Necrosis

Personal log: Entry no. 781227

My research into the genetic manipulation of deceased organisms shows continued promise. While I’ve yet to go beyond what I believe to be the safe zone and manipulate anything larger than a dead bird, I’ve full confidence that should the need arise, I could resurrect a full grown pony.

Interesting note; I resurrected a moth exactly one month and three days ago. Oddly enough, it shouldn’t have lived for more than three weeks. I’ve taken the liberty of cutting off its air supply and yet it still flutters around as though fully oxygenated. Such observations lead me to believe that the moth is in fact dead and is only surviving on the energy that I am feeding it. On a sad note, Owluicious died last week, but now he is helping keep Spike distracted during my research hours. I can’t afford to let him in on what I am doing here. While I’ve taken the necessary measures to ensure I don’t get caught, I am not so smug as to believe that it is impossible, and should such an occurrence happen, I want him to have the benefit of deniability.

It’s been three years since I began researching this field of magic, and while I have no doubt even Discord himself would be against it, reformed or otherwise, I must continue. I have reason to believe that perhaps the Princesses are hiding something from pony kind… Such is a thought I am uncomfortable with. My trust in Celestia alone is faltered by this possibility. The direction in which I am going could have led to the birth of Nightmare Moon all those centuries ago, it may also explain the Princecces’ immortality. Despite public opinion, they are not gods. This was proven to me when Chrysalis defeated Celestia with ease the day of my brother’s wedding. Were the Princesses gods, they would not have been so easily bested by an overgrown insect. I suppose I blame Chrysalis for more than what she put me and my friends and family through, but I blame her for opening my eyes to the Princesses' limits. While I respect Celestia as a teacher, and am good friends with Luna, I still yearn for the good old days when I believed them both to be invincible. But sadly, I know better now and this is why I must pursue this path that has opened itself to me.

Though a pursuer of the evolution of magic himself, I am confident Starswirl the bearded would shun this line of research also…

“Twilight, hurry up, we have to prepare for the funeral.” the voice of Spike reached my ears as I jotted down some choice thoughts in my journal. I looked up from what I was doing and turned to look at the doorway where his voice had come through. Fortunately, he wasn’t there. I sighed with relief and jotted a quick note before closing the book and hiding it away.

“Coming Spike!” I called back to him, grabbing a small necklace and throwing it into my hidden pocket. I ran up the stairs to join the now meter tall dragon, wearing his best suit.

“Come on, Twilight, I know it’s Trixie’s funeral, but you still shouldn’t be late to it. She regarded you as her greatest challenge after all, you should take pride in that.”

I rolled my eyes at Spike’s attempt to generalise Trixie’s departure. While I was going to her funeral for my own reasons, I had no doubt that Spike and my friends were going to gloat at her untimely death; perhaps not publically, but in their own minds, except maybe Rainbow Dash, whose brash attitude may result in the undoing of the upcoming funeral.

“I may have been her enemy, Spike, but she was not mine. I admired her persistence, but in the end, I knew she was just trying to be as good as me if not better. An impossible dream though it turned out to be.” I said, keeping a professional and impartial tone to my voice. Spike remained silent, undoubtedly thinking my statement harsh and colder than the body we were going to pay our respects to.

The funeral went about as well as could have been expected. While Trixie had no friends or family, there were a select few who noticed some redeeming qualities within her. I was one such entity. I’d told everypony how I respected her desire to better herself and how I was honoured to have been her goal throughout the latter half of her life. Most of what I’d told them all was just tripe to fill in the allotted time, but I’d gotten very good at lying over the past year. Trixie’s will had been read out by myself and it was revealed that she requested I bury her in the ground myself. While others found it difficult to allow, I found it to be a great opportunity.

