The Sparkle of Unlife

Chapters

"What's the worst that could happen?" (Rewritten)
Rise From Your Grave! (Rewritten)
Royal Pain (Rewritten)
Dinner Parting
Face to Face
Sympathy for the Dead
Grin Reaper
Nothing is Guaranteed in Life...
Family Matters
Bite to Eat
Soul Bound
Eternal Slumber… Party
A Talk Overdue
Figuring it Out
Interlude - Halloween Special
Interlude - The Day Before
Doctor, Doctor! Give Me the News! (Rewritten)

"What's the worst that could happen?" (Rewritten)

A book arriving at the doorstep of Castle Friendship wasn't anything out of the ordinary. After all, Twilight was insistent on spending a portion of her annual royal stipend on purchasing almost every single book, scroll, magazine, and election campaign pamphlet she could get her hooves on... often within days of them being published and added to an ordering catalogue. The paper-wrapped parcel lacking a return address was a tad more curious, but still nothing she hadn't seen before... some donations came from kind individuals who wanted to remain anonymous, after all. No, the most worrying aspect about the latest addition to the library (and the reason Spike was currently hiding under a table) was the fact that the newly arrived book seemed to be glowing black.

A scientific pony would tell you that it was impossible for something to 'glow black', as darkness in itself implied the absence of light and not its emission, but the book was unmistakably emitting an aura of pitch-black murky shadow that seemed to suck away all the light and colour from around it. Yet despite these shadowy emissions, the cover of the tome was still easily legible through the shadowy covering, the book emblazoned with blood-red lettering labelling it 'Necroponicon' across its cracked and aged leather surface.

"Uh... Twilight? I'm not sure this is such a good idea." Spike hissed from underneath the table. Twilight just rolled her eyes and laughed in response.

"Don't be silly, Spike. It's just a book! Well, a book with some enchantments to make it seem menacing maybe, but still a book! What's the worst that could happen?" She chastised, trotting towards the desk that now held only the tome and a few discarded quills. Spike winced at her words, muttering something about 'death-flags' and holding up a large copy of the Encyclopedia Equestrianna as a jury-rigged literary shield. Twilight on the other hoof was blatantly and clearly unworied about her new book's uncanny presence. Books contained knowledge, and knowledge was good, these tennets were clear and sturdy facts in the feverish nightmare of uncommon sense Twilight called her mind and psychiatrists called a 'Fascinating Subject'. If you expanded and extrapolated from this internal information, it clearly implied to Twilight that all books were, by nature, inherently good. It really was easy and simple logic, which she was already planning to sit Spike down for a three hour lecture of later that day. Maybe four hours, actually... she really didn't want to skimp on his ~~indoctrination~~ education.

Picking up the book in her aura, Twilight strolled over to her usual reading chair with a calm and collected gait. That big, comfy armchair had been one of the few things to survive the absolute thaumic annihilation of the original library, but she'd sooner lose her wings than get rid of her favourite, albeit soot-covered, reading spot. Sitting herself down with a satisfied grunt, she floated the new book down into her lap with an excited clapping of her hooves. "And now, to reading! Oh, Spike? When you're finished panicking and cowering, I'd appreciate a cup of coffee." Wrinkling her nose at the dust on the cover of the newly acquired tome, she called out again. "Better make it a princess-sized one. I'm certain that this studying session will be another all-nighter." Spike only let out a sigh in response, slinking into the kitchen to get his ~~slavedriver~~ caretaker her usual nightly cup of liquid dark matter.

With her assistant out of the room, Twilight began to carefully leaf through the old and tattered pages of the tome, excited to begin her favourite step of reading a new book: identifying what wonderful and wisdom-filled lost knowledge hid beneath its ancient words. The pages, while showing their wear and tear from years spent on shelves in dim light, surprisingly did not feel as fragile as she expected them to. In fact they felt rather stiff and thick, with a texture unlike any paper she had touched before. The lettering too was unique: harsh and roughly pressed into the material like it had to be carved in with a knife. The actual language and glyphs were strangely unique as well, which was odd considering the front cover had been written in the standard Romane glyphs of modern Equish. The ink that composed the strange sigils appeared near black in tone and saturation until held under the dim luminescence of candlelight, where the dark red hues finally showed themselves like blood upon the storied pages. Actually, the scent of iron that wafted from the pages like rust from a blade, led credence to the idea that the pigment was perhaps more sanguine-sourced than traditional gall ink. With a scrunch of her muzzle at the smell of the old, dried blood, Twilight sent off a tendril of arcana to open the nearest window, a futile attempt to avail herself of this off-putting stench. A small frown sat on Twilight's face as she flipped through a few more pages before she returned once more to the start, carefully examining a small tucked-away note tucked between the first two pages, written thankfully in a more familiar language.

Dedicated to my love, Cinderspark. May your soul rest easier than those that betrayed us, for they shall never know such kindness as the soft and slow slumber of death.

And with broken hearts I now leave this vessel of knowledge to you, the one cursed enough to have this tome fall into your possession. Maybe you could achieve what I failed, and everyone before me... and give up on this sin before you too are consumed by your hubris. Burn this book and its pages, seal its ashes in the damnedest pits, and hope to yourself that you have freed Equus from this knowledge at last, less another soul is blackened with the tar of the unholy knowledge these darkened writing contain.

But if you are the same as all those who fell before you, carry further and let your heart be hardened to commit all blasphemy in the face of the sun. This book shall grant your every wish, your every dream, your every satisfaction, but never, reader... never your happiness.
- Crescent Heart, Seventeenth Arcanist of the Celestial Court

Twilight blinked a few times, tilting her head from one side to the other as her eyes finally fell across the final words... and with a slow breath she spoke her whirling thoughts at last. "What is this, some kind of angsty teenager's diary?" Shrugging to herself without a care, she turned the page and came face to face with an inked series of concentric circles, each filled with so many symbols and squiggles that she couldn't resist the smile that was brought to her face.

"What's got you in such a good mood, Twilight?" Her assistant asked, returning at long last with a tall travel mug of coffee and a plate of peanut butter crackers.

"Just nostalgia, Spike. I haven't seen a thaumatic matrix since MAG 105, History of the Arcane." She could still remember the crotchety old teacher's raspy voice, his tweed jacket smelling softly of moth balls and his mane as old and ethereal as the subject he taught. "This was how they used to record the knowledge of spells, to pass down and teach information to other ponies millennia ago. Nopony uses them anymore, there have been hundreds of revisions to newer and better systems since then, but it was still a fascinating chapter of history." Squinting her eyes tighter, she took a sip of her much-too-hot and much-too-strong coffee as she scanned slowly across the page, gazing between each ancient glyph and the pathways connecting between the circles. "That being said... I've never seen one this complicated. Ten separate rings... I wonder how a third-dimensional rearrangement would work?"

Spike just slowly blinked in response, his gaze a void of any semblance of understanding, as it always was when Twilight went off on advance arcanic theory. "I'll... assume that's a lot? So that weird spiral thing is a spell? What does it do?"

Twilight frowned as she squinted closer. "I'm not actually sure. That's one of the reasons we switched to new methods, as it's a lot easier to describe cause and effect using say, Starswirl Arcanum Encoding... though that only came into existence after its namesake much later down the line. Perhaps Rubican Prism Theory would be a better comparison? Whatever, the point is: this old style of spellscribing has no dedicated place for actually describing what the spell does, and with one this large... it would take years to try and decode an approximation of its effects. That's why the author would usually write a brief title and description near any thaumic matrix..." Her words petered out as she continued to scan the arrangement for a few more moments, before Twilight finally lowered the book down to the coffee table and lit her horn.

"Uh... Twilight? You're not... going to try and cast an unknown spell again... r-right?" Squeaked out her assistant in a mixture of panic and exhaustion. It wouldn't be the first time, after all.

"Don't worry Spike, this castle is heavily warded against any sort of destructive magic. I've even got runic stabilizing arrays in the floor to redirect any ill-borne curses and such. What's the worst that could happen?" She closed her eyes and began to focus her mind inwards, translating the memorised sigils from the strict and precise spiral illustrations into actual arcane patterns. It was... impossible to truly write down a spell: magic had no such geometric shape, or at least not one that could be easily described in so few dimensions as a drawn figure. Even rune carvings were more about intent than the actual symbols carved. Regardless, magic was a tactile art, the most a drawing or writing of any kind could do was give vague directions for the way to 'push' the energy, the intent and emotion to focus upon, and the end result to manifest. These things could not be described with words, after all, but Ponies much like Twilight had spent millennia figuring out the best way to at least try to do that exact thing, mostly in futility. Lighting up the leylines beneath the hardened keratin of her horn with a brilliant blaze of energy, Twilight slowly opened her eyes. Concentric rings of sparking aura began to form from its tip, driven and spiralling around her horn as discarded quills and paper levitated from the floor and desks, caught in the updraft of thaumic energies. Spike could only begin to back away slowly, hiding behind a wastepaper basket as waves of pressure began to slowly pulsate around his guardian, the bright light growing brighter and brighter until it was near blinding...

...and then it was over. The spell ended suddenly, like one of Rarity's sewing machines whenever Sweetie Belle tripped on the cord. There was no bang, or puff of smoke, or event sparks. Just a sudden absence of the glowing light as the floating objects fell back to the floor and disarray, gravity once more taking its stubborn hold. Peeking out from behind the bin, Spike blinked slowly at the still figure of his guardian, clearing his throat. "...Twilight? Was that supposed to happen?"

Twilight didn't respond, as her corpse was preoccupied with falling off the chair. Dead.

Spike, of course, screamed.

Author's Note

Edit January 7th, 2025

Hey, y'all miss me? Thought it would be fun to go back over this old fic, spruce it up a bit y'know? Shout if you see any problems.

~~Hey, been a while, thought I'd post the idea I've been working on. I know the chapter is short, but I'll try (and fail) to post more chapters for this fic fairly frequently if people seem to enjoy it. Let me know in the comments what you think!~~

Rise From Your Grave! (Rewritten)

Author's Note

Edited and Rewritten 2025-01-18
Alright, that's chapter two redone. Let me know if you find any mistakes!

~~First place on the featured list? 250 likes? 1000 views?~~

People recognizing me from different sites?

~~First of all, how dare you. Shame on all of you. Go read other stories. It was a single chapter of 1000 words. You're all being ridiculous.~~

~~This chapter is a bit sad. And also still short. Deal with it.~~

Anyway, here's Wonderwall.

Rise From Your Grave! (Rewritten)

Only a day had passed since Spike had gone running to Fluttershy's in tears. The pegasus's cottage hadn't the closest place to Twilight's castle and rushing to Ponyville General Hospital might have made more sense, but in the panic and heat of the moment, the comforting, caring, and first-aid trained Fluttershy was the first pony on Spike's mind. He had arrived at her door a panting, blubbering mess, but he barely even needed to whimper Twilight's name before the pegasus had grabbed her first aid bag and rushed off to the castle with the young drake saddled upon her back.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a thing that the pegasus could do for a corpse. There wasn't much point in bringing Twilight's body to the hospital, but the pair of them (and a passing by Rainbow Dash) did exactly that next anyways. Of course, as highly trained as the Ponyville medical professionals were, they couldn't do much for the cadaver either.

The funeral was set for the day later, as nobody wanted to see Twilight's body for a moment longer. The event itself was a quiet affair; Despite the hundreds of ponies that Twilight's life had touched, her friends agreed that it was best not to make it a big public event. Twilight never did like attention and making a big deal of herself anyways. The only invited members were the five of them, Spike, her immediate family, and the three other princesses.

Not a single eye was without tears during the entire ceremony. Even Celestia had to stop for a quiet sob halfway through her speech, comforted by a damp and trembling embrace from her sister. Twilight's parents looked like their very hopes and dreams had been shattered and barely were able to say a word, and her brother's eyes were dull and unfocussed as he stared on in horrified disbelief, as he had since the new arrived. As each pony came and said their words, the thick mahogany coffin was slowly stained darker and darker with each fallen tear of the ponies that came to speak above it.

The burying itself took place in the Ponyville graveyard. As much as Twilight's family would have wanted her to be buried where she grew up, everyone agreed it would be best for her to be laid to rest near her friends. It was what she would have wanted, afterall. The tombstone itself was surprisingly modest for a princess, once again in accordance with her assumed wished. Twilight had, despite her dangerous occupation, hobbies, and location of residence, never prepared a will. The headstone had been engraved with a simple message, followed by a name and date. In a way, it was a reflection of her numerous reports and essays, but those never had a second terminal date listed after.

Here lies a good pony, a good mentor, a good princess, and most of all, a good friend.

RIP Twilight Sparkle
982 - 1004 ACR

Before long, the sky grew dim and the air grew cold, and as their breaths came out in foggy wisps of clouds, the party of mourners began to break apart at last. With one last goodbye and a promise to stay in touch, the contingent of Princesses and Twilight's accompanying family travelled back to Canterlot and the Crystal Empire, leaving a small group of ponies and a single heartbroken dragon to keep each other company for the rest of the night in a small, sad, and quiet wake. It would not be a restful night for anypony.

Surprisingly, least of all for Twilight.

Twilight yawned, blinking her eyes blearily as she awoke from what was quite possibly the most restful nap she'd had in years. Gone was the ever-present fatigue from one too many all-night study sessions, faded were the constant aches and pains, and even that crick in her neck that never seemed to fully settle had vanished at last. As the last moments before her rest came back to mind, the princess couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. "Well, that was certainly quite a spell, wasn't it?" She asked, expecting to see her number one assistant waiting nearby. When she was met with nothing but silence. Blinking her eyes open… didn’t accomplish much. Looking around as she might, the consuming darkness surrounding her seemed to have no intention of dissipating. With a grunt, she reached out to grasp for the table that had been in front of her, only for the hard tip of her hoof to clang harshly with some sort of hard wooden surface. An experimental push with her leg brought the sound of cracking and splintering wood, along with a frown to Twilight’s face. Sure, her newfound earthpony magic has reinforced her strength… but enough to split and crack wood from a slight push? That was just ridiculous. Pressing slightly further, she felt the hardened surface give way at last… followed by a deluge of dirt, soil, gravel and rocks.

