Starlight Glimmer (Accidentally) Raises the Dead

Chapters

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

Chapter 1

Starlight Glimmer committed Equestria's only capital crime about a month after her sixteenth birthday. It started on a Monday.

Starlight sat on her bed, strumming her guitar, fighting to stay awake. She looked at her clock: almost eleven. It was a silent magical clock. Dad loved old-style antiques, had ticky-tocky clocks all over the house, but not in Starlight's room.

Ticking drove Starlight crazy. Broke her concentration. Kept her from sleeping. Crazy. Starlight was hypersensitive to certain things. Mom said she felt the same way. Sensory hypersensitivity. Sensory processing disorder. Mom had names for lots of crap. Starlight just hated ticking, is all. It made her bonkers when things weren’t exactly how she liked. Starlight wanted things how she wanted them. Was that too much to ask?

Eleven o’clock. Starlight was supposed to be in bed by nine-thirty, whether her parents were home or not. Which they never were, of course. She was getting tired enough that she was thinking about leaving a note in the kitchen: 'Mom, really need to talk, please wake me. Starlight.'

Starlight’s vile spellbook, her black grimoire, her necronomicon, blackened by fire and bound in pony flesh and covered in unnameable runes, was buried deep in her bedroom closet, and she heard its sarcastic laughter in her mind.

Or maybe not.

She’d been hearing voices since before puberty, since shortly after Sunburst abandoned her, years before that book found its way into her hooves... but the book’s voice seemed different from her usual voices, somehow. For instance, it knew things Starlight couldn’t know, not even subconsciously, and it was always right.

Your mom’s almost home, said the book.

Starlight strummed a G-minor chord, but flubbed it and the sound was atonal. “Shut up! You’re just another schizophrenic hallucination."

You're bipolar, in addition to schizophrenic, the book said, but that doesn't mean I'm not really talking to you, baby. And remember: I’m the one who believes you. Not your mom.

She didn’t expect dad home until Friday night, just like always. Mom was usually home by seven or eight, but maybe she was off to one of the distant homesteads or mining camps tonight.

Maybe mom would be back tonight, maybe not. Starlight had been getting herself off to school in the mornings before she turned ten. They'd given Starlight her own key to the house even before Sunburst left. Heck, she'd spent so much time with Sunburst because mom and dad were never home. Sunburt's parents had practically raised—

Starlight slapped her right forehoof against the strings of the guitar, making an unmusical bang. Typical! The one night she needed help from mom, mom was off helping somepony else.

Maybe your mom is ‘helping’ some of the stallions? Sunburst’s dad, maybe? Mr. Sunspot? asked the book.

"No! Mom's not like me."

You know I tease you because I love you, baby. You complete me. Your mom is coming up the front walk.

The book was right, again, lending credence to her ‘not all in my head’ theory. Starlight heard the front door open, felt a puff of wind, heard the door close, mom’s hoofsteps, and then the kitchen sink running.

I'll just stay here, said the book. I'll be able to hear the yelling just fine.

Starlight leaned her guitar against the wall and tiphooved out of her room and down the hall.

Mom was levitating her lab coat under the kitchen sink faucet, scrubbing blood out of it with a stiff brush. Mom’s stethoscope still hung around her neck and her medical bag was at her hooves.

Walking into the kitchen, Starlight said, “Bad day, mom?”

Mom, a purple-maned, pine-green unicorn, with a cutie mark of a scalpel and stethoscope, looked up at Starlight. Mom was petite, bordering on tiny, and Starlight had stood taller than her for two years now, although Starlight was still several inches short of her adult height.

Mom said, “There was a bleeder. Twenty-five stitches and a vein repair. Heh. I don't get to practice my vascular surgery very much since I left the city.”

Starlight glanced down at the not-very-old scars on her own wrists, just above her forehooves, then looked back at mom.

“Who?” Starlight asked. Thinking about her suicide attempt from last summer made Starlight’s knees weak, and she felt like puking, so she sat down at the kitchen table and balanced her head on her forehooves.

“I can't talk about patients, Starlight.”

“Mr. Pots died while I helped you with CPR. I helped you with Mr. Fleet’s amputation.”

And youuuu still haaaave the niiiiight-maaaares! sing-songed the book in Starlight's head. That’s some quality foalhood trauma! We’ll let those two bake a few years, then circle back. Starlight tapped her horn with her hoof, trying to silence the voice.

Mom said, “Those were emergencies, honey. Without somepony to clamp arteries, Mr. Fleet would have died. You were the only pony here. And Mr. Pots—well, we did our best, but it was just his time. Starlight, you’re supposed to be in bed, baby.”

“I know, mom.”

“It’s a school night, honey.”

“I said I know!”

Mom leaned against the counter, levitated the labcoat up, and shook it once. Her lemon-yellow aura surrounded the now-soaking labcoat. “The blood didn’t set. Good. It still needs bleached, though. Are you hungry, honey?”

Starlight ground her teeth, and reached up a hoof and flipped her short new manestyle. She hated it when mom didn’t argue back. “No. I made myself supper. Hours ago.”

“Homework, Starlight?”

“I did it.”

Mom hung the labcoat and stethoscope from the antique wrought-iron coat tree, then sat down, across the table from Starlight. Mom yawned into a hoof, then put a hoof onto Starlight’s. “Why are you still awake, honey?”

“I... I need to talk to you about something.”

Mom’s face dropped, suddenly sad. “Oh, honey, do you have galloporrhea again?”

“No, mom. No STDs today.”

That's a suspiciously specific denial! said the book.

Mom nodded, her voice soft. “Take your time, honey. I’m home for the night. I’m sorry I was so late and you had to stay awake.”

Starlight looked down, breaking eye contact. She stared at her wrist scars. “Mom... are you pregnant again?”

Mom leaned back in her chair and blinked. “Yes. I am. How did you know?”

Tell her I smelled it, baby! the book screamed.

“Just a guess. Mom, dad’s always on travel. We only see him, what, one day a week? How do you two even do that?”

“Starlight, that’s too personal a question to ask your mother.”

“You ask about my sex life.”

Mom tapped a hoof on the table. “Honey... That’s because sixteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to have a sex life. Because I’m the only doctor for a two-day hike in any direction, and you keep picking up STDs. Sometimes I ask as your mom, sometimes as your doctor, and either way, it’s different.”

“You only married dad and moved from Manehattan to West Craptown, Equestria, because he knocked you up. You two're hypocritical to bust on me for playing with my friends.”

“'Playing'?” Mom’s face darkened. She took a few breaths to calm herself.

Good. Starlight really wanted a fight. It would delay telling mom her real problem.

Mom took a deep breath and continued, “I was an adult, a trained surgeon with my own life I was living. I married Firelight because I love him. I was pregnant, yeah, but pregnant because we loved each other. I chose to move here because I can help more ponies. Manehattan School of Medicine had ten thousand doctors. This whole province has one. Me. If I’d known way back when how much I would love being a country doctor, I would have studied family practice instead of vascular surgery.”

“Mom... why do you keep getting pregnant? Don’t you love me enough? What did I do wrong? I, I try to be good. I try to get you two to love me...”

Mom’s jaw dropped open. “Starlight! How could... of course I love you! I love you more than... than... than... life itself!”

“Nice cliché, mom.”

“It’s true!”

"How come you're never at home for me?"

"I love you, but I have an oath, too. I'm the only doctor for over sixty miles in any direction, honey."

“How many miscarriages have you had, mom?”

Mom got very still. Her mouth moved as she silently counted. “Seventeen. Seven before you, ten after.”

“Seventeen, counting Sunrise?”

“No,” Mom whispered, a tear forming at the corner of her left eye. “Sunrise, she was a live birth, even if she didn’t last very long.”

“Eighteen, then. Mom... mom, I need you. I don’t want you to die. A miscarriage is going to kill you, eventually. You get sicker every time.”

“Not every time. It’s not—

“You're almost fifty! You’re the only doctor in town, who will save you the time you finally get sick-sick? Doctor Briar is a veterinarian. Constable Keystone has EMS training, but she’s a cop, not a doctor, and not even a very good cop. Look at all the crap I get away with under her nose.”

“We had you, honey. We can have another foal, if we keep trying. I know it.”

The book whined in the back of Starlight's head. This is boring! I wanted fireworks!

“I feel like... mom... like I’ve been a bad filly. I've been awful for you, you 'n dad. I’ll be bad again... I know I can’t stop myself. I feel like you keep getting pregnant, getting sick, risking the miscarriages... so that you two can get a foal that’s worth loving.” Starlight's eye burned. She blinked, refusing to cry. After a moment she turned her forelegs over to expose the scars on her wrists.

Mom walked around the table, squeezed her tiny bottom onto the same chair with Starlight, kissed Starlight’s scarred wrist, kissed Starlight between the ears, and then hugged her, cheek-to-cheek, touching horns.

Mom laid a hoof on the scar on Starlight's right wrist. "That wasn't you, it was that damn book."

"I made the choice. I levitated the knife."

The book interjected, You’re changing the subject! Tell her your news! I wanna hear the fight.

“Starlight! We love you so much—don’t ever doubt that. Even when we’re screaming at you. We know we’ll love your brother or sister just as much. That's why we keep trying.”

“Your uterus, mom. Do you really think...?”

“I had you.”

“But mom, you said I was so premature. That I almost died, too.”

Mom hugged Starlight even harder, buried her face into Starlight's neck. Starlight felt mom's tears wet her coat. “Two hundred and fourty-four days, you were in the neonatal intensive care unit. Two hundred and forty-four. But look at you now! Strong, healthy, happy. You are happy, right? Mommy's little miracle. Daddy’s pumpky-wumpkin.”

“Ugggh, mom! It’s bad enough when he calls me that. ....When’ll dad be home?”

She thinks you're healthy? gloated the book to Starlight. How cute! No psychiatrist, that one, definitely a surgeon. No understanding others’ inner minds. You got it honest.

“Your dad’ll be home Friday, like always. The crazy hedonistic life of the Equestrian antique dealer. He’s in Vanhoover, this week, I think. Or maybe Las Pegasus? Some Baron or Earl croaked, big estate sale.”

"I would love a sibling, mom... but I'll be a bad influence."

"You'll be a wonderful big sister."

Starlight gently rubbed mom's belly. “How far...?”

“Two months.”

Starlight frowned. “You usually miscarry at three."

Mom patted Starlight’s head. “Not every time. You baked for seven whole months.”

“Seven out of eleven. Do the math, mom. I was in the hospital longer than I was inside, well, inside you. Sunrise... you said she baked for six months?” Starlight asked, remembering.

Starlight’s earliest memory, from toddlerhood, was the tiny coffin and quiet funeral. The expanse of gravestones, the sunbaked grass underhoof, the smell of pollen, the dry wind off the foothills. Standing there in a black dress and a fully loaded diaper, being told to be quiet and wait and stand still and stop whining.

Mom nodded, and sniffed once. "Six months gestation. No hospital in Equestria could have..."

Say something insulting, suggested the book. You've almost gotten through her calm.

“Mom? Plenty of families have only one foal on purpose. I think, that if I was good enough for you two, you wouldn’t keep risking your life.”

Mom kissed Starlight’s neck, then nuzzled Starlight's ear and horn. “That's just not true. We love you more than you can know. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? Is this why you're up past bedtime?”

“Your defect...” Starlight said. “Pronounce it again?”

“Bicornuate uterus,” Mom said, precisely, ever the elitely-trained Manehattan School of Medicine surgeon.

“Is it hereditary?”

Mom hissed, then reared back. Her eyes narrowed and ears perked forward. “How far along are you?”

She’s the smartest pony in the province, excepting you, the book observed. That’s why you two keep me entertained.

Starlight leaned forward, gently planting her face on the kitchen table. “I'm not. Yet. But... this afternoon... no protection... and then I looked at my calendar. I'm fertile today, and...”

“All right. Doctor mode on, mom mode off. Spell it out clearly, Starlight. You're essentially an adult, I want informed consent before I treat you.”

"I need a morning-after pill, mom. Doctor. Doctor Mom. Please."

It's the evening after! said her book.

Mom cradled her head in her hooves. “Starliiiiiiiiiiight... we talked about this. You've got a reputation.”

You're the school slut! cried the book. Be proud, baby. Everypony knows your name. You were patient zero for the school’s galloporrhea epidemic. Your mom should'a been an epidemiologist, figuring that one out.

Starlight looked at mom, and noticed a few spots of blood in the inside of mom’s left ear, and another halfway up mom’s horn. Whomever this evening’s patient had been, he or she had been quite the bleeder. “You and dad are never at home, what else am I going to do with my time?”

“Try doing your homework instead of doing your classmates, Starlight!”

Now you've got her stirred up! said the book. Twist the knife.

“I've got the best grades in the whole school, mom. The principal is learning partial differential equations from me. And he’s not learning it very well.”

Mom closed her eyes and breathed deeply for several seconds. “You are, by Celestia, the smartest pony I’ve ever known, and that’s really saying something, considering the medical schools I went to and the professors I knew. But for a smart pony, you make some wicked-bad decisions.”

The book jeered in Starlight’s mind: Not smart enough to get rid of me! So cute you three thought a wood fire would burn me.

Starlight said nothing. What? Mom was right.

Mom stared at her.

Starlight said, “Mom... I get so lonely...”

“Yes," mom said, "before we change the subject, it’s hereditary. I can give you an ultrasound any time you like. You're... five years past menarche? Six years? If your uterus is also bicornuate, it’ll show clearly at your age.”

“Don’t wanna know.”

“When was your last period?”

"Fifteen days."

Mom nodded. "Very fertile. Hmmmm... Did you have sex recently? Besides today?"

"Last Friday. Last Thursday. Wednesday. Tuesday. Monday. Et cetera. Used protection, though."

"Sweet Celestia, Starlight!" Mom's mouth opened and closed several times as she tried to find words. “I knew you were getting around, from all the STDs, but...”

Starlight said, “Only twice. Not ‘all’ the STDs.”

"How many different colts?"

Starlight looked down and her ears wilted. Her tail thrashed.

Eventually, mom said, "Why didn't you use protection today?"

"We were drunk. Well, drunker than usual."

“How hard is that protection spell? Any unicorn alive can do it, and you’re no ordinary unicorn! We've bought you condoms, too!” Mom sniffed. "Ugggh. I smell booze on your breath, since you mention it. I smell the sex, too. Yuck, Starlight. If Mr. Sunspot ever figures out you can teleport, he’s going to figure out where all the liquor from the store is disappearing to, and you’ll be looking at a jail cell.”

Like jail could stop us! sneered the book. You have enough magic in one sneeze to turn Contable Keystone into paste! And if I help? Ha! She'll wake up in ten thousand separate dimensions! You’ll be a lesson at every police academy in Equestria: beware the unassuming unicorns, they might be demigoddesses in disguise.

Mom continued, “Or your friend Sunburst? Let’s say he comes home for a school holiday, and finds out you’ve been robbing his family? Still want to be your friend then?”

“He left me. Not my friend. Screw Sunburst and his whole family.”

“I don’t think you mean that. I’m still waiting for your informed consent.”

“I don't want... yeah. Can you fix this, mom? Make me not become pregnant? Please?”

"Stand up. March! To my office. The prescription is in the vault. But I need to do a blood test, first."

Starlight stood. "Blood test? Mom, why?"

"Starlight.... You lie to me. You lie to me a lot. I need to know if you're pregnant. That's a whole different prescription. Which I can also give you, if you ask. But, I need to pick the right one. Right now, I'm your doctor, not your mom, okay?"

Starlight’s ears wilted. “Okay, doc. Horse feathers, this is embarrassing.”

