Death Valley

Bitterroot’s scream lanced through the air like a physical thing as she collapsed. Her skin rippled and pulled itself tight and tore itself apart and twisted into knots of bark. She was shriveling and boiling as bloody leaves pushed their way out of her coat. Her wings beat frantically, sloughing feathers like they were diseased, and she kicked out violently. One of her legs hit the table, sending food and drink scattering as she writhed and branches overtook her.

Amanita yelped and flailed, all vestiges of weariness gone in a single jolt of shock. Her chair toppled backward; somehow, she was able to keep scurrying with her eyes on Bitterroot. Charcoal was already in a far corner of the room, plastered against the wall. But Code was already in a stance that looked like she was ready to fight. They were attracting attention, with ponies looking over, some screaming, some cursing, some running.

Bitterroot thrashed on the floor, flesh vanishing and clothes tearing as wood enveloped her. Her screams twisted, contorted, deepened. Her hooves split apart into thick splinters. Her muzzle elongated with sap flying from her mouth and her teeth roughing. Her coat vanished beneath bark. And when she opened her eyes, they were glowing green.

The timberwolf that had once been Bitterroot sprang to its feet and lunged for Amanita.

Or tried to. As soon as it was in the air, Code had bodyslammed it. The impact blew it into sticks, but her angle had ensured most of those sticks were heading in the same direction. It was already coming back together before the two of them landed. Amanita shuffled away, hyperventilating. She wanted to run. She couldn’t leave Bitterroot.

Code tumbled through tables and chairs in a haze of branches. As the timberwolf reformed, Code scooped up what was becoming its head and pressed it to the ground. “Cabin!” she yelled. She raised her own head to keep away from the worst of the swipes of the wolf’s claws. “Lend me your magic, now!”

Cabin was still behind the bar, agape. When Code yelled at her, she flinched, opened her mouth. Then her horn glowed for maybe half a second before dissipating. Code grunted, stomped on the timberwolf’s head to shatter it, and rolled away before it could reform. Taking a deep breath, she rubbed her hooves together, then slammed them into the floor. Immediately, a large dome of a shield snapped into being around the timberwolf.

Cabin flinched. “H-how can ye-”

The timberwolf lunged for Code, plowing into the shield at full speed. The shield pulsed and its hum made everyone wince, Code most of all. “Just keep the magic coming,” she growled through clenched teeth. “Unless you can keep up a shield and let me think.”

“I- I cannae do that.” Cabin shook her head.

Code made a hissed sound of frustration. Veins were standing on her legs as she settled into a ready stance and seemed to shimmer around her hooves. “Can’t keep this up forever,” she snarled, mostly to herself, as the wolf lunged again. “Think, Colonel, think…”

Amanita blinked. This… She had to be able to do something about this, right? If only to help Code. She risked a few seconds just breathing regularly, forcing her heart to slow and her mind to clear. Her panic dwindled; she was still thinking a mile a minute, but now with purpose. Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Bitterroot had become a timberwolf. What did that mean? Abstractly.

Her essence was being taken over by the forest’s. The land’s. She was being submerged. She was drowning. Why? Who knew. That was irrelevant. More important: how to get her out?

Destroy Midwich’s essence. Or draw it out. Either way. But she didn’t know enough about land magic to touch it directly. So how to get at it?

Sympathetically. She needed something inextricably tied with the land, something made by Tratonmanians in Tratonmane with Tratonmanian materials and a Tratonmanian history. And then she needed to destroy it. But which traditions allowed you to destroy them?

The timberwolf slammed its body against the shield and a high tone rang out. Code grunted like she’d been physically struck. Cabin winced and gagged.

Which, which which…

Food. Food was a major tradition and you always destroyed food. Food would work.

…Or whiskey.

Whiskey. Distilled from Tratonmane waters. Made from Tratonmane rye. Brewed by Tratonmane ponies. Whiskey was perfect.

And the Watering Cave had a lot of whiskey.

Amanita’s gaze snapped to look at the wall behind the bar. Barrels and barrels and barrels. Whiskey alone wasn’t enough, but she had a place to start.

There were still some ponies in the room, caught in train-wreck fascination. Amanita picked two at random and pointed at them; you didn’t yell for “somepony!” in an emergency. “You two. Bring me a barrel of whiskey. Any kind. Cheap and bad’s fine.”