Spitting and hacking in surprise to the sudden feeling of debris filling her mouth, she continued to push forward as more and more particulate poured down around her, until at last the first glimmer of light breached the barrier of dirt above her. It was surprisingly easy for her to push her way up, the dirt compacting and brushing away from her hooves like putty as she continued her climb up… until Twilight had surfaced at last onto the grassy loam of Ponyville’s singular cemetery, the dust and dirt in her fur startlingly clear in the moonlight.

A quick (dog-like) shake had most of the particulate flinging itself from her coat as she glanced around. Despite the cloudy and overcast night sky, she found she could see surprisingly clearly. In fact, she could have sworn in this moment she was seeing more clearly than she ever had before. Unfortunately, one of those first things that came into line of view of her newly enhanced vision was a tombstone. Her own tombstone.

Friendship Castle and the ponies inside were equally pressed down by a harsh and discomforting quiet. That isn’t to say the castle was ever particularly loud or noisy. Twilight wasn’t one to put up with excessive chaos and noise in her studying environment… but it had always been a cozy sort of silence before. This quiet was… sticky. The lack of noise left the inhabitants numb as it clung to them like the night’s cold, equally resistant to be dispelled by the crackling fireplace that felt as if it gave off no heat at all.

A cold and draft breeze seemed to blow through the room despite the windows and doors being shut tight to the unseasonable cold wind, causing Spike to shudder helplessly. Struggling to pull the knitted quilt tighter around himself, he simply continued to stare into the slowly-dying hearth, his position and expression unmoved and unchanged throughout the past two hours. The young drake could vaguely hear Rarity and Fluttershy whispering between themselves behind him, but the words were too hushed to make out. It didn't matter what they were talking about anyway, nothing they said would bring Twilight back. She was gone. Twilight… was gone.

He had never been quite sure just what his relationship with her had been. Sometimes the mare treated him like an obnoxious little brother. Sometimes she acted closer to being his mother, henning over him with a claustrophobic level of care. But in this instance he didn’t really care just what she was to him. She was gone. None of that mattered anymore. She was gone. He felt a soft hoof patting his back but he didn't bother to look up and see who was trying to comfort him. It didn't matter. She was gone.

Pinkie Pie just sighed at the shattered dragon and walked away, her mane deflated and hanging limp and flaccid against her face. She was a mare that loved parties, but her first funeral after-party wasn't nearly as upbeat as she had expected it to be. Then again, she never had expected it to be for a friend. With a soft whimper, Pinkie sat herself down in the corner, pulling her legs up to her chest and sobbing softly.

At a small table set up on the side of the room Applejack took another swig of cider, Rainbow sitting beside her in silence. For once the two of them had finally put aside their petty rivalry, arguments, and everything else. All of those past disagreements seemed silly in the face of recent events, as if every moment of fighting was a moment wasted that they could have spent with their now departed friend. Time they’d lost, spent with careless abandon in pursuits of conflict and aggression, and now with no prize to show but the aching, hollow hole mirrored in both their hearts. Eventually, Rarity came strolling over to them, pouring herself a mug of cider as she sat down across from the two. Normally she considered herself far too ladylike for such a mundane and low-brow drink, but she wasn't drinking for pleasure tonight: She just was not going to make it to morning sober. "I feel like we should be more… upbeat. Happy? I'm sure she wouldn't want us to just be hanging around moping. She'd want us to tell stories and laugh, wouldn't she?" Rarity pondered, staring down into her own distorted face reflected in each bubble of the frothy drink.

Applejack didn’t even look up when she responded, instead tilting her hat down and staring at the table with red, tear-streaked eyes. "Well, ah don't feel much like laughing. Don't know ‘bout you." Rainbow just grunted in agreement and took another draw from her own mug before placing it on the table with a clatter that seemed to echo in the quiet chamber, the only other audible sounds coming from the crackling fireplace and the softly mourning dragon.

Rarity only pursed her lips and sighed, shaking her head softly. "I suppose you are right. It's always a challenge to be happy for somepony else's sake even at the best of times. But when dealing with this... this travesty. There's nothing to be happy about."

The three ponies all sat in contemplative but companionable silence for a while, mourning somehow in both isolation, and together. The hearth was slowly dying down but nopony made any effort to put in more firewood, Fluttershy was distracted instead trying to get the young dragon to eat even a morsel of food, alas in futility. The slowly settling chill from the cooling embers was almost comforting, the cold a grounding presence that kept them from drifting off into worse thoughts.

Rarity sighed once more and glanced over to Spike, chewing her lip. Who was going to take care of Spike now? Did he even want to stay in Ponyville, or should he go back to Canterlot? Perhaps Shining and Cadence could keep him distracted far away from all the pain? "Do you... do you think-"

Whatever she had been about to ask got cut off by the loud, echoing sound of a door cracking open and being slammed shut. A second, louder and identical sound followed shortly after as Twilight pushed her way through a second set of doors and into the midst of her own wake. Shaking the freezing rain off her coat, Twilight took a cautious step into the living room, easily noticing the startled and disbelieving expressions on her friends' tear-streaked faces despite her usual lack of any social perception. This was a… bad time, wasn’t it? She had never felt guilty about walking into her own house before, but the shocked stares made her feel like she was interrupting something important! She wasn’t sure what it was, as she was certain there hadn’t been any planned events for the next few days, but clearly she was misremembering.

With an awkwardly little laugh, her mind went into overdrive trying to figure out how to break the tense silence. Thinking back to the ‘Dealing With Your Mistakes’ chapter of ’How to be a Normal Functioning Member of Society’, she decided to attempt a harmless joke. Banter was good, after all. "What's wrong? You guys look like you've seen a ghost!"

Spike just screamed. Again. Not the response she was going for, but she’d take it.

Royal Pain (Rewritten)

Author's Note

Rewritten 06/02/2025 You know the drill, let me know if I messed anything up plot/grammar/spelling-wise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gL8JMqjomI

Royal Pain (Rewritten)

Her Highness, Princess Celestia Helios Sol Invictus, Restorer of Harmony, Diarch of the Sun, Long May She Reign, etc, etc, was having trouble paying attention. That wasn't to say her royal court was ever particularly exciting or even a thing worth paying attention to, but today more than any other seemed to slog on and on without any end in sight. Surprisingly, it wasn't even the fault of the annoying nobility who had come to rant and rave and plead their meaningless cases that was causing her such suffering. Well, maybe it was still roughly 97% that, but that remaining 3% felt heavier than she could possibly imagine.

She could still picture Twilight's unmoving body as it was lowered slowly into the mahogany casket. She had insisted on paying for the entire funeral proceedings of course. It was her own fault in a way, sending Twilight out into the wide world at such a young age with little in the way of safeguards. Celestia could still feel her sister's tears running down her neck in wet streaks as she tried her best to comfort her amongst the mourning ponies and frigid air. She could still hear the howls of anguished sobbing from Shining Armor pounding her mind, the wailing cries echoing for days after even as his wife did her best to act as some means of comfort. She could even see the broken expressions on the faces of Twilight's parents whenever she shut her eyes. All those piercing, crushing sensations... they just wouldn't go away. They wouldn't stop haunting her.

It wasn't the first time Celestia has lost a pony close to her, and she knew it certainly wouldn't be the last. Yet somehow this death came so soon, so unexpectedly, that it stung her heart with mournful daggers, an emotional wound that refused to scab over and heal. She knew the pain would slowly numb, the years to come acting as a balm... but the scars would remain with her forever.

Raven, ever dutiful to her mistress, had noticed the lapse in Celestia's mental state before she was even done her first audience. Quietly striding over to a nearby guard, Raven tapped him gently on the shoulder before flicking her head towards the Princess. "Inform the ponies still in the waiting chamber that her Highness will be ending court after this pony. Do not give a reason." She instructed in a soft tone, quietly enough to not disturb the long-winded speech being given by one 'Oversized Breeches'. The guard silently nodded in response before he left to tell those waiting outside to come back another day, much to their disgruntled complaints.

"-and that is why the point-oh-three percent tax raise on the noble class was a terrible move, likely to cause the entire Equestrian government to destabilize, raise mass riots across the land, and cause the return of Tirek. Truly it was a mistake of monumentous proportions, and needs to not only be removed... but the course must be reversed while we still have time! Now, if you would instead implement a full tax-break on my... I mean... Equestria's industrial sector, it would certainly be a decision grounded in Harmony, Friendship, and General Goodness!" Mr. Breeches finished, his patented 'Winning Smile' emblazoned on his heavily perfumed visage.

Celestia on the other hoof, had not paid even a moment's attention to the minutiae of her 'beloved' subject's speech. Her mind was still miles away, in that cold and windy graveyard in Ponyville. Yet she still maintained her mask, nodding her head as she heard his overly wordy speech wind down into a self-important silence. "I see. I promise I will look into your concern, my little pony." She spoke in her wonderfully serene voice, perfectly disguising the mild disdain underneath as she teleported his presented papers in an overfull filing cabinet with absolutely no intention of even giving them a glance at a later date.

Bidding him a good day, she rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes before righting her posture for the next pony... only for there to be no next pony. Instead, her loyal assistant returned to her side with a soft smile and nod. "My Lady, please rest. I've sent the rest of the complain- pardon me, the rest of your subjects away until the morning. Take care of yourself." Celestia just blinked slowly in response before nodding and ascending from her throne, silently making her way out of the hall.

She didn't remember much of the walk back to her bedroom. The halls seemed dim and colorless despite the many torches and hanging tapestries displaying a millennia of victory over the forces of evil and chaos. And the few portraits depicting Chaos beating her in a food fight last year. She could have sworn Discord cheated in that match, but a deal was a deal… yet she couldn’t find it in herself to give the picture an irritated huff like she usually did. She spent these centuries of fighting and conflict to ensure her ponies could live their lives so happily and carefree, but what did it matter? Why couldn’t she have that same happiness? She had finally had another pony to call her own… only for her to get stolen away so young. Cadence was already an adult by the time she was adopted into the royal family, but Twilight? Twilight was the filly she raised. The filly she loved. Twilight wasn’t just her student, Celestia couldn’t help but consider the bookish young mare… a daughter.

As she continued her slow walk, she never noticed the worried expressions on every guard, maid, and servant she passed. She didn't hear their whispered comments about her mental state, or the soft pitying glances. She just… didn’t care.

Upon returning at last to her personal quarters, she didn’t wait for even a moment before levitating the royal garments off of herself and tossing them casually onto the floor. She didn’t care if they got damaged, none of it mattered. Who was she even keeping up this persona of a calm and wise ruler for? Her sister already knew the real her, her servants had learned long ago. There had only ever been one pony allowed this far into the castle that had been worth keeping up appearances for.

"-lestia!"

Even now she could hear her student calling her name, voice muffled from the distant memories like a thick pane of glass.

"-pen the window Prin-"

How long would these phantom noises haunt her? Must she continue to hear the ghosts that wouldn’t let her properly mourn? The memories were still so fresh, she could picture her student: Her bright eyes, shaggy unkept mane, hoof repeatedly smacking her bedroom window while she shouted at her to open the latc-

Hold on, that wasn’t right. She didn’t have any memories like that. Why did she?

”Celestia! Please!”

Celestia, for her credit, only stared at the lavender Alicorn repeatedly banging on her window for the briefest moment before she reacted. In a flurry of motion, the solar diarch rushed to throw up the latch, tossing the windows wide open as the cold winter air bit into her fur.

The moment the accursed glass barrier was removed, Twilight tumbled in through the window and smashed head-first into the ground. Well, it seems even in death some things never changed, like her lack of aerial agility. Grumbling woozily, Twilight slowly rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “That was… not my best flight.” She mumbled, and her teacher couldn’t help but mentally agree.

"Twilight? Is that really you?" Celestia whispered, her leg partially outstretched but not quite touching Twilight, as if fearing that the pony would vanish at the slightest contact.

"In the flesh..." Her student grumbled in response, slowly rolling over and pulling herself back onto her hooves. “I still don’t get how anypony is supposed to fly with these things. According to all known laws of aviat-”

Celestia leapt forwards and wrapped her student in a hug upon hearing that confirmation, interrupting the academic rant. "But... you were dead! How... when..." For the first time in over a millennium of careful political intrigue and dedicated ruling, Celestia was absolutely speechless. The ruler who had focused so much time and effort into her charisma and wit could find no words to outline her confusion, shock, and overwhelming joy. She just kept flapping her mouth, stopping mid-sentence as if discarding the words that wouldn’t properly convey her emotions. After a few more false starts, she finally managed to blather out in a rather inelegant manner. "I buried you with my own hooves! How are you alive?"

"I've been getting that a lot." The disgruntled alicorn answered unhelpfully as she hugged her teacher back, grip much stronger than Celestia remembered. "I'm surprised your first instinct isn't to question if I'm a changeling."

Well, that was enough to pour metaphorical ice water over their reunion. Narrowing her eyes, Celestia suddenly pushed Twilight away from her. "Well, are you a changeling?"

"Why? Would it matter if I was?"

Celestia huffed and released Twilight to pinch her brow with her hoof. "Well, yes! The entire race of them were present at the invasion, you'd be a war criminal!"

Twilight only blinked in confusion. "But... I already am a war criminal? I'm fairly certain near indefinite imprisonment in stone is not how we're supposed to treat prisoners, but we still calcified Discord into a laws ornament for a thousand years"

The solar demi-goddess only blinked and lowered her hoof, considering the facts in her head. Harmony certainly seemed to lean on the… extreme options when it came to punishing evil-doers. "That's... a valid point."