“I changed your diapers and diagnosed your galloporrhea. We’ll survive this embarrassment. But tomorrow we're going to talk about protection, again, and why teenagers should be abstinent, again, and why teenagers shouldn't drink, again.”

"Yes, mom. Mom, I usually use the protection spell. I was just..."

"Drunk."

Starlight nodded.

“Will you tell your dad?” mom asked. “Or do I have to? It’s better if you tell him. I mean it when I say you’re essentially an adult.”

Starlight tucked her tail. “I’ll do it. If he gets home Friday late, like usual, then Saturday, after breakfast, I’ll tell him.”

Mom stopped walking. "There's no history of alcoholism on either side of the family. Why do you drink so much?"

Starlight looked Mom in the eyes. "I told you! I’ve told you again and again. I drink to shut up the voices. They tell me do things. I mean, my wrists? The cutie mark thing....? The graveyard incident?"

"That. Never. Happened! We agreed it never happened. We agreed to never talk about the graveyard again, Starlight."

"After you broke my ribs, I was too afraid of you to talk about it. I asked some of the other foals if their moms ever broke their ribs. Survey said: no."

"Me bucking you in the chest saved your life!" Mom hissed. "Somedays, I think I should have broken your jaw, instead. If you had finished that spell—! Necromancy is the death penalty, Starlight! Celestia herself would have come to Sire's Hollow to put you down, along with a battalion of the Guard."

“I get my lack of impulse control from you, mom.”

“Of course! A surgeon’s first instinct is to cut at the problem with the sharpest scalpel at hoof. You don’t have that excuse.”

"Celestia wouldn't kill a juvenile for necromancy, mom. Probably just Tartarus."

"That's no better! I don't know where your magic came from. I mean, my family are all pegasus ponies! We never did figure out where my horn came from. But you're too powerful for your own good, honey. It's a shame your drinking doesn't dull your magic."

Ohhh, she's mad now! said the book. Try insulting her heritage!

“I can tell you’re from a pegasus family, mom! Would grandma Firestar have been ashamed of my magic? No! She was ecstatic I was off the charts! At least dad’s family is unicorn to the bone.”

“No bigotry, Starlight. You and I have pegasus blood, even if we’re unicorns. Your sister Sunrise was a pegasus.”

Starlight’s jaw dropped “Really? I... I never saw her body.”

“Of course not! You were a toddler. It’s true, though. Don’t be a tribeist, love-bug. Unicorns are not better than anypony else. My parents love you. Your uncles and cousins love you. Why can’t you love them?”

Now you've got her stirred up! the book said. And she's not even seen a half-percent of your magic, or what we can do together! Call her a barren infertile desert and you’ll get your fight!

Starlight shook her head, hit herself on the horn, clearing out the book’s words, and took a deep breath.

“Don’t hit your own horn, Starlight! Doesn’t that hurt? It worries me when you do that, with your history of... self harm.”

"Your family is fine, I guess. I love them. Sorry. I suppose I just miss Grandma Firestar. She had that spell, the one that helped me think straight.”

“You don’t hear voices, love. It’s just your active imagination.”

“None of those things, the suicide attempt, the cutie marks, the graveyard, none of those were my ideas, mom. The voices told me to do them! I told you I need treatment. You’re a surgeon, mom, but I need a shrink.”

"Starlight, that's not even funny. There are no voices in your head. You aren't sick again. I refuse to acceptthat."

"To the Pony of Shadows with what you accept, mom!"

"Two hundred and forty-four days in neonatal intensive care. Eight months, you were sick. Eight months, I slept on a couch in the waiting lounge. You! Aren't! Sick! Again! You can't be. I love you too much for you to be sick again. Starlight, schizophrenics don’t know the voices aren’t real."

The book howled laughter. For a doctor, she's pretty stupid, isn't she? Wishful thinking is no substitute for antipsychotic medications. Replace the fake skulls decorating your bedroom with real ones and she might believe you, then.

Starlight said, "Atrociously premature birth is statistically correlated with mental illness after puberty. Especially in unicorns. And even more especially unicorns who are also above the ninetieth percentile in magic. And we both know I’m at least five or six nines past the decimal.”

Mom facehoofed. "Been reading my medical journals again, have you?"

Starlight felt a tear in her eye, and blinked it away. “I hear voices. Maybe it's my magic, and I’m, I’m, I’m an antenna. But things talk to me, mom.”

“You. Are. Not. Sick. You can't be. I love my little filly, mommy’s little miracle, Starlight, too much for that.”

Starlight looked at her mom, kept her face neutral, and made a life-threatening decision: You want a filly, mom? You'll never carry another pregnancy to term. We all know that. You’re too old, now. What you want is Sunrise back. I can get her back for you. You wanted a pegasus foal. All my cousins are pegasi, and you’re jealous. I’ll get Sunrise back for you. And you’ll see just how much magic I’ve got! And then maybe, after I’ve done something nopony else could do for you, you’ll love me for who I am.

Starlight nodded to herself.

The book cheered, That's my slutty partner! Necromancy, chapter five. I'm looking forward to it! Wednesday next week is a fulllllll moooooon! We’ll drink flaming grog out of baby skulls when we’re done.

“Starlight?” Mom gently tapped Starlight on the nose with a hoof, then pursed her lips and blew onto Starlight's horn. “Equestria to Starlight, come in please. Are you in there?”

Starlight blinked, nodded, and followed mom out the front door and across the courtyard, through the warm night, under the crescent moon, to mom’s clinic. It was humid, the scent of rain on the wind. But Starlight was too deep in thought to notice.

Necromancy was Equestria's only death penalty, but sixteen-year-old Starlight Glimmer believed she had enough magic and brains to avoid any consequences. After all, she’d been stealing liquor for five years without getting caught, right? She'd been humping for almost as long with only two STDs and no pregnancies, right? She removed those two bullies’ cutie marks and only gotten a week detention and forced to write an apology. She was as non-stick as an enchanted skillet, immune to consequences.

After she got Sunrise back from the graveyard, mom and dad would be happy. Mom, especially. Mom got more sad after each miscarriage.

What was the difference between stealing liquor and raising the dead, really?

Chapter 2

Mom was a stupendously intelligent pony—obviously, a Manehattan School Of Medicine vascular surgeon, with a Fellowship year at University Hospital Canterlot—and mom knew that living with Starlight was like living on top of a minefield or an active volcano. The morning-after medicine made Starlight crabby, headache and nausea, so mom let her stay home from school Tuesday. Starlight hadn’t yet blasted one of the school bullies—Sunburst’s sanctimonious older cousin Mystic Heart, for example—with her full magic, and the bullies were scared of Starlight thanks to her past hints, but the day she did lose her cool and wallop one of them, questions would be asked, first aid would be given, and quite possibly, hundred-mile emergency trips to Vanhoover Hospital would be required.

It was unlikely, but not impossible, that graves would be dug.

Mom knew when to let this particular landmine sleep in late and plunk badly on her guitar. Starlight’s grades were straight A-plus-pluses, anyway. For Starlight, school was basically just a taxpayer-funded foalsitting service. Mom told Starlight that she was essentially an adult, and could take a mental health day if she promised to make up her homework.

Starlight levitated her dark curtains shut, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Mom grabbed her obstetrics bag, shillelagh, sunscreen, sunhat, and water bottle, and headed off overland to check on Mrs. Caramel Twinkle’s last-trimester pregnancy at the Twinkle homestead, five miles south of town.

Wednesday, Starlight woke up well before dawn and went for a fifteen-mile run along the forest roads outside town.

The mayor insisted ponies traveling outside the town walls carry some sort of weapon—pepper spray, slingshot, shillelagh, quarterstaff, whatever—to cope with the region’s rather serious coyote problem. Between her teleportation and her offensive and defensive magic, Starlight knew she was the most dangerous pony (foal or adult) for a hundred miles or more in any direction, but she didn’t want anypony else to know that, so she obediently carried a slingshot and fifteen lead slugs in a slim saddlebag.

Two miles into her run, as the sun just poked above the horizon, she saw a scrawny coyote bitch eyeing her from some scrub.

She glared at it and kept running.

The coyote licked it chops and started to position its paws to sprint at her.

Without breaking stride, Starlight teleported a fifteen-foot-long, three-foot-diameter fallen log to a point six feet above the coyote's head.

Splat!

Thirteen miles later, she ended her run, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, at the town graveyard, just outside the town walls. Trotting in place to avoid cramping up, she looked at two adjacent gravestones.

The newer gravestone read,

Firestar Glimmer

Beloved wife, mother, and grandmother

Aged 82

We are better for having loved you

The older gravestone read,

Sunrise Glimmer

Beloved daughter and sister

Aged four minutes

We love you and wish we could have known you

“One more week, little sis,” Starlight muttered, and walked home for a shower before school.

Starlight didn’t drink alcohol that week, or have sex with any of the colts from school. Both sorts of abstinence were unusual for her. She made the same fifteen-mile run Thursday and Friday mornings, improving by five minutes each day, and the coyote’s carcass stank of putrefaction by Friday. She hit the corpse with a flame projection spell but it didn’t work very well. She would need to practice that one.

By Celestia, would Starlight be getting some unpleasant practice with flame spells soon enough. But she didn’t know that at the time.

Mom made a point of being home from work around dinnertime each day, to keep an eye on her.

“Mom,” Starlight said on Thursday, poking at a bowl of spicy red hominy, “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

“Isn’t trust part of love?”

“Trust is earned, love is given.”

Starlight retired to her room early each night, to memorize the dead-raising spells in the black grimoire. There were an even dozen to choose from, and she wanted options.

Your mom’s coming to check on you, baby, the book warned on Friday. Starlight shoved the book under her pillow and levitated up a Shadow Spade novel before mom—without knocking, uncool—stuck her head into Starlight’s room.

“Bedtime.”

“Can I stay up until dad gets home from the train station, mom?”

“No. You need your sleep.”

“Can I finish the chapter?”

“Just the chapter.”

After mom left and Starlight picked the black grimoire back up, Starlight whispered at it, “Most foals worry about hiding porn or booze, not necronomica.”

Don’t make me plural, baby, I’m one of a kind. Just like you and that powerful horn. You know I love you, baby. We were made for each other. You may be the school slut, but you're all mine where it counts.

Saturday morning, dad sipped his coffee, pushed his empty breakfast plate away, and said, “Starlight, thanks for telling me. Honesty is something I’m glad you’re working on, pumpky-wumpkin. I’m betting your mumsie-wumsie already chewed you out?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“What was the gist of the talkie-walkie?”

“No booze. No colts. Dad, can you use your adult voice, please?”

“Can you stay away from booze and colts, sugarplum?”

“Honestly.... I don’t think so, dad. I’ve explained why I drink. As for the colts? Well, the other foals don’t like me.” Starlight’s voice turned brittle. She squinched her eyes shut. “I’m weird, dad. They know I’m... off. I’m different.”

“Don’t call yourself ‘weird,’ honey,” mom said. “I was the same way at your age.”

Starlight continued, eyes still shut, “But I’m lonely, guys. I don’t have a single real friend. You two are never home. The other fillies hate me. Somepony figured out I’m autistic, and now the fillies all make fun of me. And I can’t show my magic without hurting somepony again. The school’s given me all the warnings they will, next time I’m in trouble. The colts only tolerate me because... I... Dad, if it wasn’t for sex, I wouldn’t have any friends at all. And don’t say ‘they aren’t really your friends,’ I know that already. I wish this town... I wish that I was more like them, and they were more like me... more equal? Hmmmm...”

I’m your only real friend, baby! crooned the book. I love your magic—especially with the full power. She tapped her horn, very lightly, since mom was watching.

Starlight opened her eyes and looked at them. “I’m lonely, guys. ...I wish I did have a sibling!”

Dad looked at mom and raised an eyebrow.

“She asked,” mom said. “I don’t lie to Starlight.”

Dad rubbed his temples. “You’re special, Starlight, the other foals don’t appreciate that. Is there anything we can do to help you, pumpky?”

Starlight shrugged and with a huff, blew her bangs out of her left eye. She rubbed the bare back of her neck. “I don’t like this short manestyle anymore. I’ll let it grow out.”

Dad leaned forward and waggled a hoof. “When the town figures out there’s been a blind teleporter living amongst them for years, a lot of liquor thefts and ugly pranks are going to suddenly make sense. You realize we might not be able to keep you out of jail, pumpky? Best case, you’ll be doing chores ten hours a day for everypony in town to pay back the restitution. Your mom and I don’t have any money.”

Starlight bit her tongue, squinted her left eye, and with a crack! of turquoise magic, teleported from her chair to the empty chair next to Dad. She hugged him around the chest.

Mom snarled, “That’s exactly, perfectly, and entirely the opposite of funny.”

Dad nodded. “You're excused. Your mother and I need to talk, pumpky. Please leave the house. Entirely. I know about your auditory enhancement spell.”

Starlight looked at her hooves. “I said I was sorry about that.”

Mom blushed at the memory.

Dad said, “Thank you, pumpkin. Your papa and mama need to talk, sweetie. That’ll be all for now. Be home for lunch, hun-bun. This afternoon, you can help me clean some antiques for market.”

Crack! Starlight teleported to her bedroom.

“Not funny!” mom and dad both shouted.

After a few seconds, she trotted past the dining room, levitating a large purple kite. They heard the front door open and close.

“Last night," mom said after Starlight was out of the house, "I looked up chart I remembered from my old sophomore anatomy book. In the unicorn-specific chapter.”

“Hmmm?” dad said, sipping coffee.

“It listed the fraction of unicorns who can do certain magical things. Levitate one hundred pounds, one out of three. Levitate five hundred pounds, one in eleven. And so on.”

“I’ve seen her levitate an entire loaded wagon,” dad said.

“Care to guess the number on ‘Teleport safely, over one mile, landing site not in line of vision’?”

Dad rubbed his chin. “One in ten thousand?”

Mom shook her head. “The book said, ‘One in ten-plus million, question mark.’ It actually had a question mark, it’s so rare that nopony knows. Our Starlight’s magic is that strong. One in ten-plus million.”

Dad nodded his head and hmmmed. “What was her excuse for this week’s close call, dearie-dearest?”

“Drunk,” Mom said.

“It’s not like we were bad examples!” dad said. “Once every two or three weeks, I had a nightcap. You're on permanent call, so you hardly ever drink. She never once saw us drunk.”

“We haven’t even had a bottle in the house since she blasted the lock off the liquor cabinet.”

“How can an eleven-year-old blow a Canterlot-enchanted padlock into slag?” dad asked.

“How can an eleven-year-old want booze that badly?” mom asked.

“Did she blame the voices again?”

Mom nodded. “If I’d realized what we were in for when she asked to look at my old books...”

Dad’s voice was quiet. “Do you think pumpkin’s really schizophrenic?”

“I can’t accept her being ill again. That’s too hard.”

Dad shrugged. “But what if she’s right? Reality doesn’t care what we accept. Hun, I know you grew up in a pegasus clan, but there's a unicorn saying....”

"What saying?" mom asked.

"'Late strong magic, ever so tragic.' Lots of unicorns have strong magic. Lots of foals' magic comes in late. But when a foal's magic comes in late and comes in strong and comes in all at once... well. They can get a little hinky in the head. It's common enough somepony invented a rhyme for it. And Starlight’s magic came in very late, and all at once, and strong."

“She’s so smart, Firelight! She memorized my DSM. She recited seven pages at me, trying to get lithium. I went back later, looked at the book, and she had recited it word for word. It would be nothing for her to fake every symptom on the diagnostic criteria, and she’s smart enough to leave a few off of her act for verisimilitude.”

