Daughter of Death

Night Light woke up with the first rays of light of the sun. He went to sleep as soon as the sun set last night, after he returned home after a full day of searching Canterlot for his lost daughter, leaving his son to take his place for the night.

He looked to his right at his still sleeping wife. The poor mare also needed her sleep. She woke up twice that night from nightmares.

Carefully, not making a sound, Night Light got up from the bed and went down the stairs, going to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for himself and Twilight Velvet. He wasn’t sure when she will wake up, but a nice meal will be ready for her when this happens.

Once he finished eating and did the dishes, he went to the living room, ready to wait for Shining Armor’s return.

That was when he spotted on the table a paper that hadn’t been there last night, with a quill and bottle of ink just beside it. Curious, Night Light went to pick it up, then read the first line written on it, gasped, and read the rest quickly, tears appearing in his eyes.

When he reached the end, he sobbed and rubbed his eyes. “Oh… Twilight…”

He then quickly climbed the stairs to wake up his wife and show the letter to her. Twilight Velvet then quickly ate her breakfast before the two left the room, opening the door just as Shining Armor had been about to open it. They showed the letter to him, then the three ran toward the castle, not minding the dark clouds covering the sky.

To the first guard they saw at the gate, Twilight Velvet said, “We need to see the princess quickly! It’s about…” She whispered. “Twilight Sparkle.”

By now, every guard knew about Twilight Sparkle, the filly-turned-undead, and Celestia made anything about her a priority, so the three were immediately escorted to the princess while a guard went ahead to warn her.

Celestia was in the middle of holding court when a guard told her that Twilight Velvet, Night Light, and Shining Armor wanted to see her, so she put the court on hold and made everypony except the guards leave the room.

As soon as the three entered, Twilight Velvet ran toward Celestia without even bowing, waving the letter in her magic.

“She left Canterlot!”

That was the last thing Celestia had expected and wanted to hear.

“What? How? Allow me.”

“Of course.”

Twilight Velvet let the princess take the letter which she read. While she mentally sighed at the filly thinking that she may kill her, she immediately focused on two pieces of information present in the letter.

A pony named Golden Crown, and a secret path out of Canterlot.

She frowned. “Golden Crown… I know this name… But… It can’t be… Unless…”

“Who is this pony, Your Highness? Can he be trusted with Twilight?” Twilight Velvet asked.

“Golden Crown… He was my nephew…”

“Do you mean he is part of Prince Diamond Tooth’s family?” Shining Armor asked.

“Yes…”

“Wait… “Was”?” Night Light asked.

Celestia nodded. “He was Diamond Tooth’s great granduncle. He died as a colt over 300 years ago.”

The family exchanged looks of astonishment before Night Light asked, “Could this be another Golden Crown?”

“Possibly. I will send ponies to look at the birth certificates to see if anypony born in the last few decades has been named Golden Crown. But… It is possible that your daughter is speaking of my deceased nephew.”

“How?” Twilight Velvet asked.

“As a necromancer, Twilight Sparkle would have gotten the ability to see ghosts.”

It dawned on the ponies what she meant.

“She could have talked to Golden Crown’s ghost if he didn’t pass on,” Night Light said.

Celestia nodded. “And I suspected for a while that he didn’t pass on. Not long after his death, I started to get reports of mysterious incidents happening everywhere in Canterlot, especially to the nobles, followed by the laugh of a colt coming from nowhere. I think that it is now known as an urban legend in the city.”

“The Laughing Colt,” Shining Armor said before he shook his head. “I didn’t believe it. Just a scary story, I thought. I guess I was wrong.”

“If this is really my nephew that Twilight Sparkle befriended, then I don’t think that you have to worry. He is a good colt. He wanted to go against his parents’ wishes and become a Royal Guard. More than that, he wanted to become a hero.” Thinking back to the colt, she let out a small giggle. “He was always running around with a wooden sword, and he often remained at my side to guard me. He was always ready to help somepony in need.” Then, she got sad. “He left us far too early…” She shook her head to think back to the present. “Seeing that Twilight Sparkle is alone, he will certainly remain at her side and do his best to protect her.”

