Sparkle! Life was amazing! No. All of that would be gone, too, if she didn’t act. “Do it, coward!” she shouted at herself. “Do it!”

She jammed the barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

It hurt. A lot.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky was passing through the tunnel again. Not walking. Flying. She cackled, blood and spittle flying from her lips. Of course she was flying. Rainbow Dash had told her that she could do anything she dreamed here. But there was more to it than that. She being dead felt strange to her. She felt alive. For the first time since she was a little filly, she felt at peace with herself. Brave. Powerful. And… hungry?

Fuck it. Shit was up against the wall. The chips were down. It was the third act. She’d be what she needed to be — a lame, goth metal edgelord fucking superhero. That thanatovore or whatever it was didn’t stand a chance. She concentrated, and her horn glowed iridescent purple light, making her light gray fur luminesce. Her speed increased until the glass around her started to crack from the force of her passage. It shattered behind her, fragments spraying everywhere.

She burst out into Celestia’s dome. Far away flashed gray and purple light.

Closer at hand, things were harder to make out. The crack in the dome had gotten worse, and a gray mist was pouring through. The fake hills and ersatz trees of the terrarium were shrouded in fog. But she could still see movement. There, in the distance, was Eternal. He was running pell-mell, heading for the center of the dome, the source of the light show. If Luna or Celestia was still there, she couldn’t see it from here. But she needed to catch up with Eternal. He had a substantial head start, but he hadn’t thought to try flying. She could catch up.

Skanky dove towards him, shooting dark bolts of magic out of her horn. Eternal dodged the shots with alacrity. Damnit. Superhero or not, she was still a terrible shot. Combat magic hadn’t really been in her repertoire when she was alive, so it wasn’t like she could have practiced.

“Stupid little piggy!” cackled Eternal.

“Where did this piggy thing come from? When did that start?” shouted Skanky.

“It was how I always thought of you mortals! Nothing but fat, disgusting pieces of meat! I just couldn’t say it before,” shot back Eternal. “Piggy piggy! Wee wee wee!”

Skanky snarled. Oh, it was on.

Eternal was headed for a bridge. A bottleneck. A big, easy to hit bottleneck. Skanky slammed on the gas. Her lips pulled back from her teeth as she shot past Eternal. She stopped on a dime over the bridge and started to rain black bolts of death on it. It didn’t dodge. It held onto its shape for a few shots, but then she thought to go for the supports, and soon chunks of it were falling off into the river, tumbling away in the current. By the time Eternal skidded to a stop at the edge of the river, the bridge was just a memory and a few jagged chunks of rock.

“Ha! Gotcha!” shouted Skanky. Eternal took off up the river bank, probably towards another bridge. She swung in close to him and fired at the ground in front of him. The earth exploded. So did his forelegs. Oh. She remembered now. From Bridge over the River Canter. Shooting in front of a running pony was called “leading the target” and apparently, it worked pretty well. She should have tried that earlier.

Ether’s crippled soul hissed at her as she landed. His torso was a little zombie pony bean. Hind legs kicked, pushing him in a slow circle on the ground. Pathetic.

Strange desires filled her as she looked at him. Not sexual desires — food desires. Like 'the waitress had just come with dinner, and she was starving' desires.

“So. You eat ponies souls, huh?” said Skanky, stepping up to him. He snapped at her hooves, but she’d stopped just out of range. “How does that work exactly?”

“I am only a part of a greater whole! I will tear open your world and feast on its guts! I will gorge myself on your universe! I cannot be stopped! Whore pig!”

“Blah blah blah,” said Skanky. She leaned down, opened her mouth, and took a bite of Eternal’s muzzle. The chalky flesh came away easily. It tasted like shellfish. A bit dry, but not bad. She took another bite, depriving Eternal of his speech.

What the hell was she doing? This was disgusting! But she couldn’t stop. Something was wrong with her. Something was very, very wrong with her and she loved it.

In only a few moments, Eternal’s body was gone and Skanky felt stronger, if a bit bloated. She took a drink from the river, trying to wash his taste from her mouth, and with it the memory of what she’d just done. Light flashed far away. She looked up. The real battle was over there. Resigned, Skanky rose into the air and flew off to help.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

She found her friends cowering in the mists in a grove of trees. The sounds of battle were closer, here. Flashes of magical light preceded rending crackles of power by a few seconds, the world of the dead for once giving nodding acknowledgment to the rules of real-world physics.