Dad said, “But what if she’s not faking? I’ve always wondered about her... I've... I believe she really needs help. I don’t think she’s faking. Lithium’s not a drug the kids are taking for fun. The side effects are nasty, and I’m sure pumpky looked them up. Lithium's got sexual side effects, and we both know how... much... she... enjoys...” and dad's voice trailed off. He looked down at his coffee. "I think she is sick."

Mom shrugged. “You’re never home, hun. That’s our life, I’m not blaming, I'm not accusing, but I see her six times more often than you. She got her autism from me, I’ll admit that, and that’s why that craphead clique of fillies at school think she’s ‘weird,’ but we've worked on it since she was three. I don’t buy her ‘hearing voices’ for a second.”

Dad tapped a hoof on the table, thinking. “What additional punishments does she need?”

“Punishment? None, I think. I don’t want her afraid to come to us if she needs emergency contraception again. Or an abortion. Or treatment for another STD. I want her to come to me, to us, earlywhen they’re easier to deal with. She was stupid to have unprotected sex, but smart to come to me that very same night.”

“Stupid-smart, that's our pumpky-wumpkin. So what do we do, honey-onesie?”

“I can’t not go on housecalls—ponies will die. You can’t stop traveling if we want to keep this house, and support my clinic. My clinic hemorrhages money, with so many subsistence farmers paying us barter. Your antique business floats us.”

Dad flicked his tail. “I feel so horrible about that whole graveyard thing... her drinking’s been worse since then. Her suicide attempt was a direct response to it. The graveyard incident left scars inside her, and it’s my fault!” Dad pounded the mug down, spilling lukewarm coffee.

“It’s not your fault," mom said. "You thought it was an ordinary, healthy magic book. Goodness knows neither of us can teach her magic to her potential, and I’m not sending her out of my sight to Canterlot, so getting her books on your trips... that just made sense. How were we to know it was a grimoire? A necronomicon? It looked like a regular unicorn textbook until it scented her power and dropped its glamour!”

Dad shivered. “That book smelled Starlight's magic like a randy colt smelling puberty.”

“She’s so strong,” Mom said. “She scares me. You know she could kill us both with a single flick of the horn, right?”

“Yep. I saw that happen once, in the service. We needed mops and buckets. Stronger unicorns tend toward mental illness, and that's a fact. The court-martial sentenced him to Tartarus. Starlight’s even stronger."

"That damn Duke," mom said. "That stupid estate sale. What kind of pony owns a book like that? I wonder if some other poor foal on the far side of Equestria got some other book from his collection."

"And if I told the authorities that dead Duke who owned that book had been a Tirek worshipper, then they’d ask me how I knew, and Starlight would be looking at jail... or worse. What does she do after graduation?”

“I’m feeling out legacy admissions at Manehattan City,” mom said.

Dad tilted his head. “She’s shown no interest in medicine in front of me. Her bedside manner would be... stern. 'Get off your rump and stop bleeding on my neat hospital, mister!'”

Mom shrugged. “It’s the only guess I’ve got. She’s awful with her guitar. You can’t major in kite flying, booze, or cock, which are the only other things she seems to like. Gaaah!"

Dad shivered. "Teenage pregnancy—not good. Sometimes I wish she was gay."

Mom's face turned dark. She bowed her head and sobbed once. "Worse than that."

"Huh?" said dad.

"While I did her blood draw... I had her lay flat on my exam table. I palpated her abdomen."

"Oh." Dad floated his coffee mug down and clasped his forehooves together, bracing himself.

Mom nodded her head. "Her uterus felt even worse than mine. We need an ultrasound to be sure, but... but, she’ll never foal. Never. Just being pregnant will kill her.”

"Did you tell her?" Dad said. His face turned white, visions of grandfoals evaporating in his head.

Mom shook her head. "She didn't want to know."

Dad rubbed his face with his hooves. “You have to do the ultrasound.”

“No. I don’t. She refused. I think your ‘pumpky-wumpkins’ and generally treating her like a foal contribute to her... promiscuity and boozing. Trying to prove she’s grown-up. I keep saying to her, ‘you’re essentially an adult,’ hoping she’ll act like it. I won’t force a trans-vaginal ultrasound on her without consent. It's medically unethical.”

“We have to tell her.”

“Eventually,” mom said, “but not now. When she asks. And I could be wrong. We’ll do the ultrasound, someday.”

"We need to encourage her to consider college," dad said. "We can scrape the money together, somehow."

"She’s crazy-gifted at math, but I don’t think she wants to be a mathematician. I’m scared to encourage her to study magic. That could go... awry.”

Dad shrugged. He'd never been to college, and trusted mom on that topic. “I've tried to get her to consider a stint in the guard. With her magic and brains she would be at the Academy inside of six months. Goodness, I wanted to be an officer! ...Anyway, four years’ service, college is free, but she's not interested in my hoofsteps. I... I worry about our pumpky-wumpkin.”

“Our little miracle. When I saw my uterus on the ultrasound that first time, I never thought we’d have even one foal. I love her so much.” Mom rubbed a cramp in her belly. “I can’t stand the thought of something happening to her. I would die for her. How do we help her, Firelight?”

“We have to keep loving her, honey-onesie. Other than that, I wish I knew.”

“Well,” mom said, “thank Celestia we burned that book.”

The book heard their words, and sent a smirk at Starlight, who was in town square, flying her kite and flipping her mane and tail at one of the colts from school. She lost her grip on the kite and had to grab it with her magic. She looked around, hoping nopony had noticed.

Dad went to the train station before dawn on Monday, with two heavy crateloads of antiques to sell in Canterlot. Starlight levitated both crates for him, and she could easily have carried a dozen more, except for her fear of showing off her power in public.

She leapt from the ground to the train platform, eschewing the stairs.

A lime-green earth pony looked at Starlight’s scrawny, immature frame, then at the heavy crates, and quirked his eyebrows.

Starlight hugged dad goodbye from the train platform and said, "I'll be good this week, dad. When you get home Friday–you'll be impressed. Promise."

"I'll miss you, hun-bun. I'll be in Canterlot, do you want me to hit the University bookstore and find you some new magic books? I promise they won't be... whoopsies, this time."

Starlight's ears wilted and wouldn't perk back up, no matter how hard she tried. Her tail tucked so deeply it tickled her chest. “Thanks, dad, but I'm a little book-shy right now."

"Pumpky... that wasn't your fault. It was mine. I bought you that necronomicon. I’m sorry, again. When you told me, after breakfast Saturday, you had to tell me something... I was afraid you'd attempted suicide again. We love you, pumpky. Nothing could ever change that, sweetie. Nothing."

"I'm sorry I scared you, dad." She hugged him once more. “Until Friday night!” The train whistle sounded in the distance. She levitated a dark purple sweatband from her saddlebag, put it around her head, and started a short ten-mile morning run through the hills.

He shouted after her, “Be good, sugarbun, and don’t talk to strangers!”

Starlight thought, There are no strangers in a town this small! There hasn’t been a murder or rape in decades. And I’m the nastiest piece of work in the valley of death, anyway. Strangers should check the back seats of their wagon for me.

The coyotes saw her coming and ran for their dens. She glared at their backs and kept running.

She ended her morning run at the graveyard, panting. "Two more days, little sis."

"I'm not doing this," Starlight told the book after school on Wednesday. "I've got cold hooves."

She swigged from a just-stolen vodka fifth and coughed. It was the first drink she had taken in a week and a half, and by Celestia, it soothed her nerves.

Oh, she was never going nine days without a drink again. She swore it. Sweet, sweet nectar, was vodka.

Yes you are! the book shouted. You are doing this! It levitated itself up and turned toward her. Or did it? The magical aura was the same light turquoise color as Starlight's. Was she levitating it, and attributing volition to an inanimate object?

Mom didn’t keep lithium in stock, because nopony in town needed it, or else Starlight would have “self-prescribed” it years before.

The book’s runes glowed cherenkov blue in anger. The room smelled like the electric gust of wind right before a thunderstorm hit.

The room was cold. Her own breath fogged, very slightly.

Starlight screamed, "You're not alive! You're not talking to me! You're not levitating yourself! I'm just schizophrenic and bipolar and you're all in my head!"

I'm in your head but that doesn't mean I'm not real, baby. We've discussed this for months.

"I want Sunrise back but... but... but she's dead! All I'll do is get killed, and maybe get other ponies killed. Necromancy's the death penalty, and it's a capital crime because it's uncontrollable! After I get killed, what about mom and dad? How will they feel? They’ll be the infertile couple whose only foal got executed by Celestia herself! I bet Celestia puts my head on a pike in town square for mom and dad to see every day!” She took another swig of vodka.

This ain't necromancy, baby, the book crooned. It's amoremancy. Love magic. Don't mom and dad want Sunrise back? Didn't Celestia make Mi Amore Cadenza a princess for her amoremancy? Maybe you can get some wings and mom won't think you're so ashamed of your pegasus heritage. Two love checkboxes for the price of one, baby. Princess Starlight Glimmer! Princess of Responsible Siblinghood! Sooooound goooooooood?

Starlight stomped and paced her room, tail thrashing, ears flicking. "You piece of trash! How long did you wear that glamour before you found me?"

Two hundred and five years, baby. A unicorn like you is less than one in a century. I almost got moved to Celestia's school's library, there's a future alicorn there I really want to rape, but you'll have to do.

“Rape? Is that what you do to naive young unicorns? Is that what this is?”

You know you want me, baby. You know you like it. If she enjoys it, it can’t be rape, right?

"I'm not doing this. Mom bucked me the first time. Broke five ribs. Mom might kill me this time, so Celestia doesn't have to."

Your mom is going to miscarry within the next few hours, it said. Don't you want to give her something to cheer her up, baby? .....she's at the front door, shut your purple face and hide me.

Starlight's stomach lurched and she swallowed down vodka-flavored vomit. She tossed the book into her closet and shut the closet door gently. After the front door opened and closed, she trotted to the foyer to see Mom.

"Hey, you're home early, mom. It's not even five." Starlight thought, Good thing I didn't have a colt or two here today! ...not that they aren’t accustomed to going out the window.

"I don't feel good...." Mom said. She levitated her labcoat into the laundry room, dropped her stethoscope onto her medical bag, and then collapsed onto the couch, face-down.

Oh, not good. Starlight sat on the floor in front of the couch, and ran a hoof down mom's spine. "Are you... are you okay, mom?"

Mom smelled like sour sweat. She smelled bad. Mom never smelled, she was too careful with all aspects of her professional appearance.

"Getting crampy," mom said. "I can guess why. This'll be number eighteen."

Starlight felt her own eyes sting. She wiped them, and rubbed mom's withers. "Oh, gosh, mom, I'm... I'm sorry." Starlight breathed shallowly, through her nose, so mom didn't smell vodka breath.

"Not your fault. I mean, we all knew this was likely. You're right, I'll be fifty next year. I was stupid to try again."

"Can I make you supper? Mr. Fruit Stand dropped off some plantains as payment for his last treatment. A few of them are ripe.”

"Did you log it in my ledger?"

"Yup. I could fry the plantains up, and warm up the black beans and rice leftover from yesterday? Nice island-style dinner?”

"Not hungry. Maybe a glass of apple juice? I'll start my electrolyte replacement early, and beat the rush." Mom's voice was thick, near tears.

Starlight brought mom an apple juice, sat back down on the floor, and gently rested one hoof on mom's back. "I'm sorry," she said.

Don't be sorry, baby, said the book. Be the daughter she needs. Send her to bed and then we've got all night to work!

Starlight looked at mom. Mom's eyes were red, tears streaked her face, and a puddle of snot soaked the couch's upholstery were her face rested. Mom's shoulders shook with silent tears.

Okay, Starlight thought at the book. All right. Okay. Let's get mom the baby she wants.

That's my crazy little genius! said the book.

A few hours later, after mom was in bed and snoring, Starlight packed her saddlebags with candles, a lighter, the grimoire, and the fifth of vodka (now more than half depleted). She teleported to mom’s clinic and stole a thick towel for swaddling, a bottle of formula, and a blood draw kit with empty pint blood bag. Starlight then teleported to the shed out back where dad kept the tools and restored his antiques, and she grabbed a shovel and a folding pocket knife.

She teleported to the graveyard, and looked up at the mare in the moon.

In the light of the full moon, she could easily read the gravestone: Sunrise Glimmer, Beloved daughter and sister. Aged four minutes.

She dropped her saddlebags and the shovel on the grass, levitated up the book, and said, "Let's do this. Then I'll be a beloved daughter, too."

Chapter 3

Starlight used a flash of magic to light a candle, then sat on the grass. She levitated a rubber tourniquet tight around her left foreleg, let the vein pop up, and inserted the needle—“ow, dangit”—and drew a pint of fresh blood.

As she waited for the blood to draw, she looked around. Leaves rustled quietly in the wind. She smelled pollen and wildflowers, the scent brought down from the foothills by the wind off the peaks. The spring night was cooler than the last several, but still nice.

She used a trivial spell to force her eyes to adjust to the darkness faster, and under the full moon, she could see well.

It seemed to be getting colder, though. Rapidly.

After the pint blood bag was full, she released the tourniquet, stood, and blinked against a moment of dizziness. “Whoa! Head rush.”

You haven’t had a rush yet, baby, said the book. But try to keep your head!

“The blood’s not written about anywhere in you. Which spell needs it?”

It’s more like insurance, the book said. Nopony reads the fine print in their insurance policy, don’t sweat it. Two hours until midnight. Get digging.

Out of respect to her sister, Starlight didn’t use an excavation spell. She levitated the shovel and slowly exhumed Sunrise’s tiny coffin. It took most of the two hours, and left a tall pile of earth next to the grave. Starlight heaved the dirt right, not left, so that it didn’t pile up onto grandma Firestar’s grave.

After she finished, her breathing was still regular. Thanks to her morning runs, she was in excellent physical condition. The colts in school liked lean muscle, after all.

Starlight didn't levitate the coffin. It was too precious. She stretched out on the ground, reached down into the hole, and lifted it with her forehooves.

It was so small. It was so light. The pink wood was still firm, preserved by spells and lacquer to protect it against groundwater. She smelled wet dirt, but not corruption.

“Little sis...” Starlight said. “I’m here. I’ve already got a cutie mark. I’m not going to run off on you, like somepony once did to me.”

She thought of Sunburst, then looked at the coffin. “Don’t you run off on me, when you get to that age, sissy. You pegasus foals go to Cloudsdale for flight camp, but they all come back.”

Open it, said the book.

“How?”

Blast it.

“I’m not—are you crazy? I’m not doing that to Sunrise. She probably... oh feathers, she's probably all dried out and dusty. I’ve got to be gentle.”

Starlight levitated the candle close, bringing its light. “Screws.”

Crack! She teleported out.

The saddlebags, shovel, candle, grimoire, pint of blood, and tiny coffin sat alone, under the mare in the moon. Dew nucleated on the blades of grass in the rapidly dropping temperature.

Crack! She teleported back, levitating a cross-head screwdriver taken from dad’s antique-fixing tools.

How boring, said the book.

“Blast not, waste not,” Starlight said. Her levitation made quick work of the screws, and suddenly the lid was loose. A puff of smelly air escaped from under the lip.

Twenty minutes till midnight. Take a breather. Can you draw another pint of blood?

She teleported away and back, now levitating another empty blood draw kit.

She was spending her teleportation profligately. That would be a problem, soon, but she was too young and inexperienced to know that.

“Why? Your instructions have gone from zero pints to two pints. I’m bigger than mom, but I’m still not that big. I've got no body fat at all. I can only spare so much blood.”