There was a brief spark of confusion as the two looked at each other, then they bolted to the bar. They were doing something, so Amanita immediately ignored them and went back to thinking.

The timberwolf scrabbled at the inside of the dome, jaws snapping; its claws left jagged, glowing furrows behind them. Code’s breath was raspy for a moment before she stomped the ground. The earth trembled, the shield flexed, and the furrows vanished. She glanced at Amanita, but said nothing. Cabin was screwing her eyes shut and breathing heavily.

Okay. Whiskey could remove the influence of the forest. But if it damaged Bitterroot’s body or soul, poisoned them, then scars would be left behind, and- Poison. “Charcoal, look through my bags,” Amanita said. “You’ll find some small, smooth, round pebbles. Brown. Toadstones. Bring me one of them.” Toadstones were good for healing and against poison. An important part of resurrection.

“T-toadstones,” Charcoal said. Her nods were quick and terrified. “G-got it.” She stumbled up the stairs, her legs shaking enough to make climbing difficult.

Cabin was hunched over the bar. Taking long, deep breaths. The shield was still up, so her magic was still coming. The two ponies Amanita had talked to laid a nice, large barrel next to her. They were asking something she willed herself to not hear.

Okay. Okay. Whiskey to remove, toadstone to heal… It wouldn’t do everything, though. Her phoenix down wouldn’t work; it was good for full-on rebirth. …Runes. She knew some of the runes she used in necromancy, now. The ones that talked about healing… Those would work. Easy. So how to use the whiskey? How to shape the spell?

A circle, it was always a circle. Gouge a little moat around the shield, dump the whiskey in, write the runes around the outside. Destroy the whiskey? Burn it?

Charcoal came stumbling back down the stairs, a pouch in her magic. She upended it on the bar, spilling toadstones everywhere, then picked one up and shakily brought it to Amanita. She stared at the timberwolf, eyes wide.

Yeah, yeah, that could work. Fire changed things. Yes. Change the land’s icon, change the land’s influence. The toadstone would destroy anything wrong in Bitterroot. The runes would heal her. Yes. Yes! But she needed something to pull it all together. Glue.

The timberwolf had seemingly worn itself out and was now prowling around the perimeter of the shield, glaring at the ponies with flashing eyes and emanating sharp growls. Code was growling back, her teeth bared carnivorously. But the shield was beginning to waver.

Magic. Unicorn magic. Amanita herself would be the binding agent. She had a good idea of what the structure would be like. It’d hurt like Tartarus, but it’d be easy and fast.

…And that was all she needed.

Amanita pointed at one of the whiskey ponies. “Find me matches.” Then she went over to one of the tables and, with a mix of telekinesis and physical strength, ripped one of the legs off. She used it to trace around the shield, deeper than usual, in the compacted dirt of the floor, then sketch out the runes.

The timberwolf followed around the edge, barking and clawing at the shield in an attempt to get to her. Amanita tried not to look at it. She also tried not to listen to the way Code’s breathing was increasingly strained.

“I cannae hold it,” Cabin rasped. “It’s- I-”

“Use mine!” squeaked Charcoal. Her horn briefly glowed with a ringing of small bells. Without looking at her, Code stomped the ground again. The shield flickered and its color suddenly shifted from Cabin’s to Charcoal’s as it stabilized. Cabin gasped like a weight had been released from her and collapsed to the ground as Charcoal started breathing through clenched teeth.

Circle done. Amanita smashed the table leg against the whiskey barrel, busting a hole in it that started dribbling liquid. She shifted it around to where it was leaking into the little trench, and soon the moat had an adequate amount of whiskey in it. Finally, she stomped the toadstone into the dirt, just outside the border. Poison in the earth, healing in the earth. The ground was softer than it should’ve been.

Her teeth were buzzing.

The pony returned with a matchbox. Amanita took it without a word and started pulling the ritual pieces together. The weave of magic trembled with a song ready to be strummed. Amanita, as the endpoints of the weave, would be yanked. Hard. Small price to pay.

“Amanita, hurry up,” wheezed Code. The translucency of the shield was growing unstable again. Maybe the wolf noticed. Charcoal had staggered over to a table and was slouching over it, breathing heavily, eyes screwed shut.