“Skanky! What happened to you?” said Hearth. Her expression was strange — as though she was struggling to be surprised, like a bad actress doing her best with a difficult role.

“I didn’t expect to run into you here,” said Ether blandly. His eyes were dull and distant, the eyes of the dead. There would be no surprises for him. Not anymore. Skanky felt her throat tightening. Firmament had her head tucked against his side. Skanky couldn’t see her face.

“What. Happened. To. You, “ repeated Hearth. “Come on. Indulge my curiosity. It’s all I have left.”

Skanky blinked. “I don’t know? I’m sort of good at magic, now.”

“You look… different. I’m not sure, but… I think you look amazing? Like, I’m literally not sure. But I’m pretty sure I should be amazed.” A single, dry little tear made it halfway down her cheek.

Skanky hadn’t really noticed how she looked; she’d been a little busy. She hardened the air beside her into a mirror — it was easy for her now — and she turned to look. “Holy fucking shit.”

The short, pudgy little unicorn she’d once been was gone. Well, no, actually, she was still short and pudgy. But her and tail mane hovered behind her, streaked green and black. Her green eyes radiated a lambent glow. Best — and worst — of all, her film reel cutie mark was gone. In its place was the cutie mark Eternal Enigma had described but never actually had — a simple, sideways figure eight.

“Skanky, I was right about you,” said Hearth. “You are a Chosen One.”

“Fuck you I’m not. Anypony dead pony can do this shit if they focus.” She missed her old cutie mark. She’d liked being a filmmaker. There were so many films she wanted to make! But you couldn’t make films when you were dead, she supposed.

“If they focus,” said Hearth with a tone that distantly approximated ‘wry’. “Skanky I’m struggling to remember ever being alive. Focus isn’t something most dead ponies have.”

“Okay, that's great, but now what?” said Skanky. “I might be suddenly better at magic, and I’d make a hell of an entrance in a goth club, but I still think I’m out of my weight class, here.”

“I don’t know,” said Hearth. “I was just waiting for you to get here. I’d hoped you’d known what to do.”

Ether poked at the grass with his hoof and bent down to eat some. Yuck.
Firmament looked up from Ether’s side. Her eyes were sad but still lucid. “Take me to Celestia. That was the plan, right? We’re under the firmament. Where she is.”

“Right.” Skanky took a deep breath. “So we walk towards the lights and explosions. Like crazy ponies.”

“Can you fly, and carry us?” asked Hearth. “It seems like this might be a little time sensitive.”

“I guess. I don’t have wings, so I must be flying by telekinesis. Let’s see what I can do.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

They whipped over the treetops, leaves nearly tickling their hooves. Skanky held Firmament on her back and carried Ether and Hearth at either side in glowing bubbles of telekinesis.

“The trees are always green here,” said Ether calmly.

“Because they’re fake,” said Firmament, clinging to Skanky’s back. “Not alive or dead. Probably so the thanatovore can’t feed on them.”

Celestia was in view, coming over the horizon as a white and red dot. The gray pony loomed over her, big as a storm cloud, its body insubstantial and blurry from being expanded to such a size. A dark shape flitted around it, firing purple bolts of light at the Gray Pony. Skanky squinted her eyes. Was that Luna?

“Cursed is everyone who hangeth on a tree,” mumbled Firmament.

“What?” said Skanky.

“We made this place as a trap,” said Firmament. “I had to buy Luna more time. So I offered myself as bait. This is my body, broken for you.”

“Firmy, stop screwing around, you’re freaking me out,” growled Skanky.

A bolt of gray energy split the air between her and Hearth. Skanky swore, and dove and spun. Hearth and Firmament screamed — Ether didn’t seem to care — but the maneuver threw off the gray pony’s aim. Gray bolts smashed into the forest behind them, throwing astroturf and plasticy-looking branches up into the air. The extra maneuvering was weakening Skanky’s telekinetic grip on her friends. She leveled off, flying under branches, losing altitude until her hooves started scraping the dirt. Skanky gritted her teeth as she skidded to a halt in front of Celestia, scraping up her legs. She set Hearth and Ether down, wriggled out from under Firmament, and pushed herself up into the air.

She took a place next to Luna, who hung in the air flapping her wings. Purple light glimmered around her body in a sphere before concentrating on her horn, and then shot out in a blindingly bright bolt. The bolt knocked a huge chunk out of the gray pony’s massive body.