Twilight nodded as she finally managed to get her wings folded back in correctly. There really were too many muscles involved with those things, how was she supposed to remember which ones to tense and which ones to relax? "Technically, you’ve also broken international guidelines and our own laws with the imprisonment of Luna to the moon. It's quite clearly stated in section 4, passage 3 of the Equus Code of Sentient Rights, any captured combatant has specific inalienable rights and privil-"

Celestia just sighed and placed her hoof over Twilight's mouth before she could continue onwards and bring about anymore realizations of ethical and legal jeopardy. She really didn’t need the Harmonic Nations getting on their case right now. "Okay, okay. I get it. You're definitely Twilight. So was the pony we buried a changeling, then? Or some sort of illusion?"

Twilight just pushed her mentor’s hoof away from her face and shook her head, grumbling to herself. "Nope, that was me. Waking up underground was not very enjoyable, by the way. Just wanted to point that out. A lot of dirt and digging… and the worms. Ugh." She shuddered.

Celestia blinked a few times… before sitting down as the shock drove her legs weak. "You mean... you were buried alive? But Canterlot's finest doctors ran you through every medical examination possible. You were dead!"

Twilight nodded. "Yes. I was.”

“No heartbeat, no breath, not a spark in your brain! Dead!” Celestia continued, jabbing her hoof out almost accusingly.

“Uh-huh. And I have no idea why I'm not dead now. Or at least... I'm sort of not dead? My heart still hasn't gotten the memo." Twilight explained, rolling her eyes.

"Your heart?"

Twilight only shrugged and kicked at one of the gemstones that had come loose from Celestia’s royal garments when they were so carelessly discarded. "It hasn't been beating, which is mildly concerning."

Celestia suddenly stopped, mind ticking away. There was no way… "Your heart isn't beating at all?" She asked slowly, leaning in and lighting her horn. Twilight just shrugged again. “Well… maybe…” A small beam of light gently shot out from Celestia’s horn prodded at Twilight's chest, the sensation fairly unpleasant. "Oh.”

“Oh?”

The diarch cleared her throat. “Well... that explains things, I suppose. And raises more questions."

Twilight tilted her head to the side. "In what way?" She asked, rubbing the tingling spot where Celestia's magic had touched her.

Celestia just gave her one more glance before exhaling a long, weary, heavy sigh. Motioning with her head for Twilight to follow her, she stood up and began to make her way towards her personal liquor cabinet. "You're undead."

Dinner Parting

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay, I was trying to beat Mariah Carey back into the deep freezer with a Swiffer WetJet. Unfortunately, I lost the fight and she broke free.

Dinner Parting

The royal dining room, referred to in secret by the various guards and maids of the palace as 'Celestia's Cake Room #2', was unusually quiet. While it was never the most rambunctious environment, apart from one very intense dinner party involving a hostile griffon delegation, today was an exceptionally quiet affair. Only two ponies were present, and only one of them was currently alive, and was struggling to consume the salad suggested for her by the royal physician. As far as she was concerned, her weight and BMI were perfectly healthy, thank you very much. Still, she refused to lose the bet she had with Luna. She could make it through the rest of the month.

The other pony seated at the table, a certain necromantic purple pony, grumbled as she stared at the food in front of her. Normally, she would have absolutely torn the hayburger in front of her apart. It had been months since she last had one... but despite her best efforts, she was struggling to consume anything from the plate. Every time she tried to take a bite, her body violently spat it out purely on instinct, as if she was trying to consume something as heinous as acid, or bell peppers. It wasn't that she felt particularly hungry either, which was strange considering she had not eaten or drank anything since her untimely demise.

Celestia looked up from her salad and gave Twilight a patient smile, using the slight distraction to teleport some of the bitter tasting green leaves from her own plate into the sun. "Its okay, Twilight. Most undead don't consume food... or at least pony food."

Twilight sighed, poking her dinned with a hoof. "Then what am I supposed to eat? I have to consume something to stay alive... or... not-alive? Not-dead? Whatever. Continuing without eating anything would break the laws of arcanodynamics."

Celestia nodded and took a sip from her glass of wine. "Well, yes. Everypony needs to eat something. Even changelings require emotional energy to sustain themselves. What you need, though, is trickier. It depends on what kind of undead you are. For example, wraiths consume thermal energy, and revenants mostly live off of hatred. Though, I believe zombies ate a mostly grain diet."

Twilight blinked. "Grains? Not brains?"

Celestia shook her head. "No, that was a misspelling in a document long gone. Common misconception. They mostly consume barley, if memory serves."

The recently risen pony sighed. "This would be so much easier if there was a book I could read on it. Are you sure there aren't any left?"

Celestia shook her head. "No, not for nearly a millenium now. We were under constant attack from various undead creatures for centuries, so we did what every reasonable governing body does, and censored and destroyed every scrap of literature involving it."

Twilight's eye twitched at the mention of destroying countless books. "We'll come back to that topic another time. So there's no documents, no stories, no pony at all who can help me figure out what's going on?"

Celestia tilted her head thoughtfully. "None, no. I myself only know the basics, hunting down and eliminating the undead was more under my sister's jurisdiction."

Expression changing to a hopeful smile in an instance, Twilight gasped. "Of course, I'll ask Princess Luna then! I'll go ask her right away! Thank you so much, Princess!" With a surprising amount of speed for an unathletic bookworm, the little purple princess dashed out of the room.

Celestia's expression, on the other hoof, turned to one of panic. "No, wait! I have to warn her first! She doesn't kno... and she's gone." She let out another sigh, and poured another glass of wine before standing up to follow after her. "This isn't going to be pretty."

Princess Luna, Ruler of the Night and Bastion of Dreams, was unsurprisingly a heavy sleeper. She remained unconscious despite the loud, thundering banging on her chamber's door, and didn't stir as a dark silhouette slowly approached the side of her bed. Despite her near comatose level of unconsciousness, she was not, in fact, vulnerable. She was known as the warrior princess for a reason.

Her eyes snapped open in a split second as she felt an approaching sensation that she had not felt in over a thousand long, lonely years. Necromantic magic was easily detectable, once a pony knew what they were looking for, and the aura of a powerful undead being was unmistakably at her bedside, its limb moving towards her body at a frightening pace.

With a shout of righteous fury, she drew the massive steel battleaxe (that she of course kept under her pillow at all times) and lunged towards the nighttime invader, slashing its head off in a single chop. The sound of something wet hitting the floor was enough to let her know that her attack had struck true, and she let out a victorious laugh. "Hah, and Tia said We had gotten rusty! Now let Us see just what foul creature deigned to molest Our chambers in the middle of Our sacred night!"

A flick or her horn later, and her bedroom chambers were lit up brightly, and the entire grisly scene was thrown into the light. The red dripping from her battleaxe was clearly going to stain her carpets, but that was of no concern to her. That's what her handmaiden was for!

Hearing the door being thrown open, she looked up to see Celestia storm into the room. "Ah, Tia. Thou art just in time. Behold this mongrel of the darkness that I have disposed of!" She smiled up at her older sister, perfectly playing the part of a younger sister seeking praise.

Celestia just sighed and leant down, picking Twilight's head up off the floor. "You have just beheaded my student, Lulu."

Luna squinted, looking more closely at the lavender fur. "Aye. It appears We did. Sorry about that."

Her sister sighed once again and placed her face in her free hoof. "You know, this is why you can't keep a coltfriend. You need to stop mutilating things in the middle of the night."

Luna leaned in and looked at the head. "Mutilated? Nay, twas a clean cut. One chop."

Twilight's disembodied head glared back at her with a bitter expression. "I've seen better." It said in a sarcastic tone.

Face to Face

Celestia's private office was a surprisingly modest room. That wasn't to say it was small, any location designed for her had to be of substantial size, but it was rather rustic in its décor. A simple walnut stained desk topped with the requisite inbox and outbox, a well-used and comfortable office chair, its brown faux-leather cracked with use, and a pair of matching chairs across the desk for the few visitors she accepted in this personal space.

Celestia was (for once) not in her usual chair, but rather seated next to her sister in the guest chairs facing the desk. Placed a top the desk was not the usual plateau of unfinished paperwork, but rather a disembodied pony's head, and the head did not look very amused.

While Celestia was able to keep a straight face, her sister was struggling to contain her fit of giggles. She had spent the last 15 minutes listing off every 'head' related pun that came to her mind, much to the chagrin of the other two occupants of the room.

"Lulu, can we please begin now? Its really not a laughing matter." Celestia pleaded, placing her hoof on her sister's still mirth-shaking shoulders.

"Aye, tis true. We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves." The normally-stalwart defender of the night spoke, before breaking into another set of laughs.

Twilight just let out a long, tired sigh in response. She wasn't entirely sure how she was capable of sighing as her lungs were currently still in an unconnected body a good ten feet away, but sigh she did nonetheless.

"Alright, 'twas the last one, we swear. Now, how did thee manage to resurrect thyself?" Luna asked, lightly poking Twilight's forehead.

"You've got as good of an idea as me. Actually, better I'd imagine, considering your personal experience." The somewhat annoyed head replied. "First thing I remember is waking up in a coffin and pulling myself up through the dirt, which is not something I'd recommend trying. I've still got grave soil in my mane." Luna nodded and poked Twilight's head again. "Stop that." The living-impaired mare grumbled in annoyance, only for Luna to shrug her shoulders.

"We are testing thy flesh. Tis not rotting, so thee are no zombie or ghoul. Thee are still solid, so not a banshee, poltergeist, or any other spectral creature. There is also no smell of mildew that we can detect, so any kind of hag is unlikely. What is the last thing thee remember before thy untimely demise?" Luna spoke, poking Twilight's forehead again.

Twilight's eye twitched as she struggled to remain calm. "I was doing my daily inventory of every book in the castle. A new book arrived on the doorstep, so I tried to give it a read. Only the cover and first page were in Equish, but the book was filled with thaumatic matrices. After making sure the castle's usual wards were in place, I gave the first spell listed a test cast... and that's the last thing I remember."

Luna's face broke into a grin. "Truly? Well, that makes things easy then. You're a lich, Twilight!"

"I'm a what?" Twilight asked in confusion. Any information at all on the undead was almost impossible to find, but she had never heard of such a thing.

Celestia shook her head. "She can't be. Every lich we've ever fought has been skeletal with only bits of flesh stuck to them, apart from that one that was just a floating skull." She shuddered. "He had terrifying power."

Luna picked up Twilight's head and held it aloft, grinning wildly. "Aye, a normal lich is unable to keep their body pristine from the effects of death, and a demi-lich's mortal shell is burned away by their immense power, but thy student has defied all expectations once more! Thought only to be a myth, she had become a True Lich. A High Lich."

Twilight blinked down from between Luna's hooves. "Could somepony please explain to me what a lich is?"

Luna sighed and placed the head back on the desk. "A lich, a traditional one at least, is the result of one of the greatest and most forbidden kinds of necromantic magic. Honestly, we are surprised thee were able to perform such a spell on thy first attempt. The process of becoming a lich can be mostly summed up as a two-step process. First, the lich-to-be moves their soul, the very culmination of their magical and spiritual being, into a container of some sort. Called the 'Phylactery', this object becomes the permanent vessel for their soul."

Twilight blinked in confusion. "But I'm still here! I'm not in a container!"

Celestia gently put her hoof against her student's mouth. "Let her finish, Twilight."

Luna nodded at her sister and turned back to her decapitated victim. "The body is then remotely possessed by the spirit residing in the vessel, like an extremely complicated puppet or golem made out of flesh. Even the body's senses are linked to the soul's, allowing it to pilot the corpse as if it was still inside it."

Twilight frowned. "How is that useful? You're still just controlling your own body!"

Celestia stepped in. "Twilight, the main limits to a pony's magic is their intellect, energy, and passion. A lich has no physical body to tire, which can allow them to more than double the capabilities of their magic."

"Aye, and a True Lich is supposed to be one step even further beyond that. 'Twas a thing thought to exist only in the theories of the most insane necromancers. The idea is simple, perfectly and evenly envelop every cell of their corpse with their own arcana, preserving the body and converting the flesh to a higher state of matter, capable of channeling magic with no resistance. Any fool insane enough to try it would find the process nigh-impossible in practice. A single mistake with the concentration of mana around a single cell in thy body would cause an explosion of burning mana, chain-reacting and destroying both the vessel and spirit in a blaze of soulfire. 'Twas a dream of only madmares... until now."

Twilight looked down at corpse slumped in the corner. "So, I accidentally performed what could have ended in a thermoarcano blast capable of destroying half of Ponyville? That's... terrifying."

Luna nodded with a big smile. "Aye! But thou succeeded, and became the first necromancer in history to do so!"

Twilight bit her lip. "Well, at least I accomplished something amazing. So... when am I going to be destroyed?"

"Pardon?" Celestia asked in confusion.

"I performed an extreme act of dark magic! That breaks so many laws!"

Celestia nodded. "Yes, that's correct."

"So, I must be at least banished, but with the severity of my crimes, I should be executed!" Twilight shouted.

"Yes, 'twould be the normal thing to do." Luna replied with a smile.

"So when am I being destroyed?" She asked.

"Don't be silly, Twilight. You can't press legal action against a corpse. You were already absolved of all crimes the moment you died." The Diarch of the Day replied while sipping her tea.

"But you killed all the other liches and undead! Leaving me alive is nepotism!" Twilight cried out.

"Yes, yes it is." Celestia replied, lowering her teacup to reveal a huge shit-eating grin.

"Ah! We forgot to make any 'getting head' jokes! 'Tis a whole category of head humor we missed!" Luna cried out.

Twilight's head fell off the desk with a thud.

Author's Note

Enjoy the exposition? No? Too bad! You're the ones who wanted another chapter!

Sympathy for the Dead

Twilight pushed open the doors to her castle with a tired sigh and slowly made her way into the dimly lit kitchen. She was half expecting her friends to be waiting impatiently at the train station for her return, but it was 1am and a few of them had actual lives and jobs and stuff like that. The trip home had been more uncomfortable than usual; her neck had been stiff the entire time, not surprising considering the semi-accidental decapitation she has just suffered. Luckily, the other two princesses had managed to snap her head back into place with a noise and effort uncannily similar to snapping toy building blocks together.

