By The Gloom Of The Everfree

by LucidTech


Grave Matters

Twilight peeked out into the Ponyville night, cautiously at first before gaining the courage to lean fully out of the doorway to get a clear view of the surroundings outside the house. Her gaze moved carefully over the heavy fog that seemed to have returned with a vengeance after its defeat at the hands of the midday sun. Her eyes combed the calm rolling waves of the heavy cloud-like presence for any sign of movement that was outside the normal pattern , any disturbance that might signal something hiding beneath it. After she determined it to be clear she ducked back into the tree for a moment before she returned with a lantern and stepped down the porchway, putting her knee deep in the fog.

She made quick progress to the nearest intersection and cast a careful eye once again and, once again, she found nothing to worry her. Signalling back to the house she watched carefully as Spigor exited out into the night, his arms full with a large single wooden box upon which a set of shovels and picks rested. He set the load down with barely a noise in order to lock the door behind himself, then joined her at the intersection with the box once again in hand.

“I wish you’d let me check for threats when we do this stuff Twilight, the servant’s guild would string me up if anything happened to you.” Spigor said in a low voice as the pair set off towards the cemetery.

“The servant’s guild doesn’t own you anymore so they’d have to fight their way through my undoubtedly resurrected corpse first.” Twilight said dismissively as she clenched and relaxed her free hand over and over again. “Besides, Raven Inkwell says that the most important thing for an up and coming scientist is to know that they, personally, are the most frightening thing on the streets in the dead of night.”

“Being the most frightening thing doesn’t seem that great.” Spigor said with a kind of familiarity, receiving a non committal mumble in return. In an effort to beat back the approaching silence Spigor changed the subject. “You know,” he said, pausing for a moment to try and get a better grip on the box he carried, “I hear some girls read etiquette books instead of Mad Scientists Monthly.” He smiled in joviality to indicate he was simply teasing.

Twilight, not catching his tone and expression, simply stared into the middle distance for a moment. “Then they’re wasting their time aren’t they?”

Realizing he’d been misunderstood but not willing to tell Twilight that she’d missed his point Spigor gave up on continuing their dialogue and let the empty noise of gentle breeze a rustiling trees fill his ears. This silence remained until they came to the gate for the cemetary. The duo looked around briefly, Spigor keeping his ears attentive for foreign noises, then they began their approach. At the sight of a sign near the entrance Spigor tried once again to start a conversation.

“What’s this say Twilight? I can’t recognize the language.” Spigor whispered, catching Twilight’s attention and pointing to the sign with a foot before he continued into the cemetery. Twilight gave one more final look around before she approached the wooden sign and then crouched in front of it to get closer to the text. She suspected it would be some no tresspassing sign or other popular signage though the way it was written certainly stood out.

“It’s… cursive I think.” Which, to be fair to Spigor, was strange to find on a sign. She couldn’t imagine the patience it would’ve taken to clearly and accurately write anything in cursive on a coarse wood surface.

“Cursive huh? Who speaks that?”

Twilight spared a look to Spigor to make sure a joke wasn’t being made at her expense. Seeing genuine curiosity on her assistant’s face, she tamped down on the anger that had been all too quick to surge. Mumbling under her breath Twilight focused on the sign again. “Can read my chicken scratch notes like a code breaker but cursive loses him.”

“What was that?” Spigor said, setting the box down inside the gate under the boughs of a stunted weeping willow, hiding it from any potential passerbys, and then wandering back in her direction.

“It’s a style of writing, not a language.” Twilight clarified, opting not to repeat her pervious statement. Squinting to read the faded writing in the dim light and thickening fog, she brought her lamp up to the words and began to piece it together.

“Welcome to the Ponyville Cemetery. If you are a visitor we would like to ask you to be as respectful as you can of other visitors. If you are a graverobber-” Twilight read aloud, pausing at the fact that the welcome sign had apparently been prepared with law breakers in mind. Twilight gave a glance to Spigor, who shrugged. She continued. “If you are a graverobber than I ask that you keep your looting to a minimum. I am sure you are more than capable of taking whatever you want and if you choose to do so I would be unable to seek revenge. Secondly, if you could keep all illicit digging activities out of the animal graveyard that would nice of you, thanks.” Twilight had leaned in, her forehead almost resting against the sign, in order to read the print as it got smaller and smaller to fit on the wood provided.

Standing once again, Twilight threw a confused glance to Spigor, who returned it with another shrug. “What kind of cemetery asks that graverobbers only rob certain graves?”

“One that hopes there’s some good in law breakers maybe?” Spigor offered, unsure of an answer himself.

“Mmm.” Was all Twilight offered in response as her gaze scanned the surrounding fog once again. She didn’t see anyone there, and the sign had seemed rather aged so it clearly hadn’t been placed in anticipation for their visit. “I think it’s best if we avoid looting the animal graveyard tonight anyway. I’m not sure what kind of night life this town has and we should just get out of here as soon as we can.”

This statement was one that Spigor accurately interpreted as ‘I think we should do like the nice sign asked, it seemed like a reasonable request.’ but decided not to say anything about it.

