Dead Week

Totality and Gamma walked down the hall to the history of magic classroom but stopped just before the closed door. A sign taped to the window said 'History of Magic canceled.'

"Shocking," droned Totality.

"Got a minute?" asked a voice from behind them.

The two turned with a start to see that Professor Moondancer had snuck up on them again. She cocked her head toward her office.

Totality and Gamma exchanged worried looks but followed her.

She opened the office door, turning the round knob with her mouth and showed them in. "Sorry. I would have just teleported us in but, y'know, no magic."

Totality laughed nervously. "Our magic should be back in a couple of weeks. Obviously the horns won't, though."

"Speaking of horns," muttered Moondancer, locking the door behind her. She shuffled behind her cluttered desk and rumagaged around on the floor, out of view. When she reappeared, she dropped two severed horns on the table from her mouth. "I believe these are yours."

"Hey, our horns!" exclaimed Gamma. He pawed clumsily at his light green horn to coax it closer. "When our magic comes back, we can have little sword fights with them!"

"I'm happy this moment brought you joy," said Totality dryly as she accidentally knocked her own horn down onto the floor. "Ugh. How do earth ponies live like this?"

Moondancer cleared her throat. "I've decided to give everypony involved in the incident an extension on their final project."

Gamma and Totality side eyed one another awkwardly as they were reminded of the project they'd all but abandoned to hunt down a necromancer.

"Yaaaaay…" they replied in monotonous put-on celebration.

Moondancer shook her head. "You haven't talked to the police yet, have you?"

"No," they replied with confused expressions.

"Anypony in school administration?"

"No."

"Good. I know you two are at the center of this somehow. I don’t think you’re bad kids and I don’t want to see you get expelled because of a stupid mistake you made with a book. I’m not going to rat you out… But you have to tell me everything that happened so that I can successfully avoid doing that.”

“Isn’t that exactly what the ‘good cop’ always says?” argued Totality.

“Yes, but if that’s the angle I was going for, I’d be talking to you separately, wouldn’t I? If I wanted to screw you, I would have done it last night. I’m not a cop or an informant for the school. You don’t have to talk to me. You can walk out the door right now if you think that’s really in your best interest.” She gestured to the locked door.

Totality and Gamma looked at eachother.

Gamma swallowed. “I brought a necromantic grimoire on campus.”

“Why?” asked Moondancer.

“He wanted to show it to me,” answered Totality. “We found out that we have the same interests and it was really exciting… for purely historical value, you understand.”

“You heard this part, but Hazy stole it out of my saddle bag and then gave it to Blue Moon, and then Blue started using it. But until the very end we only knew that the book was taken by somepony, not who took it.”

Moondancer put her hooves together in a thoughtful pose. “What did she do to Comet Shard?”

Gamma licked his drying lips. “We think he was her first experiment. She sacrificed him just to reanimate a random skeleton in the catacombs.”

Moondacer’s eyes widened. “Wait, she sacrificed him? But he’s still alive?”

“We think she messed up her ritual and it left his dead body behind. We found him and the skeleton when we went down into the catacombs for fun and we… brought him back to life.”

Moondancer’s jaw went slack. “Who did you sacrifice to do that?”

“No pony!” they blurted in a panic. “We don’t do that!”

“We used the skeleton, some already dead rats, and our own life force,” clarified Totality.

“Dead… rats? You can do that?”

“You can do a lot of things. We still didn’t know who had done it at that point, but we were sure they were using the grimoire. We tried to figure it out and stop them ourselves without telling anypony because we knew what would happen to us if the school or authorities found out, but things got out of hoof and you know the rest.”

Moondancer took off her never used, backup pair of red framed glasses and rubbed her face. “It’s clear to me that much of this was avoidable had there been different policies regarding said literature other than zero tolerance and veritable excommunication. You needed a safe way to help defuse the situation, but the laws and the school didn’t provide that, and I don’t think that’s safe or fair to you or the rest of the students. Totality, without your knowledge and quick thinking, who knows what would have happened. You’re a hero and it would be egregious for anypony to just throw you in the same box as Blue Moon. We wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

"Yeah, but we wouldn’t have been endangered in the first place if it wasn’t for me," cried Gamma.

