Daughter of Death

Climbing the town a bit, they arrived at a house larger than the others, almost like a small manor.

Death Speaker gave a small smile as he saw Twilight look at the large house.

“Selling undead pays well. As you saw, the inhabitants of Klugetown are quite interested to get one. Especially ones as rare as you. This is why I send my vulture to fly over the desert, to search for rare corpses to reanimate and sell.” He chuckled. “Of course, as you can see, I’m getting quite old, and it’s only a matter of years before I die. Then, all my undead will die with me, and the people I sold them to will feel stupid for having wasted so much money on something they only kept for a few years.”

Beside Twilight, Goldie laughed. “Ah! And meanwhile, you live a good life with their money! In their teeth!”

Twilight wasn’t sure if it was nice or not, but it still was a bit funny.

They reached the front door, which Death Speaker opened. “Come. Leave your guards outside.”

“Okay.” She looked at Woofy and Tabby. “Guard the door. Howl and roar if there is anything.”

As the wolf and the feline placed themselves at both sides of the door, Twilight and Goldie followed the old minotaur into the house.

Only for Twilight to be sprayed by a perfume.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, but I don’t want your odor to soak up my house. Anyway, welcome to my house. I would propose something to you, but I don’t think that you have the stomach for anything I would give you.”

Twilight fully entered the house, entering a room that was mostly empty except for a ram skull above the entrance door, a mirror on the wall at the left, a coat rack just beside the mirror in the corner, and a staircase leading up. There was a door at the left, another at the right, and another at the right of the staircase.

Death Speaker closed the door behind her, then what he said registered to her and she groaned.

“That was horrible!”

Goldie, however, burst into laughter.

Then, the skeleton of a unicorn in a maid outfit approached, scaring Twilight.

“I have prepared your favorite coffee, master,” the skeleton said in the voice of a mare.

“Thank you Sunshine. I will be in the living room with my guests.”

“Very well. I will bring the coffee there.”

The skeleton then walked away, Twilight always staring at it.

Once the skeleton was out of sight, leaving through the door at the left, she looked at Death Speaker. “A unicorn?”

“I found her skeleton in the desert three decades ago. Decided to keep it. Having a unicorn maid is very useful.”

“How can you tell this is a mare?”

“The opening of the pelvis is larger to facilitate childbirth.”

“Oh, I see!”

Death Speaker put his cloak on the rack, his vulture having to fly a bit before returning on his now naked shoulder, then led Twilight through the entrance room to the door at the right, entering the living room.

The first thing she spotted upon entering, which made her stop in horror, was a portrait of a familiar blue ram with a red collar with a bell.

Grogar.

Death Speaker saw her expression, then what she looked at, and shrugged.

“Don’t mind him. Every necromancer worth their salt worships him. Say whatever you want about him, he was a genius who reached the pinnacle of necromancy. Most necromancers can only dream of reaching a fraction of his talent, even after studying necromancy during their whole life.”

“It doesn’t make it any less creepy, when you know how the guy is pretty much Evil incarnate,” Goldie said.

“I will not say the contrary.”

Now less sure that it was a good idea to follow the old necromancer who apparently worshiped Grogar, Twilight looked around at the living room.

Beside the portrait of Grogar, it was a normal living room, albeit not very decorated. There was a table in the center with two chairs, a couch, and a shelf full of books beside the couch. A small chandelier above the table was the only source of light.

Death Speaker went to sit on one of the chairs, so Twilight went to sit on the other, removing her cloak, revealing her full state to the minotaur.

And for the first time, Death Speaker could see her Cutie Mark, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Interesting. Not a bad Cutie Mark at all for a necromancer. What have you done to get it?”

“I died.”

“I see…”

Sunshine then arrived with a cup of coffee, giving it to Death Speaker.

“Thank you. Can you take Twilight’s cloak and repair it?”

“You don’t mind?” Twilight asked.

“Not at all.”

