Death Valley

It was amazing how much you could waste time if you really wanted to. As the group practiced sharing magic, Amanita didn’t think that much time was passing, but every time she looked at the shadows, they’d shifted. And moments before she could really get what meant, or even care, they’d moved to another aspect of sharing magic. The day was slipping away, progress was being made, and Amanita cared much more about the latter than the former.

Amanita and Bitterroot faced each other, breathing slowly. Code was sitting off to the side, eyes hooded, a pen and an open book at her side. Charcoal was sitting even further back, her tail flicking. “Are you two ready?” Code asked, her voice distant.

The two nodded.

“Very well. Three… two… one… go.”

Amanita and Bitterroot both charged and reared, smashing their front hooves together and bracing each other up. Then they began pushing, each one trying to shove the other back. Well, Amanita was trying; Bitterroot was actually doing it, even without flapping her wings. The actual running around she did in her job had given her a solid amount of muscle. As Amanita’s rear hooves began sliding across the rock, Bitterroot somehow smirked apologetically.

“Now,” Code said, “I’m reaching out…” She tapped the ground.

Suddenly, magic began swirling around Amanita, brushing against her awareness like wind trying to get in. Flexing a mental muscle she rarely used, Amanita grabbed it and pulled it in.

Without a change in posture, she immediately stopped sliding.

Bitterroot flinched at the sudden stop, like she’d run into a screen door. Amanita didn’t waver. A sudden sense of readiness was running through her body; she’d woken up from the best sleep of her life and was ready to take on the world. She was holding Bitterroot back with barely any effort. Bitterroot’s smirk turned into a self-effacing giggle as she began flapping her wings and pushing harder, to no avail.

Then Amanita pushed back and Bitterroot slid like she was on skis. Amanita’s body sang with new magic and new sensations and she wanted to try bench-pressing a house, just to see if she could do it. Moving like this, pushing like this, was using magic as easily as breathing, so easily she barely even knew she was doing it.

Earth pony magic felt really good.

She gave Bitterroot a harder push than usual, the sort she might give to a sticky door. The pony who outweighed her was sent sprawling, saving herself with a few quick flaps to land on her hooves. Grinning, Bitterroot said, “If that’s not magical strength, I don’t know what is!”

“Indeed.” Code stood up and the rush of energy immediately vanished from Amanita’s body. “And the feeling is… less grating when you expect it. Amanita, how do you feel?”

Amanita shrugged. “Like I always do.” She flexed her legs and looked at one of her rear hooves. “Like… There’s really nothing more I can say.”

“Mmhmm.” Code flexed her legs. “Charcoal, are you still interested?”

“Yep!” Charcoal bounced to her hooves and strode up. “Hit me!” Her ears twitched. “Or- maybe don’t. Or… maybe yes? We could-”

As Charcoal chattered, Amanita took the opportunity to bow out, taking a seat behind Code. Sharing magic was something she hadn’t done before, and that meant it required her attention. Which, more importantly, pushed certain dark certain thoughts away.

Amanita just didn’t have the time to mope and wallow. She was so involved in learning about sharing that whenever her mind had a moment of downtime, she naturally gravitated to that instead, thinking about its implications and possibilities and mechanics. And unlike her recent acts of necromancy, she was clearly improving, going from getting a tiny little pick-me-up from earth pony magic to nearly throwing a pegasus ten feet with her bare hooves. She was willing to admit that the possibility of her not being a necromancer was slim, but even if that was true, she had something to fall back on, if only for a little while.

The thoughts were still there. But now she had a reason to ignore them.

Even if her capability was debatable.

She blinked, shook her head, refocused on Charcoal. She and Bitterroot were in the “grapple” stage, and although Charcoal was sliding, it wasn’t quite as much as Amanita had. (Amanita darkly muttered something to herself about studying and Charcoal living outside in moderate temperatures and how she absolutely wasn’t jealous.)

Then Code tapped the ground, and even if you weren’t paying any attention to magic, the shift was remarkable. Charcoal simply stopped, without any sort of sway, no matter how much Bitterroot pushed. And Charcoal was a bit bigger than Amanita, true, but to see her throw Bitterroot by that much looked surreal. No doubt about it: Charcoal was using Code’s strength.