Moondancer sighed. "Gamma, good historians like you and I make a point to learn the whole story whenever we can get it. When necromancy originated, it was considered wholesome and revered by entire communities. Ponies who had experienced a tragic loss had the power to reverse it. If a foal died, an elder might sacrifice themselves to bring them back. If a pillar of the community died before their time, somepony else might enter death in their stead for the good of the village. It was always voluntary. It was always communal. It followed a strict doctrine. It wasn't evil or dark. It was just a different philosophy of how life works."

The professor leaned back in her seat to look up at the ceiling. "When viewed through a modern day lens by ponies like us without that mindset and that reverence, all we hear about is the blood and the death coupled with a selfish motive where consent is removed. That's when it becomes a horror story instead of something beautiful.

"Yes, you broke the law by simply owning that grimoire. Yes you broke school rules by bringing it on campus, but it’s important to never equate legality with morality. At the end of the day, the only thing that book can do is give knowledge. Knowledge isn't good or bad. What we do with it is, and you can't hold yourself responsible when somepony else chooses to abuse it."

Totality nudged Gamma in the side. "See, that's exactly what I was trying to tell you. It just sounds a lot better coming out of a history professor."

Gamma turned back to Moondancer "But shouldn't I have been more responsible with that knowledge so that this didn't happen?"

Moondancer scratched her nose. "Okay, here's a question for you. If you were to stab me with my letter opener right now, would that be my fault?"

Gamma frowned. "No. Of course not."

"Why ‘of course not?’ It's pointy and I left it right there on my desk where anypony can just grab it and start stabbing." She gestured to the brassy, dull blade.

"It’s not your fault because… I made the decision to stab you."

"So?" She shrugged. "I could have been more responsible with the letter opener."

Gamma paused, struggling to come up with a counter argument. "Okay… I see your point."

"I don't need to be more responsible with the letter opener,” declared Moondancer, “because at some point it becomes perfectly reasonable to assume another pony is going to be responsible for themselves. It's perfectly reasonable to assume no pony's going to stab me with my letter opener if I leave it on my desk. It was perfectly reasonable for you to carry that book on campus in your bag and assume it wouldn't get stolen off of you and fall into the hooves of a lunatic. It was perfectly reasonable for the history department to display that mask and assume it wouldn't get absconded with for use in a necromantic ritual. That’s not to say that nothing bad can happen anyway, but if it does, you shouldn’t beat yourself up for it. You can't blame the clock maker for the time bomb.”

Gamma nodded solemnly.

“So when you stab me with my letter opener, whose fault is it?”

“Mine.”

“And when Blue uses your book to perform a nightmarish ritual, whose fault is it?”

“Blue’s.”

Totality cleared her throat. “Uh… what’s going to happen to Hazy Sheen?”

Moondancer cocked her head curiously. “What do you think should happen to her?

“Ugh, come on,” grumbled Totality in annoyance. “Just tell me.”

“I already spoke with her. I think it’s reasonable to say that the three of your fates are tied together. Either you all get out of this, or none of you do. I know that’s infuriating to hear after what she did.”

“It’s fine,” muttered Totality absently.

Moondancer’s eyebrows raised. “It is?”

“Yeah… I spoke with her too.”

“Huh… Did you recover the book?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Take it back to your house, Gamma. Do it now. Use your wouldbe class time. I’m sure they’ll be looking for some sort of materials in Blue’s room, but If anypony asks you, you don’t know anything about any grimoires and we all ended up down there because of bad luck with no prior knowledge of these necromantic activities and Blue clearly botched the ritual herself. If the four of us can keep that straight, everything will be fine.”

“Thank you, professor,” said Totality.

Gamma held his hoof over the table. “Stump buddies,“ he smiled.

The two looked at him quizzically.

“‘Cuz we all have stumps.” He pointed at his head with his other hoof.

Totality and Moondancer held their hooves to his like a team break “Stump buddies,” they answered in unson.