The Necromancer of Ponyville · 4:05am Oct 9th, 2019
Once upon a time, there was a pony named Violet Bier. She was a unicorn, and she was born in Ponyville. She was an orphan, as her parents died when she was very young. No cause was determined at the time. They were simply found cold in their kitchen with their little filly wailing over her mother’s body, begging for her to wake up.
This in of itself was not so unusual. While it was certainly tragic, ponies did die, and those who lived near the Everfree sometimes died mysteriously. She was placed in the care of her aunt and uncle in-law, who had no foals of their own and who were quite willing watch over her. Everypony in town thought that they would do their best to make her happy. It was even suggested that the young Violet might be a good playmate for little Applejack, who had also recently suffered great loss.
Then Violet’s aunt and uncle dropped dead in their living room, without a mark on them. They were found a day later. Violet was found hiding in the closet in her room, shaking uncontrollably. She refused to speak.
Violet had one more relative in Ponyville, an uncle. He was terrified, on the day he took Violet in. He shook with fear in her presence. He couldn’t sleep with her in the house. He became more haggard and distant the longer she stayed. But what, he asked, was the alternative? To leave a filly out in the cold?
He died of a heart attack four months later. The stress, they said.
And so, the ponies of Ponyville took Violet to the edge of town. They painted her flanks with sheep’s blood where her cutie mark might one day be. They marked her face with mashed rowan fruit and ashes.
Then they cast her out into the Everfree.
“Of course,” Violet said, idly stirring her tea as she waited for it to cool down, “it wasn’t quite that simple. A lot of ponies would leave food at the edge of the forest. Particularly Rarity.”
“You’re mistaken, surely,” Rarity replied, her intonations smooth and cultured. “I was merely leaving out scraps for the ducks down by the river.”
“You leave the ducks a whole basket of bread and a jar of butter?”
“Violet, dear, have you seen how fat the ducks in this town are?” Rarity laughed. The two shared a brief smile.
Twilight stared. She gaped. Her teacup lay askance, halfway through being picked up. A good amount of tea had spilled down to Twilight’s saucer, apparently without her noticing.
Eventually, of course, she recovered. Then, she laughed. “I get it.” She looked around the table at the other ponies present. “This is a joke. You’re putting me on.”
The other ponies stared back at her. They were all unicorns: Rarity, Violet, Lyra, Amethyst, and Colgate. While each had their own interests, they were perhaps best thought of as the five unicorns of Ponyville who had some serious interest in learning magic outside their special talents. Rarity had suggested that if Twilight was going to be living in Ponyville’s library from now on, perhaps she would like to meet the other academics in town.
They would love to meet her, of course. The very idea of Celestia’s student living in Ponyville was such a novelty. They could trade stories.
Rarity spoke first. “Well, yes. Obviously. I’d usually leave a few loaves of bread each week. And something to put on them. It wasn’t always butter, but something sustaining. Jam or preserves or—”
“Where would you even get sheep’s blood?”
The ponies around her frowned. This time, Lyra spoke: “From a… sheep?”
Twilight let out half a laugh, the sound sharper than it had been. “This isn’t funny,” she snapped, but nopony answered. They seemed confused. “You expect me to believe you, you all around this table, and your parents, took a little filly. You took a little filly, murdered a sheep so you could paint her with its blood, and then cast that little filly out of civilization to fend for herself in the most dangerous forest in all of Equestria.”
Violet made a small, polite shrug. “Better a sheep than a pony. You know that no unicorn can really control their powers at that age. It’s bad enough for ponies whose talents are things like pyromancy, or woodcutting.”
She removed her spoon from her tea, setting it down beside the cup. “How do you deal with necromancers in Canterlot?”
Twilight ended the meeting there. She told everypony they could go home. In fact, that it might be better for them if they did. The unicorns of Ponyville did not understand why, and Rarity was hurt most of all, but Twilight’s tone did not encourage lingering. They packed up their things and left.
Violet was last out the door, being the only pony there who wore significant clothing. Twilight watched her intently, as she fashioned her cloak about her shoulders. She was a slight little thing, with a diminutive frame and a soft face. Her cutie mark was unthreatening, even common: an hourglass. When she was bare, she looked like she should be the cute mare up the road, who sweeps up at the little corner shop that sells watches.
But it was not her habit to go bare. She wore a heavy black cloak, which covered her cutie mark as well as most of the rest of her body. She fastened it with a black stone, and kept the hood up. Over that, she wore a traditional saddle and saddlebags, the containers stuffed with unpleasant smelling herbs. And on one side of that saddle was affixed an old glass lantern in which burned an unnatural violet flame.
“It’s an act,” Twilight said abruptly.
Violet paused, her hoof halfway to the door. She turned to face Twilight, momentarily torn between her and the rest of the unicorns waiting for her outside.
“You have good manners.” Twilight said. “You know how to drink from a teacup properly. You don’t act like a pony who was raised by wolves. Or a pony who practices dark magic.” She swallowed and then repeated: “It’s like, performance art, or something.”
“Ms. Lemon Honey taught me how to be polite,” Violet said. For a moment, a frown appeared on her face. She hid it just as quickly. “You’ve never met her, but she was the schoolteacher before Ms. Cherilee.”
“She raised you?”
“I raised her, more like. She died when I was… nine, I think. Or ten. And I remembered her being so nice. Her spirit has moved on now, but she’s the one who stopped me from growing up to be a little barbarian.”
Twilight’s lip pulled back into a sneer, half her face twisted away from the rest. Her eyes narrowed. “You’d need a corpse for that.”