Carefully flying up, she began to untie all the 'Twilight Kicked The Bucket' banners from her walls and ceiling. There were... a surprising amount of decorations prepared for her death. They were all in shockingly high quality too, clearly not a rushed job. Just how long had Pinkie been preparing for her death for? Probably better for her own emotional state not to ask.

At least somepony, or more likely, somedragon had done her dishes. As much of a slob as she could be at times, the one thing she would not stand for was dirty dishes lying around. So many research papers on the bacterial hazards that can bring into the household.

With another gentle sigh, she sat herself down at the table. She had never gone this long without reading before. In her defense, she was dead for most of the duration, but still! This was unacceptable.

Her kitchen table had been covered in flowers from the mourning ponies the day before, but they were in the way of her reading, so she shoved the entire pile of them into a large vase and placed it rather roughly on the windowsill. It was finally time to get back to work. Surprisingly, the spooky looking book that has apparently killed her was still sitting open on the kitchen table, as if nopony saw it, or at least, nopony felt brave enough to move it.

Twilight immediately plopped herself down and began studying the pages again, trying to make sense of the weird squiggles and un-equine writing that permeated most of the pages. An ignorant pony might have thought the fact that she was studying a book at 1am in the morning was due to her new afflicted form and the lack of sleep it required, but no, she was just like that. She considered it 'getting to bed at a good time' so long as she had fallen unconscious at the table before the sun came up, but now she didn't even have to worry about that!

Part of her brain was clearly starting to register her new state of being as a somewhat beneficial thing. Imagine all the time she could have saved throughout her life by never having to sleep or drink during her studying! All the books she could have read in that time! She still apparently needed to eat, though neither Luna or Celestia were aware of exactly what it was that she had to consume.

Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes quickly gave way to hours, yet Twilight did not stop her frenzied examination of the book. It had been a couple hours now, just past 3am, when 'something' finally startled her from her studying.

That 'something' having been a large scythe blade suddenly pierced through her chest.

She slowly turned around, (well, as far around as she could with her body pinned to the chair via stab wound,) and glanced backwards at what appeared to be a young foal. They were small, smaller than the crusaders, and covered head to hoof in a wispy black cloak. Despite their diminutive stature, they were gripping the scythe nearly triple their height with just their mouth.

Twilight blinked a few times. "Can... I help you?" She asked. How to be a Normal Functioning Member of Society didn't prepare her for this! Unless maybe the section on being mugged would be appropriate? No, that chapter specifically mentions knives and other short bladed weapons, not farming implements! Useless book!

The foal looked up with her in alarm, their hood falling off their head with the movement, revealing a young, white coated foal in a long black cloak. "Oh gosh." They said in a nervous voice. "It didn't work. Why didn't it work? It's never not worked!"

Twilight could only assume it was a young colt by the voice, though with children it was always so hard to tell. "Is something wrong?" The impaled mare asked patiently. She was used to dealing with foals, with the constant tutoring the CMC needed. Foals were easier to understand than most ponies, so they made surprisingly good company. Terrible conversationalists, though. Parents need to teach their children better if they don't even understand basic quantum-arcano theories.

The colt continued fretting. "Maybe if I try again?" He mumbled to himself, pulling the large scythe out and impaling it into a different part of Twilight's back. "Did it work this time?" He asked her.

Twilight blinked, looking down at the second puncture wound. Neither appeared to be bleeding, perhaps she was finally all coagulated. "Did what work?" She asked back at him.

"Darn!" He cursed, rubbing his eyes with his hooves. "Shoot! Crud!" He continued shouting out the worst swears most foals know. "I'm going to be in so much trouble." He whimpered, dropping the scythe to the floor with a heavy 'thunk' and sitting down, wrapping his forelegs around his knees and burying his face into his cloak.

Now, although the child had just stabbed her twice, clearly the existence of a crying colt was a much bigger deal that her large gaping wounds. Standing up from her seat, Twilight walked over to the little guy and say down beside him. "Are you okay?" She asked, silently thanking How to be a Normal Functioning Member of Society and apologizing to it. The book did, at least, have a chapter covering comforting crying ponies.

"You're dead." The colt whimpered.

"Yes, I am." Twilight replied helpfully.

"Then why didn't it work!" He shouted, staring up at her with watery eyes. Eyes, that she had just noticed, were lacking any form of iris or pupil. They were just bright white. Weird. Some sort of ocular disease, perhaps? "It's supposed to work when ponies are dead and aren't leaving their corpses! This is my job!"

"Your job? What's your job?" She asked, gently patting the colt on the back.

"I'm Death." He replied, before going back to crying.

Author's Note

Sorry, been busy. Abandoned my entire career path and went back to university for a new one. Have a new chapter, finally!

Grin Reaper

Twilight awkwardly sat at the table in silence, with the still sniffling colt seated across from her. She had finally managed to get him up off the ground, and to stop crying. He was currently wiping his eyes on his now-damp cloak, while slowly taking small sips from the glass of juice she had given him. "So..." She attempted to start, scratching the back of her head. "You're Death."

"Yeah..." The colt responded awkwardly. He clearly was embarrassed from crying in front of a stranger like that, but she wasn't going to bully him for it. "I'm Death. Aspect of Death, if you want to use my full name. I'm in charge of making sure souls go to where they're supposed to go when ponies die."

"Shouldn't you have come like... days ago? I died like, on Tuesday." She asked, attempting to sip from the glass of water in front of her, only for the fluid to pour back out the open wounds on her back, leaving water stains on the chair behind her. Oh well, Spike could mop that up later when he woke up.

"I'm supposed to wait at least two days for the soul to pass on on its own. If it doesn't, I'm supposed to come down and take it There myself." He mumbled, taking another sip of his juice.

"There?" She inquired. "Where?"

"There." He replied.

"There." She parroted incredulously.

"You know... There. There. The place where souls go when people die. There!" He said, tilting his head to the side like an adorable puppy. "There."

"Oh! There!" Twilight nodded, while silently taking notes on a piece of paper under the table. At last, proof of an afterlife! She would write a paper on this and get so many research grants! Maybe she could go to There. And back again!

"That's my job... or at least, that's supposed to be my job. I'm still new, so I'm on probation for three centuries." The colt mumbled nervously. "I've only been doing this for a couple hundred years, I started back when the old Death finally retired. I can't believe I messed up during my probationary period. I'm so getting fired for this..." The colt was beginning to sound more and more like a nervous part-time new hire at Hayburger rather than the embodiment of a philosophical concept.

Twilight gently patted his head. "It's alright, it's not your fault. I did die, but I got better. I'm an undead now. A lich."

The colt scrunched his nose. "Undead? Lich?" He mumbled, flipping open a small binder that he pulled out from underneath his cloak. Squinting his eyes as he tried to read the words, he tilted his head back and forth. "Oh. That makes sense. Your soul isn't in your body right now. It's in your... uh... fill... feel.... filli..."

"Phylactery?" Twilight offered.

"Yeah." He said, nodding his head adorably. "Which means this is outside my job description. Which means I might not be fired!"

Twilight gave the young colt an encouraging smile. "Well there you go. That's good news, right?"

The colt grinned and took a big celebratory swig of his juice. "Yeah! If I messed up like that in my first three centuries, my big brother and sister would tease me forever! They said I was too young and immature for this job, but that's wrong!"

Twilight chose not to remind him of the fact that he had just cried a tantrum on the floor of his client. "Yeah! You did a good job!" She said, ruffling his mane. "So you have siblings?"

He nodded. "Yeah, big brother Pain, and big sister Disease. They're twins. They pick on me a lot." Twilight's eye twitched.

"I'm guessing they are also... aspects, I think you called yourself?" She inquired, leaning in slightly. "How many of you are there?"

"Oh, I don't know. A whole bunch. We only have a family get together once every decade or so. Last time it happened, uncle Discord spiked the punch, so I didn't get to drink anything but water."

Twilight's eye twitching intensified. "Excuse me? 'Uncle' Discord?"

Death perked up. "Yeah! You know him?"

"We're acquainted. He didn't mention he had family." She muttered with an uneasy smile, mentally categorizing all the things she would interrogate that draconequus about later.

"Huh. Weird." The foal said with a shrug, finishing off his cup. "This is really good juice. Where did you say you got it?"

"Sweet Apple Acres. My friend's family owns it." Twilight offered. How to be a Normal Functioning Member of Society always said you should support your friends occupation when you get a chance. "Do you want another cup?"

"Yes please!"

Twilight handed the colt a paper bag of sandwiches and a SAA branded juicebox and waved him off as he walked out of her castle. He turned back and smiled, calling out to her as he waved back. "Thanks, Ms. Sparkle! You're the best!"

"No problem!" She called back. "Walk home safely!"

"I will!" He shouted, taking a sip from his juice box.

Moments later, a massive fiery hole opened up underneath him. Pained, agonized screams called out around him as he sank down into the ground, leaving a perfect circle of charred grass where he had just been standing. Luckily, it was on some other pony's lawn, so she didn't have to deal with the landscaping required to clean that up. Or rather, Spike didn't have to deal with it.

Speaking of which, Spike had just began walking down the stairs as the colt disappeared, rubbed his eyes as he walked into the kitchen. "Who was that you were talking to this early in the morning?" He mumbled, noticing the large water stain beside Twilight's chair and walking off to get a mop. "It didn't sound like anypony in town I know."

"Oh, that was Death." Twilight replied, walking back into the castle with a smile as she sat herself down and went back to attempting to decipher the book.

The sound of a mop dropping to the floor and a drake's confused shout rang through Ponyville early that morning.

Author's Note

OwO wuts dis?
*Notices your second chapter in a week*

Nothing is Guaranteed in Life...

Spike sipped his coffee slowly as he sat across from Twilight, glancing at her every now and then. He was used to her looking frazzled, but today she seemed even more out-of-sorts than usual. Possibly a 7.3/10 on the Twilight Freakout Scale. As happy as he would be to not get involved (read: not have more problems to clean up) he couldn't just leave his undead guardian sitting there. "What's got you so wound up, Twilight?" He asked, crossing his fingers that whatever she said would not be his problem.

"I missed the tax submission deadline!" She shouted back, scrambling to read through a table of crunched up receipts, unsorted reports, and crumpled tax forms. "With my death, and funeral, and everything... it completely slipped my mind! This is bad Spike. Really bad."

Spike blinked a few times. "So? Just don't pay them."

Twilight glared at him. "I can't do that! It doesn't matter if I'm a princess, I'll still go to Tartarus! Or the moon! Or kindergarten! The law clearly states that all creature of adult age living in Equestria have to pay their yearly taxes based on income and expenses!"

Spike took a long sip from his coffee. "Yeah, exactly. You don't have to pay them."

Twilight glanced at him in confusion... before a wide grin began to grow on her face.

Penny Pincher hammered on the castle doors, huffing to herself. She did not have time to deal with this, even if this was her job. She had better things to deal with than some annoying new princess that thought herself too good for taxes. Twilight owned property, and she made an income, and that meant she had to cough up what was due.

As she waited to be let into the castle, she glanced at her reflection in the reflective walls of the building. The uniform she wore was of the utmost quality, which was expected, considering the PRS (Pony Revenue Service) was the best funded department of the Equestrian diarchy. As they should be, considering how lackadaisical most ponies were when it came to paying their taxes on time. It was like they expected the entire country to be run on just the magic of friendship, without realizing the mountains of bits it took to maintain it. And if a sizable cut off those bits went to the hard working folks at the PRS, why that was just the icing on the cake.

Eventually, the crystalline gate began to slowly swing inwards. Adjusting her tie, Penny Pincher strode into the castle as if she already owned the place. Effectively, she did. The amount of power the PRS had was incredible. The head of the department, Mr. Bean Counter himself, was arguably more powerful than even Celestia.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for her, was the upstart princess herself. Penny Pincher felt a strange twinge of worry overtake her as she approached the alicorn. Most ponies trembled slightly whenever an PRS agent was in the same room as them, it was ingrained in their very DNA... but this pony was leaning nonchalantly against a wall, a small smile on her face. Perhaps the greenhorn princess was too clueless to realize just who she was dealing with. "Good morning!" The annoyance called out to her.

"Yes, yes. Good morning, indeed. My name is Penny Pincher, I'm a member of the PRS, and I am here to inquire as to the status of this year's tax payment. Considering the large amount of territory taken up by your castle, as well as your yearly stipend, a sizable sum should have been paid a week ago, and yet we have not received a single bit."

Somehow, Twilight was still standing there with the same unworried smile. "I can proudly state that there is not a single bit left that I am due to pay this season."

Penny Pincher narrowed her eyes and a sneer grew on her face. "Do you understand the severity of your actions here, Ms. Sparkle? If you do not intend to pay, you risk a lot more than just your bits."

Twilight just shook her head. "I already told you, I'm not required to pay anything. Can I help you with anything else?"

Penny Pincher just let out a somewhat animalistic growl and trotted away. She'd have to bring the higher ups for this. And muscle. A lot of muscle.

Twilight was sipping tea when she heard the hard thumping at the door for the second time this week. Sighing, she walked over and manually opened the gate, glancing out at the tax collecting mare now surrounded by an entire platoon of guards. Standing beside the mare this time, was a lanky middle aged stallion in what was quite possibly the ugliest suit Twilight had ever seen.

Penny Pincher was looking unreasonably smug, but Twilight only faced her with a look of deadpan nonchalance. The stallion beside Penny cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Ms. Sparkle, my name is Bean Counter. I'm sure you are aware of the reason for our visit today. Are you prepared to submit the requisite taxes?" His voice was dull and dreary, reminding her of the sound of fresh gravel being poured on a road.

Twilight just huffed. "Honestly, at this point it might have been less effort to just pay the late fees. But no, I will not be paying any taxes today. I would like to request the use of Quickhorn's Verification Field." She replied, a small smile appearing on her face.