As Bitterroot got back to her hooves, Charcoal made a sound that was probably a kirin whinny as she trotted in place. “Ha! Wow! That felt… Wow.” She made a few small kicks with her rear hooves. “That was great! Do you feel like that all the time?”

“I don’t know, since I don’t know what that felt like,” Code replied as she rolled her shoulders. “How do you feel, compared to your usual?”

“Ehhm…” Charcoal walked a few paces. “The same. Except that I miss your magic already.”

“Which means unicorns and kirins are close enough that magic usage makes no difference, at least in this regard,” Code said, tapping her chin. “Not that surprising, but veeeery interesting.” She took up the pen in her mouth and jotted a few lines in the book.

“If it’s not that surprising, why’d you do it?” asked Bitterroot.

“Data!” chirped Charcoal. “More data is always better. Even though we guessed there wasn’t a difference between kirins and unicorns, now we know there isn’t! Imagine if we pest- guessed and we were wrong.”

“…I could never be a scientist.” Shaking her head, Bitterroot flap-trotted over to the nearby stream and took a quick swig. As she raised her head, she shuddered and coughed. “Wow that’s bracing,” she said. She blinked and took another drink.

Code raised her head and squinted at the sun. “I think,” she sighed, “that the time has come to take our geothaumometer measurements. I’ll take a look at the far one. Amanita, Charcoal, you check the other one.” She trotted off towards the device in question.

When Amanita and Charcoal reached their geothaumometer, the pendulum was still swinging, but its arc was narrow and it was moving unnaturally quickly. Amanita crouched down to survey it. There was something hypnotizing about its speed. “You said this means the ley line’s further down, right?”

“Yeah. It’s going fwit fwit fwit,” Charcoal declared seriously. She was already sketching some figures in the dirt. “And the reservoirs aren’t nearly as filled as they ought to be… Hang on a sec.” She started tapping a hoof on the ground, about once a second. Charcoal stared at the pendulum and her lips moved as she soundlessly counted out its swings. After about ten seconds, she glanced out at Midwich and made some triangulating motions with her legs, then sighed. “ ’Course it’s in the mine,” she muttered. Without another word, she got up and, hanging her head, began slouching back to camp.

Amanita blinked, then briefly galloped to catch up to her. “Is something wrong? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Eh…” Charcoal raised her head and cycled a breath. “You said you wanted to do some good with what happened to you. Twilight and her friends, they gave me back my voice and my emotions, and…”

Something ticked in Amanita’s head. “I thought it was just Applejack and Fluttershy.”

“Technically, yeah, but they’re the Elements of Harmony. You need to take them as a group or they won’t work. Either way, they helped me with my problems, so I vant- want to help them with theirs. Let them know that helping me wasn’t a mistake.”

“If it was, do you think they would’ve done it in the first place?”

Charcoal suddenly became very interested in a direction that wasn’t toward Amanita.

“…Charcoal…”

“Have you met them? They’re good ponies, but they’re also kinda…” Charcoal pointed at the side of her head and made a little twirling motion with her hoof. “Helping us is the sort of mistake they’d make. And ley sanitation’s important, but it’s also normally the kind of thing I can do in my sleep, so I’m feeling… guilty?” She shrugged. “Like I’m letting them down.”

Amanita nodded. Another form of her own feelings at the moment. Unfortunately, that meant that if she knew how to help Charcoal, she’d’ve known how to help herself. Definitely not the case. “At least we’re all in the same boat,” she stalled as she gathered her thoughts.

But Charcoal laughed like her problem had been solved. “Heh. Yeah. I know I’m overreacting. Bee-jerking. Or… no, knee-jerking, yeah. Don’t worry about me. …Hah, bee’s knees. …Why is that a phrase?” And as she kept walking, Amanita could see that the weight had drained out of her steps. Oh, to have such emotional stability.

They arrived back at camp at the same time as Code. Code immediately asked, “In the mine?” At Charcoal’s nod, Code sighed. “Of course.”

“There isn’t a chance you can… force a way in, is there?” asked Charcoal, her ears quivering.

“De jure? Absolutely,” said Code. “But whether Tratonmane will honor it is another matter, and it’s not a card I’d like to play to begin with. If it comes to that…” A shrug. “We’ll see.”