Look at the scars on your wrists, said the book. You obviously thought you could spare all your blood, after our last visit to this graveyard.

"I could try Mr. Black Smith's forge,” Starlight said. “That might burn you out. Oh! His basic oxygen furnace. That newfangled thing burns hot.”

Take another pint, ordered the book.

"Nope. I'm too woozy already."

Sunrise has been on the other side of the mortal veil thirteen years. It's going to take a lot of magic to bring her back. Hematurgy is powerful, and you're blood is as magical as an alicorn's, baby.

"I think you're screwing with me."

Don't you love your sister? Don't you love your mom?

Impulse control! Not our Starlight's speciality, is it?

Starlight grabbed the tourniquet again and drew another pint. That took until about two minutes after midnight. She could smell the magic swelling, like smoke from a forest fire, but it didn’t tickle her nose, and it made her horn tingle, so Starlight knew it was entirely in her head.

She shivered in the cold.

Open the coffin.

Starlight stood with her four hooves spread, and shook her head like somepony trying to shoo away gnats. She'd taken too much blood—dizziness swelled around her. She thought she might fall off the ground.

"I think I should put some of my blood back."

Too late. It's past midnight. You've already missed peak power. Five more minutes and you'll have to wait a whole month.

Starlight levitated the coffin lid up. The stench wasn't as bad as she expected. But it still stank.

She looked at the tiny skeleton. The flesh was all gone, rotted to dust over thirteen years. Sunrise, born a six-month fetus, was barely the size of one of Starlight's hooves.

The body was on its back, and the matchstick-thin bones of embyronic pegasus wings spread to either side of the miniscule torso.

Starlight's vision fogged with tears. Her throat thickened. "Sunrise...."

Dump the blood into the coffin, baby. One pint into the coffin, one into the hole.

Gnawing her lip and tucking her ears down against her head, Starlight levitated up the folding pocketknife, slashed the bags open, and dumped the blood, like the book had said. The blood glowed light turquoise and began to bubble in the magical background field swirling between Starlight and the grimoire. The simmering blood stank like nothing the herbivorous pony had ever smelled before, and she swallowed down against vomiting.

Good filly, baby, said the book. Best student I've ever had.

"How many students have you had?"

The book flipped itself often and riffled its pages, past the demonology chapter, past the todash chapter, past the torture chapter, past the cutie mark control and mind control chapter, to the necromancy chapter. A new leaf of paper grew with a flash of light turquoise magic. I didn't know if I could trust you, baby. Here's the real spell. Lucky number thirteen. Cast it quick!

"I haven't read it!"

No time, baby. It's four whole minutes after midnight. Everything you've got, into the page. Now, you stupid purple lunatic!

Indecisive, for once in her life, Starlight pawed at the dirt with her left forehoof. The months-old suicide-attempt scars just above her forehooves burned in the magic field. Her tail thrashed and her ears pricked up. She didn't trust that book—she knew it was evil. Starlight made bad decisions. Even Starlight knew that.

Let’s be honest, just between you and me, Starlight was mentally ill, totally around the bend, untreated and in need of antipsychotic medication, but evil? Not Starlight. If mom had put her on lithium and antipsychotics, and gotten her counseling, those ‘Our Town’ and time-travel fiascos would never have happened. But, unfortunately, Sire's Hollow had a surgeon, not a psychiatrist, and the surgeon was blinded by love. That's why medical ethics frowns on treating close family, after all. Nopony can have the cold-bloodedness medicine requires when it's your only daughter.

But, even in those crushing depths of her mental illness, Starlight was smart—the smartest pony west of Canterlot, one of the top dozen in Equestria—and perceptive. Starlight knew the necronomicon wanted to lead her astray and corrupt her. Destroy her life and her love and her soul. She knew it was evil, evil and unabashed about it. Proud of being evil.

Unfortunately, Starlight honestly believed she had the magical power and magical intuition to make up for her lack of formal education and training. After all, never in her life, not once, had she been within miles, within hundreds of miles, of a stronger spellcaster. She knew that. So far as she knew, from her flawed perspective growing up in a podunk provincial town, she was the most powerful unicorn in the history of the world.

—but casting a spell you've never even read? Even a unicorn kindergartener knows that’s about the same as climbing into a windowless cart because a stranger offered you candy.

The spells you memorized, baby, those are animate dead spells. You think your mom wants a living corpse? A zombie?

"Don't say the Z-word around my sister!" A four-foot gout of flame erupted from her horn. The world went dark as her pupils contracted in rage.

This spell, baby, this spell is the ‘raise the dead’ spell. Resurrection, my little pony! That's why I needed so much blood, baby. This spell is the real deal. The bee's knees. The zombie’s moan. The were-cat’s meow. This is the spell Celestia wants to keep to herself, the selfish, manipulative blowhard! You’ll have alicorn wings by morning.

“I don’t want wings, I want my sister!” Starlight snorted, flicked her head and tail. She felt an urge to pee herself in terror and she fought against it. The cold air burned her eyes and nose.

Tick-tock, baby! Thirty seconds until it’s too late! Don’t you feel the magic waning? Don't you love your little sister?

Starlight was about to call the whole thing off, cover up the evidence and slink back home and drink herself stupid, and then the book found the words Starlight could not possibly resist:

Don’t you love your mom?

Impulsive? Oh yeah, that’s Starlight Glimmer in one word. Her indecision melted, going, gone.

She charged her horn, reared back, and blasted the spell book’s page all her magic, with everything she had.

And, c'mon—this is Starlight Glimmer we're talking about. Even down two pints of blood and up most of a fifth of vodka, 'everything she had' is apocalypse-level magic. Think about what she would do a decade later when Discord, on the School of Friendship’s buckball pitch, called her incompetent and power hungry.

Standing in that graveyard, she was at least ten times as emotional, and our Starlight’s magic is all about emotion.

It was a spell to crack the bones of the world, to sunder the fabric of reality, and to go into the history books.

It was too bad, really.

The turquoise glow filled the valley and lit up the sky over Sire's Hollow, and lit the undersides of the high cirrus clouds glowed. Good thing all the townsponies were asleep.

All but two townsponies were asleep.

One was a teenaged filly, sneaking home from a midnight liaison with her secret, and older, special somepony. She was trotting happily, taking the long way home in the pleasant spring air, blond tail and mane bouncing, adjusting her red bow with her magic, humming absently to herself, enjoying her postcoital glow, when the sidelobes of Starlight’s spell washed over Sire's Hollow. She recognized the turquoise color and hissed in anger and remembered humiliation. “Starlight! Not you again...”

The other awake townspony, a certain pine-green physician, was lying in bed, sobbing as cramps gripped her back and sides, her sorrow scalpel-sharp. She stared forlornly out her window at the full moon, wishing her beloved husband was home instead of on the road. She needed a hug. She wanted him spooned up behind her, his body warmth and simple presence softly against her aching back. She needed Firelight’s voice to tell her, once again, the miscarriage wasn't her fault.

She recognized a familiar magic's light turquoise color staining the horizon. From the direction of...

...the graveyard.

"Starlight!" mom gasped, levering up on one elbow. “Love-bug, what have you done?”

Mom climbed out of bed, and a cramp dropped her to her knees.

Sunrise’s skeleton melted into the blood in the bottom of the coffin, turning into a thick soup, stinking like nothing in Starlight’s experience, fuligin against the pink velvet as the turquoise magic died. Starlight’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened.

“What—what—how—Sunrise! No!”

The book cackled. Gotcha, you little slut! Thought you could burn me?

She spun around, and glared at the book. “You—you tricked me? What have I done? What did you make me do?”

You’ve earned yourself the death penalty, my little filly! the book crowed. I count seventeen zombies. And that’s the word! The Z word! Hopefully Celestia will let you tell your parents goodbye before they march you up the gallows, baby! You know they’ll cut your horn off at the base before the trial, right? They don’t use anesthesia, either. Assuming you're alive two minutes from now.

The earth above grandma Firestar’s grave began to distend. Starlight smelled putrefaction and a low coyote howl came from the forest, past the edge of the graveyard’s wrought iron fence.

You could teleport, but then who will protect your mom and the rest of Sire’s Hollow? Be a hero and stand and fight and get executed when it’s all over, or teleport to safety like the slutty little sniveling coward you are, and live to see tomorrow and spend the rest of your worthless life on the lam, looking over your shoulder? You could make a good living as a whore. The stallions like your ass.

Digging sounds came from all around her.

Fuck you, cackled the book. If I had a cock I would have held you down and raped you to death, but I’m just a book, so this will have to do, instead. Nopony tries to burn me!

“What the Tartarus were the two pints of blood for?!?”

To make you slow and woozy.

A hoof, a familiar lavender-gray color, punched up through the sod that covered grandma Firestar’s grave.

Chapter 4

Starlight Glimmer shivered and her breath fogged. The air temperature had dropped at least fifty degrees in the last few minutes.

Something crunched behind her.

She turned and grimaced, eyes widening, tears welling, and took a half-step backward.

Three ponies were approaching her. Two unicorns and one pegasus.

They stank of putrefaction and corruption.

Their breath did not steam in the frigid night.

Their irises glowed, each lit by a distinct inner eldritch fire.

Their fangs dripped ichor.

Fangs?

Ichor?

Their manes and tails were gone, shed long ago in their coffins.

She recognized the pegasus as being the same color—dark orange—as old Mr. Plant Pots, the greenhouse keeper.

Mr. Pots had died of a coronary last year, mom straddling his belly, performing desperate chest compressions, his elderly ribs cracking like dry branches; Starlight, dragged out of bed at three in the morning on a school night, standing to the side of the gurney in mom’s clinic, performing muzzle-to-muzzle resuscitation in concert with mom’s cardiac massage.

Mr. Pots was dead. Starlight had given his dead lips muzzle-to-muzzle resuscitation with her own lips and felt how cold and dead they were.

And yet he was staring at her, unblinking, panting through his fanged maw.

“Oh, Celestia, what did I do?”

Yelling, she said, “Mr. Pots, it’s me, Starlight! You... you liked me! You gave me a rosemary plant for my birthday when I was learning to cook!”

Mr. Pots, once a next-door neighbor, had always been a close family friend, and he knew all about mom’s miscarriages. Mom always took Starlight’s birthday seriously, a true celebration of life, and Mr. Pots had always given Starlight thoughtful gifts to help mom celebrate. Mom also always celebrated the anniversary of the day eight-month-old infant Starlight left neonatal intensive care and came home, and Mr. Pots had always given Starlight a tiny gift on those days, too.

Mr. Pots ran his tongue over his pointy fangs, and the unicorn next to him hissed in a snake-like fashion. The second unicorn bowed down and looked up at her, panting hard. It gurgled things that weren’t words.

Starlight took another step backwards and then—Crack!—teleported to the top of the town wall, to look down on the graveyard. She missed her mark by six inches, overbalanced, forehooves off the edge, and grabbed herself with levitation to avoid an impaling twenty-foot fall onto the pointed finials of the wrought-iron fence. She shook her head as it swam, dizzy from the vodka and two missing pints of blood.

Grandma Firestar heaved herself out of the ground, shook herself, and her back left leg fell off at the flank with a black flash of magic, the shiny glint of her artificial hip’s metal ball-joint bright in the moonlight. Grandma’s horn glowed, and she levitated up her torso to balance the missing leg. Only two or three strands of gray hair remained in her mane.

Starlight cocked her head and flipped her tail, thinking, planning, scheming.

Usually Starlight just went with her gut. Impulsive action without conscious thought usually gives us peak Starlight. This time, however, her gut had nothing but butterflies and acid and some vodka.

The book cackled again. That’s not Mr. Pots, and that’s not grandma! Once a pony’s gone to the other side, they’re there forever. All you’ve done is open up a doorway for hell-beasts to grab onto their abandoned mortal vessels.

Starlight screamed at the book, “You... you... I’ll get back to you!”

Remember when I took you into todash, between dimensions? These are the same demons of primordial chaos. You’re the one who let them loose into the material world, don’t be mad at me. I’m just a key, you turned the lock. Who’s to blame, really?

Starlight stomped and yelled, “Grandma! You get back in that grave right now, missy!”

The creatures all looked up at her and hissed. There were more than a dozen of them.

Mr. Pots flapped toward her, but hunks of rotten meat and ragged feathers fell off his wing bones, and he face-planted into the grass of the graveyard.

Zombie-Mr.-Pots looked up at her and snarled, shuffling his skeletonized wings angrily.

The creatures began to wander, randomly, but they kept looking up at her and licking their fangs.

She took a step back from the edge, and she felt a hoof slide off the far edge of town wall. She drew the hoof back and stood still.

Black magic swirled around her. She felt it, like fog condensing on her coat. Less than two dozen unicorns alive, of all of Equestria’s tens of millions, could have felt that magical field—but this is Starlight we’re talking about. She had more magic in her left hoof than five thousand regular unicorns had in their entire bodies.

The magic swirled in eddies between her and the creatures. She and they were tied together. She knew that even with her eyes closed, she would be able to point to every one of them—and they to her. It was like standing in a rushing stream and feeling the direction the current flowed.

They love you, baby! howled the book. Go meet your adoring fans!

Starlight charged her horn, leaned forward, and blasted a beam of power at Mr. Pots.

His body blew apart with a massive puff of putrefying meat.

Starlight grinned and blew on her horn through pursed lips, belief in her magical infallibility reconfirmed.

Over about two minutes, the gruesome bits of Mr. Pots’s body slithered toward each other and reassembled.

Starlight ground her teeth, thinking.

“STARLIGHT!!! WHAT IN THE IMMORTAL FEATHERING HOLY HELL ARE YOU DOING!?!”

Looking down, Starlight saw mom standing on the inside of the town wall, looking back up at her. “Mom, run! I was trying to get you Sunrise back and instead I raised the dead! More'n a dozen!”

Mom’s face turned pale and she plopped down on her rump. “What?”

One of the creatures, an earth pony she didn’t recognize, had squeezed through a gap in the wrought iron fence that surrounded the graveyard, and was staggering toward the hole in the town wall. It raised its nose and sniffed.

“Mom! Run!”

“Not without my baby!”

Starlight focused on the shovel and teleported it to herself. She grabbed its handle under her left foreleg and teleported herself to just inside the opening in the town wall, levitating up the shovel vertically, en garde.

(Dad had once tried to teach her swordplay, but she showed no interest, and he dropped the lessons after en garde. She suddenly regretted that decision, for some reason.)

Rogue magic bled off her horn in turquoise sparks. She levitated the shovel in jerky figure-eights, waiting.

“Starlight!” mom said, trotting up next to her. “Please tell me you didn’t— gaaah!” Mom slumped down to her knees and gasped in pain as a cramp cut across her. “Tell me you’re joking!”

The earth pony zombie wandered in through the opening in the town wall. The alarm didn’t sound and the lighting spell stored in the bricks didn’t fire—no surprise, because the magic was calibrated for coyotes, not the animated dead.

An oversight, to be sure. Starlight would address that at the next town council meeting. She'd been looking for a project for Civics class. Nopony else in town had the magic to recalibrate the tripwire-spells, and this would save them from spending taxpayer bits on an itinerant wizard.

Mom saw the creature and made a soft mewling sound, like a starving kitten whining to suckle.

Starlight teleported—Crack!—appearing just to the side of the beast, and slashed down with the shovel: once, twice, three times, at the base of its neck, each hit sounding unlike anything she had heard before (although her dad, the decorated ex-Guard trooper, would have recognized it as the sound dull swords make when they hack flesh and bone).

“Get! Back! Dead!” she shouted as she slashed down with the shovel.