That night, I stood next to the coffin, the hole across it from myself. I opened the lid of the casing to reveal the beautified features of the mare who had wanted to defeat me for five years. I removed the necklace from the hidden pocket above my breast and placed it around Trixie’s neck. With a light glow from my horn, I tapped the pendant on the necklace and the crystals lit up, revealing a pentagram shape of sorts glowing a bright red over a golden base.

I whispered some incoherent words that would have made no sense to the untrained and within a few seconds, the light faded and Trixie gasped for air, sitting up in the coffin a moment later. I could see she was stunned and unsure of what had happened. Looking at her back, which had been hidden beforehoof, I saw the scars that had been recently stitched closed. She checked herself over, feeling herself to make sure she was still alive. She even went so far as to touch herself to make sure she could still feel… things. Her hooves rested on the amulet I’d outfitted her with. It wasn’t until she looked around at her surroundings that she noticed me and nearly screamed in horror.

“Twilight Sparkle! How dare you barge into… wait, no. What am I doing here, out in the open… in a coffin… with a body colder than the frozen mountains in the north? Oh Celestia, I’m dead!” I admit it was amusing to see her come to the conclusion herself.

“Yes, but it’s nice to know that you checked for perspective activities the moment you awoke.” I said, shifting my gaze to her highly visible nethers. If she could blush, I imagine she would have.

“Trixie always sits up this way!” she cried defensively.

“Giving your patty a bit of an airing? Very wise.” I retort, leaning towards the corpse that shied away from me.

“Twilight, how is any of this possible? I died… I felt my life slip away in that cave.” she dropped the shyness and switched to desire, specifically, the desire for answers. It was no use hiding the truth from her.

“It’s called resurrection. I brought you back to life thanks to the help of that amulet around your neck. It’s called the Amulet of Sion. Usually with resurrection, the resurrected has to feed off of the magical residue the… host exudes. And knowing you, you’d undoubtedly find it an insult to survive off of the residue of my magical energy, so I found this instead. All it requires is a touch of my magic to activate and you can survive off of it instead of me. Call it a gift for being my first pony experiment.”

I watched as Trixie’s mind absorbed the information… slowly. She uttered gibberish as she collected choice words from my speech. I could tell when she rested on experiment by the rise of her ears and the widening of her eyes.

“Experiment?!” she demanded. I nodded and helped her out of the coffin. “What have you gotten yourself into, Twilight Sparkle?” she asked. I ignored her for a minute as I closed the coffin and shoved it into the hole, proceeding to bury the empty casket.

“Just some experimental magic that would undoubtedly be labelled as illegal with the mere suggestion of its components.” I replied. Trixie grinned sheepishly.

“So that means if anypony found out about what you were doing, you could get into some serious trouble?” I knew where she was going with this, but I planned ahead.

“Yes, but just remember who it is that’s pulling your strings right now, Trixie. One little incantation and that amulet becomes nothing more than a paperweight and you drop dead, literally. So you could finally get revenge against me, but you’d have no time to enjoy it.” Trixie abandoned the subject and remained silent for another few seconds.

“Why me, Twilight?” she asked. I began to lead her back to the Library. Despite the fact that I knew Spike would likely see her, I had a contingency plan. Should the need arise, I could disguise her as somepony else.

“There are two reasons I chose you that made you the perfect choice.” I started. Trixie listened intently, though I knew she wouldn’t like either one of them. “Firstly, I chose you because you’d just died and your funeral was exactly what I needed.” she seemed put down, but that mattered little to me. As far as I was concerned, she was little more than a corpse, a shadow of her former self.

“And the other reason?” she asked, the hope in her eyes and voice was stagnating as I almost wished I could have thought of something to cheer her up.

“The second reason was because I needed somepony that wouldn’t be missed by others, wouldn’t be remembered by anypony unless they’d managed to piss them off enough. Again, you.” I heard the slightest whimper as her ears fell behind her and her eyes took on that childish pouting look. With a defeated sigh, I came up with a hypothetical third reason.