Twilight took a pry bar from the inside of her coat and slide it beneath the first of four nails on the box. Spigor took his own pry bar from a similar position and, working together, they managed to silently open the box, Spigor collecting the nails in his coat for when they would reseal it at the end of their work.

Inside was a collection of small things, mundane and scientific, that Twilight had set aside for just such an excursion. Reaching in, the duo pulled a personalized set of heavy rubber gloves out. Spigor’s were much larger and heavier, for which he was grateful. Dragons had no inherent immunity to some of the worse complications that might be brought on by gravedigging but, on top of that, his immune system had been compromised when Twilight had turned him into one, making the gloves almost a necessity to prevent any negative side effects. As were the boots that came next.

Suited up in protective equipment, they began their work. They found the most recent grave, easily visible by the patch of grass darker than the rest around it, the headstone still pristine against the elements. Then, moving the box next to the foot of the grave plot, they began the more traditional grave digging work.

It went quickly, they’d had practice after all, and as they work they kept talking to a minimum. Not only to avoid drawing attention to themselves but also to save their breath. Spigor’s muscles burned with a dull pain after a few mere shovel fulls, the sprint that Rainbow Dash had led them on through the town having been a work out and a half. He opted not to say anything about it though, knowing Twilight must’ve been feeling it even more painfully.

In the silence that was only filled by shovels unfilling a grave, Spigor’s mind began to wander. Specifically, it wandered to the subject of Twilight. She was a good person, even if she didn’t seem too keen on the idea. She’d never struck him, though she’d gotten close a few times. Though that was still a large step up from some others he’d worked for.

He remembered how they’d met. He’d been cleaning her room in the student’s quarters when she’d stopped him and asked him about if she could twist his genetics, and he’d agreed as a servant was supposed to, but then she’d asked him what he wanted his genes twisted into. She’d said she wanted to work with phoenixes potentially, to try and find immortality, or perhaps fae to try and extend life, or to tap into the primal magic of the world. He’d asked, in a moment of brief courage, if a dragon would be okay.

She’d ‘mmm’d' noncommittally and then left him to his work. It wasn’t until later, when she’d cleared the experiment with the school and the servant’s guild, that he’d found out she’d listened to him. It wasn’t, in fact, until after the experiment had been done and he looked down and seen the new patches of purple scales on his hands. She’d seemed uninterested in his fervent thanks and he wondered if she’d done it out of kindness or if she’d found some better reason to do dragon in the first place.

It wasn’t until she was found guilty of all her crimes, not until they’d found out that, as he was now almost impossible to punish by conventional means due to his thick scales, that he’d be turned into a biology project for the school, only then, when she’d promptly purchased his terms from the servant’s guild with what was left of her life savings, that he knew without a doubt that she was a good person. She just had… a problem showing it sometimes.

At the end of his reminiscing Spigor found himself neck deep in the hole, which meant that, assuming the six foot deep rule applied here, he would soon be hearing a-

Thrunk

Spigor’s half-hearted drive with the shovel bounced off the heavy coffin wood and with a sigh and a stretch he climbed out of the hole to grab the crowbar and smaller shovel and the body bag. Meanwhile, Twilight continued to work the dirt, removing patches that she could lift without risking damage to the coffin and, consequently, the corpse within it.

Without a word and, working perfectly in sync, they switched positions. As Spigor moved the heavy dirt off the coffin lid, Twilight set to work on her miniature pulley system, anchoring the main pillar of it into the dirt and then pouring a strange glowing liquid around it’s base, firming up the dirt until it was almost like stone. Silently, she ran the rope through the pulleys as Spigor worked the crowbar into the crevice where the lid rested.

With a pop, the lid came undone and Spigor looked down at the stout figure that had been called Applejack during life, but was now a corpse barely different from the ones around it. Almost blindly, Spigor reached up and grabbed the rope that was being lowered to him and he tied it tightly under the arms of the cadaver.

Climbing back out, Spigor took one end of the wheel while Twilight took the other and, working in tandem, they raised the limp form from its resting place. As it hung in the air Twilight let go of her end of the wheel while Spigor braced himself against his to prevent their work from becoming undone. She grabbed it by the ankles and swung it out over the dirt, signalling Spigor to let the wheel wind itself out slowly. He did so until the burden rested easily on the grass of the cemetery.

Twilight undid the knot with a tug and began to wind the rope back into a coil. Spigor, meanwhile, closed the coffin and began to fill the grave. Until, eventually, the grave was filled once again with its dirt. Twilight retrieved two more vials from the box and handed one to Spigor while she took the other to the anchored pulley system. Her’s was straightforward, simply undoing the work of her previous concoction. Spigor’s, meanwhile, was slightly more impressive.

Uncorking it carefully he let a few drops free and onto the recently moved dirt below him. Almost immediately, the grass grew in. Making the grave look almost exactly like it had before they’d started their work.

With a nod to each other, Spigor filled the body bag with their recently ‘acquired’ body and Twilight repacked the box. Spigor placed the nails back into place and then, using his thumb, pushed them back into the wood. After a brief moment to collect themselves, they began their trip home. There was still work to be done. But that would be all to Twilight.  Spigor, with his mind turning in twists of anxiety and doubt, hoped they would have a couple days before the people with pitchforks showed up. He understood that was very ‘chic’ nowadays.