Dead Week

Totality stacked the research material on the library table and sat down in her favorite chair. They really needed to get it together and actually do some research for a change, but talking with Gamma was so much more interesting.

Gamma came trotting up right on time, smiling widely. He floated his bag to the table and flung it open. "Hey, I brought something for you."

Totality's ears perked up and she watched closely as Gamma shuffled things around in his saddle bag. After failing to produce anything for a while, he began pulling books out one by one, setting them aside. He frowned before just inverting the bag and dumping everything out.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I can’t find my book,” he replied worriedly, spreading out the field of papers and classroom whatnot.

“What book?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, well… I went home last night, ‘cuz I live in Canterlot, and I got my grimoire to show you.”

Totality's eyes bulged. “You brought it on campus?" she whispered. "Are you nuts? I thought we’d, I don’t know, go somewhere in town and look at it in a broom closet or something.”

Gamma sighed. “I thought it would be fine. Just keep it in the bag and don’t show it to anyone. That's easy. I know I had it in my saddle bag when I left my room and then I went to two classes and now it’s gone.”

“Please tell me you didn’t have your name in it,” groaned Totality.

Gamma crashed down into his chair. “No. Of course not. Those books are priceless artifacts. I’d never alter them. But I never took it out. Somepony had to have stolen it right out of my bag.”

Totality shook her head. “You’re never getting it back. You can’t ask anypony about it or even admit that you possessed such a thing, and it's just going to end up on the black market.”

“I know," moaned Gamma, collapsing in a mopey puddle on the table. "Can't believe this..."

"Sorry."

For the entirety of the session, Gamma stayed on task though he was inconsolably despondent.

They went to the cafeteria together again later and Totality convinced Gamma to get a sandwich instead of his usual.

"So how does this work?" mumbled Gamma, staring suspiciously down at his plate.

"Oh, yeah, the exorcism," began Totality. "You just do this." She enveloped the sandwich in her magic for a few moments as though she were about to raise it into the air and then released it. "And now all the spirits are gone. Chef's kiss. Bon appetit."

Gamma took a cautious bite of his sandwich and gestated on it.

"Well, does it taste possessed?" asked Totality.

"Nope. Good job," he nodded.

The next day, they did not meet for their project. Totality felt considerably more melancholic about her situation, despite having a nice day where she avoided contact with any undesirable ponies. She used her time to get completely caught up in her other homework.

When they did pick their project back up in the usual place, Gamma was quiet and devoid of his usual levity, absently scribbling notes as his eyes scanned attentively across the pages of his book. They were finally making good progress on the research, but it was sad to see him like this.

“Are you worried you’re going to get caught somehow?” asked Totality, breaking away from her own reading material.

Despite the ambiguity of her question, he knew precisely what she was inquiring about which in turn told her that he was indeed still stewing over the grimoire.

“No,” he sighed. “I think it would have happened by now if it was going to. As you said, it’s on it’s way to a black market buyer like it was never even here. I’m just still upset about losing it in general.”

Totality looked at the clock. "Hey, why don't we take a break and you show me that door?"

Gamma looked up from his book and smiled.

Gamma stamped his hoof on an unassuming stone slab embedded flush with the surface of the ground in the south side of the park. The face was cracked in places with weeds growing out of it, and there was no nearby plaque to mark the spot as there was for many of the other points of interest on the academy's campus.

Gamma cleared his throat. "So, obviously the building's gone but this is it."

"Not really a door," muttered Totality.

"Yeah, they sealed it a really long time ago. This is the only former point of entry I'm familiar with that I could actually locate."

"Have you ever been in there?"

He shook his head. "No. I can't teleport."

"How do you know this is it then?"

"I told you, I checked the plans in the archives. All of them, and then I cross referenced them looking at identifiable architectural landmarks.” He turned around and pointed to an old row of columns.

"That colonnade is original to the courthouse. They repurposed it for a newer building but it still sits right on top of the western edge of the dungeon. That's how I knew this was here and what it was."

Totality raised an eyebrow. "But that still doesn't mean there are bodies down there." In a flash, the whole world around them became pitch black. Totality quickly illuminated her horn and glanced around. “Looks like you can focus on a research project if you want to badly enough," she laughed.

Gamma lit up his horn to see that they were now standing on a stone staircase in a narrow descending passage. Just above their heads was the stone slab embedded in the lawn of the park. He turned back to Totality, grinning ear to ear.

In a communal full body rush of excitement, the two breathlessly descended the steps together.

A pack of rats squeaked in alarm and dispersed at their arrival to the floor of the old dungeon.

It didn't take long for them to spot the bones. In the small square room, full pony skeletons were laid out in repose, stacked floor to ceiling in a sort of hive of inset alcoves. There was hardly a swatch of unused wall space.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Totality. "Good thing we didn't make a bet because I would have lost."

