//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Starlight Glimmer (Accidentally) Raises the Dead // by SockPuppet //------------------------------// The squashed coyote growled low in its throat. Starlight looked over her shoulder. The pony-zombies were following, but the nearest was at least thirty seconds away. She lit her horn and projected a flame spell onto the flattened coyote. It yelped and moaned, flapping and flailing, but didn’t... well, die was the wrong word. Maybe... re-die? Its coat smoldered and the others were getting close, grandma Firestar leading. Starlight teleported—Crack!—back the the graveyard. She levitated up the vodka bottle and grabbed it between her teeth, because she already had the four-foot wrought iron picket tucked under her left foreleg. Dang—the vodka bottle was less than a third full. Crack! She was back, levitating the vodka bottle down, as hard as she could, smashing it against the coyote’s smoldering coat. Whoosh! It lit up, howled, and she felt the magical connection snap as it returned to death. “Fire,” Starlight snarled. “I’ve got you all now.” Best of luck, said the book. Crack! She teleported fifty feet deeper into the woods, then screamed wordlessly at the beasts, to draw them farther away from town. She lit her horn, blinking it several times so the stupid creatures would see her. Crack! Fifty feet more, now deep into the woods, and the leaves blocked the moon, plunging her into darkness. She saw their glowing irises in the dark night. Well, that helped. Her breathing was steady, she was holding it together physically, but she felt the exhaustion in her magic. Physically, she was a distance athlete, but magically, a sprinter. Teleports pull tremendous magic, and she was feeling the missing two pints of blood. She didn't have much magic left, but the adrenaline burned like snake venom inside her, and she felt confident. She was angry, furious, terrified, and she’d always known her magic was strongest when she was at the edge of losing control. Yeah, she had this. No problem. “Two more teleports,” she said, “then you’re all mine!” Picturing Mr. Sunspot's general store, specifically its locked liquor closet, Starlight bit her tongue, and... ...fffffbbtttt. Turquoise sparks and gray smoke issued from her horn. Blown out. Her high-level magic was gone until she could sleep and eat a few thousand calories. “Oh, crud,” she said, and swung the wrought-iron picket with all her levitation, smashing grandma Firestar’s skull open and knocking her horn and one ear clean off the crown of the skull. Grandma-zombie staggered, down to its knees, and Starlight swung at the creature behind it, hitting it between the glowing eyes, then smashing each of its foreknees, whack-whack, swinging the picket as fast as she could. Levitating the iron, she ran, sprinting, not trotting, out of the woods, down the darkened trail, back toward town. She whacked three of the zombies as she passed them, dodging their bites, feeling branches cut into her face and feeling brambles slice her legs. She tasted blood seeping into her mouth from a cut on her lip. The wounds on her forelegs burned where stomach acid from her earlier vomiting touched the cuts. Starlight burst into bright moonlight in the clearing between the woods, graveyard, and town wall. Still sprinting, throat now getting sore from hard breathing, she tore through the gap in the town wall and down the side road to Town Square, and she drew enough magic to blast the lock off the front door of Mr. Sunspot's store; that spell required a lot less magic then a teleport, but it still staggered Starlight. She tripped, down to her foreknees, and left bloody streaks on the slate stoop from the bramble cuts on her legs. Standing, then trotting into the store through the now-charred door, she jumped the counter and smashed the glass of the liquor display case with the iron fence picket, and levitated up as many fifths of vodka and grain alcohol as she could manage. Babbling to herself, self control finally cracking, Starlight said, "Okay so I'm going to jail for breaking and entering and burglary but that's way better than getting my horn chopped off and hanged and my head on a pike for necromancy!" She turned around, preparing to run for the woods and the graveyard and her fate, and kill the blasted things, but in the doorway of the store, Starlight ran face-first into another pony. It wasn’t mom. It was somepony who hated Starlight. An angry voice said, "What're you doing, you little slut? Stealing liquor for your coltfriends from my family’s store? I’ve always known it was you. Now I can prove it!" Starlight lit her horn and saw a gray-coated, blond-haired unicorn with a three-heart cutie mark, and a fillyish red bow in her mane. “Mystic. Move.” Starlight felt her horn’s glow brightening, charging a spell. “My name is Mystic Heart.” Sunburst's first cousin, Mystic Heart, was older than Starlight but had missed a lot of school, so she was in Starlight’s year. Mystic heart’s parents, Sunburst's aunt and uncle, operated a mining camp deep in the provincial wilderness, far away from schools, other foals, ...or the town doctor. So Mystic Heart had lived in town with Sunburst's parents for the last ten or eleven years. Starlight said, "Move. Now." "Did I hear you say necromancy? I'm glad Sunburst got off to Canterlot before he was old enough to fall for you. Give anypony the clap this week? You gave it to my ex-coltfriend, last year, and then he gave it to me. That was not okay. Your mom was so embarrassed when she figured out I was yet another victim of your personal galloporrhea epidemic. I felt bad for Doctor Glimmer.” Starlight gently put the liquor bottles on the ground and levitated up the iron picket, brandishing it. "I don't have time for this. Move or I'll break your kneecaps. I promise I'll explain it all later. Or we'll be dead. Either way, give me an hour, all right?" "I saw the whole horizon go turquoise. That's your magic color, and nopony else in a hundred miles has the magic to light up the whole sky. Nopony this side of Canterlot Castle. What the Tartarus did you do?" "Starlight!" Mom staggered out of the darkness, behind Mystic Heart. "What