The bolts Skanky had been using so far had been telekinesis-based; tiny packets of force. Luna was using something else. Skanky didn’t really understand what, but she thought she could copy it.

The gray pony’s wound was healing rapidly. Skanky drew a massive amount of magical energy from her body and focused it in a point on her horn. She aimed for a spot near the gray pony’s wound and fired. Her black bolt slammed through the gray pony, tearing out a chunk and making it stagger. Luna fired again, knocking a chunk out of the gray pony’s head. It roared at them, its massive mouth opening to show jagged gray teeth.

Skanky pulled together another of those strange magic bolts — it hurt this time, a burning all through her body. She fired into the Gray Pony's mouth. Its head blew apart like something in an old camp horror film.

The rest of its body turned and fled.

“Did we win, your Highness?” Skanky felt shaky, like she’d she did when been living on sugar and caffeine for days at the end of a semester. She found the telekinetic field holding her up was too hard to keep up. She yelped as she began to plummet, but Luna was on the ball and grabbed her before she hit the ground. She lowered Skanky, flapping down afterward.

“Your Highness,” mumbled Hearth, bowing.

“You may be at your ease, loyal subjects,” said Luna.

Skanky looked around for the other two. Firmament was staring up at Celestia, mouth hanging open in horror. Ether was trying to eat astroturf. He’d take a mouthful, chew for a bit, and spit it out. Then, a few moments later, he’d take another bite and try again.

“Did you beat it?” asked Hearth.

“No,” said Luna. “Only frightened it away. Your friend’s attack startled it, but it will be back soon. But you brought the soul jar. You have done well.”

Skanky bristled, the furs of her coat standing on end. “You mean Firmament.”

“Yes.”

“She’s not a ‘soul jar’, she’s a living pony,” growled Skanky.

Luna frowned. “Celestia lives in unendurable agony. She could not make her sacrifice and hope to maintain her sanity for long. Her resolve would falter, and risk everything. So I took the essence of her being — her free will — and followed the spirit of a foal who had died in utero back to its mother’s womb. That foal became your friend Firmament. Very similar to the technique the gray pony used to escape her prison by creating Eternal Enigma.”

Skanky didn’t feel any less angry. “So what happens to her now?” said Skanky.

“The universe has sent us a gift, my little pony. You are something I have never seen before — a pony who gained a new cutie mark upon death. A thanatomancer. If we reawaken my sister, the three of us may have a chance at defeating the thanatovore.”

“What happens to Firmament, then?”

“She would be reabsorbed into my sister,” said Luna, bowing her head. “I’m sorry. There is no other way.”

“No.” growled Skanky. “I’ll let the universe end before I give her up.”

“She doesn’t belong to you, Skanky,” said Hearth.

Luna nodded. “You are correct. Firmament must make the choice.” She looked up towards Firmament. “Child?”

Firmament looked away from Celestia. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “Will it hurt?”

“I will not lie to you, child. It probably will.” Luna walked over to Firmament, placid but sad, and draped a foreleg over her shoulder. “I cannot make you do this. You must be brave — I’m asking you to give up your life as you know it. But I do remind you that the fate of Equestria depends on this choice.”

Firmament gulped. “Will I remember this life?”

Luna hung her head. “I do not know.”

“Can I say goodbye?” said Firmament.

“Yes. But be quick. The prison weakens”

Firmament stopped at Ether first. She nudged his head up from the grass with her hoof, and kissed him on the lips.

“You’re nice,” said Ether. “I knew you, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Firmament, fresh tears welling out of her eyes.

She hugged Hearth quickly, and came over to Skanky. Skanky bit her hoof, trying not to sob. Tears were rolling down her cheeks en masse, she was finding it hard to talk.

“Skanky,” said Firmament, kissing her on the cheek and wrapping her forelegs around her shoulders.

“I love you, Firmy,” said Skanky. “Please don’t do this.”

“I love you, too. But if I don’t the world will end.”

“Then we’ll watch it end together,” sobbed Skanky. “Don’t leave me!”

The two kissed until the sound of shattering glass rent the air. Chunks of the dome were falling, landing with resounding crashes that could be heard from kilometers away.

“Quickly!” said Luna.

Firmament turned and walked back towards Celestia. "I'm ready."

Skanky gasped as Firmament lifted up into the air, glowing like a foal getting her cutie mark. Celestia was glowing, too. Firmament rose up, wings spread, and floated up to Celestia’s chest. She slid inside of the larger mare’s barrel, head thrown back, vanishing inside of her. Celestia began to scream.