Twilight Velvet breathed in relief. “So it seems that Twilight is in good hooves, at least. What about this secret path she is talking about?”

“There is only one secret path leading out of Canterlot that I can think of,” Celestia said before she got up from the throne, giving the letter back to Twilight Velvet. “It is a secret evacuation tunnel inside the mountain. Come, I will lead us to it.”

And so, with an escort, they left the castle under the rain and, before long, they were before the wall of the mountain.

“This is a secret that I want all of you to keep to yourselves, for security reasons,” Celestia then said before she pressed a rock, opening the wall and revealing the tunnel. “Only the officers of the Royal Guard normally know about it.”

“Then how could Golden Crown know about it?” Shining Armor asked.

Celestia sighed. “He often visited a retired Captain known as Iron Sword. He probably learned it from him. That old stallion loved to tell stories of his time as a guard, and he must have thought that it wouldn’t hurt. Golden Crown was good at keeping secrets.”

“And this tunnel leads to the other side of the mountain?” Night Light asked.

“Indeed,” Celestia answered before she pressed the rock again, closing the tunnel. Then, she teleported everypony to the other side of the mountain. “It leads right here. From here…” She looked around. “She could have gone anywhere. But she probably went to a place where nopony would be present, and the closest I can think of would be the Everfree Forest. I will try to intercept her.”

Shining Armor looked down at the ground, then snorted. “Too bad the rain removed any trace she may have left that we could have followed. Talk about bad timing.”

“That is indeed very unfortunate, Cadet Armor,” Celestia said. “Hopefully, she really went to the Everfree Forest. I can’t think of a better place where she could hide.”

Over the next few hours however, Celestia couldn’t find Twilight anywhere between Canterlot and the Everfree Forest, and she doubted that the filly managed to reach the forest in just one night by walking. She had to face the fact, Twilight went against her expectation and chose to go elsewhere than toward the obvious choice.

And so, the question was: where in Equestria could she be?”

This made her very frustrated. She will have to send words to the guards everywhere in the kingdom. The problem was that a photograph wouldn’t help for long, but a walking skeleton shouldn’t be hard to spot if she showed herself.

If she showed herself.

And nothing said that she would remain in Equestria.

She may really have lost for good the filly who could have become Luna’s savior.

She still hoped that she would be found, but it was fleeting.

She wanted to cry.

Twilight Sparkle continued to walk toward an unknown destination, surrounded by flies, much to her growing frustration. Not helping at all was her vision slowly obscuring because of corneal opacity. Her belly was still swelling, and she began to release gas in embarrassing ways.

But despite all that, there was one good thing about being an undead: infinite stamina. Despite walking all night, she wasn’t tired at all, and her legs didn’t hurt. And yet, she wasn’t considered the sportive type. Like, at all.

Goldie remained at her side, like he said he would, and while Twilight didn’t have many subjects of discussion in mind, the colt was constantly talking about this or that. Being over 300 years old, he had a lot to talk about, without revealing anything about his life, like who had been his parents. Twilight thought that he was a noble, with a name like Golden Crown, but she couldn’t be certain. It wasn’t impossible for ponies who weren’t nobles to give their foals fancy names. And he didn’t act like a noble at all.

As noon passed, they spotted a village in the distance, to the left.

“Do we go there?”

Twilight shook her head. “Thanks to my fur hiding the marks and discoloration caused by the various stages of death and putrefaction, I still look mostly alive, but I must be smelling pretty bad by now, and I don’t want ponies thinking that I haven’t taken a shower in weeks.”

Goldie shrugged. “Alright.”

With that, they resumed their walk, passing beside the village without getting too close. But then, Goldie stopped as he saw something under a bush, and he went to look.

“What is it, Goldie?” Twilight asked.

Goldie looked under the bush, then back at Twilight. “There’s a dead cat here! Must have felt it was about to die and hid itself here! Sad for whoever owned it. Hey, why not take the occasion to test your necromancy?”

“No way! Besides, I have no idea how to use necromancy!”

“Come on, give it a try. It’s your special talent after all, you should as well accept it, and maybe you will be able to do something even if you haven’t studied necromancy.”