“…We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“Probably, unless a miracle occurs. In the meantime…” Code craned her neck to look back at her geothaumometer. “Normally, this is when we would pack up and head back to town, but we’re on a roll with sharing magic right now…” She cracked her neck and grinned. “…and I’ve always wondered what levitation feels like. Any objections?”

No one raised a hoof. Amanita probably would’ve glued hers to the floor if she’d had any glue.

“Excellent. Now, there ought to be no difference between the two of you when it comes to sharing… Do you have a preference or should we flip a coin?”

All things had to come to an end, and as the sun inched towards the horizon, the crew had to pack the geothaumometers back up. The descent back into Midwich was uneventful, but the sudden darkness hit Bitterroot like a physical thing. One minute, they were climbing down in the sun; the next, the mountain had completely covered it up and they had to wait for their eyes to adjust. Bitterroot had to avoid looking up at the still-illuminated cliff above them. And the cold. Once they were out of the sun, the temperature dropped with every step, frost trying to work its way into her veins. It bordered on clammy, even. Bitterroot knew she’d get used to it again, but… wow.

She wasn’t used to carrying things on the wing for very long and her joints ached when they reached the bottom of the path. Amanita and Charcoal were also breathing a bit more heavily than usual, while Code was as stalwart as ever. More and more, Bitterroot was suspecting that earth ponies were lucky in all the small ways, especially after a taste of earth pony magic had left her feeling like she could bench press a locomotive.

As they walked across the railyard shelf, Code spoke up. “Bitterroot? I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for everything you’ve done.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Bitterroot flicked a wing dismissively. “It was nothing.”

“It was nothing you didn’t need to do, and yet you did it anyway,” said Code. “Regardless of how small it was, I’m grateful.”

Bitterroot shrugged. “We should help each other. I was here, I helped, that’s that.”

Amanita spoke up. “Code, don’t bother. This is the pony who let herself get killed to help someone she’d known for only an hour, remember.”

Everyone chuckled a little. Bitterroot grinned at Amanita. “Hey, it was the right call.”

Amanita grinned back. “Sure. But you’re weird.”

Bitterroot let out a good-natured chuff, then glanced around to reorient herself in the dark. She looked up the tracks; they were passing one of the towers and getting close the downward-

She stumbled to a halt as she remembered the sign.

Amanita was the first to notice she’d stopped. “Bitterroot? Something wrong?”

“It’s-” Bitterroot swallowed. “I- went for a… fly yesterday after… Pyrita. And I saw that…” She pointed up the line. “…that… sign that we passed on the way in, and… the ‘O’ in Tratonmane was a crossed circle.”

It took a moment for Amanita’s ears to twitch. “Like your brand,” she said.

Bitterroot nodded. “Like my brand.” She swallowed again. “And that’s even though- I- I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like that coming in, because… I, I don’t know. I think I’d remember that.”

Charcoal looked at Bitterroot for a moment, looked up the tracks for another, and galloped off into the darkness, her horn twinkling. Code’s gaze followed her, although she didn’t move. “Did you… experience anything when you looked at it?” Code asked. “Intrusive thoughts, pain, hallucinations?”

“No, nothing like that.” Bitterroot shook her head. “A-at least, not if the crossed circle was really there.” It was a possibility that left her mouth dry. What if it got worse? What if it had already gotten worse and she wasn’t aware of it? Her wings twitched restlessly.

Charcoal came bounding back. “I, uh, took a look at the sign,” she said, not quite meeting Bitterroot’s eyes, “and, uh… There’s no crossed circle there.”

Bitterroot’s wings clamped themselves tightly to her sides as her stomach froze. She tried to force herself to shrug and the thoughts out of her head. She only succeeded at the first. “I- could’ve been seeing things,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound particularly convincing, particularly not to her. “It was dark and I was stressed.”

A tense silence fell over the group. Charcoal absently kicked at the ground. After a moment, Amanita opened her mouth.

“Can we at least get back to the inn?” Bitterroot asked tightly. “So whatever we’re talking about, it’s not out here?”

“…Yeah,” said Amanita, nodding. “Let’s do that.”

A little bit quieter than before, the group headed into Tratonmane. Bitterroot couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder as icy thoughts wriggled through her mind. She meandered over to Code and asked, “S-so, um, should we… ask the townsfolk about anything? I, I mean, if it’s… showing up there-”

Code sighed. “Ideally, we would,” she said, almost apologetically. “But as things stand-”

“It’s too early, yeah,” Bitterroot mumbled.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

They got further and further away from the sign, but it loomed larger and larger in Bitterroot’s head.