“I will repair it right away,” Sunshine said with a small bow before she took the cloak and walked out of the room with it.

“Thank you,” Twilight said.

Death Speaker simply nodded in return before he said, “So, you said that you were taking the entrance exam to Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns, right? You must have studied magic a lot then.”

“I read lots of books,” Twilight confirmed before she looked away with a pout. “Not that they were of any help in the exam.”

“Ah, yes, trying to hatch a dragon egg, right?”

“Uhuh.”

“Yes, it is quite the test for young unicorns, and how were you doing at it?”

“Badly. I couldn’t hatch it.”

“Of course. Hatching a dragon egg is not a small feat for a unicorn. Which is why it isn’t the goal of this test.”

“Really?”

“Yes. After all, after some thinking, asking the potential future students to hatch dragon eggs is ridiculous. Nobody would succeed at it. And it’s not like they have a supply of hundreds of dragon eggs for them to hatch, or else, they would be swarming with baby dragons. No, the real test was to see how you would analyse the situation and adapt using what magic you know to try to hatch the egg. What solutions will you come up with? Will you give up after one or two tries? Will you think outside the box? After all, what they want aren’t just powerful unicorns, but determined, powerful unicorns with sharp minds capable of coming up with solutions to any problem, no matter how impossible they seem. They fail? Then they try again, and again, and again, until they succeed or someone else tells them to stop and focus on something else.”

Twilight looked at Death Speaker in awe. “I… I had no idea!” She then sighed. “My only solution had pretty much been to try to brute force it. It never came up that I should try something else. No wonder the teachers looked bored. I would have probably still failed.”

“So it seems that you focus on the obvious solution while forgetting everything else. That’s something you will need to work on if you want to be worthy of your Cutie Mark. Especially now that you are a necromancer. With your army of skeletons, you have many solutions to any problem. And you will discover more potential the more you study necromancy, without forgetting the more normal magic,” Death Speaker said before he smirked. “If you end up fighting someone, firing a magical beam at him will be good, but tripping them first by growing the grass under them will work better. Or why not use some illusion? Or levitate some stone to hit them on the back of the head. Or flash them in the eyes. See what I mean?”

Twilight nodded. “I don’t know if I will ever end up fighting somepony, but I understand what you mean.”

“As a necromancer, and especially as a lich, you WILL end up fighting someone, sooner or later.”

Twilight lowered her head at that.

“Anyway, so you were taking the exam and failing only to get a magical surge which somehow killed you and turned you into a lich.”

Twilight nodded. “And then, I left Canterlot, and Equestria.”

“Which is perfectly understandable, with the reputation of necromancy. And a lich? You would be hunted. Celestia and Luna personally fought quite a number of them through the centuries.”

“Luna?” both Twilight and Goldie, who was on the couch, asked.

“Celestia’s little sister,” Death Speaker answered.

“Princess Celestia has a sister?” Twilight asked in shock.

The minotaur huffed. “Right. Celestia erased her own sister from history books in Equestria. That mare claims to be benevolent, but sometimes, she acts in ways that aren’t any better than the villains she fought.”

“Hey!” Goldie yelled in indignation.

“Nowadays, Luna is better known as the Mare in the Moon, Nightmare Moon,” Death Speaker revealed.

Goldie snorted. “Come on, she is just some boogeymare used to scare the foals during Nightmare Night.”

“Oh, she is very real, and it has been nearly one thousand years since she has been exiled to the Moon. To return to the subject, liches are pretty much Celestia’s enemies, so you did good to escape Equestria. And what do you intend to do, now? You have almost reached the extremity of this continent. Further south in the Sea of Clouds, and then the ocean. I guess that you could take one of the airships to fly to the beyond, but you will have to leave most of your army behind.”

“I was actually thinking of settling in the jungle,” Twilight said.

Death Speaker rubbed his chin. “Yes, it would be a good place for a lich.”