“I suppose another reason was because I’m nostalgic. While you spent your life trying to become better than me, it’s sad to have it just end out of stupidity. While I’m calling you an experiment, I suppose in truth, you’re more of a colleague now; a partner in the research I’m conducting. Maybe next time you’ll think twice before trying to take on an Ursa Major outside of your fables.” Trixie seemed to brighten at my statement and hold as I mentioned what killed her in the first place.

“Do not expect Trixie to thank you.” she said defiantly. I shrugged it off.

“Your thanks, or lack thereof have no weight in the long run. Grateful or not, it doesn’t change the fact that you belong to me now. So you can either struggle and be an experiment as was intended, or you can co-operate with me and help me further my research.” I said. She seemed to surrender to her fate, but I decided to give her one last clarification before giving in.

“Either way, you can be replaced as an experiment by many other long dead beings, but you could be invaluable as a research partner, but not critical to the end game.”

“You’re confusing Trixie with your word play.” she replied. I sighed, revealing some frustration in it.

“I can see I’m going to have to teach you the game before you can play.” I said.

As we reached the Library, I stopped her before she went to open the front door. She looked at me with an expression of confusion on her face.

“Now before we go in, Spike doesn’t know about what it is I’m doing, and he’s not allowed to know, understood?” Trixie nodded and proceeded towards the door before I stopped her again.

“That means hiding you from everypony.” I added. Trixie took the chance to ridicule me.

“Well it’s a good thing you took me to a public library; nopony will ever see me there.” she teased. I smacked her on the nose, shutting her up as she scrunched it, stunned by the action.

“I’m going to place a camouflage on you, you dingbat. Now to make you look the least like yourself, I’m thinking contrast colours to your current form. Maroon coat with an ebony mane.” I began.

“Ew, no! Black and red has long since been out of fashion. I’m sure your designer friend would be the first to tell you. No, perhaps keep the black mane, but give me a powder yellow coat.” she said. I raised a brow at her.

“So you basically want to be a black-maned Fluttershy?” I watched as her mind tried to work out who Fluttreshy was. When she matched my friend’s face with the name, she smiled and nodded.

“Oh yes. Despite our differences, I’ve always felt Fluttershy’s natural beauty to be just one more thing to be envious about.” she replied. I recalled a previous event involving one of Trixie’s visits.

“So that’s why you over-endowed her pet rabbit. You wanted to see if her beauty ranged beyond the sentient lifeforms.” I clarified.

“You saw the results for yourself.” Trixie replied with a malicious grin.

“Yes, even today I’m still trying to un-see it.” I placed a hoof to Trixie’s chest and ignited my horn. A hexagram appeared from under my hoof and rotated outward, expanding to cover her chest. It glowed for a moment before resting as a giant cutie mark on her breast.

“There you go. I’d say you look just like her, only I can’t actually see the camouflage.” I said. Trixie’s face turned unsure.

“Maybe it didn’t work… could it be a dud? Maybe it won’t work on the dead.” she said. I dismissed such thoughts as I shook my head.

“It’s designed for the dead. But I guess there’s only one way to find out if it really works.” I opened the door to find Spike sweeping something off the floor.

“Spike! What did you break this time?” I asked, dropping my stern personality in front of him and Trixie both.

“Sorry Twilight, I’m still getting used to my tail. It doesn’t help that I grew another six inches overnight.” he replied.

“I thought you looked taller at Trixie’s funeral today.” I said casually, stepping aside to allow Trixie through. Spike noticed her and stopped what he was doing.

“Who’s your friend, Twilight? Out-of-towner?” he asked. I smiled and nodded, sneaking a victorious glance over at Trixie who shared it with me.

“Yes, her name’s….” I quickly looked her over to give myself an idea of a name. Her cutie mark ended up giving me the title. It was a six pointed star like my own, only it resided within a circle and was more of a black outline than anything else. “…Hex! Pentacle! Hex Pentacle. She’s been in… Abrika, studying Zebra magic.” Spike seemed impressed by her brief history and waved at her, eliciting a wave back from Trixie.