Everypony had the legal right to request to testify under the effects of Quickhorn's Verification Field when interrogated by a governmental body. The spell was originally invented by a stallion who was quite certain that his wife was having an affair. It would cause a projected field to glow green or red, depending on if the last statement spoken inside it was factual truth. Quickhorn unfortunately found out his wife was not, in fact, cheating on him, but still got the divorce he wanted when the field caused his own infidelity to come to light. Poor stallion was never able to walk again, once his wife was done with him.

Bean Counter blinked in surprise, before shrugging. He spoke to one of the unicorns in the platoon of guards, motioning for them to cast the spell. A moment later, a translucent bubble surrounded all of the ponies, pulsating with a gentle white light.

Twilight smiled, stepped forward, and spoke confidently and plainly. "I do not owe the PRS any bits." The field glowed a bright green in response. The are around her instantly grew silent enough that the sound of Spike scraping burn marks off a cast iron pan in the distant kitchen could be heard.

A moment later, Penny Pincher regrew her composure. "What?!" She shouted, stomping her hoof. "How? She hasn't paid a single bit in over a year! She must have cheated the spell!" The field glowed red in response to her accusation, further angering the irate tax collector.

Bean Counter only quirked an eyebrow, speaking in his monotone. "Ms. Sparkle. Why do you believe that you do not owe any bits?"

Twilight grinned in response, pulling out a legal tome larger than one of the guards. The full Equestrian tax code, in its entirety, written in double sided, single spaced, 8pt font. "According to section 3, paragraph 2 of the code, these laws apply to all creatures of adult age living in Equestria. I am not living in Equestria anymore, so you have no authority over me"

The stallion let out a sigh. This wouldn't be the first mare who thought claiming to live in another country could prevent her from paying taxes, and certainly wouldn't be the last. "Then where, pray tell, are you living Ms. Sparkle?"

"I'm not." She replied with a smirk.

"You're not what?"

"Living." She replied, before slamming the door on him.

Penny Pincher let out a noise halfway between a startled dog and a dying foal, making a move to kick the door down and chase after her, only to be stopped by Bean Counter. "Well, I guess that's that." He spoke with a bored tone, pulling the mare away with him as she screamed at the castle.

Author's Note

Haha, funny 9pm chapter posting.

Probably shouldn't have to put this disclaimer at the end, but don't be like Twilight. Pay your taxes. You're not an undead lich, and if you think you are, lay off the Benadryl.

And yes, this entire chapter was written for that one loophole pun at the end, which wasn't even funny.

Family Matters

“Hey Twilight?” Spike asked, poking his head through the door to her study.

“The answer is still no, Spike.” Replied the pony inside who was rapidly jotting down something with a quill onto parchment.

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask this time!” He called back with a huff, stomping into the room.

“I’m not turning you into a giant undead skeletal dragon.” She replied in monotone without even glancing up from her writing. The dragon raised a finger to interrupt, only for Twilight to continue. “I’m also not summoning you any undead minions to command.” Spike pouted and kicked a nearby stool, crossing his arms. After the moment of teenage angst, he let out a sigh and walked over to her desk, attempting to glance over her shoulder only to remember that he was about a meter shorter than her when she was sitting on a stool.

“What are you even writing?” He asked, pulling a nearby chair over and hoisting himself up onto it. She appeared to have four different copies of the exact same document. “Letters?”

“I realized I hadn’t let my parents or Shiny know I was quasi-alive again. I thought it would probably be a good idea to let them know sooner rather than later.” She mumbled as she tucked each letter into a carefully folded envelope. Handing the papers to Spike, he grumbled and sent them off to their recipients with a burst of emerald green dragon fire.

“Didn’t you come back from the dead like, more than a week ago?” He noted once the letters had already travelled off in separate trails of smoke, quirking his head to the side. “I think you probably should have let them know a bit sooner.”

“Considering that the first few days of my unlife consisted of me crashing my own wake, consoling my friends over my own death, and having my head forcibly removed with an axe, I’ve had a lot to deal with.” Twilight grumbled in response.

“Wait, somepony cut your head off?” He inquired, poking at Twilight’s neck with his claws until she slapped his hand away with her hoof.

“Luna is not a morning person. I got better though.”

“That’s so cool! If you lose your head again, can you show me what the inside of your neck looks like?” He inquired, perking up as his young teenage mind took hold.

“Maybe for your birthday.” Twilight replied, before pulling out a stack of paperwork and returning to her duties.

Twilight withered slightly underneath the stare of the stallion looking down at her. Normally she wouldn’t be particularly worried about facing up against any pony, even if they were a former member of law enforcement. She had enough raw thaumic power, and fine enough control, to rearrange the very neurons in a pony’s brain and send them straight into a catatonic state. Unfortunately, the stallion she was facing off with wasn’t just any pony.

“Twily. Really.” Her brother sighed, rubbing his temples as if to relieve the ever-growing migraine pounding through his skull.

“Look, I already told you this whole thing was an accident! I didn’t mean to do this to myself.” She grumbled back at him, before shrinking at his deadpan glare.

“As worried as I am about the whole ‘not-actually-dead’ thing, that’s not why I’m upset. You rose from the dead over a week ago, and you never thought to let your family know that you had come back until today? I’m hurt.”

“Wait, didn’t you forget to tell me that you were marrying Cadence for over a year, and only let me know a few days before the wedding?” Twilight shot back, slamming her hooves on the table.

Cadence suppressed a laugh by daintily clearing her throat. “She’s got a point, Shiny.”

“N-no! No she doesn’t. This is different. I just forgot to tell her, I was under a lot of pressure with the wedding and the invasion and everything!” He argued back, avoiding eye contact with either mare.

“I was under pressure too. About six feet of it.” Twilight ‘Snarkle’ snarked back. “And it only took me a week to send you a message despite having just died. Much less than the year it took you.”

“Yeah? Well I… uh… Still! You’re not getting off the hook that easily!” He stammered, trying to regain control of the situation.

Cadence suppressed another laugh before giving Twilight a wide smile. “He’s lying. That’s not why he’s upset.”

Twilight only blinked in response before glancing over at Shining Armor. For some reason, his entire face had gone pale white, which was impressive considering his already ivory coat. “H-hey now Cady. Let’s not get off topic here. She’s the one in trouble, so let’s focus on her. My motives have nothing to do with-”

Cadence’s smile widened into a smirk. “He’s actually just jealous. He’s been reading this foal’s book series-“

“Young adult series! Not foals! It was written for young adults!” He shot back, his cheeks beginning to turn pink from embarrassment.

“As I said, foal’s book series. It has this villain he really likes who’s this necromancer, and he’s been working on his costume-“

“Cosplay!”

“-on his cosplay for weeks now. And you just went and became an actual undead. He was fuming the entire train ride here. Constantly complaining about how unfair it was.” She spoke with a wide grin, before breaking into guffaws.

“Oh really?” Twilight asked, narrowing her eyes at her brother. “So this whole lecture you’ve been giving me is because you’re jealous?”

“Uh… well…” He stammered in response, looking at his wife out of desperation. She refused to meet his eye and was whistling nonchalantly while staring out the window.

“Shiny!” Twilight growled, stomping the ground.

“Okay, but Edgeblood von Deathscythe is a really cool character with a deep and interesting backstory!” Shining Armor yelled back before stomping out of the room.

Cadence fell off her stool laughing as Twilight leapt down from her seat to chase after him.

Author's Note

Happy Valentine’s day. I’m going to go eat a bunch of fresh baked cookies and fall into a sugar coma.

Bite to Eat

Twilight cringed whenever she heard the noise she had been fearing for nearly a week now: Her stomach grumbling. She knew eventually she would have to eat… whatever it was liches ate. She was just hoping she would have more time to figure out what that thing was. She was unable to consume anything she tried, and she tried nearly everything. Neither grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, or eggs could settle her slowly aggravating stomach, or slow the weakening she could feel in her body. She even managed to try a bit of meat and fish that Fluttershy kept saved for some of her more predatory pets, only to the same inedible result.

She could tell her time was running short, every day her appearance grew more and more corpse like as her body began to waste away. Splotches of fur were beginning to fall out, showing her skin that had begun to dry and decay. The smell of her own rotting flesh was barely held at bay by constant showers and practically bathing herself in perfume she had borrowed from Rarity. She needed to find out what a lich consumed, and quickly, or they would have to hold a second funeral pretty soon, and Pinkie’s finances likely wouldn’t survive two best-friend’s death related celebrations in a month.

Gritting her teeth, she looked out the window at the moonlight dusted village that had been her home for the past few years. The town was silent at night, yet had a serene beauty to it that called to her. Perhaps a walk in the shadows would set her mind at ease enough for her to puzzle out a solution.

Stepping quietly as to not disturb the sleeping lizard in her house, she tiptoed out the door and into the gravel-paved road that lead to the main street (ironically, named Mane Street). The sound of the gentle stream running through town and the odd noises of insects, nightfowl, nightfowls eating insects, and giant everfree insects that ate nightfowl, were the only sounds audible to her ears.

As she walked along the road she took a deep breath, allowing the crisp night air to fill her non-functional lungs, only to stop in her tracks. She tasted something on the wind. Something good.

She began to slowly walk towards the strange flavour, before breaking into a sprint as the scent and taste grew stronger and stronger. It was a rich and hearty flavour like that of a warm soup on a cold winter’s day, though she couldn’t pick apart any of the ingredients that seemed to make up the aroma.

As she grew closer she realized she was approaching Fluttershy’s cottage, and by this point there was no turning back. Whatever this delicious smelling thing was, she had to eat it. She was starving, she wanted it, she needed it.

Noticing that the cottage lights were still on, she rapidly knocked on the cottage door, wiping some of the drool from her mouth as she impatiently waited for the shy pegasus to let her in.

“Twilight? What are you doing here?” Fluttershy murmured as she opened the door a crack. Her voice was shaky… well, shakier than usual. The fur on her face was stained and matted with tears, and her eyes were red and puffy like she had just been crying. Wiping her eyes, the pegasus glanced at Twilight’s rather… frenzied expression. “It’s… really not a good time for a social visit.”

“I know, Fluttershy, but I really need to come inside. I’m starving and something smells absolutely delicious!” The librarian lich said in response, pushing the befuddled mare aside as she made her way into the cottage. “Were you having a late night dinner or something?”

Fluttershy blinked in confusion. Delicious? The entire cottage smelled like medicine and chemicals. How on Equus was that suppose to be ‘Delicious’? “Um… no. I was just… taking care of a friend. He’s really sick and doesn’t have much longer.”

Twilight was not paying any attention, following her nose and mouth towards the tantalizing scent. Her olfactory senses quickly lead her to a miniature hospital bed, like something out of a doll house. Laying in the tiny mattress was an even tinier squirrel hooked up to what was likely the worlds smallest IV bag. The squirrel’s eyes were barely open, and one didn’t need to be a vet to see how sick the poor critter was.

Fluttershy walked over and sat back down next to the squirrel. “Um… this is Stu. He’s… not going to be alive much longer. I was just keeping him company… in his final moments.”

Twilight, still, was not paying any attention. She was only staring down at the little creature. The squirrel clearly wouldn’t be edible for her… but why did it smell so good? Her thoughts were only broken by the sound of the tiny AKG (arcanocardiogram) attached to the squirrel. It had been beeping consistently for the past minute or so, but the rate was beginning to slow down. Each beep and pulse on the screen was slower than the last as the squirrel’s breaths grew more and more shallow, until finally… it stopped, letting out a low, long beep like a deflating balloon. Fluttershy stifled a sob as the squirrel slumped in its tiny bed, and all went quiet.

Twilight stared in awe as moments later, a glowing blue silhouette began to envelope the squirrel. It continued to form and grow brighter as the translucent squirrel-shaped figure rose up out of the departed rodent and began to float in the air. She had never seen anything like it before, and as Fluttershy was busy crying into her hooves, she assumed she was the only one who could see it. It might have been the most beautiful thing Twilight had ever seen.

So naturally, she leaned forward and took a huge bite out of it.

Instantly, her senses went wild. Energy filled every part of her body; the bottoms of her hooves to the tip of her horn felt stronger and healthier than ever before, even compared to when she was alive. She had never felt this good before, this strong, this powerful, this right. The feeling was intoxicating.

That was until she heard a small voice from the doorway behind her, coming from a young colt in a black cloak.

“Um… Miss Sparkle?”

Author's Note

Slightly less comedy and jokes, this is the ~~filling~~ filler episode I guess?

For those wondering, the squirrel died of stage 4 halitosis.

Soul Bound

It took buying the young(?) colt the super extra-large sundae deluxe supreme (premium edition) at Sugarcube Corner before he stopped panicking. Luckily, Pinkie seemed to have noticed how grave the situation was, pun intended, and had cleared out the bakery of all its usual customers. Yes, they had 'usual customers' at 4am in the morning.

"So..." Death spoke, taking another bite from the scoop of Chocoholic Crunch that sat halfway up the 27-flavor sundae in his bowl. "You eat souls. And... you still have a little on your mouth, right there."

Twilight blushed, wiping off a tiny bit of ectoplasm stuck to her mouth. "That appears to be the case." She replied, examining her rejuvenated hooves. "Is that going to be a problem, the whole soul eating? I was mostly running on instincts at that point, hadn't had a bite to eat in weeks."

Death shrugged, now biting into a scoop of Honey'd Almond Haze. "I honestly don't know. This goes so far above my paygrade, that I have no clue if you're in trouble, if I'm in trouble, or what. I'm going to have to call it in to figure out exactly how bad this is."

Twilight nodded slowly. "Call in to who? Is there like... some bigger death? Or a council of deaths? I have no idea how the structure of your job looks like."

He shook his head in response. "No, I'm practically self-managed. Only person I answer to at my job is Reality themselves, and they don't really bother with the day-to-day stuff... though they can be grumpy if you catch them at a bad time, so I probably won't bring this up with them. Nah, I'll probably just bug Disease until she tells me what I should do. She's got a pretty good head on her shoulders, unlike Pain. He's a total slacker."