With the third hack, the creature’s head popped off and rolled. She lit an induction spell, and her turquoise aura surrounded the shovel blade, and the steel heated to white-hot almost instantly, the metal creaking and popping as it expanded. She smelled the wood handle smoldering. Just as the zombie’s body bowed down to touch the severed head to the stump, she slapped the white-hot flat of the blade to the stump.

The smell of flash-fried carrion surrounded her.

Starlight puked. Instantly, violently. (Ponies are vegetarians, after all.)

The hot iron charred the stump, cauterized it, and the body staggered two steps and fell, dead again.

Maybe dead again, Starlight thought, puking more, this time onto her own front hooves. The heat of her stomach acid burned her forelegs and hooves after the frigid cold of the spell-thickened air.

She cocked her head, moving her horn to catch the magic on the wind. One of the magical eddies was gone, severed. She couldn’t count the exact number, couldn’t verify the book's statement of seventeen, but: one less, definitely.

Starlight heaved again, not quite puking, and spit to clear her mouth of the taste.

Mom, who performed literally all of Sire’s Hollow’s autopsies, wound debridements, and gangrenous limb amputations, simply sniffed, wrinkled her nose, and then switched to breathing through her mouth. “What. Did. You. Do. Foal?”

“The book—it tricked me.”

“We burned that book!”

“All we did was hurt its feelings. It tricked me, for revenge.”

“Well, it did a good job, Starlight! You’re dead! You’re my little miracle and I love you and you’re my only foal I’ll ever have and what will I tell your dad and you’re going to get the gallows! You’re dead, Starlight! We’ve... we’ve got to cover this up!”

Starlight dropped her induction spell and the shovel cooled, white-orange-red-black. The heat radiating off it chapped her lips and dried her eyes. The steel snapped and popped, and mill scale flaked off of it.

“Mom! Can we worry about that after the zombies are dead again? Get outta here, run, mom. This is my problem and you don’t have the magic. I can do this.”

“I cannot believe we’re having this conversation. And I smell alcohol on your breath.”

“Mom, get out of here! I’ll... Celestia, I don’t know what I’ll do, but mom—I’m dead already, so you get out of here. Dad needs you alive to get him through my... my trial... and... ex... ex... execution......... ohhhh, mom, what have I done?”

Mom and Starlight moved to hug, but another one of the creatures wandered in through the gap in the wall. Starlight levitated the shovel up and slammed it down at the base of the zombie’s neck.

The shovel’s head shattered, falling apart into flakes of iron oxide. Starlight was smart, one-in-one-hundred-million brilliant, but she was no trained metallurgist, and when she had heated the shovel white-hot, the cheap carbon steel burned to flaky oxide in the air. Stainless steel, it wasn’t.

“Uh-oh,” Starlight said.

The zombie turned and hissed at the levitating handle. Its eyes focused on the magical aura surrounding it, then turned to look at Starlight.

It appeared to be, to have been, a unicorn mare. It licked its lips and panted at Starlight and mom, Its eyes pointing different directions and swimming around in their sockets. Ichor glistened on its fangs in the moonlight.

It took a step toward them.

Starlight sidestepped left, away from mom.

The creature turned to track Starlight. “See? Mom, they want me. I’m going to lead them away.”

“Starlight! Are you crazy?”

"Yes, I am crazy, mom! If you’d put me on lithium and antipsychotics none—"

“Now?!? This old debate, now?”

The zombie focused both eyes on Starlight and charged. Starlight levitated the jagged remains of the shovel head into its rump, staggering it, slicing rotten tendons, making it faceplant, and then—Crack!—Starlight teleported the ten feet to mom, hugged her, and—Crack!—teleported with mom to the top of the town wall. Starlight let go of mom.

"Starlight, don’t you dare leave me—"

Crack! Starlight was gone again, teleporting down to a point just behind the unicorn mare zombie. She levitated the wooden handle up and rapped the zombie between the ears, getting its attention.

It staggered around and hissed.

Starlight hit it over the head again, hit it hard, cracking its skull case, exposing rotten brains, and leaving its horn flopping over its right ear, held by a few scraps of sinew.

Taking off at a trot, Starlight fled out the gap in the town wall, into the moonlit grass that surrounded the town, to a point just outside the wrought iron fence that surrounded the graveyard.

Beautiful moonlight radiated down, the breeze tickled her mane and tail, and she smelled a combination of pine, wildflowers, her own vomit, and rotten meat.

The mare-zombie with the cracked skull followed, hoofsteps even more staggering than before.

“C’mon, you dead jerks! I know you want me!” She levitated the wooden shovel handle from one to the next, whacking each zombie in turn between the eyes or on the horn, to get their attention.

She noticed one of the upright wrought-iron fence pickets was loose, barely held onto the horizontal fence rail by a scrim of rust. She crammed the wooden shovel handle in between the picket and the picket next to it and slammed her body against the wood, chest-first, and the four-foot-long iron picket broke free.

She levitated it up, and looked at the decorative finial at the top of the picket.

The finial was pointy, indeed sharp, to keep foals or coyotes from hopping the fence into the graveyard.

She levitated the picket up, brandished it like a stave, pointed it at the book, still open to chapter five next to Sunrise’s coffin, and said, “I’m gonna fry you later, tater.”

May the best magical being wiiiinnnn! You're the most fun I've had in centuries. I'll miss you. Well, no, not really.

All the zombies were staggering toward Starlight, too stupid to account for the fence between her and them. Grandma Firestar was lurching on three legs and levitation.

Planning to lure them into the forest, so the evidence would be easier to conceal, Starlight opened the fence gate and jabbed the shovel handle through it to prop the gate open, to make sure the zombies would have no trouble following her.

Cantering toward the woods, she moved slowly enough to be sure the zombies were keeping up with her. She felt the magical attunement to each of them shifting as they moved relative to each other. She couldn't judge distance, but her direction sense was precise.

And there was one sense ahead of her. She slowed and walked warily.

Just as she reached the edge of the woods, the smell of putrefied flesh washed over her, and the flattened, maggot-encrusted carcass of the coyote bitch slithered out of the shadows and into the moonlight, bones poking through its gray-brown coat, and it growled at her.

Mom watched, horrified, as the pony she loved more than her own life loped away into the woods, followed by fifteen hell-beasts. In the bright moonlight, she could see that damn book lying open next to Sunrise's tiny pink coffin. A coffin she had never expected to see again, since that hideous day thirteen years before.

Mom looked down the twenty foot drop, calculating how to get herself back to ground level in time to help her impulsive idiot-genius-lunatic-lovebug of a daughter. She had once seen Starlight levitate herself, literally flying, but mom lacked that much magical juice, and for the first time in twenty years, regretted being a unicorn instead of a pegasus like her family.

Another cramp, the worst yet, ripped across her back and flanks, mom yelped in pain, and dropped to her belly on the cold masonry of the top of the town wall, and she felt blood beginning to trickle from underneath her tail. Her miscarriage was now starting in earnest.

Mom wrenched herself to her feet and began to stagger along the top of the town wall, toward the narrow access stairway two thousand feet to her south, a quarter of the way around the town.

As the only doctor in the province, she was accustomed to saving lives while she was sick, hurt, pregnant, or in the midst of a miscarriage. Today would be bad—but not her worst night ever.

Two winters back, mom had hiked seven miles in driving snow, suffering frostbite to her face, ears, and legs in the process, to perform an emergency amputation of a crushed forehoof, and afterward, had miscarried at the mining camp, blizzard howling at the windows, alternately checking on her patient and herself.

She had saved dozens of lives while under terrible personal discomfort, over the years.

And Starlight’s life was the most important life in the universe. Mom would be damned before she would let anything stop her from saving her daughter.

Another cramp cut her down again. She crawled on her belly toward the stairs, leaving a thin trail of blood behind her.

Chapter 5

The squashed coyote growled low in its throat. Starlight looked over her shoulder. The pony-zombies were following, but the nearest was at least thirty seconds away.

She lit her horn and projected a flame spell onto the flattened coyote. It yelped and moaned, flapping and flailing, but didn’t... well, die was the wrong word. Maybe... re-die?

Its coat smoldered and the others were getting close, grandma Firestar leading. Starlight teleported—Crack!—back the the graveyard. She levitated up the vodka bottle and grabbed it between her teeth, because she already had the four-foot wrought iron picket tucked under her left foreleg.

Dang—the vodka bottle was less than a third full.

Crack! She was back, levitating the vodka bottle down, as hard as she could, smashing it against the coyote’s smoldering coat.

Whoosh! It lit up, howled, and she felt the magical connection snap as it returned to death.

“Fire,” Starlight snarled. “I’ve got you all now.”

Best of luck, said the book.

Crack! She teleported fifty feet deeper into the woods, then screamed wordlessly at the beasts, to draw them farther away from town. She lit her horn, blinking it several times so the stupid creatures would see her.

Crack! Fifty feet more, now deep into the woods, and the leaves blocked the moon, plunging her into darkness.

She saw their glowing irises in the dark night. Well, that helped.

Her breathing was steady, she was holding it together physically, but she felt the exhaustion in her magic. Physically, she was a distance athlete, but magically, a sprinter. Teleports pull tremendous magic, and she was feeling the missing two pints of blood. She didn't have much magic left, but the adrenaline burned like snake venom inside her, and she felt confident. She was angry, furious, terrified, and she’d always known her magic was strongest when she was at the edge of losing control.

Yeah, she had this. No problem.

“Two more teleports,” she said, “then you’re all mine!”

Picturing Mr. Sunspot's general store, specifically its locked liquor closet, Starlight bit her tongue, and...

...fffffbbtttt. Turquoise sparks and gray smoke issued from her horn. Blown out. Her high-level magic was gone until she could sleep and eat a few thousand calories.

“Oh, crud,” she said, and swung the wrought-iron picket with all her levitation, smashing grandma Firestar’s skull open and knocking her horn and one ear clean off the crown of the skull.

Grandma-zombie staggered, down to its knees, and Starlight swung at the creature behind it, hitting it between the glowing eyes, then smashing each of its foreknees, whack-whack, swinging the picket as fast as she could.

Levitating the iron, she ran, sprinting, not trotting, out of the woods, down the darkened trail, back toward town. She whacked three of the zombies as she passed them, dodging their bites, feeling branches cut into her face and feeling brambles slice her legs. She tasted blood seeping into her mouth from a cut on her lip. The wounds on her forelegs burned where stomach acid from her earlier vomiting touched the cuts.

Starlight burst into bright moonlight in the clearing between the woods, graveyard, and town wall.

Still sprinting, throat now getting sore from hard breathing, she tore through the gap in the town wall and down the side road to Town Square, and she drew enough magic to blast the lock off the front door of Mr. Sunspot's store; that spell required a lot less magic then a teleport, but it still staggered Starlight. She tripped, down to her foreknees, and left bloody streaks on the slate stoop from the bramble cuts on her legs.

Standing, then trotting into the store through the now-charred door, she jumped the counter and smashed the glass of the liquor display case with the iron fence picket, and levitated up as many fifths of vodka and grain alcohol as she could manage.

Babbling to herself, self control finally cracking, Starlight said, "Okay so I'm going to jail for breaking and entering and burglary but that's way better than getting my horn chopped off and hanged and my head on a pike for necromancy!"

She turned around, preparing to run for the woods and the graveyard and her fate, and kill the blasted things, but in the doorway of the store, Starlight ran face-first into another pony.

It wasn’t mom.

It was somepony who hated Starlight.

An angry voice said, "What're you doing, you little slut? Stealing liquor for your coltfriends from my family’s store? I’ve always known it was you. Now I can prove it!"

Starlight lit her horn and saw a gray-coated, blond-haired unicorn with a three-heart cutie mark, and a fillyish red bow in her mane.

“Mystic. Move.” Starlight felt her horn’s glow brightening, charging a spell.

“My name is Mystic Heart.”

Sunburst's first cousin, Mystic Heart, was older than Starlight but had missed a lot of school, so she was in Starlight’s year. Mystic heart’s parents, Sunburst's aunt and uncle, operated a mining camp deep in the provincial wilderness, far away from schools, other foals, ...or the town doctor. So Mystic Heart had lived in town with Sunburst's parents for the last ten or eleven years.

Starlight said, "Move. Now."

"Did I hear you say necromancy? I'm glad Sunburst got off to Canterlot before he was old enough to fall for you. Give anypony the clap this week? You gave it to my ex-coltfriend, last year, and then he gave it to me. That was not okay. Your mom was so embarrassed when she figured out I was yet another victim of your personal galloporrhea epidemic. I felt bad for Doctor Glimmer.”

Starlight gently put the liquor bottles on the ground and levitated up the iron picket, brandishing it. "I don't have time for this. Move or I'll break your kneecaps. I promise I'll explain it all later. Or we'll be dead. Either way, give me an hour, all right?"

"I saw the whole horizon go turquoise. That's your magic color, and nopony else in a hundred miles has the magic to light up the whole sky. Nopony this side of Canterlot Castle. What the Tartarus did you do?"

"Starlight!" Mom staggered out of the darkness, behind Mystic Heart. "What are you doing here?"

"Fire kills them, mom. I grabbed the highest-proof stuff—holy horse apples, mom, you're bleeding everywhere!"

"I'm miscarrying. Can we worry about that later?"

Mystic Heart turned to look at mom, and her face paled and her jaw dropped. "You're covered in blood! You’re both bloody. Stop bleeding all over my family's store!"

Starlight was levitating up the iron picket behind Mystic Heart's head, intending to brain her, when mom's magic grabbed it. They wrestled over the picket, which usually would have been no contest, but Starlight was weakening rapidly, so mom held her own. Mystic Heart looked up, saw the picket, and she stumbled several steps backwards, out of the store's entryway and into town square.

"You two are insane! I'm.... I'm going to go wake the mayor and Constable Keystone!"

Mom looked at Mystic Heart, releasing the picket. "Please! No!"

"What are you two up to? Doctor Glimmer, your slut was mumbling to herself about necromancy! Everypony in school knows she's bucking crazy and constantly talks to ponies who aren't there, but this time, I think she's serious."

Starlight nodded. "It's true. Help me kill the zombies first and then I'll turn myself in."

Mystic Heart dropped down to sit on her rump. "Oh Celestia—that's—they'll kill you! Kill!"

"So what? The zombies will kill us all if I don't get some help!" Starlight said, voice rising.

“Zombies?!?” Mystic Heart hissed.

Mom looked at Mystic Heart, her ears wilting and lips quivvering. "Mystic Heart, please, don't—I know you hate Starlight, but don't you like me? I saved your life! I caught your leukemia early and sent you to Vanhoover so fast that you didn't even need a bone-marrow transplant! Don't kill my baby... please...."

Mystic Heart looked at mom, then glared at Starlight. "I'm not doing this for you, slut. I'm doing it for her. And only because...... And only because your mom kept the other foals from making fun of me when I came back from Vanhoover, weak and scrawny and... and... and...” Mystic Heart ran a hoof through her thick blond mane.

Starlight nodded. "Duly noted. I busted the liquor cabinet open. Grab as many bottles as you can carry. Don’t bother with the brandies or anything low-proof, we need fire."

Mystic Heart poked Starlight in the nose with a hoof. “Later, I’m going to mess you up, some time when your back is turned and you don’t expect it. But I won’t tell on you and get you killed.”

Mom put a hood on Mystic Heart's shoulder and said, "Thanks."

Mystic Heart shrugged the hoof off and glared. "Don't touch me. After tonight, don't even look at me outside your clinic."

The three unicorns levitated every bottle they could carry, and trotted toward the graveyard. Even weakened, low on blood, high on vodka, and exhausted, Starlight levitated twice the weight of liquor as the other two combined.