“One of the reasons I came to the desert is to find tools, like axes and pickaxes, to make it easier to start to build something, like, maybe, a tower.”

“I advise against a tower. It would be too visible. A pegasus flying above the jungle could see it. Yes, there are almost no pegasi flying above the jungle, but it can happen. Ponies do come to the desert every now and then. Unless you could cloak the tower in an illusory field to make it invisible, but you are nowhere that advanced yet. No, instead, you should build an underground lair.”

Twilight thought about it. “That’s true… Alright.”

“For the tools, I can help you find some, but unless you found some monkeys, your animals will not be able to use them.”

“I did find a monkey… Just one… And I don’t want to kill animals and to reanimate ponies.”

Death Speaker sighed. “What about other civilized creatures, like griffons and minotaurs?”

“I’m not sure… I don’t feel good thinking about it.”

“You will have to let go of your morals sooner or later. Animals are good, but civilized creatures are the most useful. And waiting for monkeys to drop dead will take too long. There is a pony settlement at the northwest of the desert, a port that also acts as a terminus for the train. I can lead you to the cemetery there to reanimate some corpses out of their tombs.”

Twilight whimpered, making the minotaur sigh again.

“It’s either that or you give up on building a lair. And trust me, you don’t want to remain here in Klugetown.”

She didn’t want to. She really, really didn’t want to. “.........O…Okay…”

“Good. But before that, how about I start to teach you about necromancy? I’m guessing that you want to give some independence to your undead, or to be able to move your body while still looking through the eyes of one of your undead.”

Twilight suddenly got very excited. “Yes! Yes yes yes! Please!”

“Then follow me.”

Leaving behind the now empty cup, Death Speaker got up and led Twilight out of the living room. They climbed the stairs, then took a door at the left.

And they entered a small library.

Twilight gasped.

“Books about magic and books about necromancy, among others,” Death Speaker announced.

Twilight ran around, looking from book to book.

However, she quickly noticed that quite a number of them were signed Grogar, making her gasp again.

“Grogar wrote books?”

“Of course. Thankfully, a fellow necromancer managed to find Grogar’s lair and to get all the books he wrote before the ponies could get their hooves on them and probably burn them. And he did good. Grogar studied life and death like none other in order to better manipulate them and create his monsters. He closely studied the bodies of any creature he could get his hooves on. This is where most of the knowledge modern medicine uses comes from. Yes, he may have done untold atrocities to write these books, but the result is here, and let’s say it, it’s worth it. Any necromancer worth their salt has at least one copy of these books.”

Twilight took a very large book, Fauna Anatomy Vol.1, then opened it, finding very detailed information about the bodies of ponies, griffons, dragons, donkeys, deers, yaks, and many others, and that was just the first volume. Twilight counted dozens of them.

“Thanks to them, you will be able to identify any animal by their skeleton. For example, the feline that followed you, do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“It’s a tiger. And if you search in the third volume, you will discover why. But we aren’t here today for these books.” At that, Death Speaker took a smaller book and showed it to Twilight. “How to Start at Necromancy. I know that you already have a good base with your natural talent, but it’s always good to be sure. Since you can’t sleep, you can spend the night reading it. Tomorrow morning, we will go to the cemetery to get you some pony skeletons so you can start to build your lair.”

Twilight grabbed the book with her telekinesis and immediately opened it to the first page. “Okay. What if I finish the book before morning?”

At that, Death Speaker grabbed another book. “This one has more advanced stuff, like how to give independence to an undead. If you somehow manage to finish this one before morning, then you should as well practice what you will learn by, for example, giving independence to your undead.”

“Okay. Thank you, Master Speaker.”

The minotaur raised an eyebrow as the “master”, then chuckled. She wasn’t wrong, and it felt good.

Meanwhile, Goldie looked out through a window. "Well, while she studies, I will go have a look at Klugetown. See if there are any local ghosts who could give some juicy info."

Twilight nodded, and the ghost flew through the window.