Twilight raised her eyebrows slightly. It seemed the natural aspects of the world also had a sibling hierarchy. "This goes way above your paygrade, but there is no one above your paygrade who can help? Why does your job feel more and more mundane and tedius the more I hear about it?" Twilight asked with a sigh.

"Even the Aspects of the world can't defeat bureaucracy." Replied the small colt, looking around for any more White Chocolate Whiteout in his bowl.

Twilight gently lifted a napkin down and wiped some of the ice cream off his face. "Okay, but... what were you doing there at Fluttershy's anyway? I thought you didn't show up right when creatures die, only if their souls remain floating around for too long. Stu died while I was there, so his soul couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes when you showed up."

The colt blinks in slight confusion, tilting his head to the side. "Stu...? Oh! You mean the squirrel. No, I wasn't there for him. I pop into places where lots of animals die quite frequently, it's one of the big things my job involves."

"That's... really kind of dark. And not how I want to think about one of my best friend's cottages." The lich remarked. "But why animals specifically? I'd think you'd have more problems with ponies refusing to pass on.

"For some reason, pets have a habit of not realizing they're dead, and hanging around their owners for far longer than they should. It's really kind of sad, actually." He replied with a distant expression.

Twilight just blinks at him a few times. "Yeah, that is depressing. Also, isn't there like, several movies about that exact plot?"

The colt shrugs again. "Sometimes life imitates art." He said around a massive mouthful of Pistachio Pizazz.

Once the colt had finished licking the bowl of the last trace of Cinnamon Sin, she walked him out of the store. "So, just to double check, you're not upset with me? Isn't taking souls to their resting place... sort of your job?"

Death blinked at her, before laughing. "Nah, as far as I'm concerned, you're good. My job is just to make sure souls don't hang around in the living realm. Whether they pass on or not isn't in my job description. That's why I have to ask someone else to figure out if there is some other problem. I'm not really well versed on whole soul-cycle thing."

Twilight just shrugged and nodded. "I guess that makes sense? So... are you going to head off now? I can walk you to... uh... wherever you need to go before you can do that whole fiery-portal thing."

"Uh, I'm not sure. I can go back There any time by going to a nearby bend in the barrier between realms... but I didn't really have any other assignments for today, so I have the rest of the day off. I don't really know what I should do." He idly kicked a pebble down the road as he walked beside her. "Do you mind if I just follow you around?"

She gave him a gentle smile. "That's fine by me. I'm sure we can find something to-"

"Twilight!" Her comforting words were interrupted by an excruciatingly familiar country twang.

"Applejack?" She questioned, seeing the pony running up to her in the dark.

"Twilight, Granny just broke her hip bad and I need to take her to Canterlot quick. I'd ask Mac, but he's out in Appleloosa. Can you please take care of the crusaders? They're having a sleepover in the barn." The farm pony practically begged her, her entire body leaning away as if to make a mad dash for the train station at any moment.

Twilight blinked a few times in response. "Um... sure?"

Applejack sprinted off with a shouted "Thanks!", not even turning around to look at Twilight as she made a rush for the train station.

The lich just sighed as she watched the farmer sprint away, shaking her head. "Well, if you're not planning to head back any time soon, want to come with? You can hang out with some ponies you're own age... er... well... you know what I mean."

Death scrunches his nose. "Are they girls?" Twilight nods in response. "Ew. Cooties."

Author's Note

Decided to stop writing Applejack phonetically, because that was awful, even to my bad tastes.

Also I think this story was technically supposed to be a comedy? Whoops.

Eternal Slumber… Party

“Is too!” Sweetie Belle shouted, poking Scootaloo in the snout.

“Is not!” The orange filly replied, like a very mature pony would. This argument had being going on for nearly half an hour now, and had the house beside them not been empty, they would have had an irate older sister and brother slamming on the door and yelling them to go the buck to sleep.

“Can you y’all both be quiet!” A third filly, Applebloom, complained towards the two of them, causing the arguing girls to grumpily cross their forelegs and sit down on the ground. “When I said we should talk about colts, I did not want to start an argument!”

“But her tastes are bad!” Scootaloo called back, causing Sweetie Belle’s fur to stand on end like a cat. She even hissed like one too!

“Well I’m sorry that your interests only extend as far as colts that shop at Warm Subject!” The small unicorn shouted back.

“At least the colts I like have roughness and mystery to them! You just want a crybaby!” The petite pegasus fired in response.

Applebloom just let out an exasperated groan. Everypony said that at slumber parties, they were supposed to talk about colts, but nopony warned her it would ignite such a stupid argument.

“They’re not crybabies!” Sweetie Belle whined, stomping her little hoof. “Just because a colt is kind and actually shows emotions, doesn’t make them a wimp!”

“Nice colts finish last!” Scootaloo shouted back, causing the room to descend into silence. The two fillies remained silently huffing at each other for a good few minutes, staring at one another with livid gazes before they both simultaneously turned to Applebloom.

“Uh… girls?” The small farmpony asked nervously, eying the door.

“You haven’t told us what kind of colts you like yet.” Sweetie Belle replied in a low voice.

“Yeah, c’mon! Don’t hold out on us!” Scootaloo growled.

“Uh… well…” She swallowed her nerves down and went for a diplomatic response. “I think we’re still a bit too young to think of colts like this… But… Sis always told me I should get a hardworking colt with a steady job.”

Sweetie Belle blinked. “That’s… it? That’s not a romantic interest! That’s a plan for financial stability in our failing economy!”

Scootaloo blinked and placed her hoof on her chin. “Actually… my aunts always said being able to afford a house is a fantasy for my generation… so why not a romantic one! You know what, that’s a good idea, Bloom.”

“Thanks! I think I’d want to go for a colt who’s studying to become an accountant or a mortician. Always jobs for those. Y’know, death and taxes. Either that or a colt who knows his way around farm equipment.”

Sweetie Belle only frowned in response. “You two are depressing.”

“So, who are we going to play with?” The young colt asked as he trotted beside Twilight, taking in the sights of the slowly waking country town.

“A group of fillies, little sisters to some of my best friends. They’re a pretty hyper trio, always shouting and running and trying to earn their cutie marks. They even made a club about it, calling themselves ‘Crusaders’.”

The embodiment of death gasped and clapped his hooves together. “You don’t mean the Cutie Mark Crusaders, do you?”

Twilight blinked in confusion and felt a trickle of cold sweat run down her forehead. This couldn’t be good. “You… know about them?”

The aspect gave a childlike laugh and nodded. “Of course! We’ve got a running bet on how long it’ll be until one of their accidents takes a life! The smart money is on five years, at least that’s what big sis says.”

The princess only frowned in response as she made a mental note to hire a security detail for the young girls. They were possibly more of a danger to themselves and society than even she realized. After a few more minutes of walking, they turned onto the farm property proper, they early morning sun casting the grass and endless hills of trees a honey-gold hue. “Now, the girls will still be asleep, but I’m going to take a quick peek to make sure they’re okay. You can play with them once they wake up. I’ll make you all breakfast then.”

Death pouted adorably. “Fine.” He grumbled. “But they better wake up pretty soon!”

Twilight just smiled and rolled her eyes, pushing open the door to the barn.

“There’s not really any point in us arguing about this.” Applebloom said with a slight yawn. “This town is almost all mares. The chance of a single colt our age suddenly showing up is next to impossible.”

“Yeah…” Sweetie said with a grumble. “I should probably see if Button wants to get back together again.”

“How many times have you guys broken up now?” Scootaloo inquired, tilting her head to the side.

“This week, or in total?” Sweetie asked.

Suddenly, the door to the barn slowly creaked open, and the girls squinted in the sudden bright amber light that flooded the previously candle-lit barn. As they stared into the blinding glow, their eyes matched with Twilight’s own as she glanced down at the girls and gave them a reproachful glare. “I’m pretty sure you girls were supposed to be asleep by midnight.”

The fillies glanced around for an excuse while Sweetie Belle gave her biggest, most innocent smile. “Oh, we were! But, we woke up when Granny hurt her hip, and we couldn’t get back to sleep after! We were just so worried about her!” She lied perfectly.

“Yeah, it was super scary and stuff!” Scootaloo shouted out in false agreement.

“We were up since then talking about how worried we were, and making plans to go visit her!” Sweetie completed the fib.

As their eyes finally adjusted to the glaring morning sun, their gazes all locked on a small figure standing next to Twilight’s tall form. It appeared to be a small earthpony colt with bright white fur, pitch black hair-ruffled adorably, and for some reason, swaddled in a ragged black cloak with a billowing hood coiled around his withers. The massive scythe leaning against his side only added to the confusing picture.

“Dibs!” Scootaloo shouted out before the other girls could react.

“Aw, horseapples.” Applebloom cursed.

Author's Note

I have finals coming up in a week, and should be studying. So here’s a chapter instead.

A Talk Overdue

Twilight let out a long exhale as she sat herself down at her dining room table. Despite no longer requiring sleep, she was feeling exhausted beyond belief. As much as she liked foals, taking care of three (or maybe four?) of them for that many hours in a row took an extreme amount of energy; Even fighting Tirek seemed easier at times.

It was immediately apparent that Applebloom and Scootaloo had a crush on the poor colt at first sight. The fillies were of course amazed when he was introduced as Death, but after he began to shyly greet them, something piqued Sweetie Belle's infatuation as well.

Twilight had to admit, watching Death being absolutely clueless towards the three fillies' crushes was adorable. At times like those, when he wasn't actively trying to guide souls to There, she could even convince herself he was another innocent colt. He did, of course, eventually catch on to the girls' intentions, and had to let them off with a gentle 'I don't date clients' speech. Unfortunately, that seemed to have only made the fillies fancy him more, leading to what appeared to be a contest between the three of them. They reasoned that once they were dead, he'd be fair game, so they seemed to intend to wait for him for their entire lives. Twilight was fairly certain they'd give up in a week.

Pushing thoughts of schoolfilly crushes aside, she opened the strange leather-bound book back up and went back to work... not that she had really accomplished anything in deciphering it since she had first cast the spell. There were no other runic matrices visible in the book, and the rest of the text was still nothing but 'gobbledygook', as Pinkie would put it. Twilight wasn't sure where the baker had gotten that term from, but it seemed appropriate.

It wasn't even just that the words were too archaic or grammar too esoteric, the letters themselves didn't make sense. While not fluent with every language, Twilight was pretty confident in recognizing the scripts of the different languages across Equus. The strange loops and rigid angles of the bizarre symbols looked like nothing she had seen before. She even tried comparing it to ancient Abyssinian, to no avail. Trying to translate such a language with no start point was nigh impossible.

Another scrunched up bit of parchment hit the wastepaper basket as she started once more, trying to rethink the problem and approach from another angle, despite the doubt and futility of the situation constantly nagging the back of her mind.

At some point, Spike came by with her usual cup of tea, placing it on the table. She didn't have it in her to remind him she could no longer drink, so she just thanked him and continued her Sisyphean task.

"Maybe it's some sort of cipher mechanism?" She mumbled to herself. "But it that's the case, it'll take years to figure out what language it's a cipher for. Maybe I could figure it out by averaging word length, and comparing it to the averages for other languages?"

"Brilliant." Came a sarcastic voice from beside her, startling her out of her concentration. Her vision was quickly filled by the sight of a long-necked creature with bright yellow eyes and even brighter red pupils. "Taking inspiration from puzzles on the back of cereal boxes now, are we?"

"Discord." Twilight hissed in response, not needing to say anything other than his name to make her annoyance abundantly clear.

"Oh good, you remembered my name! After all the time you spent with my nephew, I was afraid you'd forgotten about me. I was so terribly alone, you know." He purred in response, swirling his serpentine body around her chair legs. "Though, I guess I can't blame you for being upset. I forgot to come to your 'Welcome to Immortality' party after all. I didn't even get you a gift! How could I be so thoughtless towards my good friend?"

Twilight sighed and looked away from him, going back to her work to try and tune him out.

"Oh come now, Twilight. Don't you know it's rude to ignore company? I'm pretty sure that's quite 'unfriendly' of you, when I came all this way just to offer my help." He said, somehow phasing his head through her notes, blocking her vision.

"Go away, Discord. I'm busy."

"Ah yes, busy, busy. Busy trying to fill your trash can with paper balls, more like. I didn't know you were practicing for the Ponyville basketball league." With a snap of his fingers, her trashcan quickly levitated up near the ceiling. Grabbing her current notes, he rolled them into a ball and swooshed them through the basket, a very compressed and digital sounding fanfare accompanying the motion. A chorus of tiny Discords on her desk in even tinier little cheerleading outfits waved their pom-poms and did a routine. Twilight wasn't amused. "Oh come on, don't give me that look. You and I both know the latest straw you were blindly grasping for was just as anemic as all the others. But don't worry, your best friend Discord is here to help!"

Twilight continued to give him an annoyed glare for a few more moments before finally letting out a sigh and rubbing her temples with her hooves. "Okay, Discord. Fine." She pushed her chair away from the table and turned to look at the chimeric being. "What did you need to tell me?

Discord crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "How friendly of you. Do you know how rarely I actually try to be helpful to people? This is extremely out of character for me. I'll get so much flak for this."

The princess just made a 'get on with it' motion with her hoof while continuing to stare at him.

"Ugh, fine. Fine. I won't even be cryptic with it. I'll just tell it to you straight, though I'm amazed you yourself haven't noticed it. Its been what, a month since you turned? And you still haven't realized it? I assume it's your brain hiding the truth from you. Protecting itself from trauma, you'd probably say, if you had some fancy-smancy degree. It's even crazier considering you're the Element of Magic and everything."

Twilight blinked in slight confusion. "And what, pray tell, haven't I notice?"

Discord leaned in and spoke in a quiet, surprisingly concerned tone. "Twilight, when was the last time you actually used your magic? Because I'm fairly certain you haven't used even a single spell in over a month."

Only once Twilight had finished hyperventilating into a bag helpfully supplied by Spike was she able to talk. Of course, her voice was rather scratchy from the terrified screams she had let out, which had drawn the drake's attention in the first place.