Re-entering Midwich combined with Bitterroot’s mention of the circle had jarred all the nice thoughts out of Amanita’s head, sending her morbid ideas again. They weren’t self-destructive morbid ideas, at least. But for all her work with ritualism, Amanita didn’t have any experience with the sorts of hallucinations Bitterroot was experiencing. All of her otherworldly visions were in other worlds, in a manner of speaking. Circe had actually been quite careful about ensuring that, to keep her mind clear.

Tratonmane slipped by as she walked and Amanita barely noticed. She tried thinking about Bitterroot and the crossed circle, but she kept coming back to one fact, a fact so obvious that a foal could’ve seen it: the crossed circle meant something. It had to, for Arrastra to have reacted upon seeing it on Bitterroot’s neck. Or- did Arrastra even recognize it from anything besides the grain mother? The mother’s design had come up first, so maybe she was shocked at a symbol of healing being used like that. It didn’t seem likely, but it was possible. But then that brought up the question of what the symbol meant, since Code had also sketched it out on instinct… And if Arrastra knew about that meaning at all…

They were missing something. Some tiny piece of the puzzle that’d make everything fit together. And the sofa cushions were actively resisting being turned over.

Amanita glanced over. Bitterroot seemed fine, but she always seemed at least fine. Sometimes, Amanita wondered just what it’d take to rattle her; she’d let herself get murdered by a necromancer and had later slit her own throat to escape a hostage situation because waiting would’ve taken too long. The idea that she’d hallucinated the circle on the sign had left Bitterroot more rattled than Amanita had ever known her to be. But why?

Control, maybe. Bitterroot had always had some degree of control over her situation previously. Now it was just happening, with nothing she could do about it. She just had to tuck her head in and pray. Combine that with everything else, and she was probably handling it about as well as could be expected.

Amanita moved so she was walking next to Bitterroot and cleared her throat. “Hey, uh… Are you… doing okay?”

She didn’t miss the pause before Bitterroot said, “I think so. I… Maybe I’m just seeing things.”

“That could be the problem.”

“As a one-off thing, I mean. A lot happened yesterday, and… I don’t know. The trip up top left me feeling better, though.” Bitterroot turned to look Amanita in the eye. “And I mean that. Going up there was like a headache going away. I can just fly up there again if I need to.”

Oh, to be a pegasus. Amanita was already missing the sun. “Alright. But let me know if you need to talk.”

“Of course I will.”

Well. At the very least, that door was now open.

Tratonmane was nearly deserted as they walked through the streets. Every now and then, they’d pass a pony who’d shoot them a dirty look, but it was rare. Amanita guessed Pyrita’s funeral was still going on.

It was a guess that was borne out as they approached the Watering Cave. Many ponies were still gathered in the cemetery and Amanita could hear somepony speaking, their words made indistinct by the wind. Whippletree and Varnish were at the entrance to the graveyard, apparently standing guard against someone. The rest of the crew didn’t pay the funeral any attention.

Amanita found herself walking to the entrance. She didn’t know why, and when she realized what she was doing, she didn’t care enough to stop. Maybe she’d get lucky and be able to talk and get through to Arrastra. And maybe someone else would suddenly die in the next few hours and she’d be able to resurrect them to convince Tratonmane she was a necromancer, while she was wishing for the impossible.

Just as she reached the gate, Whippletree flared a wing in her path; at the same time, Varnish threw up enough of a shield for her to bump off of. As she stumbled back, rubbing her muzzle, Whippletree sighed. “Beg pardon, but we cannae let ye in,” he said in a tired voice.

“Nor any of the rest of your group,” scowled Varnish. He was glaring at Amanita like she’d personally been the one to kill Pyrita.

Amanita swallowed. What was she doing here, again? “It’s that bad?” she asked quietly.

Varnish snorted contemptuously. “Do you know what you did?” he asked. “You lied about being a necromancer, you made yourself sound powerful and got everyone’s hopes up that- that Pyrita would be saved, and then you did nothing-”

“I thought-”

Whippletree’s face abruptly screwed up in anger and his wings flared. “Ye thought wrong,” he hissed in a dangerously level voice. “Ye hurt all these here ponies wi’ yer words, an’ ye keep stickin’ yer nose in where it doesnae belong. Y’ain’t welcome here and ye’d best be a-leavin’ afore I a-finally mellow yer head in.”