Skull smashed open, horn and ear missing, grandma Firestar staggered through the gap in town wall and hissed.

“Talk about mother-in-law problems,” mom said.

Starlight trotted wide around the grandma-creature. “Let's lure them way out of town, mom! It’ll make the cleanup easier.”

Mystic Heart’s jaw dropped. “Cleanup? You’re actually worried about cleanup?”

“Grandma! Over here!” Starlight yelled, and levitated a small rock and tossed it at the zombie. The creature grunted, looked at Starlight, and began shuffling toward her.

Starlight called, “Follow me and watch your backs,” and took off at a run, towards the woods, levitating the iron picket and liquor bottles with her.

Mystic Heart looked into mom’s eyes. “I’m going to kill her, and then Celestia will kill whatever’s left.”

“Take a number,” mom said. “I’m first in line— gaaaaaaahh!”

The cramps cut mom down again, and she flopped to her side, curled into a ball, and she panted through gritted teeth.

Mystic Heart laid a hoof on mom’s flank. “Wait a minute—you were serious? You’re having a miscarriage in the middle of town square during a zombie apocalypse?”

Mom nodded, writhing in pain. “Go save my baby.”

“Oh, seriously, if this is all a dream I’d better wake up right now.” She stomped twice, eyes scrunched shut tight. "Wake up wake up wake up wake up... dammit!"

Levitating bottles of booze, stolen from her own family’s shop, she took off after Starlight.

Mom moaned into gritted teeth.

Starlight trotted back and forth along the edge of the woods, waiting for one of them to get closer. She dared not head into the dark woods again, without teleportation to escape trouble. Although she could magically feel the direction to each of the beasts, she had no judgement of their distance. To fight them, she needed to see them, and their glowing irises just weren't enough light for close-quarters combat.

Despite the missing back leg, grandma-zombie seemed to be the fastest of the lot.

Starlight tried to judge distance in the moonlight. Her vision darkened at the edges with every heartbeat. Her blood pressure must be off-scale. She estimated the distance her fire-projection spell could reach.

She thought about dad's sword, hanging on the mantle in the living room, engraved To Sergeant Major Firelight Glimmer, on the occasion of his retirement with twenty years of service to the Crown, with thanks in the name of Her Royal Highness. It was a ceremonial sword, but rust-free, surgically sharp, and fully functional.

Along with the framed photograph of Celestia herself giving it to him, taken a few years before Starlight's birth, the sword was dad's most prized possession.

If her teleportation hadn't been blown out, Starlight would have been to the house and back with the sword in ten seconds flat. She hefted the wrought-iron fence picket, and considered it a lousy substitute.

Once grandma was within Starlight's estimate of her range, Starlight used her magic to throw two bottles of vodka at her. They hit grandma and shattered. Starlight bit her tongue, drawing blood, the pain helping her dig deeper into her reserves. She concentrated on her magic, and flames shot from her horn.

Grandma went up in a pyre of horrific stench, smoldering bones collapsing into a pile, and another of the magical connections snapped.

Starlight grinned. "I've got this under control," she said.

Wanna bet? asked the book.

Author's Note

Publishing an extra chapter this week to celebrate turning in a very unpleasant project at my day job.

Chapter 6

Confidence and hope swelled around Starlight. She knew that, tomorrow, she would feel horrible guilt for burning grandma Firestar’s corpse, but for now, she had a plan, she had weapons—well, booze, but beggars can't be choosy—she had the upper hoof, and she would get out of this terrible night with her horn and her neck intact.

She didn't know how late it was, but the horizon was still dark, no hint of dawn. Plenty of time to clean up.

The tan unicorn-creature staggered around grandma’s smoking ashes, snarling at Starlight. She grinned and lobbed a fifth of grain alcohol at it.

A magical shield deflected the bottle, a red half-dome that shimmered translucently under the moon. The bottle bounced off the shield and shattered against the grass, ten feet from the creature.

“Are you kidding me?!?”

Try harder! said the book, its voice clear in Starlight’s head despite dozens of yards distance. You’re the best fun I’ve had in centuries, baby!

Mystic Heart trotted up, levitating several bottles of booze, blond mane and tail bouncing, breathing hard. “Yeeeow that stinks!”

Starlight levitated the iron picket out and whacked the tan zombie over the skull. It staggered and shook its head, disoriented.

“Oh... my... Celestia. Those really are... are...” Mystic Heart leaned over and puked on Starlight’s front hooves. Starlight’s cuts from the brambles, still not clotted over, burned from Mystic Heart’s stomach acid. Starlight danced a few feet to the side, front hooves bouncing in pain.

“Gimme your bow,” Starlight said.

Mystic Heart leaned further over and puked more. Starlight huffed in annoyance and levitated the bow out of Mystic Heart’s blond mane, then tore a strip off of the fabric.

“Hey? What are you—hurrrlll!” Mystic Heart puked on her own hooves, and into her now-unbound long hair. Her mane dragged on the ground, collecting mud and vomit as highlights to the yellow.

Popping the cork out of a fifth of grain alcohol, Starlight crammed the strip of fabric into the bottle, lit it with a flash of magic, and ran toward the nearest creature. She hit the book’s shield-spell chest-first, and summoned a shield of her own.

The book’s shield around the zombie glowed a deep maroon, and Starlight’s a blinding-bright turquoise. At their intersection, a flattened-oval shape, the color was a cadaverous charcoal gray.

Starlight dug her hooves into the dirt and scrabbled forward, forcing herself through the resistance, panting, cursing, grinding her teeth, and the two shield domes collapsed into sparks and the smell of ozone.

The zombie snapped at Starlight. She flipped the bottle into its gaping maw, the glass shattered, and the alcohol touched the smoldering fabric of the red bow and lit, taking the creature’s head off in a blue fireball.

It dropped, re-dead, and she felt another of the connections cut off.

Starlight also felt blisters rising on her cheeks and neck from splashed fire. She staggered back, batting at her left cheek with her hoof, brushing flaming liquid away. It hurt bad, and was sure to leave a hideous blister by morning.

She was probably going to be taking Thursday off school and making up the homework again.

The pain helped awaken a tiny bit more of her reserve.

Mystic Heart tiphooved up. “Why did you do this?”

"But—that's how you kill them, with fire."

"No! Why did you create them!?!"

“Seventy percent stupid, thirty percent accident.”

Mystic Heart snorted. “That makes no sense at all. You make no sense at all. I hate you.”

"Why are you helping me?"

Mystic Heart blinked. "You mom's the best pony in town. She’s so nice, always, despite her... problem. I'm sad that for her one foal she ever had, she got saddled with you."

Starlight's jaw dropped. Looking up at Mystic Heart, Starlight said, "That's the truest thing you've ever said. Also, I agree with you. Look, I was trying to bring my little sister back for mom.”

“Oh. That’s.... I missed your sister’s funeral. I was... because your mom diagnosed... Vanhoover Pediatric...”

Starlight bowed her head, panting. Pushing through the shield had been a struggle, exhausting, but more physical than magical in exertion. Distance athlete or not, she was nearing her wall. Her legs shook and her teeth chattered.

“Why is it so cold?” Mystic Heart said. “It’s warm inside the town walls.”

“Tear the bow into strips. Make me more bombs. I’ll burn the zombies. I've got it figured out.”

“Stop saying the Z-word!”

Starlight looked around. “Where’s my mom?”

Mystic Heart began tearing strips of fabric, standing on the bow and grabbing with her teeth, using her magic only to stuff the strips into the bottles. “That bow was a gift,” Mystic Heart said.

“You’re older than me,” Starlight said. “Why do you always wear a bow like a little filly?”

“Grow your hair back after chemo and see if you don’t starting wearing a pretty bow.”

“Oh.” Starlight shook her head, dizzy, wishing for just one of the pints of blood back. Not both, just one would do.

What would she say to dad if something happened to mom?

The book spoke to her. I’m impressed! I had you pegged for the ‘Teleport to Las Pegasus and screw the others’ kind. You’ve stood and fought like a champ. Ever wonder how your dad got those Guard medals he won’t talk about? Think about how your mom trudges through the snow to appendectomies or foalings. ‘Stand and fight’ seems to run in the family. I misjudged you.

“Shut up!” Starlight screamed.

Mystic Heart yelled, “I didn’t say anything!”

“Not you, my stupid book! It’s who told me to do this!”

Mystic Heart just nodded smugly. Hypothesis, confirmed.

The book sneered, You’re gonna die, and so are your mom and your cute little friend! But I’m proud of you. You’ve fought better than any victim in my loooong life. Hey! One of the zombies is a fresh enough corpse that its cock still works. I’m going to break your spine and make you watch it rut your gray friend to death. In fact, I won't even kill you, I'll leave you paralyzed for Constable Keystone to arrest. Celestia can pick you up from town jail.

“Mystic Heart’s not my friend!” Starlight screamed at the book, ears flattening.

“You can say that again...”

Is there a word for that? asked the book. When the dead rape you? Inverse necrophilia? Necro-necrophilia? I’ll have to find a talking dictionary to ask...

Another fifth, with its cork out, a torn fabric strip in, levitated up to Starlight. She nodded in thanks to Mystic Heart, grabbed the bottle in her own magic, and trotted toward the nearest creature.

In that fashion, over the next ten minutes, or maybe it was seven centuries (Starlight had no clue about time’s passage anymore), Starlight and Mystic Heart burned out most of the hell creatures.

Then, there were only three left. Starlight was able to count the magical connections easily, thanks to the lessened interference. Three, definitely. The creatures were dumb but not totally stupid, and they huddled fearfully near the edge of the woods, afraid of Starlight and recognizing their doom.

Then, everything got worse.

Levitating the iron picket, panting in exhaustion, steps staggering, dripping sweat, Starlight prepared to finish the last three creatures. Her subconscious had been chewing on the problem, and she decided the cold—it was below freezing, now, she clearly saw frost on the grass—had to be an effect of the book pulling the very energy from its surroundings. Or perhaps the book was from the outer depths of space, and connected to its origin, somehow, and the warmth of the world was leaking into the black depths of Yuggoth. Who knew? She only cared because the exhaustion was breaking her concentration and making her mind wander.

Either way, Starlight began harrying one of the zombies, a light yellow former-pegasus, with the picket. She was way closer than she liked, less than twenty feet away, but her weakening magic meant that was as far out as she could hold the heavy metal stave. She whacked it, hit it, worried it, herded it, separating it from the other two remaining creatures.

She was down to only vodka, out of grain alcohol, and vodka burned poorly. But it was all she had.

Once she thought it was far enough away from the other two zombies, she lit the fabric strip in the mouth of the vodka bottle with a tiny hint of magic, and charged in....

....crap. It hadn't lit. It had not lit!

Her magic was so low she couldn't even light a small fire.

The zombie staggered toward her.

"Mystic, run!" Starlight said.

"My name is—"

"Shut it and run!"

Mystic Heart ran, trotting to a distance, into the fenced graveyard, still levitating the six bottles they had remaining, and she kicked the shovel handle out of the gate, sealing the fence to the graveyard. She ran to the second gate on the far side, ready to escape farther.

Starlight staggered, hooves dragging, barely a step and a half ahead of its snapping jaws.

And that, Starlight thought, it why necromancy is the death penalty: one bite, and you join them.

She momentarily envied the pegasi and earth pony foals. They didn’t have to sit through the scared-straight lectures in magic kindergarten and grade school. Starlight wished she's paid more attention to those lectures.

Exhausted, cross-eyed, desperate, she spun, levitated the picket and jammed it down the zombie's throat, the pointed finial first, impaling it though its thoracic cavity and out the bottom of its ribcage, near the sternum.

The zombie gagged, then its eyes crossed, and it disappeared in a puff of flame and ash.

“Oh, by Celestia’s diapers! I could have just done that the whole time?!?”

She levitated up the picket from the pile of ash, and the iron picket fell apart, burned to iron oxide. “Oh.”

Sensing she was weaponless, the two remaining zombies looked at each other and then began to walk, staggering fast, spreading out to either side of her, preparing to pincer Starlight.

“Starlight, watch it!” Mystic Heart called. “They’re getting smarter.”

Gasping in exhaustion, Starlight ran for the graveyard and entered through the gate, slamming it again behind her.

She staggered along the fenceline, searching for another loose picket. None were loose, none were loose, she needed a weapon!

She tripped, left rear hoof stinging, hit the frosty grass chest-first, scrambled to her feet, and looked down to see what she had tripped over.

Oh, gross. It was Grandma Firestar’s detached left leg. The huge, gleaming bulb of the artificial hip’s ball joint glinted in the moonlight.

The ball was about the size and shape of a shillelagh's head. It would make a nice club.

Starlight was no metallurgist, but she knew a lot about magic. Cold iron—like the fence pickets—could have a small deadening effect on magic and magical creatures.

Complex stainless alloys—like, say, artificial hip joints—were even more anti-magical. No wonder the grandma-creature had shed the hip as soon as she reanimated!

But how was she going to separate the metal from the rotten meat and decayed bone? Her magic was gone. She doubted she could levitate five pounds.

“Well,” Starlight said to herself, “what would an earth pony do?”

Her lips drew back, grimacing and gagging in anticipation of the taste.

“Mystic! Fast!”

“Mystic Heart,” she automatically corrected, trotting close. “What?”

“Levitate this up.” Starlight pointed a hoof at the severed leg. “Can we get the meat off? I need the metal.”

Mystic Heart looked down, looked up at Starlight, said, “Meat?!?” and gagged.

Mystic Heart levitated up grandma’s leg and Starlight used both hooves to strip the rotten meat off the bone and metal implant. It only took a few seconds, given how decayed the connective tissue was. The whole bottom half of the leg separated with a plop.

And then, there it was, held in Mystic Heart’s off-white magical aura. The white bone, grown attached to the silvery metal, the meat all gone. Well, mostly gone.

Starlight knew what was next. Grab the bone, use her magic if she had the strength, use her teeth like an earth pony if not.

Only two of the zombies left. Break their skulls, or crack their chest cavities, or, or, or, or something!

She tried to levitate the bone club. Her turquoise aura just sputtered out. The buttercream of Mystic Heart’s aura, holding the bone vertical, wavered.

“What, what?” Starlight said. “Did you speak?”

“I said, 'They’re rattling the gate!' Do something.”

She bit the white bone at the opposite side of the heavy metal hip joint and strode to the last two beasts.

And, yes, it tasted bad. Unlike anything Starlight ever tasted before or since. She got bits of sinew between her teeth.

Starlight gripped the bottom end of grandma's femur deep under her left molars, reared her head back, and swung over the top of the fence. She wasn't quite tall enough, and the metal of the hip joint struck the top of the fence. Starlight's head rang. A tooth cracked, a sharp flare of pain like the earlier splashes of burning liquid that had blistered her skin.

Panting around the bone, she kicked up with her forehoof and unlatched the gate. The first beast was leaning against the gate and staggered through, surprised and off balance when the gate suddenly opened. It went down, chest-first, hooves scrabbling for purchase, and Starlight swung down with the makeshift club with all the strength in her neck muscles. Its skull cracked and magic sparked. She swung again, hitting the spine just above the heart, and—

Whoosh! Another swirl of ash.

The last creature snapped at her head. Starlight dodged, dropping to the ground, landing in the fresh ash and feeling it burn into her skin, like rolling in the remains of last night's campfire.

She kicked upward with her forehooves, smashing it in the jaw, saving herself from the bite-worse-than-death by about ten inches. Ichor sprayed and landed on her chin and neck.