Discord, surprisingly enough, had sat beside her and patted her gently on the shoulder throughout her entire panic attack. Whether it was from Fluttershy's constant 'Being a Good Person' lessons, or because he actually was worried about her, it was still... surprisingly nice of him to do.

"Thanks..." She croaked out, taking the glass of water from Spike. She wasn't sure which one of them she was thanking, but the fact the Spike responded with a smile, and Discord didn't respond at all, implied that they all assumed she was referring to the dragon. "How... did I not notice? I can't even feel my magic..."

Discord grimaced slightly. "Like I said, your brain likely couldn't handle the concept of not having access to your magic. So it distracted you from that."

Twilight nodded slowly, drinking from the glass of water held shakily between both hooves. She didn't trust herself not to drop it if she only used one. "So... why can't I use my magic? I thought my whole body was magic now, shouldn't it be easier to cast spells?"

Discord huffed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling grew a small pair of eyes and stared back, so he looked away as to not be rude. "Yes, and no. Your body is filled with magic, and is capable of quite immense spellcraft now. But... you're dead. Your tissue is necrotic, your blood vessels are clogging, your signs are flat, your humours are unbalanced, whatever you want to say. The only reason your body isn't completely rotting away is the magic constantly rejuvenating your tissues. It can't, however, keep this working." He tapped her horn with one talon. "As I'm sure you know, the horn is the one body part we can't properly regrow or make prosthesis for, no matter how powerful the healing spell we cast. You probably have a better idea of why that is than me, not that anyone's fully sure of the reason yet. The point is, this little protrusion on your forehead is now about as useful as a doorknob when it comes to casting spells."

Twilight stared at the table for a while. "So... I can't use magic anymore? I'll never cast spells again?

Discord grumbles and crossed his arms. "Well, it's not impossible. Most species are capable of channeling magic of some kind without horns. Zebras can imbue plants with arcane energies for use in witchcraft, merponies can create enchantments using their voice, even changelings can do their little transformation trick without using their horns. You just have to use the magic your biology is designed to use."

Twilight grimaced. "But I'm an Alicorn, so I guess I still have Pegasus and Earth Pony magic. Great. That's not really casting spells though, Discord."

The deity just gave her a wink. "You're not just an Alicorn anymore though, are you?"

Author's Note

Ha ha, finish exam, new term, brain hurt. Have long(er) chapter.

Figuring it Out

Twilight grimaced around the taste of chalk in her mouth as she glanced once more over the large circle, squinting her gaze at each little squiggle and marking of the countless runes dotting the outside. She didn't have a lot of practice with Furthark Runes, having previously considered them little more than an ancient and obsolete writing system. She wasn't really sure how these sharp-edged squiggles were supposed to do anything, but her rather annoying 'assistant' insisted that they were an important part of the process. "How about now?" The lich-in-training grumbled, looking up to the lazing draconequus in the hammock nearby.

Discord yawns and stretching, pulling off his thick black sunglasses and putting down his magazine to glance at her work. "Eh... your Othala is still a bit lopsided... but I suppose it's good enough. Now you just have to wiggle your little hooves and say the funky words and shazam! Ritual complete."

"And tell me again..." Twilight drawled, spitting the piece of chalk out of her mouth and swigging some water to try and get the taste out. "...why we're trying to summon someone's spirit?"

Discord shrugged in response and cricked his neck. "Well, I can't be here to babysit you the entire time, and you don't have enough knowledge or control of your powers to read through that little book of yours on your own. We need to get you an actual necromancer as a teacher, but all of them are a tiny bit dead. Luckily, this ritual is pretty easy to perform, you don't even have to be a necromancer or lich to pull it off! It only requires that you yourself had been the person to kill the pony you're trying to speak to, and that you're not afraid to get your hooves dirty. Luckily, you meet both those requirements!"

Twilight grimaced. "I didn't kill him! I just... sort of intentionally caused his destruction. That's not the same thing!"

"It kinda is." Discord replied, polishing his fingernails with sandpaper. "But your crumbling sense of morality aside, you should be all good to start. I do have tea with Fluttershy in an hour, so if we could hurry this up that would be appreciated."

The lich only huffed in response and turned back to the circle, poking it gentle with her hoof. "So how do I... uh... make it go?"

Discord snapped his fingers and a very surprised and upset chicken appeared before Twilght, along with a knife.

Death groaned as he sat at his desk filling out more paperwork. Honestly, actually going up and dealing with the souls of dead creatures was the easy part of the job. Why he had to fill out forms in triplicate for every wayward soul he guided was anyone's guess. He didn't even know who was supposed to read them once they were filled!

Grumbling as he finished signing off on the death of some donkey who kept insisting that he was alive and had just taken a long nap, he smiled down at the almost completely processed inbox. He was almost done for today, and could finally rest. Maybe he'd even pay a visit to Miss Twilight! She always had the best snacks, and was always so nice to him. Maybe he should introduce her to his sibling some day. Pain and Sickness would probably like her a lot!

A sudden blinding flash of purple flame interrupted his daydreaming, the colt shielding his eyes with his hoof as a piece of paper exploded into existence in front of him before slowly drifting back and forth through the air, coming to rest on his desk atop all his other paperwork. Most of his documents had always been delivered by the soul of an unpaid intern that the previous death had conned into working for him for eternity, so the sight of the parchment appearing with such a spectacle of light and sound spooked the young colt.

Rubbing the spots from his eyes, he snatched the paper up and skimmed the parchment. "Imprisoned soul exchange application?" He asked with a grumble, pulling out his massive binder to cross-reference the document and see how to handle it. "Let's see... sponsor is... Twilight Sparkle..." He slumped and placed his hoof against his forehead. Why did that mare have to make his job so complicated. He didn't even bother to read the rest of the document, imprinting it with an ink-covered rubber 'approved' stamp and tossing it into his outbox.

Twilight grimaced at the blood covered chicken at her hooves in the center of the circle, tossing the knife away and wiping the foul fowl blood from her fetlocks. "That was disgusting." She grumbled, feeling queasy.

"Well, the sooner you can get a hold of your magic, the sooner you can do these rituals properly without all the blood and viscera. It's only a crutch to help those without the ability to cast, not really designed for long-term use. Unless you own a chicken farm, I assume." The chaotic being said in response, laying back down in his hammock.

"So... now we wait?" Twilight asked softly.

"Now we wait." Discord agreed. "It might take a few weeks, the amount of review and revision your request is going to have to go through is an absolute nightmare of bureaucracy. Gone are the times when you could just call up souls of ponies all willy-nilly using chicken blood. So we might as we-"

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the dead fowl bursting into a rush of black flame, somehow surprising even the lord of chaos himself. "Nevermind! Nepotism really works wonders." He commented, shielding his eyes from the glow of the cursed fire. Twilight still wasn't sure how something could glow black, but she was getting used to it now.

"Is this supposed to happen?" She called to Discord over the roar of the flames, gritting her teeth as alternating waves of boiling heat and freezing wind barraged her form. The chaotic god-like creature only shrugged unhelpfully in response, pulling his sunglasses back down over his eyes as he hid his face behind the fabric of the hammock.

After what felt simultaneously like hours of waiting, yet no time at all, the flames slowly began to die away, leaving the skeletal remains of the poor chicken laying in the middle of the singed circle. Then, with a faint rattling noise, the fallen bones began to rise to their feet, glowing red embers replacing where the eyes in his sockets should have been. The skeletonized poultry glanced around a few times, an ugly sneer on its boney face, before it finally opened its mouth to declare: "Who dares summon me, the lord of shadows and darkness, King Sombra!"

The deceased chicken then began to idly peck at the ground.

Author's Note

Finally finished my summer term, have a couple months off. Might post more, might not.

Interlude - Halloween Special

Fluttershy was feeling nervous about Nightmare Night. That wasn't anything particularly new, per say, as she had always spent most of the previous spooky seasons hiding under her bed until the terrifying foals went away. What was new was the bowl of candy by her door, and the 'less-than-spooky' costume she was wearing.

"Stop fiddling, my dear. You look wonderful." Came the purring voice of a particular draconequus who had stopped to admire himself in the mirror. Fluttershy gave him a nervous smile as she lowered her hooves from the little kitty-cat headband on her head. She still didn't have the courage to dress as any sort of witch or pirate or, Celestia-forbid, a zombie... but dressing up as a cute animal? She could do that.

"You'll stay by me the whole time, right?" She asked, her voice even softer than her usual nearly-inaudible volume.

"Of course! I'll make sure you have the best Nightmare Night possible... and we are still going to that party, right my dear?" The demi-deity asked, his signature Cheshire grin still on his face.

Fluttershy only gave a tiny nod in response.

"Perfect! That gives us a good couple of hours before hand to give out candy, and terrify the socks off the unlucky souls who knock on that door." Discord cackled, his eyes narrowing in malevolent glee.

"I guess it is pretty cold tonight, if they're wearing socks they should probably keep them on." Fluttershy responded with a small smile. "So maybe don't scare them quite that much?"

Discord sighed, wiping the grin off his face. "Fine." He grumbled morosely, only to instantly smile again as he heard the doorbell ring.

Slithering through the air to the door with his closest friend slowly trotting behind him. Wrenching the door open, he got ready to scream a terrifying shout at whatever poor fool opened the door... only to have a rolled up newspaper smack him on the snout.

Blinking, he opened his mouth only for the paper to swat it shut again. "You t'were right, Sister! Going door to door is fun!" Came the exuberant cry from the lunar princess levitating the roll.

Celestia sighed and adjusted the pitch black crown on her head. "I'm glad you're having fun, but next time can I choose my own costume? This black paint is going to take hours to get out of my fur. And I look ridiculous with these insect wings next to my real ones."

Luna just stuck her tongue out at her elder sister before turning back to Discord. "We have come to demand the delicious spoils from your domicile!"

Discord rubbed his forehead, trying to massage down the bump slowly growing from the repeated cellulose-based percussion upon his self. "I may have been locked in stone for nearly a millennia, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to sing a little ditty, not smack and threaten ponies door-to-door."

"Of course! We are aware of the traditions, but when it comes to your face, We cannot help but give it a royal smacking!" Luna replied cheerfully, adjusting the witch's hat on her own head.

"Luna, Luna, Luna." He purred, "You cannot always demand what you want. Sometimes you have to-" Discord began, only to be interrupted by Celestia taking the newspaper and continuing the assault upon his poor face.

"Sweets or statue, Discord. Your choice." The royal and regal sun diarch said, pretending not to eyeball the overflowing bowl of candy just outside her reach.

Discord wisely deposited a clawful of candy into each of their buckets, not pressing his luck.

"Huzzah!" Luna cried out, before immediately turning and skipping down the dirt path away from Fluttershy's cottage. Celestia only sighed and trotted after her, giving a polite nod to Fluttershy before she left.

Discord slowly shut the door, grumbling to himself. "That was awful. You do the next one." He spoke with a grimace, crossing his mismatched limbs and floating over to the sofa.

Fluttershy just gave a small smile and nodded. "There's some iced tea in the fridge if you want."

"Thanks." He called back, disappearing from her view. The butter-colored pegasus laughed softly under her breath and shook her head, turning around to walk away from the door only to hear the distance sounds of young voices. Blinking, she turned back towards her door as the sounds got closer and more distinct, the sounds of foals arguing until they reached her door.

A moment later the voices quieted, and she heard a single polite knock at the door. After a short breath to calm her nerves, she slowly turned the handle and drew the door in barely an inch, peeking through the crack.

"Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!" Came the loud chorus of young voices that nearly made her slam the door shut again. Once she had finally calmed her nerves to peak through the crack, she felt herself relax as she spotted the terrible trio of crusaders staring up at her with expectations in their eyes, and not enough candy in their buckets.

Swinging the door open, she gave a small smile at the three of them, before blinking in surprise at the sight of a fourth foal. Trapped inbetween the robot-costumed Sweetie Belle, Applebloom disguised as an orange juice carton and Scootaloo with an extra two pairs of legs strapped to her barrel and googly eyes plastered to her forehead was a fourth young pony. The young colt had a bone white coat, and a mane dark as pitch, and appeared to lack any kind of irises or pupils. Attached to his back was a pair of feathery white wings, and a plastic halo was suspended over his head by a wire.

"Oh my." She gasped softly, looking between them. "All your costumes are so scary!"

The three girls preened happily, thought the colt blinked in confusion. "Angels are scary?" He asked softly.

"Well, no. But the scythe is!" Fluttershy responded with a small smile.

The girls didn't give them much more of a chance to converse as the lifted up their buckets expectantly and Fluttershy gave a soft chuckle in response, missing the quite murmur of 'not part of the costume...' from the young colt.

Lifting a hoof full of sweets into each of their pails, she gave another smile. "I don't think I've met you before. Are you friends of the crusaders?"

The colt grinned and nodded. "Yes ma'am! Miss Twilight asked me to watch over them tonight."

Fluttershy gave a small giggle in response. The tiny colt looked to be even younger than the girls, so she was sure it was the other way around. Not wanting to spoil his mood, she nodded. "Well, I'm sure you're doing a great job. They're not even covered in tree sap."

"Not covered in tree sap yet." Sweetie Belle emphasized, glaring at Scootaloo who very maturely stuck her tongue out in response.

Applebloom rolled her eyes and gave a grin up at older pegasus. "Thank you, Miss Fluttershy!" She chirped out, followed by a chorus from the other children (Scootaloo was slightly delayed by her joyous cheer at finding a full sized Oh Pony bar in her bucket.)

"Say hello to Uncle Discord for me!" The colt called out before turning around to sprint after the quickly retreating forms of his friends, much to the butterscotch pegasus's confusion.

Giggling again, Fluttershy waved them off and shut the door, returning to Discord after a moment. Sitting herself down on the armchair across from her chaotic friend, she blinked at him again. Noticing the dark, heavy bags under his eyes and the look of absolute exhaustion on his face, she frowned slightly. He looked like he hadn't slept well in months, despite having definitely looked as wide awake as ever earlier this morning. "What was your costume again?" She asked softly.

