Catskill stared at Artemis. She… couldn’t seriously… The world seemed to turn over. It was one thing to claim that Amanita had been a necromancer, this was something else entirely. Catskill laughed nervously. “W-what’re you talking about? M-my heart’s beating.” Right?
“No, it ain’t,” said Artemis. She wrenched one of Catskill’s hooves from the ground and forced it to her neck. Catskill waited for the lub-dub, lub-dub of her heartbeat, but she felt nothing.
Nothing at all.
She was dead.
“She was a necromancer,” said Artemis. “You’re ’er slave. Simple as that. Didn’t you notice y’ain’t been breathin’ for an hour?”
“But…” Catskill moved both hooves to her neck like she was trying to stem the blood flow from a wound. Silent as the grave. “But she… She said… I…” Her voice grew weaker and weaker. “She said she was a…”
“Pro’bly ’ad that story lined up for whatever schmuck she met,” said Artemis. “Can’t b’lieve you b’lieved ’er.”
“I… I felt okay… like I’d…” The world was swimming. Catskill’s legs gave out beneath her. “I… didn’t think…” She’d risked her life to save that unicorn, agreed to escort her through dangerous terrain, and what’d she get in return? Death. She was a zombie, a mere necromantic thrall, nothing more. Did she even have a soul anymore? Or was she just a hunk of meat that thought it was Catskill? Her life — her very being — was over. Raising the dead was illegal. The moment the Royal Guard heard about her, she’d be… purged, simply for existing. All because she’d tried to save the wrong pony.
It wasn’t fair. It was not fair.
“No. Y’didn’t think,” said Artemis scornfully. “Well, wake up! Accept the facts. Y’been duped, and-”
“Oh, for peat’s sake, Arty!” yelled the unicorn from across the room. Catskill had barely noticed her for the last ten minutes. “If you were a doctor, your bedside manner would convince ponies with a broken leg to commit suicide! Give her a moment!” Although Catskill wasn’t sure she wanted a moment. That would mean accepting what had happened to her.
“I’m jus’ convincin’ ’er o’ the facts,” snapped Artemis. “Didn’t you ’ear ’er a minute ago? She wouldn’t rec’nize real’ty if ’t tap-danced in front o’ her, wearin’ a-”
The pegasus abruptly stood up and imposed herself between Catskill and Artemis. “Artemis,” she said quietly, “I swear to Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and Twilight together, if you don’t shut your sunblasted mouth in the next ten seconds, I’m going to drag you out into that blizzard, fly you a mile up, and drop you.” She started tapping her hoof on the ground. “Ten.”
“Well, it’s true!” protested Artemis. “All of it! I ain’t gonna tone it down for ’er just ’cause she’s too sens’tive for it!”
“Four,” whispered the pegasus. “Three.”
“Y’ain’t foolin’ nopony like that,” Artemis snorted. “Why don’t y’just-”
“Zero.” The pegasus sprang forward and caught Artemis in a headlock. A flap of her wings took them both to the door, where she kicked aside the board holding it shut. The wind blew it open immediately and snow swirled through the room. Without a sound, the gunmare dove for her arquebus, but the unicorn telekinetically snatched it away and hurled it into the rafters. And then the unicorn was standing between the gunmare and the Artemis-pegasus tangle, her horn projecting a shield around the latter two and glaring at Artemis like she wanted to pound the latter’s head into paste herself. Outside the shield, the gunmare pawed at the ground, her ears back.
“Alright!” screamed Artemis. She wrestled with the pegasus’s grip but couldn’t pry it apart. “I’ll be quiet! Sunblasting Sol Invictus, I get it!” It might’ve been Catskill’s imagination, but she sounded more annoyed than frightened.
The pegasus stopped, already halfway out the door. Artemis still couldn’t get free. The unicorn didn’t drop her shield. “Perhaps you ought to do it anyway, Bitterroot,” said the unicorn. “I, for one, won’t miss her.” The gunmare’s eyes narrowed; her wings twitched and she flicked her tail.