“Nice, I’ll bet you and Zecora will have loads to talk about.” he said. Hex (Trixie) looked over at me with a puzzled look on her face.

“Zecora?” she asked, feigning a soft and calm voice.

“Yeah, she’s a zebra who lives in the Everfree forest. She’s helped us out a few times actually. We ran into a bind with the poison joke flowers, and Zecora had the antidote, then there was the bother with Trixie Lulamoon and how she cheated by using the Alicorn Amulet. Zecora tried to help me get stronger, but I ultimately failed that.” I noticed Trixie’s angry expression at the word ‘cheated’ and cleared my throat.

“Uh, anyway. Hex is going to be staying with us until further notice, Spike. She’s offered to help me with my research, which will endeavour to lighten your workload greatly.” I said.

“What, you thinking of combining zebra and pony magic or something?” he asked. The concept was a delicious one indeed, so much so I nodded and grinned at them both.

“Yep! It’s going to be so much fun too. I said, clopping my hooves together. Hex mimicked my reaction and extended a hoof, motioning for me to lead the way to the study. I did so and she followed close behind, the smile glued to her face… until the door closed.

“Cheated?! That amulet was a legitimate object that fulfilled its purpose at the time, that’s hardly called cheating. I’d have called it resourcefulness.” she protested.

“So you resorted to an all-powerful relic to defeat me instead of doing it of your own free power. Yes, I can see the respect the others would have for you… flittering away into dreamland when they find out it isn’t all you.” I snapped. Trixie found no retort, but simply crossed here hooves and looked away from me like a spoiled little filly who had been scolded.

“So what is this bloody research you’re doing? You’ve told me nothing about it other than the fact it involves resurrection.” she said, looking back to me. I opened my hidden drawer and pulled out my personal journal.

“Read this. Just the first entry to get a good idea of the name of the subject.” she took the journal in her hooves and opened to the first page.

“What’s this? Grimoire du crépuscule?” she asked.

“It’s Prench. It means ‘Grimoire of Twilight’. Though I suppose I should amend the title.” I replied. I watched as Trixie flicked over the title page and began to read the first passage.

Personal log: Entry no. 1

It has come to my attention that there is more to magic than what we already know. More than the legends speak of, I believe there is magic that not even the Princesses have tapped as of yet. I wish to reach that point of no return. Ever since the cascade involving the Crystal Empire and King Sombra, I’ve been wondering if there’s even more to magic than even the oldest of ponies know. More to magic than Discord can control. Healing, and teleportation are some of the basic laws of magic, including creation to a limited extend. It is possible to create inanimate objects, though much easier to teleport already existing objects. It is also possible to create life forms such as plant life and basic insects.

However, I believe there is another section of magic yet untapped, and that it is a force darker than that of Crystal magic. While I fear for my safety and the safety of my friends, my hunger for knowledge drives me on.

Ever since that moment when I was trapped in that crystal barrier, I thought about what it would be like to have broken the rules. And this is what I will do. If I am to die for researching such darkness, then let me live a little beforehand. I will turn my life into a lie and abandon Celestia’s teachings. Her limitations have been made painstakingly clear to me four months ago. But I will not think of the past yet. Now, I must look toward the future. Transportation, Creation, Healing, Containment… these are but four pieces of five. The fifth shall be Resurrection, life after death and immortality. Perhaps I will even surpass my teacher as history has shown they take pride in such achievements.

My name is Twilight Sparkle… and I am a Necromancer.

As Trixie read the scripture, she looked up to reveal I had been wearing contact lenses to hide the true eyes that had been altered through the morality of my magic. No longer the beautiful violet eyes that Trixie herself envied, my eyes were aglow with a fiery red, and my sclera blackened like my faith in my old teacher. I could see the fear in Trixie's eyes as she saw me for what I truly had become: a Necromancer.