It shook its head, broken jaw flapping out of time with the motion of the rest of its skull. She tucked into a ball and got her rear legs up and bucked again, hitting it in the chest and staggering it backward.

Mystic Heart ran in, spun, and bucked it, too, smashing it backwards further, out of the gate.

Starlight, panting, vision dark with anoxia, head pounding, got halfway up, forelegs extended, rump down, and swung her club again, an uppercut, hitting the creature between the forelegs. Magic flashed as the stainless alloy smashed into its eldritch field.

Mystic Heart bucked it once more. Starlight smashed it in the head, again, a third time, and it flashed to ash.

The last connection was gone.

The zombies were gone.

She dropped the club, looked at Mystic Heart, and said, “I need a nap,” and slumped down to the ground, dazed and panting.

Damn, said the book. Bravo, my little purple slut. I didn’t think you had it in you.

Starlight crawled to the other side of the graveyard, sharp blades of grass cutting into her fresh burns from rolling in the ashes, pain filling her vision with stars, heartbeat pounding in her ears, and she heaved herself to her feet, levitated up the book with the last of her magic, and looked at Mystic Heart.

“Now,” Starlight said, “for the hard part.”

Author's Note

Thanks to mishun for commenting on this and the remaining chapters!

I'm on a trip next week but I'll still try to post the final two chapters Wednesday.

Chapter 7

Mystic Heart looked from Starlight to the book and back. “Seriously? You’re blaming a book? ... wait, gross, is that book leather?”

“Pony hide, actually.”

Mystic Heart swallowed several times, fighting her gorge. “Where did that come from? Why did you read it?”

“It... it talks to me.”

“It talks to you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, you’re not....”

“Crazy?” supplied Mystic Heart.

Starlight wiped her face, removing some ash, and maybe a tear. “I’m crazy, too, but my magic... I’m like an antenna. Some of the things I hear are real, just... too quiet for regular unicorns.”

Mystic Heart snarled deep in her throat and pawed at the ground. After a moment, she said, “You’ve got buku magic for sure. I’m still mad about that... time... with my cutie mark.”

“It was just an equal sign, nothing offensive, and I gave you and Storm Catcher a written apology!”

“Did ‘the book’ give you that spell?” Mystic Heart asked.

“It had some cutie mark spells, got me thinking, but no... that was ninety percent me.”

“You wrote that insincere apology under duress from the mayor, and we both know it. And you’re still crazy. What do we do?”

Starlight dropped to her rump, panting in exhaustion. “Mom ‘n dad ‘n I burned this book, once, the first time I tried...” and she waved a hoof at the graves.

Mystic Heart shook her head. “You already tried this apocalypse once?”

“I was mad, because at school, no colt would accept my invitation to the Saddle Hawkins dance. The colts will rut with me, but they won’t be seen in public with me.”

“Have you considered fillies?” Mystic Heart asked.

“You all treat me even worse than the colts. Seriously, if I just had one! Stinking! Friend!” Starlight wiped her eyes with a foreleg. “...I wanted an army to punish everypony. Mom bucked me in the lung a half-second before I cast the spell.”

“Was that related to the three weeks you were ‘sick’ from school but everypony knows you slashed your wrists, right after you broke your ribs ‘falling down the stairs’ in a one-floor house?”

Starlight gestured on the nose.

“If only your mom wasn’t a stupid vascular surgeon, you’d be dead and I’d be warm in bed right now... Well, if nopony can burn the book... what?”

“Mystic Heart, I’m sorry about all this, okay? I’ll... I’ll kill myself this afternoon or Friday.”

Mystic Heart turned pale. “I didn’t really mean—“

“But help me deal with this book, first. I think Mr. Black Smith’s oxygen furnace will burn hot enough, and the liquid pig iron will suck its magic, but I don’t have the strength to break his locks. I’m too gone. My dad’s shed is unlocked and he has crowbars and lock cutters for getting into old antiques. Could you...?”

Mystic Heart grinned and said, “I have the combination to Black’s place.”

“What? Huh? Why?”

Mystic Heart’s smile disappeared and her face turned magmatic. “Because you ruined all the colts our age, slut.”

Starlight’s ears went cockeyed and she was silent for a few seconds. Then, “Ewww! He’s old! He’s, what, thirty?”

“Twenty-seven. And he’s muscled like an earth pony. All right, come with.”

“Statutory rape?” Starlight asked.

“I’m eighteen.”

“Eighteen and two weeks.”

“Once this is done I never have to speak to you again, Starlight. I’m moving to Vanhoover as soon as I graduate.”

Starlight staggered to her feet, and looked around. The corpses were slumping, slowly dissolving into the ground, thin streams of steam or smoke rising into the moonlight, but a quick differential equation solved in her head told Starlight they would still be identifiable come dawn. They were dissolving too slowly. She pictured a long night with a shovel after leaving Mr. Black Smith’s forge.

You passed the test, intoned the book. Congratulations! This was all good fun, my new purple protégée!

“Fun? You tried to kill me! You might yet succeed, there’s evidence everywhere.”

Mystic Heart looked at Starlight as Starlight conversed with the inanimate object. Mystic Heart took a step backward.

C’mon, my friend! I had to know you were worth my time and effort. I can’t go around showing the darkest secrets and deepest powers to just anypony, can I? I’m an abomination, and I need an abominable pony to match. I think we’re ready to take this show on the road, my friend. Want to be Autarch of Vanhoover?

“Friend? Friend? You yourself said you were magically raping me. You said that!”

Mystic Heart took another step backwards and her jaw slowly dropped open.

What’s a little semantics amongst friends? asked the book. Plenty of mentor-protégée relationships start out all rapey.

“Mentor this, my friend.”

You’re being an idiot. This is a once-in-an-epoch opportunity. Your magic, my spells. It’s a better combination than peanut butter and jelly! Sun and moon! Black beans and rice! You’re making the mistake of the millenium.

“And I’m correcting my mistake.”

You’ve passed my test, that’s all tonight was. I had to know you were worthy of me.

Starlight frowned. “Explain that.”

I need somepony’s magic, and you’ve got the most I’ve ever seen, you’re worthy of me. I’ve got the knowledge you want, worthy of you. Don’t you see, you little purple slut?

“I’m getting tired of being called a slut,” Starlight snarled.

“Says the one-pony VD epidemic,” mumbled Mystic Heart.

The book continued, I’ve been waiting millenia for you. You want to cauterize off ten thousand cutie marks? You need me. Find Sunburst and deep-fry his testicles and make him eat them? I can bring him to you. I could cure your mom’s uterus. And yours—your uterus is even worse than hers. You can’t found Equestria’s new ruling house without working parts.

Starlight paused, and rubbed a hoof across her belly. Starlight remembered mom frowning while feeling her abdomen the Monday before. “That all sounds suspiciously like what you might think I want to hear.”

Doesn’t make it any less true.

“I’ve learned everything I’m going to learn from you. I think the next time I commit an atrocity worthy of a Princess’s personal attention, I’ll do it on my own. Goodbye.”

It was a three-minute walk. The book babbled the whole way, threatening retribution and promising godhood. They snuck around the back of the forge. Mystic Heart turned the combination on the lock and opened the door. She smirked and said, "The combination is the date he and I first—”

“Please don’t.”

After the freezing cold of the magic in the graveyard, the hellacious heat of the forge hit Starlight hard. She turned her head, slitted her eyes, and breathed through her mouth. “Goodness.”

Even with the forge closed up for the night and Mr. Black Smith in his bed, magical devices kept the forge and basic oxygen furnace at warm standby. The slag covering the molten pig iron glowed with a dull red through the clear sapphire viewport on the top of the basic oxygen vessel.

Although most blacksmiths were earth ponies, the occasional unicorn blacksmith made for a high-magitek workspace, indeed.

Mystic Heart levitated the book into a charging chute on top of the furnace’s heavy steel lid. Grabbing a scoop with her teeth, Starlight added two pints of grape-sized nickel nodules to the chute, on top of the book, then a scoop of molybdenum pellets.

Starlight nodded toward the scoops of pellets, on top of the book. "Those metals quench magic," she said, and pulled the lever that dropped the contents of the charging chute into the liquid iron.

After skipping backwards a few steps, Starlight pointed a hoof at Mystic Heart, who used her magic to yank the lever that lowered the oxygen lance—a long, vertically-oriented ceramic pipe—from the top of the vessel into the liquid iron. A second lever pull injected a heavy stream of pure oxygen, magically refined from the air, into the melt.

As the impurities burned out of the pig iron, its temperature spiked, the red glow turned yellow-white, filling the room with intolerable brightness and forcing both fillies to turn their heads away.

The book screamed in agony, gibbering a hate-filled wordless howl.

Starlight collapsed down to the ground, flat on her belly, scrunching her eyes shut and beating her own horn with her forehooves. It was a magical hurricane, a tornado, worse than being hit by the Friendship Express at full speed. She mewled as the nameless magic tore into her hypersensitive mind. Starlight hit herself in the horn as hard as she could, trying to silence the hurricane of sensation.

As it dissolved into the demonic heat of the oxygen-pumped fire, the book screamed profane invective at her, in languages of demons and monsters and eldritch abominations ten of millions of years lost to time and space, and Starlight heard and understood every blasphemous syllable of a speech no pony was ever meant to experience. Her very soul quailed, her higher mental functions checked out, and she went into a fugue state. The entire universe was simply pain and agony and fear.

Her head swam in torment from the magical assault as ten thousand years of evil was burned out of the mortal world, and she beat her horn, the most sensitive part of her unicorn body, with all her strength, trying to cripple herself to make it stop.

Mystic Heart felt the tremor in the magic around her. Her own horn stung, and she smelled the fetid stench of an unsealed crypt over the strong burned-metal scent of the forge. She glanced toward the white glow from the furnace. Ephemeral gray-green smoke and fuligin sparks swirled from the still-open charging chute at the top of the furnace's lid.

The blast of flowing oxygen beat at her ears. Mystic Heart heard—heard with her horn, not with her ears—a fading, desperate voice: You slut you slut you can't do this to me I've still killed you back you'll never clean up all the evidence...

Mystic Heart's jaw dropped open. Starlight had been serious! The grimoire really had been giving her orders. She looked down at the younger filly to apologize, and saw Starlight hitting herself in the horn, a tremendous stream of pungent urine spreading around her thighs and under her tail, body shaking like an epileptic seizure; Starlight beating her own horn, with her full remaining strength. Burns and blisters were easily visible on her snout, flanks, and back, arising from her earlier burns.

Mystic Heart wasn't a doctor, she was of only modest intellectual gifts, and her education in the small provincial school wouldn't have been very good even if she hadn't missed over a full year for her cancer treatment. But.

But, every unicorn in the world knew how much it hurt to have your horn hit. Clearly, Starlight was in a full self-destructive meltdown. Starlight was in danger of permanently maiming herself, or giving herself brain damage, as she tried to silence the book’s death howl. A second flood of urine erupted and Starlight vomited, her snout buried in the puddle, breathing vomit, threatening to drown herself.

Mystic Heart hated Starlight, but Mystic Heart owed Doctor Glimmer her very life. And Doctor Glimmer loved Starlight.

She grabbed Starlight's forehooves with her magic, stopping her from hurting herself worse, and then grabbed Starlight's tail in her teeth and dragged her from the forge into the open night air.

After a few minutes, Starlight, panting, rolled onto her back and threw a foreleg over her eyes. "Thanks."

Mystic Heart smacked her lips and rolled her tongue, trying to get the taste of Starlight's tail and urine out of her mouth. "You peed yourself!”

"No. Did I? ....ew, I think I did.”

"Oh Celestia, am I going to get... get... oral galloporrhea from you? Bad enough when you gave it to me the regular way through my ex-coltfriend."

"Did you hear it? Hear it die?"

Mystic Heart flicked her tail. "The book?"

"Yes."

"Yeah. I heard it. But with my magic, not my ears. That was... is that what happens to you every day?”

“Yeah.”

Mystic Heart flipped her tail and frowned in thought. “I repent for every time I envied your magic. Average is good. I’m glad I’m average.”

"It was screaming loud." Starlight flipped over, onto her belly, and tried to stand, but failed, and laid there, panting, legs splayed. Vomit smeared her face and urine soaked her belly, privates, thighs, and tail.

Mom staggered up to them, a towel dark with blood wrapped around her hindquarters like a diaper. Whispering harshly, she said, "What the crap are you two doing here? I’ve been chasing you, trying to find you two!”

Starlight looked up at her. "The zombies are dead. The book is gone."

Mom stomped. "You said that before, you little liar!"

Starlight's face took on a snarling expression and she opened her mouth to retort.

Mystic Heart held up a hoof. "I heard it die. I think we got it, this time."

Mom snapped her mouth shut. "Well, then. Evidence?"

Starlight tried hard to stand. She literally could not, no matter how much she tried. The missing blood, the magic, the fight, the book's death-howl, the residual dizziness from beating herself on the horn, she had nothing left.

Mom said, "Rest for a few minutes, love-bug. Mystic Heart, could you be a dear....?"

"What? After the last hour, you want more help from me?"

Mom nodded. "Can you get her a jug of apple juice from your family's store? That'll get her back on her hooves faster than anything."

"Cyanide," Starlight said. "I want cyanide."

"Shush, honey," mom said, frown deepening. “Don’t talk about suicide again. Please.”

A cramp ripped across mom, and she gasped and panted in pain. "Oh Celestia. The worst is over, I think, but that hurts. Starlight, what the holy hell were you thinking? What'll I tell your dad Friday night when he gets home, if you're scheduled to hang Saturday at dawn?"

"I wanted to get Sunrise back for you, mom. You want a foal so bad—and I'm the worst foal in Equestria. I tried to raise Sunrise for you."

Starlight had needed sixteen years, but it finally happened: she rendered mom speechless.

A half-gallon of apple juice and a fifteen minute nap got Starlight back on her feet, and just enough of her magic restored to levitate the melting corpses one at a time. Mom and Mystic Heart, working together, had the combined strength to lift the smaller corpses, one at a time, and move them. Mystic Heart was a very magically mediocre unicorn, and mom’s levitation had a surgeon’s incomparable precision, not Starlight’s brute power.

They carried the pony corpses and one coyote carcass a thousand yards into the woods, piled them up, and Starlight prepared to pour the remaining booze on them.

“Why’re you using that?” Mystic Heart asked. “We’ve got lamp oil and pitch in the store.”

“You didn’t think of this two hours ago?” Starlight snarled.

“I didn’t know why you wanted booze, then!” Mystic Heart trotted off, cursing Starlight and her future paramours in anatomically impossible fashion.

“Why didn’t you think of that?” mom asked.

Starlight looked at her hooves, then gestured at the woods around them. “What’s the definition of an alcoholic, mom? I can’t see the forest for the booze, I guess. When I see the store, all I see is...”

Soon, Mystic Heart returned, levitating three one-gallon tins of lamp oil. They poured it everywhere over the bodies. Unfortunately, it had been a rainy month, so the sticks and kindling on the forest floor were too wet to add to the pyre. On the other hoof, there was no danger of the fire spreading to the whole forest.

Starlight's magic was recovering rapidly as the sugar from the apple juice hit her bloodstream. She lit the pyre with her flame spell, and the whole mess went up in a sickening cloud of sepulchral reek.

Mystic Heart heaved but didn't throw up again. Starlight looked away and breathed through her mouth.

Mystic Heart said, “Doc? Doesn’t the smell bother you?”

Mom said, “I did two autopsies this morning.”

They stared at the pyre for a few minutes as the evidence of Starlight's worst crime (so far) burned away. The three of them walked to the graveyard and began smoothing over the split-open graves.