are you doing here?" "Fire kills them, mom. I grabbed the highest-proof stuff—holy horse apples, mom, you're bleeding everywhere!" "I'm miscarrying. Can we worry about that later?" Mystic Heart turned to look at mom, and her face paled and her jaw dropped. "You're covered in blood! You’re both bloody. Stop bleeding all over my family's store!" Starlight was levitating up the iron picket behind Mystic Heart's head, intending to brain her, when mom's magic grabbed it. They wrestled over the picket, which usually would have been no contest, but Starlight was weakening rapidly, so mom held her own. Mystic Heart looked up, saw the picket, and she stumbled several steps backwards, out of the store's entryway and into town square. "You two are insane! I'm.... I'm going to go wake the mayor and Constable Keystone!" Mom looked at Mystic Heart, releasing the picket. "Please! No!" "What are you two up to? Doctor Glimmer, your slut was mumbling to herself about necromancy! Everypony in school knows she's bucking crazy and constantly talks to ponies who aren't there, but this time, I think she's serious." Starlight nodded. "It's true. Help me kill the zombies first and then I'll turn myself in." Mystic Heart dropped down to sit on her rump. "Oh Celestia—that's—they'll kill you! Kill!" "So what? The zombies will kill us all if I don't get some help!" Starlight said, voice rising. “Zombies?!?” Mystic Heart hissed. Mom looked at Mystic Heart, her ears wilting and lips quivvering. "Mystic Heart, please, don't—I know you hate Starlight, but don't you like me? I saved your life! I caught your leukemia early and sent you to Vanhoover so fast that you didn't even need a bone-marrow transplant! Don't kill my baby... please...." Mystic Heart looked at mom, then glared at Starlight. "I'm not doing this for you, slut. I'm doing it for her. And only because...... And only because your mom kept the other foals from making fun of me when I came back from Vanhoover, weak and scrawny and... and... and...” Mystic Heart ran a hoof through her thick blond mane. Starlight nodded. "Duly noted. I busted the liquor cabinet open. Grab as many bottles as you can carry. Don’t bother with the brandies or anything low-proof, we need fire." Mystic Heart poked Starlight in the nose with a hoof. “Later, I’m going to mess you up, some time when your back is turned and you don’t expect it. But I won’t tell on you and get you killed.” Mom put a hood on Mystic Heart's shoulder and said, "Thanks." Mystic Heart shrugged the hoof off and glared. "Don't touch me. After tonight, don't even look at me outside your clinic." The three unicorns levitated every bottle they could carry, and trotted toward the graveyard. Even weakened, low on blood, high on vodka, and exhausted, Starlight levitated twice the weight of liquor as the other two combined. Skull smashed open, horn and ear missing, grandma Firestar staggered through the gap in town wall and hissed. “Talk about mother-in-law problems,” mom said. Starlight trotted wide around the grandma-creature. “Let's lure them way out of town, mom! It’ll make the cleanup easier.” Mystic Heart’s jaw dropped. “Cleanup? You’re actually worried about cleanup?” “Grandma! Over here!” Starlight yelled, and levitated a small rock and tossed it at the zombie. The creature grunted, looked at Starlight, and began shuffling toward her. Starlight called, “Follow me and watch your backs,” and took off at a run, towards the woods, levitating the iron picket and liquor bottles with her. Mystic Heart looked into mom’s eyes. “I’m going to kill her, and then Celestia will kill whatever’s left.” “Take a number,” mom said. “I’m first in line— gaaaaaaahh!” The cramps cut mom down again, and she flopped to her side, curled into a ball, and she panted through gritted teeth. Mystic Heart laid a hoof on mom’s flank. “Wait a minute—you were serious? You’re having a miscarriage in the middle of town square during a zombie apocalypse?” Mom nodded, writhing in pain. “Go save my baby.” “Oh, seriously, if this is all a dream I’d better wake up right now.” She stomped twice, eyes scrunched shut tight. "Wake up wake up wake up wake up... dammit!" Levitating bottles of booze, stolen from her own family’s shop, she took off after Starlight. Mom moaned into gritted teeth. Starlight trotted back and forth along the edge of the woods, waiting for one of them to get closer. She dared not head into the dark woods again, without teleportation to escape trouble. Although she could magically feel the direction to each of the beasts, she had no judgement of their distance. To fight them, she needed to see them, and their glowing irises just weren't enough light for close-quarters combat. Despite the missing back leg, grandma-zombie seemed to be the fastest of the lot. Starlight tried to judge distance in the moonlight. Her vision darkened at the edges with every heartbeat. Her blood pressure must be off-scale. She estimated the distance her fire-projection spell could reach. She thought about dad's sword, hanging on the mantle in the living room, engraved To Sergeant Major Firelight Glimmer, on the occasion of his retirement with twenty years of service to the Crown, with thanks in the name of Her Royal Highness. It was a ceremonial sword, but rust-free, surgically sharp, and fully functional. Along with the framed photograph of Celestia herself giving it to him, taken a few years before Starlight's birth, the sword was dad's most prized possession. If her teleportation hadn't been blown out, Starlight would have been to the house and back with the sword in ten seconds flat. She hefted the wrought-iron fence picket, and considered it a lousy substitute. Once grandma was within Starlight's estimate of her range, Starlight used her magic to throw two bottles of vodka at her. They hit grandma and shattered. Starlight bit her tongue, drawing blood, the pain helping her dig deeper into her reserves. She concentrated on her magic, and flames shot from her horn. Grandma went up in a pyre of horrific stench, smoldering bones collapsing into a pile, and another of the magical connections snapped. Starlight grinned. "I've got this under control," she said. Wanna bet? asked the book.