“Pull yourself together, Sister,” shouted Luna. “The trap is failing. It is time to fight!”

Celestia, still screaming, flapped her wings, and rose off the spike impaling her. Organs and muscles rose after her, reforming into a pony’s hindquarters in a sickening, if largely metaphoric, display. She landed next to her sister, legs shaking like a newborn foal’s. They embraced. Reunited. Skanky fumed. It must be nice.

“What now?” said Skanky.

“I can’t sense the thanatovore anymore,” Luna. “It has escaped. It will be heading for Equestria.”

Celestia turned from Luna, and smiled a bitter smile. “Then we go hunting.”

Chapter 9

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 4

“I am Eternal Enigma, and I am an explorer of the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler has returned.”

“So you’re obsessed with death,” said Skanky, glancing in the side-screen of her camera to double check that the shot was framed correctly.

Annoyance flashed across Eternal’s face, but he got control of himself before responding. “I suppose that would be a fair assessment,” he said, his tone even.

Skanky felt a glimmer of satisfaction at irritating him. It was unprofessional, but she couldn't help it. When she started to wonder if her hatred of him was irrational, she remembered the griffon roulette incident.

“What got you interested in death research?” she said.

“The story beings in my youth. I suffer from a congenital heart condition. As a foal, I had to undergo a number of operations. During one of these, I was clinically dead for almost three minutes.”

“What was it like? Do you remember it?”

“I remember leaving my body. I saw myself on the table, rib cage open, the doctors working to restart my heart.”

“Were you afraid?”

Eternal shook his head. “No, I felt very calm. I noticed that there was a gray light coming from the ceiling. I felt curious about it, so I floated up towards it. I found myself in a tunnel made of glass and black metal, like an underwater passage in an aquarium, but through gray mist instead of water. There was something moving in the gray, but I couldn’t see what it was. I followed the tunnel to a massive domed room made — as far as I could tell — of the same materials as the tunnel. I walked for several hours…”

Skanky glanced up from her notes. “Several hours? You were dead for three minutes.”

“The flow of time in the afterlife seems to be either subjective or subject to some type of time dilation. After a while, I began to see something red in the distance. As I got closer I realized it was quite large. So far in my journey, I had not felt any fear — the brain releases calming chemicals when under heavy stress, and my soul was still effected by them. This was too much, though. A tower of organs, cancerous and twisted, grown around the spokes and wheels of some sort of some sort of massive mechanical device. My eyes followed the machine up, up, and there at the top was the front body of a while alicorn mare with a pink mane.” Eternal removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Skanky swallowed her mouth suddenly dry. “Celestia. Was this…”

“Yes, she had disappeared the year before.” Eternal replaced his glasses. “Her expression… such pain. Such love. Such… peace? I don’t know, my impression was that this was something she had chosen, but I was very young. How could I have understood such complex emotions? There is, of course, no reason to believe it was anything more than a vision. But. I would very much like to know more.”

“What happened then?”

“The doctors started my heart, and I came out of anesthesia.” He patted his hip. “And I had brought something with me.”

Skanky glanced down; his cutie mark was covered by his lab coat. “What is it?” she asked.

Eternal traced his hood in the air in a sideways figure eight. “Infinity. Quite a lot to live up to, but I do my best.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Skanky found Hearth in Grounds for Celebration after her History of Horror Film study section.

“Mind if I sit?” asked Skanky.

Hearth glanced up at her over the top of her laptop screen. “Of course not. I gotta keep working, though.”

Skanky levitated her espresso down in front of her and leaned over for a lap. Hearth’s hooves clattered on her keyboard. “You, know,” said Skanky, “no earth pony has ever been able to explain to me how you guys type with…”

“Ah ah ah!” interrupted Hearth, covering her ears. “Don’t! Don’t even! If I start thinking about how I do it, I can’t do it anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Just don’t ever mention it again,” said Hearth, going back to typing.

“So.”

“We haven’t really talked since… you know. The event.”

Hearth sighed. “You make it sound like we had sex. And wipe that goofy grin off your face.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t fantasizing about you, I swear.”

“Uh huh. So, what’s your issue?”

Skanky steeled herself for real talk. “I want to ask you not to go under again.”

Heath kept right on typing. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because Wing Dings and Letterspace didn’t raise a coward, is why.”

Skanky realized she was grinding her teeth. “There’s a difference between bravery and insanity, Hearthie. Death isn’t someplace we’re meant to go to and come back from like it’s bucking Neighpon.”