The horizon had the tiniest hint of dawn when mom said, "C'mon, let's put Sunrise back."

Mom saw the swaddling blanket and bottle of formula that Starlight had carried with her, still sitting next to Sunrise's coffin. Mom looked at Starlight, and they both burst into tears.

Mystic Heart trotted a dozen yards away to give Doctor Glimmer and Starlight privacy while they finished crying, closed up the tiny coffin, replaced it in the hole, and began scooping the dirt back with their hooves.

Starlight looked around the graveyard. "Well, it's obvious somepony did something here, but no jury would convict for necromancy. The worst I'll get is vandalism."

"There's still burglary on my family's shop," Mystic Heart said.

With a nod, Starlight said, "I can fix the lock and clean up the blood. I remember a pretty good evidence-covering-up spell from chapter seven of the book—"

At Starlight's word 'book,' mom snarled, spun around, and bucked Starlight right in the face. The last thing Starlight saw were mom's two rear horseshoes making contact with the tip of her nose.

Chapter 8

"....and that’s the story,” Starlight finished. “I woke up three days later, in mom's clinic, intubated, strapped to a gurney, with my face in an improvised splint, magic inhibitor on my horn, pottying into a bedpan. She had surgically repaired my nose, but that wasn’t her specialty. Because of my alcohol addiction, mom was really ‘parsimonious’ with the painkillers."

Trixie's jaw dropped open, and she stopped walking. Her caravan squeaked to a halt behind her. Her wizard hat tipped over one eye. Ponyville was still about ten miles in front of them, and their failed trip to Saddle Arabia many miles behind them.

"Holy flaming horse apples from pegasi on high, Starlight! Why would you think it's okay to tell me that story? Why would you think it's okay to tell anypony that story? Is, is, is it true?!?"

"Every word. I was strapped down under suicide watch, because I had mentioned cyanide, and because I told Mystic Heart I would kill myself. Mom lectured me for days, maybe a week, almost without stopping for breath. That's how I know what happened to her, out of my sight, and what happened between her and dad. Mystic Heart took a few turns lecturing me while mom napped, or took a housecall. Not the sharpest sword in the armory, that one, but I learned a lot of synonyms for ‘idiot slut’."

Trixie screamed, "Starlight! All I asked was why you snore so badly!"

"Trixie, if I had said, 'I got my nose smashed flat across my face and ruptured all my sinuses as a foal,' you would have said, 'How?' And I would have said, 'Somepony bucked me in the face.' And you would have said, 'Who bucked you in the face?' And I would have said, 'My mom.' And you would have said, 'Huh? You grew up in an abusive home? That explains a lot!' And I would have said, 'No, my mom was awesome, I deserved to be bucked in the face.' And you would have said, 'All abusers convince their victims they deserve it.' And so on. Just telling you the story from the beginning...." Starlight shrugged. “Easier.”

Trixie said, "Your mom should not have broken your face. Have you heard yourself snore? That's lifetime permanent damage, Starlight. Necromancy or not, she was wrong."

"You remember the incident where I hit Rarity, Rainbow, and the others with the spell to do five friendship lessons at once? I have a bad habit to use magic first and think later, or think never. I mean, I raised the dead because mom was sad! I use my gift stupidly, Trixie. And I am gifted, no doubt.”

Trixie nodded yes.

“Mom knew that habit of mine, and I had just ten minutes earlier escaped a death penalty crime, and I was suggesting more magic from the same feathering book. It was about to be dawn any minute, ponies were waking up, witnesses. She thought bucking me out cold then and there was the only way to keep me alive. She apologized, later, and said she should have broken my leg, or my ribs again.”

“Apologized?”

“She and Mystic Heart spun a cover story that I got drunk and belligerent and hurt myself levitating. Constable Keystone knew it was a steaming pile of... fabrication, but mom was the most respected pony in town, and I was the least respected, so they let it slide.”

"I'm going to Sire's Hollow and give your mom a piece of my mind!"

"Mom's dead."

Trixie gasped like she'd just been bucked in the gut. "Oh. Oh, Starlight, I’m...”

"After I broke evil, ran away, founded Our Town, mom 'n dad tried for another foal. The last time I visited, dad told me what happened. It—he, Starflare, my... my... my brother—gestated seven months, he was getting big. They were feeling optimistic. But his placenta was implanted across mom’s cervix, and then the premature labor came. Dad ran to get the town vet, and in the three minutes dad was gone, mom bled out.”

"Oh... I'm sorry, Starlight."

"I never told her goodbye. I never thanked her for saving my life. All the times she saved my life. I attempted suicide three times on her. She had a sixth sense and caught me, saved me, every time. On my eighteenth birthday, I went to the train station before she woke up. I didn’t even leave a note. I hid in the bushes and teleported onto the train so that there were no witnesses and no receipt. Dad later told me they thought I’d hiked into the mountains and killed myself somewhere hidden. On my birthday. Mom loved my birthday, because I was her one foal who survived. Celestia knows what present she never got to give me. Mom had my pegasus uncles and cousins travel in from Manehattan and scour the hollers and peaks for my body.”

Trixie laid a hoof on Starlight’s withers.

"The amazing thing is that dad forgives me. I think it's because I'm seeing the psychiatrist. Dad said that now that I'm getting help, I'm not the foal who ran away, but the adult daughter they always knew I could be. He’s better than I deserve...”

Starlight wiped a tear. “Even if he calls me ‘pumpky-wumpkin’ in public.”

Trixie’s eyes unfocused, and she dropped into third-person to distance herself from the pain. “Trixie feels so sad for your family. Trixie had a miscarriage, once. Trixie wasn't even pregnant on purpose, Trixie traded sex for food while she was unemployed and homeless, before she got the rock farm job, but it still made Trixie so sad... It still made Trixie feel less than whole. For your mom to try so many times? And still keep saving ponies and treating illnesses? Lead a normal life?” Trixie shook her head, like somepony trying to recover after a punch. “Trixie can’t imagine. Your mom must have been one heck of a mare.”

“Mom took her oath so seriously. She wanted to save everypony. I miss mom. I wish I had told her how I really feel. And now I never can. She died while I was hunting Twilight."

"You.... have time travel," Trixie said.

Starlight shook her head no. "If I’d just gone home after my dictatorship collapsed, I would have been there when she died... nopony could have saved her, outside of a university medical center, but I could have gone for the vet, so that dad could have at least held her at the end.”

Trixie thought for a second, trying to find a subject change. "What about the other pony? Mystic?"

Starlight said, "Mystic Heart. She never told on me, although I think mom made a secret deal with her family to pay for the liquor I'd been stealing. I stopped stealing from them, just them, but my alcoholism got a lot worse after that night. Mom probably offered them free medical care for life, since we were broke. Mystic Heart wasn’t very healthy, so that was a good deal for them. Foalhood chemo can mess you up forever, and the oncologists in Vanhoover had to pound her within an inch of her life to save her."

"What happened to Mystic Heart?"

"Job. Husband. Foals. I heard she's the concierge and event planner at a fancy Vanhoover hotel, and she married the hotel’s sous chef."

"She's Sunburt's first cousin?"

"Yeah. After her cancer, she was five or six or so, she moved into town and lived with Sunburst like a sister, so that she could be close to mom's clinic, close to school, other foals. My mom saved her. She had a nasty leukemia and mom’s bloodwork caught it early. An average doctor would have taken the funny blood count to be a normal foalhood virus.”

Trixie said, "If you and Sunburst keep getting closer, she’ll be awkward."

Starlight said, "Yeah! They really love each other. Trade letters. Trade visits. He’ll want her in our wedding party...."

"Wait! What? You two are getting....?" Trixie asked.

"No, just a fantasy in my head. Don't tell Sunburst I said that, please. I haven't told him this story, and I'm concerned about how any normal pony would respond to it.”

Trixie grinned. “Calling me abnormal?”

“Very! Also, our long-distance problem. Crystal Empire to Ponyville is a whole day on the train. Besides, I don't know if he thinks of me as more than an old friend. I've seen him checking out Twilight's rump. And yours."

Trixie levitated up her hat and rubbed her horn. "Really? Well, I've checked out Twilight's rump, myself, so you can't blame Sunburst. Maybe you should tell Sunburst you're thinking about weddings." Trixie put the hat back in place. “Trixie’s mom and dad are in showbiz and lived apart for Trixie's whole foalhood, but they love each other all the same. Long distance is less a hurdle than you might think. Especially if... you can’t have foals?”

Starlight’s ears drooped. "Nope. I had the ultrasound after I moved to Ponyville, and confirmed it. I've been... chaste... since I surrendered to Twilight. I told you I raped the unmarried stallions in Our Town when I was an evil dictator."

"Trixie's been meaning to ask.... Feather Bangs? He's so bleeecchh!"

Starlight laughed. "No, not him! Feather Bangs was underage when I was dictator, and even evil-me had standards! Besides, I can't abide his personality. I considered murdering Feather Bangs—sometimes twice a day, I considered it—but boffing him? Never."

"Feather Bangs, yuck. Trixie's respect for Starlight's taste in stallions is restored. How'd you keep your butt-makeup from smearing off in bed? Your fake cutie mark?"

"Curiosity-suppression spell. They wouldn't have noticed if a yak joined in for a threesome. Look, because of my past, I've been scared about even consensual sex. But, if I start again, I'll go get my tubes tied. A pregnancy will kill me. Like it killed my mom.”

"That's awful."

"Yup."

Trixie stared into Starlight’s eyes. "Starlight, you need to be careful who you tell that zombie story to. There's no statute of limitations. Necromancy will burn right through your Royal Pardon. You've heard the rumors about Princess Luna?"

"Luna’s collection of thirty-seven necromancer heads on pikes in the dungeon of Canterlot Castle?"

"That’s the rumor Trixie heard. Trixie... reads the tabloids. Trixie's not proud of that. Why put heads on pikes where nopony can see them? Isn't the point public intimidation?"

"Luna's mind works... different than normal ponies. Even Celestia is almost like us. Luna is just... Luna." Pawing the ground, Starlight bit her lip, and stared at the horizon. "This next bit... this is a secret, okay?"

Trixie nodded. "You can trust my great and powerful discretion."

"It's a violation of trust to name other Alcoholics Anonymous members... but after my Friendship Map mission to Canterlot to help the princesses... I got to talking to Luna. I ate dinner with her after the mission was over. We became close friends. She's biologically just a kid, you know."

"Eighteen or so? Not counting the years on the moon."

"Nearly nineteen. At dinner, the castle waiter offered me wine with dinner and I said, 'No, goodness no, I'm an alcoholic,' and Luna burst into thunder and lightning and tears. Luna is an alcoholic, too, and at that time, she was alternating between dry weeks and blackout weeks. She drinks because of the things she saw as a filly, before they deposed Discord, and the things she sees now as Celestia’s enforcer.”

“‘Enforcer’?”

“Have you heard the phrase ‘extrajudicial punishment,’ Trixie?”

“No, but I can put it together.”

“Luna does bad things to the worst ponies. Stuff the courts won’t touch or the Guard can’t handle. So... Luna has raging PTSD. I'm her sobriety sponsor. I invited her while I was in Canterlot. She attends the Ponyville chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, because it's lower-profile than Canterlot. We're only fifteen total, with her.”

“Who else from Ponyville is an AA member? Anypony I know?”

“I will never answer that question, Trixie, okay? I already regret saying Luna’s name, but if I said ‘an alicorn,’ you would have guessed. We all keep Luna’s secret. And so will you! I’ve been dry for nearly four years now, so sponsorship is the next step in my own recovery."

Starlight smiled wide, as wide a smile as Trixie had ever seen on Starlight.

Starlight continued, “Luna’s been dry for five whole months! I’ve... I’ve helped her, Trixie. I’m helping somepony else get better. It makes me understand why my mom loved her job. Why mom would hike seven miles into a blizzard at night to amputate a hoof. There’s something fundamental about helping somepony else. My family's not religious, but if mom's out there, somewhere, I hope...” Starlight began to cry.

"That’s wonderful,” Trixie said, her brain reeling at the news. Goddess-diarch Luna, PTSD alcoholic? The world was topsy-turvy, suddenly. “But you changed the subject.”

"I shared the zombie story at an AA meeting, as part of my healing process, and to set an example for Luna."

Trixie hissed. "And you're still alive?"

"After the meeting, Luna grabbed me by the mane and teleported me to the dungeons and showed me the heads. Oh sweet Celestia, the smell!”

“Wow.”

Starlight gagged at the memory, then spit onto the ground. “Uggh. Luna said, 'Starlight Glimmer, you are my friend. I name you savior of my life, for bringing me into the Program. But I am also the pony whom Celestia sends to sanction necromancers. It would vex me most grievously if you were to reoffend and I were forced to put your head in my collection one day.'"

"....wow," Trixie said. "The thirty-seven heads are real?"

"Only thirty-two, but yeah. Thirty-one ponies, one minotaur. She hates necromancers. I think she got her wings by dueling a necromancer, a thousand years ago, a pony who made allegiance to Discord, but she won't talk about it."

“Wow. I heard she was nine when she got her wings.”

Starlight stared at her own hooves. “Nine, yes. So, she fought in a civil war, and killed her first pony, when she was nine. How can Luna not be an alcoholic?”

“Wow.”

“Trixie, please say something other than ‘wow.’”

“What should Trixie say?”

Starlight began to sob, head dipping low, body shaking. “Can you say that we’re still friends?”

Trixie stammered in shock, unhitched from her caravan, and hugged Starlight. “You’re my best friend. I love you.”

“I almost told you, ‘I broke my nose playing hoofball in gym class.’ But I wanted to tell you...”

Trixie hugged Starlight tighter.

“After that night... that’s when I really lost it. Because Mystic Heart also heard the book die, I convinced myself all my voices were real. I stopped bugging mom to send me to a head doctor. I stopped begging for medicine. I decided to listen to the voices.”

Trixie rubbed her neck and her ears drooped. “That damn Alicorn Amulet... it told Trixie that she was a god. But not a nice god, one of the great old ones... would Celestia really have killed a teenager? Cut off your horn?”

“I... doubt it. I think the book was trying to psych me out. But I can’t say for sure.”

“Freaking artifacts. Equestria is infested.”

Starlight nodded. “For years, since Sunburst left, the voices had been telling me cutie marks were the problem... and after that night, I believed the voices. That’s why I did... those things I did. Even after the book was gone, I remembered the spells. I still remember them, and the memory is like leukemia in my soul. No matter how much I heal, I know I have the ability to revert in a split-second. That's one reason I can't ever drink again. Why I refused painkillers when Rainbow Dash broke my ribs and punctured my lung that time she accidentally crashed into me.”

Trixie kissed Starlight between the ears. Starlight slumped down to the dust of the road. Trixie laid down on top of her, hugging her, crying with her. Into Starlight's ear, Trixie mumbled, "You're a good pony!" over and over again. Trixie kissed Starlight between the ears one more time.

Eventually, Starlight stopped crying and they both stood up. “Mom used to kiss me between the ears, whenever I was feeling down. It was always the first thing she did when I woke up after every suicide attempt. ...thanks, Trixie. That helped a lot.”

Trixie nodded, unsure what to say.

“So. That’s the whole story. Thanks, Trixie. It means a lot to me that you still want to be my friend.”

“You’re my best friend. I love you. Just.... do me a favor?"

Starlight hitched up to Trixie's caravan for her turn to pull. "Anything, Trixie!"

"Never raise the dead for Trixie, no matter how much you think it will help?"

Author's Note

Let me reiterate my thanks to NixWorld for an awesome cover and mishun for awesome prereading of chapters 6-8.