Amanita didn’t totally know what the words meant, but the tone of his voice made it frighteningly clear. “A-alright,” she said, nodding rapidly. She took a step back, her tail close to her body. “I’ll- be- gone, sorry to bother you.” On a sudden impulse, she bowed, then turned around.

“W-wait. Hold up.”

Whippletree’s voice gave Amanita pause; it’d been shaking. Hesitantly, she turned back. Whippletree was hanging his head and his stance was tense. “Beg yer pardon,” he said in a voice on the verge of splintering. “ ’Twas uncalled for. ’Tis been a… hard day.”

“I get it,” said Amanita quietly.

Whippletree sighed and raised his head up. “Pyrita’s part o’ my family, an’ e’er since she came out o’ the mine, I havenae been feelin’ right. I jes’ want fer tae roar an’ tear an’-”

“Whippletree, we’re keeping her out,” growled Varnish. “Cease talking to her.”

“-an’ I’m afeared my head’s in a bad fix,” Whippletree continued. “I dinnae ken why I’m sayin’ what I been sayin’ an’ I want fer tae te-” He bit his lip and looked away. Varnish seemed to be bristling, for some reason.

“I get it,” Amanita repeated a bit louder. “Stress and orders and- I should’ve listened to you. Shouldn’t’ve even been here anyway. I, I’ll be off. …Tell Arrastra I’m sorry.”

Whippletree didn’t look at her, but he nodded.

Amanita turned and walked away, wishing she could do more. When she was about halfway back to the Cave, she looked over her shoulder. Whippletree seemed to be in an argument with Varnish and was pointing aggressively at her. The impulsive part of Amanita wanted to walk up and ask what that was all about, but impulsivity hadn’t served her well in the past few days. Sucking in a breath, she returned to the inn.

They almost locked the door for dinner again that night. Not quite. But almost.

It wasn’t as tense as the previous night. They managed small talk as they ate, speculated about the mine, speculated more on sharing magic. But there was still a question hanging over everything.

Once the majority of the food had been eaten, Code set aside her plate and stood up. “I think tomorrow ought to be focused on number-crunching,” she said. “We have all that data and, for the most part, we’ve only glanced at it. I think we should look at it more in-depth.”

For several moments, no one said anything. Amanita spoke up to break the awkward silence. “Sounds good. It’ll get us through another day.”

“Yeah,” said Charcoal, more to help drive away the quiet than anything else.

Bitterroot raised a hoof. “I can try to look for Tallbush and ask him about the mine again. Keep drilling until he breaks.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Code said. “We’ll see tomorrow. And depending on how your…” She gestured vaguely at Bitterroot’s neck. “…condition turns out, you might need to head back to Canterlot. Need to.”

“Alright.”

“And I’ve. Um.” Charcoal bumped her hooves together. “I’ve got a bit of a theory about the wolves. Spriggans. They’re these… forest beats- beasts that can be… real mean. If something set one off, maybe it’s… trying to drive Tratonmane out. They don’t really have any sort of influence over ley lines, and this isn’t their usual schtick, and they’re almost never this far north, and they can be driven away with iron like the weapons Tratonmane is using, and they ought to be blighting the crops instead of them being delicious, and there’s been no whirlwinds, but…” Her ears twitched and she lowered her head.

“If nothing else,” said Amanita, “it’ll give us something to call the reason the wolves are going crazy.”

“Mmmff.”

Silence fell again. It lasted about a second before Charcoal suddenly raised her head and started speaking again. “You seemed to brick up- pick up levitation pretty quickly,” she said to Code. “I know levitation’s simple, but you got it almost immediately.”

Code blinked, then shrugged. “I’m the High Ritualist. All rituals could theoretically be performed by a unicorn with enough power. I know how ritual levitation works, so I know how thaumic levitation works. I simply never had a chance to apply it until a few hours ago.”

“Really?” Charcoal asked. “Is there a… system for going back and forth? It feels like it should have a system.”

“Yes and no,” said Amanita. “There aren’t any one-to-one connections or anything, but the Holstein equivalence principle says that…”

Outside, the valley darkened, but there was still light inside.