Before them was a rotten wooden door which led into the dungeon proper. It sat ajar, slumping from its hinges.

"C'mon," beckoned Gamma excitedly.

The two pushed through into a three-way intersection where again every inch of wall appeared to display a skeleton. They walked down the path straight ahead, their hoof falls echoing down the musty corridor.

Totality exhaled in amazement. "I can't believe this place is just sitting underneath the school, never seen. They should be giving tours. You could be the tour guide."

"I would definitely do that," agreed Gamma. "Coming up on your left, you'll see some olden beer bottles and some olden graffiti."

"And an olden box spring mattress and some olden condom wrappers," added Totality. They stopped to peer through a grate of flat iron bars into a converted prison cell that now housed remains, the floor strewn with contemporary artifacts, mostly trash, around a nasty looking mattress. Clearly there had been other, at least relatively, recent visitors. In between nooks and niches in the wall were words scrawled, most of them just names, like a sort of guest book for trespassers.

"Oh, I see how this works," began Totality in mock annoyance. "This was your plan all along. Fill my ears with promises of dead bodies and ancient squalor and then, like clockwork, out comes the moldy mattress. I bet you bring them all down here, don't you?"

"You brought me down here," laughed Gamma.

"A likely story."

Gamma ran his hoof slowly across the sturdy bars with a rhythmic succession of metallic clangs while Totality floated a misplaced skull into her light for closer inspection.

“Wonder who this pony was,” she muttered. “Think they had a family? Or if anypony cried when they went? Think they have any living descendants? Maybe here in Canterlot.”

“Yeah, could be me,” answered Gamma, turning to continue down the corridor.

Totality set the skull respectfully against the wall. “Weird to think about,” she breathed

The two meandered down the row of cells and alcoves casually glancing left and right through the bars, and every one of the doors which were unlocked and wide open. As they came upon another, Gamma slowed and craned his head down at a dark figure curled up on the floor. As his light washed over it, he could see that it was the body of a pony, not a skeleton.

“That looks… fresh?” he declared, unnerved.

Totality gasped as she looked over his shoulder. She rushed in through the cell door and hovered over the body. It was a unicorn with a burnt mane and charred skin over much of the body. She couldn’t smell it, which she thought odd. The parts of the coat that were intact were light blue and as her eyes traced down to the flank, she could still make out a familiar ice crystal cutie mark.

Her eyes widened and she grabbed her mane with two hooves. “Oh fuck me. It’s Comet Shard! He’s dead!”

“Uh, Totality?” called Gamma from outside the cell.

She looked up to see him pointing urgently to the adjacent cell where there stood the skeleton of a pony just seemingly staring at them, head even cocked curiously to one side. It was deliberately corralled in the cell.

“What… the hell is going on here?” breathed Totality.

“Somepony had to have raised this skeleton. They must have sacrificed Comet… but his body’s still here.”

“He’s got magic burn marks,” explained Totality. “That’s what happens when you don’t put something completely inside a blood seal circle. That’s why he didn’t dematerialize.”

“So their ritual was only partially successful,” concluded Gamma. “Sounds like they’re a novice,” He thought on this for a moment. Then his mouth dropped open. He pressed his face into the bars with a look of horror. "Comet’s dead because of me!"

Totality's eyes opened wide. "What?"

"My grimoire. I lost track of it, and then this happened. What are the odds? Him, here, now, like this? Whoever has that book is experimenting with it now, and they just used it to kill Comet. We have to bring him back.”

“Bring him…” Totality trailed off as she began to crunch the numbers in accordance with her scale methodology. The remains were an eight or maybe even a nine, which was pretty good. Time since death was indeterminable, but it couldn't have been long. The rating she guessed was between six and zero. The longer they waited, the lower that number got, and the worse their theoretical results became as the spirit became further dissociated from the flesh. For resources, they had a live skeleton which was a three. She didn’t need to finish the tally. A quick and dirty raising was going to yield a notably subpar Comet Shard, but all this was beside the point.

“We can’t,” she replied. “Without a grimoire, we can’t make blood seals to raise him. Even if we could, without all the proper resources, he’d come back looking like a burn victim with significant brain damage. Without a personal effect, we don’t even know if it would be him in the body. It could be any ambient spirit, of which there are probably many in a dungeon slash mass interment site for plague victims like this one.”

Gamma swallowed. “I know how to draw basic rez seals from memory. We can use the skeleton plus my life force to get back most of his mental capacity. If we hurry, we might not need the personal effect. He’ll have scars and he might never be able to graduate in his major, but he’ll be alive.”

“Your life force?” she squeaked. “You could die if you screw that up.”

“This is my fault!" he railed. "I have to do everything I can to fix it!”

Totality hung her head and groaned. “Well, then at least let me split it with you… and you’re going to need my blood too. I’ll go get a knife or something. I’ll be back in a minute!”

She flashed out of the catacombs and suddenly Gamma was alone… sort of.