“Yes. I dug her up. That’s my right.” It was Violet’s turn to sound impatient, and her own eyes narrowed. “The living belong to Celestia, the dead belong at peace, but that which is neither living nor dead belongs to Charon and his servants—they who bear the lanterns of purple fire, whose light penetrates the mists of the river Styx. Think about it. When a pony dies, don’t you put a coin in their mouth?”
“Where I’m from, we cremate the dead.”
Violet snorted, and opened the door to go: “Selfish.”
“Um… no. Of course not. I can see how upset you are.” Fluttershy wrapped her wings around herself like a blanket. “But how do you deal with necromancers back home?”
Twilight let out a sigh, tapping her hooves hard on the table. She looked not at Fluttershy but out the window, staring at her animal friends in Fluttershy’s yard beyond. “There are no necromancers in Canterlot. Or, I mean, maybe a few in prison. But basically none.”
“Oh.” Fluttershy said the word ever so softly. She looked down at the table, and lapsed into an extended silence.
“It’s black magic,” Twilight snapped. “There aren’t any diablists or blood mages in Canterlot either.”
“I’m just wondering what you do when something dies but doesn’t, you know. Die all the way.” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Practically, I mean.”
Twilight turned back to Fluttershy and rolled her eyes. “That’s a big problem around here, is it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say a big problem. But last month, one of my little bird friends hit the window and broke her neck. The poor thing’s heart stopped, but she just… didn’t.” Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably in her chair, folding and unfolding her wings. “So, I asked Violet if she could stop by, and she had a word with her and she stopped moving.”
Twilight stared. Fluttershy withered under the attention, scrunching up in her chair and trying not to draw notice. “I mean,” she spoke quickly, the tension in her voice showing itself. “It’s better that way. Than the alternative.”
“You’re…” Twilight swallowed. “You’re making that up.” After another lengthy silence, she added a weak: “Well, that doesn’t happen in Canterlot. Things there die when their hearts stop beating.”
Fluttershy nibbled on a cracker for awhile. Then, finally, she said, “That must be nice.”
It was another lovely day in Ponyville.
This has the beginnings of a most interesting story!
Fluttershy’s line at the end is the best.
Daaaaamn. Pretty interesting.
Yes, more of this please :)
Need more, much more.
ok i want to read the rest of this
Poor Twilight. One of your closest friends, a bunch of other unicorns - they can be having you on. But Fluttershy as well? Yeah, no sheep go missing around Canterlot because a dead pony is a cremated pony, but out in
HickvillePonyville when the occasion demands it, you need sheep's blood.You had my curiosity. Now you have my attention.
Oh, a continuation of this? :D
(After reading: Or on the same sort of thing, at least, and/or sharing some characters. Well, fun either way. :))
"This in of itself was"
"This in and of itself was" or "This in itself was"?
(Not sure on this one, though.)
"I raised her, more like."
:D
"for awhile. Then"
"for a while. Then"?
"It was another lovely day in Ponyville."
Hah! :D
Nicely done, this, again. :)
Though I do wonder where she got her lantern.
(Also, how the schoolteacher went from being dead to undead without violating belonging at peace.)
I smile
Please, turn this into a full story!
Dang. Jaxie
Well both parts of what appears to be the Violet Biers saga are enjoyable.
I'm just going to blame the Everfree for this. It's a mess of magic, what with the Sister's old palace, the Tree of Harmony, Discord's evil vines, and who knows what else all in close proximity.
I wonder. Does it really not happen in Canterlot or did Twilight just grow up sheltered enough? I mean she had a privileged upbringing having an alicorn as a foalsitter and later being the personal student of Celestia herself.
Her reaction feels to me more like the latter, more like denial than disbelief, in a "I don't want that to be true"-kind of way.
Who says you need to kill a sheep? Modern medical practices are a wonderful thing.
That three of them had seen Twilight in Canterlot the day before she left for Ponyville was just one of those things that nopony was gauche enough to bring up.
"Violet, I grew up on the side of the mountain. Where would we bury ponies?"
"Look up the old crystal mines sometime. Good night, Twilight Sparkle."
"Sheltered, fresh-off-the-air-chariot Twilight gets her horizons expanded" can always make for a fun, world-expanding story, as can necromancy in Equestria. And I do appreciate the reference. (Can't help but wonder which of her relatives were Golden Barque, Cerulean Lute, Crimson Banner, and Forbidding Manse.) I do look forward to seeing what you do with this should you expand it. Especially if Twilight writes to Celestia on the subject.
good lord
The Quick and the Dead. And those caught in the Twilight between. Maybe Twilight shouldn't go looking into this too much. She might not like what she finds, after all.
Check your privilege Twilight!
Dear Mr. King,
We here at IDW are greatly honored to find that an acclaimed author like yourself has taken an interest in one of our titles.
However we regret that your story treatment "Like Pet Sematery But With Ponies" does not suit our present needs. We fear this is also true of "Winona Gets Uber-Rabies and Attacks Everypony" and "Pinkie Pie Becomes a Murderous Clown Who Lives In the Sewer."
We wish you luck, though, in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
The Editors
I mean, do you check?
I think we can see where that is going.
5134711
Okay, where's it going?
5134810
In Canterlot they cremate anyone who sits still too long. No one ever says "that pile of ashes didn't die all the way."
5134853
Whereas I was thinking that the pile of ashes might still "come back" in an even more horrifying form.
5135175 I think the ashes might well "come back" as not quite dead, but as a pile of ashes that cannot express this to others. So every house in Canterlot with an urn on the mantel piece may well have a silent scream that only a necromancer can hear, which explains why there are no necromancers living in Canterlot.