Hearth glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “Not meant to by whom? I thought you were an atheist.”

“Just because there’s nobody in charge doesn’t mean there aren’t things we shouldn’t do. Luna said death was jealous. What is it going to do when it finds out it's being cheated?”

Heath shook her head. “Skanky, ponies nearly die all the time. These experiments are based on a medical procedure doctors do hundreds of times a year. Plus Ether and Eternal say its safe, and I trust them.”

Skanky blew out through her nose. “Your mind’s made up, then.”

Hearth nodded. “One more time. If I can’t find her… well, I guess I’ll have to look for her more after I die. It’s kind of nice knowing for sure that death isn’t the end.”

“What? But life after death is horrible! Your story was a nightmare! I recorded Eternal's story yesterday, and his was a nightmare, too! You’re happy about this?”

Hearth shrugged. “I figure it’s like life — it is what it is, and it’s our job to make the best of it.”

Skanky slumped down in her chair. “Oh, Faust, Hearth, I’m… I don’t even know how to deal with all this. I always used to think, ‘yeah, life sucks, but if things get too bad, at least I can always kill myself.’ But now I know even killing myself won’t make things better.”

Hearth slammed her laptop shut and glared at Skanky. “Good.”

Skanky slunk down in her chair. “Wait. I shouldn’t have said that out loud, should I?”

Hearths thumped her hooves on the table, eyes narrowed to furious little slits.“How do you think I’d feel if you killed yourself? How would your family feel? How about your students?”

“My students hate me.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard. Anyway, you think everypony hates you. You probably think the barista hates you.”

“I fumbled around for exact change for half a minute. She gave me a dirty look.”

“And then she forgot about you and went on to the next annoying customer.” Hearth took a deep breath, and reached across the table, covering Skanky’s hoof with both of hers. “I’m angry because I’m scared. I hate hearing you talk like this. You’re my best friend.”

Skanky blinked. “What? I am? Me?”

Hearth nodded.

Skanky felt like a fresh piece of dog shit. She rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. She was tougher than this. “I’m sorry. I just… I feel bad almost every single second of almost every single day. It… it’s had to take, sometimes.”

“Skanky, you need to talk to somepony about your depression. It’s not your fault that you feel this way.”

“Hearth, how is it that I’m the suicidal one, but you’re the one who’s all about playing dead?”

Hearth shrugged. “It’s just something I’ve got to do. Anyway, the ponies who go under always come back okay, right?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

There was another experiment scheduled three days after she talked to Hearth.

Skanky didn’t like to be around for the immersions, so she headed down to the Bunker at 9:30 at night to record her interview. Ether had told her that Smooth Operator should be revived and ready to talk by that time. Overly Suspicious carefully examined the limited security access ID that Ether had given her, even though he knew damn well who she was and what she was doing there. She felt his eyes on her as she walked to the elevator.

She could tell something was wrong when she stepped out into the foyer. Nothing she could put a hoof on, just something wrong. She swiped her ID and headed into the corridor. There were voices coming from Ether’s lab. Voices with the clipped, jagged tone of trained professionals who’ve just realized they’re utterly fucked. And weeping. A mare’s weeping. Skanky ran the rest of the way to the lab.

Smooth Operator was lying on his back on a gurney, covered in a blanket, still bristling with electrodes. At first, she thought he was staring at her, but his eyes didn’t follow her as she rushed in and set down her bag and camera case. Ether and Eternal were standing on either side of him, bickering. Wild Oats was in the corner wailing, tears squirting from her clenched closed eyes. Firmament — the only researcher of the three with a basic grasp of equine emotions — was awkwardly patting Oats’ shoulder, and trying to talk her down, but whatever she was saying was drowned out by weeping.

“We could send him back in again. Give his soul more time to find his body,” said Ether.

“No,” replied Eternal, taking a break from gnawing on a forehoof, “The shock of a second immersion could kill him.”

Ether scowled. “As opposed to being only spiritually dead.”

Eternal tapped his chin. “I suppose a heart attack would be easier to explain to the University.”

“Are there any unicorns we could trust?” said Ether Brew. “Maybe there’s a way to reboot his mind from physical memory? Or at least keep him going long enough to fool people temporarily? Draw suspicion away from us.” They both looked at Skanky.