Amanita faced the circle and threw together a quick incantation. The words bubbled out from her like someone else had written them. “She’s not your own, despite your claim,” she intoned. “Her body is not yours.” She struck a match; the air pulsed as reality tensed. “It is by us you shall be tamed-” The flame flared and curled and breathed, ready to ignite something more. “-and thus we close your doors.”

She tossed the match into the whiskey ring.

The fire raced around the moat with an unnerving swiftness, surrounding Bitterroot in less than a second. It grew unnaturally high, climbing almost to the ceiling, and flared brighter than any light in the room. Yet the heat that fell from it was soothing rather than scalding, alarming only because of the contrast with the cold it drove away. Ponies staggered back in surprise and the timberwolf let out a chilling howl.

Alcohol burned quickly and the fire was gone in moments. But through her horn, Amanita felt something buzz in the air.

The toadstone’s crack was loud enough to blot out everything else.

The branches of the timberwolf exploded outwards, leaving Bitterroot screaming on the floor. Code gasped; the shield collapsed at the same time she did. Lightning both metaphorical and literal raced up and down Amanita’s nerves. She screamed and spasmed, toppling to one side and smashing against a fallen chair. Her sense of balance told her the world was spinning in two different ways at the same time as thorns prickled throughout her mouth. When she coughed and spat, what came from her mouth was ashen.

But as the timberwolf’s bark caught fire and the leaves turned to ash and embers drifted lazily down, Bitterroot managed to silence herself. She jerked into a fetal position, her entire body heaving like she was a captured rodent. Wild eyes darted between everypony and her breathless, whimpering wheezes tripped over themselves. “I didn’t mean it I didn’t do it I don’t know what happened-”

“You’re okay!” coughed Amanita. “You’re- You’re okay!”

“-I’m sorry it wasn’t me please I didn’t mean it-”

Amanita managed to pull herself to her hooves. Her ears were ringing as she shuffled forward, but she could still hear Code coughing, as well as… Who was that? She looked off to the side. Charcoal was draped across the table and breathing like she’d just finished sprinting a marathon, but seemed to be unhurt.

The barrel was still leaking whiskey and Amanita slipped in it. The new pain managed to displace the old as she stood back up. “Bitterroot!” she said.

Bitterroot’s gaze snapped to Amanita. She didn’t say anything, but she kept taking small, quick breaths and she was blinking like crazy as her wings writhed.

“No one got hurt,” Amanita said in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “It’s okay, it’s alright. No one got hurt.”

Bitterroot’s blinking slowed slightly. “I d-didn’t hurt anyone?” she whispered.

“No one got hurt,” said Amanita. “Right, girls?” Right?

“I can taste blue,” Code said in disgust. “I can honestly taste blue. …How do I know it’s blue?” She groaned and put a hoof to her face. “…Conflab it, where’re my glasses? Pffbbt. I’ve got spares, don’t worry if you step on them, but…” She stood up and flexed her entire body, grunting.

Charcoal was already off the table and crouching on the floor, examining one of the branches that had once been part of the timberwolf. “This is aspen,” she muttered. “Why is it aspen?… Oh! Uh…” She raised her voice. “I’m… fine. Just… Just fine. Aspen…”

Cabin raised a hoof. “I’ve had worser,” she said. “Dinnae worry no mind me.”

“See?” Amanita said, risking a smile at Bitterroot. “Fine.”

Slowly, bit by bit, Bitterroot began uncurling. She went from a tight ball to lying down to sitting down. She was twitchy from her ears to her wings to her tail and her eyes refused to sit still, but she was sitting up. “I d-didn’t m-mean it,” she whispered to everyone staring at her.

“It’s not your fault,” Amanita said reflexively. “How do you feel?”

Bitterroot shook her head. “I- I don’t-” Suddenly, she clapped a hoof to her chest and started gasping. Everyone recoiled from her in fear.

Everyone except Amanita. “Bitterroot?” she asked, cautiously stepping closer.

“It hurts,” Bitterroot rasped, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’ve- Something’s in my-” She coughed, then gave a sort of tortured scream. She clapped her hooves to her mouth as her entire body convulsed.

Then her breathing was normal again, even and loud and unlabored. She wasn’t twitching. She wasn’t changing. She was just sitting there, tense and still. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at her hooves.