Twilight hesitated, but then sighed and said, “Alright…” before she approached the bush, looking toward the village to make sure that nopony was seeing her. Once she was close and Goldie walked out of the way, she could see the cat slightly poking out of the bush. A black cat with a white belly and chin.

She felt very sad seeing a dead animal. She wasn’t a cat pony, but still…

After some hesitation, she used her magic to pull the cat from under the bush, then sat down to look at it, wondering where to start.

The cat must have died very recently, because it hadn’t reached rigor mortis yet, and there were no flies flying around it, so it wasn’t smelling, meaning that the putrefaction hadn’t started.

After a couple of minutes just thinking and studying the cat, she decided to try something. She lit her horn and willed the cat to become alive again. Then, as if her own magic guided her, she created the spell and fired a beam at the cat.

Almost right away, the cat opened its eyes and got up, sitting in front of Twilight and looking at her with lifeless eyes.

Twilight stared at the cat in awe, not believing that she really brought something back to life. However, she could tell that she didn’t really bring back the cat. Its soul was gone. It was just an empty shell ready to follow her will. She could probably give it more personality with some more studying of her power, but until then, it was nothing more than a mindless zombie.

But it was her zombie.

“You did it!” Goldie shouted excitedly, getting Twilight out of her shock.

“Uh… Get up?” she sorta ordered the cat.

The cat got up.

“Walk to my left.”

The cat walked a few steps to her left.

“Jump.”

The cat jumped.

“Do a meow.”

“Meow.”

After that, Twilight wasn’t sure what to do. She now had a zombie cat, what next?

“Uh… From now on, you are Felix.”

The cat didn’t react to receiving a name.

“Well… then… Felix… Let’s go. Follow me.”

And she began to walk, the cat following her.

Immediately, Goldie was at her side. “So, how does it feel to have your first minion?”

“I… have no idea.”

“Well, I think that it is very exciting! Ok, I admit that there is not much you can do with a cat, but it’s still a huge first step! Now, imagine what you could do if you could get your hooves on other animals. Like… a dog! You could use its powerful sense of smell! Or… a giraffe! To reach really high stuff!”

“Where would I find a giraffe?”

“No idea. But it would be really cool if you had one.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to get a bird and order it to fly to grab whatever could be so high?”

Goldie huffed. “It would be less cool. But… I guess that it would be easier to find. Well then, let’s search for a bird! How about a crow? Or a parrot, to make it talk! Or I guess you would be more the owl type.”

“I can’t believe you are talking about what kind of zombie bird I would like as if you asked what kind of apple I would like at the market,” Twilight said with a flat look before she sighed. “I guess that’s my life now. Or… unlife. And to answer you, I will settle with whatever dead bird we encounter first, if we find one.”

“It will be easier to find one if we search the den of a predator, like a fox.”

“I will think about it if we see a fox.”

“Or… You could order Felix to attack a bird.”

“What?!”

“As a cat, it shouldn’t be a problem for it.”

“I will not kill a bird! I don’t want to kill anything!”

“Right, sorry. It’s just that killing things is your main way to get corpses to animate. It’s by pure luck that we found this dead cat.”

“I would rather take the long way and search for corpses rather than make corpses.”

“Ok. I guess that you won’t have an undead army anytime soon.”

“Why would I want an undead army?”

“Every necromancer has an undead army, just for the heck of it. You could use one to build your own tower.”

“I… guess that a tower would be nice. Many great mages in history have huge towers. I wouldn’t mind one of my own. So… I guess that an undead army would be alright. But I will not kill. And I will avoid reanimating ponies. I will remain respectful of the dead.”

“Unless their ghosts authorize you to use their body?”

“Unless that, yes. But just the idea of reanimating a pony creeps me out.”

“Meh. You just reanimated a cat. It’s just as creepy, and you didn’t mind.”

“I don’t know, I guess that being a pony, touching other pony corpses doesn't feel right.”

“Fair. Well then, let’s search for a fox den for your zombie bird.”

“Preferably one with no fox pups. I would rather avoid getting a mother angry.”