“For fuck’s sake, I don’t know how to do that, and I wouldn’t even if I could!” Skanky couldn’t believe she was hearing this. She recognized some the different readouts and what they meant — the one that measured Smooth’s heart rate and breathing was beeping along happily. The ETG was flat. She glared at Ether and Eternal. “You killed him. I knew something like this would happen!”

Eternal shook his head. “Physically he’s fine. Bloom of health. With a feeding tube he could survive like this indefinitely. But mentally, spiritually…”

“He’s a vegetable,” said Ether, shoulders sagging.

Skanky stamped and snorted. She wanted to kick both of them in the head. “Didn’t you prepare for this?”

“We didn’t realize it could happen,” said Ether.

“The body is the home of the soul,” said Eternal. “Life is its natural state. Almost all thanatologists agree on this. Apparently they are wrong. Useful to know, though if word of this gets out it could bring an end to my research.”

Skanky’s vision took on a red tinge. She felt a vein in her forehead pulse. “Is that really your biggest concern? He’s a pony! A living, thinking being! Or he was. Now he’s… he’s a husk, and all you can think about is your research?”

Eternal rounded on her, fire in his eyes. “Young mare, my research could help millions! It could extend life, ease fears, maybe even conquer death! You need to keep a proper perspective!”

Skanky gritted her teeth. Eternal was insane, but a shouting match wasn’t going to help Smooth. What would? An idea occurred to her. “Send me after him.”

Ether blinked. “What?”

“Send me after him. Put me under. How long has he been like this? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? Maybe he’s close. Maybe I can find him.”

“The world of the dead doesn’t work like that. We don’t even know if it’s a real place or some sort of dream state that’s unique to every pony. Anyway,” Ether waves his hooves frantically, “The same thing could happen to you!”

“It’s good to know you care.” She wasn’t being sarcastic — she was genuinely touched.

“We can’t allow any more expeditions until we know what went wrong!” said Ether

But Eternal waved his hoof at Ether. “No, she may be right. She’s heard all of our stories. She knows as much as any of us about the soul’s journey after death, at least from an anecdotal point of view. And she’s willing.”

“And expendable,” said Skanky.

“I wasn’t going to say it,” said Eternal.

Epilogue

The screen flickers with static, then the view solidifies into a view of the floor of a dark laboratory. Puddles of water and blood glisten on the floor, Skanky’s corpse lies in a corner, peaceful in its repose.

“It’s on! It’s on! How do I move it? Do I just…”

“I think we can manifest protoplasm.”

The camera’s view jerks, showing the ceiling, then a stool, then settling on to show the far wall of the room. Two pale figures wait there — a pegasus and an earth pony, flickering and pale, but visible.

“Got it!”

“Can they really see us on this?” asks the pegasus.

“Wait I’ll flip the screen around so you can see,” says a voice from off-screen.

“Whoa,” say the earth pony and the pegasus.

“Hi, mom!” says the earth pony, waving her hoof. “Wait, that’s in really bad taste. I’m sorry I died. I didn’t want to!”

“Yeah. Mom. Dad. I miss you!” says the pegasus.

“Don’t get too sentimental. We can swing by and haunt them later,” says a unicorn with bat wings, trotting into the frame. “Okay. So. I don’t know how much of what happened is going to be covered up by the government, or the school, but we wanted to say goodbye. We also wanted to tell whoever finds this that all my videos about Eternal Enigma’s experiments are on my laptop and some USB drives in my room. My password is ‘G0REL0VER666’, all caps, with zeros instead of ‘o’s. If you don’t release it to the press, I will haunt you, your children, and your children’s children. Just so you know. Oh, also, while you’re in there, if you could do me a solid and delete all of the porn, that’d be great.”

“Like, We don’t want to be jerks, but we’re serious about the haunting thing,” says the earth pony. “Also we wrote up some notes about what happened to us in the afterlife and manifested them on Skanky’s hard drive. Being a ghost is kind of cool.”

“Luna told me that technically we’re ‘eternal dreamers’,” says the pegasus.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m a Death Goddess,” says the unicorn.

“Anyway,” says the earth pony, waving them both down, “manifesting, even for the camera, is really hard, so we’ve gotta go soon. But we really are sorry about dying. Seriously it’s not that terrible for us, but I know it’s gonna suck for the ones we’ve left behind.”

“Yeah,” says the unicorn. “We miss you all. But we’re gonna go look for Hearth’s birth mother now.”

“See you arond,” says the pegasus, waving.

One by one, the ponies get up and walk through the wall behind them.

The video continues running until the camera runs out of batteries.