"The author." Discord replied.

Author's Note

Halloween specials are cool guys, right?
I haven't forgotten about all of you! I'll hopefully have more time to write next term, I should have more time after my classes and sleep more!

Happy Halloween!

Interlude - The Day Before

Sombra had been having just another morning of his endless torment. Apparently, murdering, torturing, and brainwashing hundreds of thousands of ponies was considered a 'bad move', so he got put in one of the most torturous places in existence: a lower middle-class bachelor suite apartment. The underworld, or 'There' as the denizens were inclined to refer to it, had a lot fewer pits of lava and torture than he expected.

No physical torture at least, he reminded himself as he glanced at the blood dripping from his ceiling. Sombra sighed to himself; He had reported the leak to his landlord nearly three months ago and nothing had been done of it. At this point, he was fairly certain that the leak would remain there for the rest of time. He was a king after all, so it's not like he'd fix it himself. That was peasant work.

Glancing at the clock above the fridge (that would run five minutes slow or fast depending on how it felt at the present moment), he let out a sigh as he took another sip of his lukewarm coffee. Even he with his all-knowing mastery over the darkest arts and vilest rituals had no clue how the coffee down here could go from impossibly and dangerously hot to mediocrely tepid in a single blink. Perhaps some sort of cursed time manipulation? He tried making iced coffee once, but it would always taste horribly watered down no matter how strong of a brew he used. Such was life in this tormentous segment of the afterlife.

What he had not expected was a knock upon his apartment door (with eternally squeaky hinges and a deadbolt that always turned the opposite way he expected), followed by a slip of paper being pushed beneath the crack under his door that seemed to always let all the heat out in the winter yet provided no cooling draft in the summer heat.

Grumbling to himself as he levitated up the paper with a crackling aura of malevolent energy, he scowled at the messy and almost childish hoofwriting across its surface. A summoning? For him? He could have laughed if he wasn't more insulted. How dare a being try to summon him as if he was just some minor spirit or wraith. How dare they! Did they really think he had nothing better to do than some menial task and labour for some wannabe necromancer? Why, he oughta burn the thing and toss its ashes out the window.

Hearing the dull drips of water against the tarnished metal of his kitchen sink, he grumbled and put his focus back on the letter. A summoning was one of the few things that could get him out of the damned call center. (Literally, the entire call center was Damned.) If he went and did this... at least it would get him out of there for a few days. He wouldn't have to Becky standing around the bloodcooler and complaining about how Kyle had cheated on her for the seventy-third time this month. Nor would he have to deal with the complaints and wailing of the (literally) Damned customers on the other side of the phone for eight hours, broken up only by a single unpaid lunch break of a soggy sandwich that someone else had already eaten one half of.

Maybe... maybe he could do this. The damned letter didn't say the name of the summoner, of course. They never did. Something about diversity and fighting unfair biases in summoning the dead that the council had decided a millennium or so ago. Well, would it really be so bad? Paid leave back up in the surface world away from the dripping, away from the traffic, and away from Celestia-damned Becky.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted one hoof up to his pointed horn and slashed a small cut across his frog, cursing softly under his breath. That was going to sting so much for the next few hours when he walked on it. Pressing the soul-essence dripping cut against the paper, he signed across the line, and suddenly the idea of walking on his hoof didn't sound so bad.

Honestly, most things would sound much better than standing in the painful, blistering, scorching black flames that erupted from around him, consuming his ethereal form in a pillar of the Darkest fire.

Author's Note

Just a short little teaser as I try to get back into writing!

Doctor, Doctor! Give Me the News! (Rewritten)

Author's Note

Rewritten 2025-01-19
There's chapter 3 rewritten. At this rate, we might even see a new chapter this decade!

~~oh shit. this story is still alive? my bad.~~

~~I only wrote and published a chapter because Maxie threatened to start writing again, and I can't have him making an update before me.~~

Doctor, Doctor! Give Me the News! (Rewritten)

Ponyville General Hospital was a surprisingly well furnished hospital, or at least surprisingly well furnished relative to the rather tiny town it services. Then again, being located so near to both the Everfree Forest and the shenanigans constantly surrounding the element bearers, it was determined a ‘valuable use of taxes’ to keep the building up to date with the latest technology, training, and staff. After all, less-than-fatal accidents seemed to be an everyday occurrence here.

Yet on this night, the hospital was quiet. There were none of the usual incidents of nails-through-hooves and tree-sap-coverings, in fact not a single pony had even popped their head in all day. Nurse Redheart was the only pony-on-staff that night, the rest of her colleagues having long since left to spend an unexpected day off with their families, hobbies, or mugs of cider down at Pinch’s bar. She of course both blamed and thanked the recently departed Princess for this, it seemed that nobody was in the mood for their normal chaos after such an unexpected tragedy.

The mare stared out from the front desk at the empty lobby and let out a small sigh as she fiddled with the pages underneath her hooves. As nice as it was to see nopony getting hurt, volunteering for the graveyard shift was a regrettable choice. As little as she wanted to be overworked, the excruciating boredom of staring at an empty waiting room for eight hours definitely wasn’t what anyone would consider ‘intellectually stimulating’. “8 years of medschool for this…” She mumbled to herself, glancing up at the clock on the wall before huffing and turning her gaze back to the cheap pulp fiction that sat upon the desk, polished and smooth despite the years of wear and tear. The novel itself seemed to be some sort of country-western romance, definitely not her usual taste, but she needed to be distracted with something and the tome of cheap and mindless words was like a siren’s call in these dreary witching hours. The whole idea of a busy city stallion coming out to the country and falling in love with a mild-mannered rancher mare was a bit uninspired, but anything was better than watching the clock for 5 more hours until her shift ended.

Thankfully, she was spared the fate of wasting her night on cheap fiction and cheaper granola bars by a sound familiar to any hospital staff: arguments, fighting, and denial. It seemed tonight would finally have some sort of entertainment, unwilling as they sound.

“I told you, I feel fine!” Twilight grumbled, struggling against the bonds of rope tying her to all five of her so-called friends. “I just had a nap, and Spike just overreacted!” Each tug of that rope had her hooves digging into the ground, leaving surprisingly deep impressions as she nearly succeeded in beating the tugging strength of all five of her friends and the help of a silent but clearly confused Big Mac.

Applejack huffed and continued yanking on her end of the rope, the tough hemp fibers digging into her shoulder as they fought and struggled for each inch against Twilight’s half-hearted resistance. “And ah’ told ya’, as soon as ya’ve got a clean bill of health, ya can go back home! Ah’m not taking any chances on somethin’ like this! Woo-nelly… when d’ya get this strong, Twily?” The recently deceased alicorn didn’t have a useful response to that, instead just crossing her forelegs and sitting herself down onto the dirt, her flanks joining her hooves in digging an even wider trench through the ground.

Rainbow gasped for breath as her wings flapped in steady but exhausted beats, sweat trailing down from her brow before dripping off her muzzle into the dirt. “I don’t like hospitals either, Twi! But being a Wonderbolts member-“

Rarity cleared her throat, glancing at the pegasus.

Rainbow responded to that glance with a stink eye before correcting herself. “Being a Wonderbolts reserve member taught me that you gotta get yourself checked out when you have an accident! And I dunno about anypony else, but that was one heck of an accident.”

Twilight let out a sigh and finally stopped pulling back, the sudden slack in the rope causing four of her captors to stumble forward into the ground, and a fifth cyan pegasus to ram straight into a tree. Mac was, of course, unaffected by the sudden change in tension, and with a gentle ‘Eenope’ he shook his head and strolled off to the farm. He should have been in bed hours ago, after all.

Twilight stood herself back up with a sigh, dusting the dirt from her butt and hooves as she glared at the rest of the mares. “Alright, but right after this waste of time I’m going back to finish reading that book. I haven’t even figured out what class of magic I have to categorize it under!” She declared, stomping her hoof into the ground dramatically and leaving a rather worrying imprint.

The other five girls only gave her a look of concern before taking a moment to huddle away from her. “Um… we’re not going to let her keep reading that book, right? She did sort of… die last time…” Fluttershy whispered softly, her lip trembling.

Pinkie was fast to respond, her ‘whisper’ louder than Fluttershy’s normal speaking volume. “Yeah, and it was totally made out of somepony’s skin!” She agreed with surprising exuberance, her mane once again as poofy as a poodle. “You can tell by the way it was soft, but cracking around the edges! I think that there was a nostril on the spine, but it was sewn super-duper well! And let me tell you, flayed skin is not easy to work with!”

Rarity only stared at Pinkie for a moment before shaking her head softly and whispering back in response. “I’m… not even going to ask how you’re so experienced in that sort of thing, darling. Regardless, we’ll pretend to agree with her for now, and just hope that by the time she gets home she’ll be tired enough that we can get her straight off to bed. We can confiscate the book once she’s asleep.”

The rest of the ponies nodded in agreement as they broke their huddle, before the farmpony reached out to open the door to the hospital. The other girls moved in unison to stand in a semicircle behind Twilight, probably to make sure she didn’t attempt to escape back to the library for more late-night reading.

As the reluctant Twilight walked through the door, her movements triggered the small dinging tone of a bell, along with drawing the attention of the singular staff member. “Hello! Welcome to Ponyville General Hospital! Are you sick, injured, or dying?” Inquired Nurse Redheart, her body jittery from running on nothing but caffeine for the past 12 hours, as usual.

Rainbow walked in behind Twilight, speaking for the stubborn alicorn. “Uh… dead? Or not dead? It’s complicated.” She muttered, caught slightly off guard by the doctor’s strange greeting. Shaking her head clear of the bemusement, she gave Twilight a little shove forward. “Go on Twilight, talk to the doctor.”

“I swear, you all are just being paranoid hypochondriacs.” Twilight muttered in response, but did indeed begin her way up to the front desk.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Redheart inquired.

“So everypony keeps telling me.” Twilight replied tiredly.

Pinkie took that moment to pop up beside her dear friend, tutting disapprovingly. “Twilight, you just wasted your chance to say ‘the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!’ It’s like… the one line everypony has been waiting for you to say! Now you have to fake your death again. We need a redo!” Thankfully, Rarity and Fluttershy were both there to tug the pink pony away, hoping to discourage Twilight from doing any such thing.

Twilight just stared at pinkie incredulously for a few moments before shaking her head and turning her gaze back to the doctor. “Anyways… I’m just here so that we can do a quick little test of my vitals and prove that I’m not dead. Afterwhich, I will go back to reading my books, and these damn ponies who I love and cherish very much, can stop hugging me and crying every few seconds.”

The doctor whose name was Nurse (a fact that has left her estranged to her parents) just blinked at Twilight a few times before shrugging and closing the novel without even bothering to check the page. She’d have time to reread the entire thing again anyways. “Yeah, sure, alright. I had nothing better to do anyway.”

With a quick snatch of her clipboard, she motioned for Twilight to follow her away from her friends and into one of the side rooms, idly chatting as she trotted. “I was the one who did your autopsy, you know. Let me tell you, Princess… seeing you in the Ponyville morgue yesterday was not how I wanted to spend my afternoon. Try not to end up there again, okay?”

Twilight only grunted in response as she followed and sat down on the presented hospital bed. Her posture wasn’t what one would consider ‘welcoming’ or ‘helpful’ even as she followed the doctor’s instructions, just giving glares and grumbling as she folded her forelegs grumpily, but Nurse Redheart was unaffected. There were a lot of stubborn ponies in this town (mostly those of the 'applebucking' variety) and she was well used to patients not being very... well... patient. She just kept up her casual attitude, sitting herself down on a stool adjacent the bed as she began to flip through her clipboard. "Alright, first things first, let’s check your blood pressure."

Doctor Nurse Redheart reached out (and with a surprising amount of a struggle) pulled Twilight’s arm away from her chest before expertly wrapping it in a plastic cuff. A quick flick of a switch had the band slowly inflating ash placing her stethoscope against an artery in Twilight’s leg. After a few moments, she narrowed her eyes and repeated the entire procedure with the other foreleg. "Interesting." She murmured, removing the cuff and placing the stethoscope directly against Twilight's chest.

"Interesting?" Twilight inquired.

"According to my measurements, your blood pressure is... 0 over 0. And your heart rate is 0 beats per minute. Congratulations, Princess. You are dead." Redheart then proceeded to empty a coffee cup into the sink, and began to fill it with a flask of something from a drawer. "And I am too sober to deal with the fact that you're a walking corpse." Drinking on the job wasn’t really recommended in the medical profession, but neither was talking to dead bodies, so Redheart considered it even. Taking a quick swig, she offered the flask to Twilight with a raised eyebrow.

Twilight only blinked owlishly, politely refusing the drink as she lightly placed the frog of her hoof against the inside of her other foreleg, failing to find even the slightest hint of a pulse. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Redheart agreed, taking another long sip.

Explaining that to her friends after the six of them were politely booted out of the clinic was… slightly awkward. The confused, horrified looks on their faces definitely wasn’t making Twilight feel less guilty. They were only disturbed from the ensuing awkward silence by the sound of the hospital doors locking, followed by a hoofwritten sign being slid into the window stating: ‘No Doctors on Duty’.

“...So, ya are dead, then?” Applejack asked, lightly prodding Twilight’s shoulder. “That why yer so darn strong? That… rig her moatus thing?”

“Rigor mortis, dear.” Rarity commented quietly, her expression going rather blank as her mind drifted off to that brand new pail of ice cream she’d be destroying when she got home. Rainbow Dash just coughed awkwardly, scratching the back of her neck.

After a moment of silence, it was surprisingly Fluttershy who spoke up. Not questioning the recent news or development… but a slightly more important issue."Hold on… it wasn’t just Twilight that needed to get checked out. Weren't we supposed to take Spike to the hospital too? You know... for the concussion?"

"Whoops!" Pinkie Pie replied unhelpfully.