“Tartarus!” she shrieked. She hurled something to the ground and awkwardly shuffled away from it with her wings beating fitfully and a look of terror on her face. Holding her breath, Amanita inched over to what Bitterroot had thrown.

Sitting on the ground, flecked with blood and phlegm, was a tiny armature of twisted brass clockwork.

“Look at the match…”

Bitterroot struggled to do so, but only because most ponies would struggle to look directly at a bright source of light that close. Her pupil contracted properly.

Amanita gave the match a shake to extinguish it. Bitterroot’s pupil dilated properly.

“Her pupils are fine, so I don’t think there’s brain or mental damage,” Amanita said to Code.

Code looked up from the little clockwork gizmo. She’d managed to find her glasses before anyone had stepped on them. A blood vessel in her eye had burst, but no matter how shocking it looked, a little subconjunctival hemorrhage was nothing to be concerned about. “Good,” she said. “Charcoal, how’s it going?”

“Almost there,” Charcoal said. Cabin had lent her a mortar and pestle that she was using to grind up one of her plants — a noonflower, was it? — into some kind of medicine to help ensure that Bitterroot had been fully purged. Amanita didn’t quite understand the mechanics, but Code seemed to and was satisfied.

The moment Bitterroot had calmed down enough, Code wanted to do a checkup on her, as thorough as they could. Any leftover magics? Any mental trouble beyond trauma? Any physical harm? So as the few patrons still around awkwardly started cleaning up, Amanita, Code, and Charcoal started analyzing Bitterroot and the device she vomited up. Everyone was watching them with bated breath.

Amanita turned back to Bitterroot. “How do you feel?” she asked again. “Physically, not emotionally.”

Bitterroot shifted her weight around on the chair. “Tired,” she said. “Tense. B-but otherwise normal.” She was speaking quietly, like she didn’t want to disturb anyone by talking too loudly.

Charcoal suddenly nudged her way in, levitating a cup filled with cloudy water. “Drink this,” she said. “The ritual jarred most of the magic loose and this’ll get any magic still stuck in you throwing- flowing more freely so it’ll be less effective.”

With a certain automaticity, Bitterroot snatched the cup and took a chug. She blinked and looked at it, then took a more delicate sip. “This… tastes good,” she said in surprise. She started drinking it like she would a fine wine.

“It’s a side effect of the noonflower,” said Charcoal. “It gets mana flowing more easily, and that includes the mana in your mouth and even your tongue-”

As Charcoal talked, Amanita walked over to Code and her table. She was still examining the device like a jeweler. “Any luck?” Amanita asked.

“Not yet,” Code said. “I’m no artificer, and this is a spectacular bit of artifice. See all these gears? They have runes carved in them. Mere millimeters high. And as the gears turn, they form spells.”

“They- What?” That was mind-boggling. The runes were tiny, there were plenty of gears, the number of permutations was immense… and it all still worked? Holy crow. “What did it do?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out. I’ve never seen multiple runes used singly like this before.”

“And how did it run?”

“There was a seating for a gem right here.” Code jabbed a hoof at a miniscule frame, one more fitting for a diamond in a necklace than any sort of mana reservoir. But it was blackened as if a reservoir had overloaded. “I’d say that was the power source to drive the mechanism, but I’ve never seen one that size before.”

She nudged the device around on the table and sighed. “I can’t do this tonight,” she muttered. “Charcoal?”

“-can let your mana flow too easily,” Charcoal was saying, “so- hmm?”

“How long do we have to wait until-”

“Oh, you can ask her now,” Charcoal said, nodding. “Noonflower works very quickly.”

“Good. Amanita?”

Amanita’s special talent was healing, so she knew a thing or two about magic inside the body. If the noonflower was distributing any pent-up magic, as Code and Charcoal claimed it was, she knew what to ask about. “Bitterroot, do you feel any different? Physically.”

“Well… about the same. Maybe a little better.” Bitterroot licked her lips. “The noonflower tasted good.”

Promising. “Anything in your hooves?”

“Anything new? No.”

“Anything new in your chest?”

“…No, definitely not.”

“What about your ears?”

Bitterroot gave Amanita a Look, but she still said, “No.”

“And how about mentally?”

Bitterroot’s wings immediately tightened and her breathing hitched.

“Any… urges?” Amanita asked. “Anything you… haven’t noticed before? Anything that feels wrong?”

“Amanita, I-I just turned into-”

“I know.” Inside, Amanita winced. “I mean… besides… stress.”

“I’m terrified out of my mind,” Bitterroot said quietly. “I- I nearly-” She swallowed. “I, I feel like- how you’d expect me to feel. Nothing, nothing extra. Just fear.”

In spite of Bitterroot’s choice of words, Amanita sighed as her muscles released a tension she didn’t know they’d been holding. “Then you should be good,” she said. “No transformational magic inside.”

“As I said,” Code spoke up, “the ritual was quite thorough, particularly for its slapdash nature.” (Amanita didn’t take offense; it being slapdash was justified in the circumstances, but that didn’t make it not slapdash.)

“You’re sure?” Bitterroot asked.

“Absolutely,” said Code. “There’s nothing more we need to do for you.”

“Heh. Great.” But Bitterroot hung her head and started examining the ground.

Cabin was one of the ponies still around, watching them work as she re-organized things behind the bar. “Sorry about the mess,” Code said to her. She dropped two coins on the bartop.

Cabin looked at the coins. She looked at Code. She opened her mouth.

“I’m tired and I feel guilty even though I know it’s for no reason, take the sunblasted money,” growled Code.

Cabin took the money.

With a sigh, Code turned to the rest of the room. The patrons were all staring at her or Bitterroot and the tension was palpable. “What jes’ happened?” one of them asked.

“We don’t know yet,” said Code. (The ponies stirred uneasily.) “But I promise you, we will know eventually. Whatever the problem is here, we’re going to fix it.”

Bitterroot kneaded her seat and looked up, biting her lip. She opened her mouth, closed it again, looked back down. Her legs were shaking.

“But we’ve done all we can for tonight,” said Code. “I apologize for the inconvenience.” She groaned and rolled her shoulder. “And I’m going to bed.” Without another word, she marched up the stairs.

Amanita and Charcoal looked at each other. As her adrenaline began crashing, Amanita coughed and said to the crowd, “Um… she can… be like that, sorry.”

“G’night,” Charcoal said in a please-get-me-out-of-here voice, and then she was out of there.

For a moment, Bitterroot didn’t move. Her wings twitched weakly and she hung her head. She coughed. “A-Amanita?” she asked quietly.

Exhaustion was dripping into Amanita’s veins, but for the moment, she didn’t care. “Something you want to talk about?”

It took a bit too long for Bitterroot to say, “…N-no.”

Amanita waited. Bitterroot didn’t continue. “You’re sure?”

Bitterroot nodded, obviously reluctantly.

“Positive?”

“…I’m tired.” Without looking Amanita in the eye, Bitterroot stumbled off her chair and up the steps.

Maybe, on another night, Amanita would’ve pushed. Tonight, Amanita was ready to marry her bed. She raised a hoof to follow Bitterroot.

“This didnae happen afore you’uns showed up.”

Amanita put her hoof back down and turned. A chiropterus stallion was shooting her dirty looks. “Tratonmane was right peaceful days ago,” he said. “Then y’all Canterlouts came, an’ take a gander at it now. Crosscut attacked, Whippletree’s missin’-”

“What about Pyrita?” Amanita asked. Almost snapped, really. She was too drained to stop herself. “The pony who wandered into the mine and lost her mind when she came out?”

“That…” The stallion’s wings rustled. He looked around, as if for reassurance. None came; everyone was shuffling away from him. “That… ain’t the same.”

“You’re right. It’s not. Because you know what happened at the same time as her? The ley line turning. The entire reason we’re here to begin with.” Would they ever circle back to it, though?

“That-”

“I think the ley line’s got something to do with all of this. So, really, this is what we’re here to fix.”

“The ley line,” snapped the stallion, “didnae have a blasted thing tae do wi’ Pyrita. Tallbush says so.”

“His Grace Tallbush drives trains. How much experience with the land does he have?”

Silence. The stallion glared at her, pawing at the floor.

“And even if it’s not the ley line, we’re going to find out what’s causing it,” said Amanita. “But if you want to debate me, please wait until I’ve had a good night’s sleep. Because I’m still a necromancer and I can resurrect you.”

And then she marched up the stairs. Her bed was calling her.