For a second, Catskill thought that the pegasus — Bitterroot — would actually follow through. But instead, she hurled Artemis back into the room and propped the door shut again. “No,” whispered Bitterroot. “Not if she can actually keep quiet. This is her second chance.” She gave Artemis a significant look. “Her only second chance.”
Sprawled on the ground, Artemis rubbed her neck and glared at Bitterroot. “I ain’t forgettin’ this,” she snarled. She switched her glare to the unicorn. “For either o’ you.”
“Oh, believe me,” said the unicorn contemptuously, “I shall not forget this, either.” She looked ready to spit on Artemis, but instead let the shield fall.
The gunmare walked forward to help Artemis up. The group split into pairs; Bitterroot and the unicorn went to one side of the mill, Artemis and the gunmare to the other. And Catskill was left alone in the middle.
Catskill had never felt so betrayed, so utterly violated before. She’d been lied to, exploited, treated like dirt. She’d almost liked Amanita, at the end. It was a salve against the loneliness she hadn’t known she’d been feeling. But it had all been a façade. Amanita was probably laughing her tail off downriver. Catskill could almost hear her thoughts: That was the most gullible ranger I’ve ever met! I didn’t think it’d be that easy! Catskill wondered if she’d be able to trust a stranger again. Assuming she met a stranger and wasn’t just put down.
Or was it all a misunderstanding, somehow? A trick by the bounty hunters, meant to turn her against Amanita. Something they’d agreed upon. The argument had all been fake. It was unlikely, Catskill knew. Laughably so. But she was willing to believe just about anything if it meant she was still alive. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.
She took a deep breath to try to calm herself and felt the tightness of the bandages around her trunk. For a second, she had hope. Had Amanita really healed her? Or was she hiding something? What had she done beneath the dressing? Catskill hadn’t thought about the bandage since the bear. She’d known she’d have to replace it, eventually, but that was always supposed to be later. Was Amanita hiding something? Clinging to one last straw, her heart said Amanita was trustworthy, that a “real” necromancer would’ve made her a slave, that Amanita would never do something like that, but what did her heart matter? It was dead. Right?
She nearly ripped her furs off before she knew what she was doing. She started clumsily tugging at the bandages, her hooves almost moving of their own accord, but Catskill didn’t try to stop herself. The end of the long strip came undone. She had to know. She started the long task of unwinding. She’d never rest if she didn’t. After what felt like hours, the bandages and dressings fell away.
Amanita hadn’t remotely healed her.
She had a hole in her body, evil and dark, almost three inches across. It was irregular and ragged. The edges hadn’t even scabbed over, and looked raw and red in the firelight. A ring of naked flesh, with only the shortest hairs of a new coat, maybe two inches thick, was between the hole and the rest of her coat. Catskill prodded at the hole. It didn’t even twinge. She thoughtlessly worked her hoof into the hole. Her insides were like eel corpses, cold and damp and unmoving, and she could feel the softness of her guts. She felt revolted, but her gag reflex never made an appearance. Maybe it, too, was dead.
She bit her tongue in stress. There was no pain.
She didn’t even have the energy to sob. Catskill simply loped to a corner of the mill and collapsed against the wall, breathing deeply. Did she need to breathe anymore? Could she just stop? She thought she knew the answer. She didn’t want to test it. Breathing gave her something to do.
Time slipped away from her and she didn’t know how long she was there. All she knew was that suddenly Bitterroot was standing over. Desperate to change what she was thinking about, Catskill stared at Bitterroot’s features like they were the last things she’d ever see. She didn’t look the slightest bit angry, Catskill noticed. “Confused” or “befuddled” were better words.
“You want something?” Catskill asked. “I’m trying to have an existential crisis over here.” She smiled so weakly she doubted the corners of her mouth moved at all.
“Hey,” said Bitterroot. “I’m… Bitterroot.”
“I heard,” Catskill said tonelessly.
“Sorry about Artemis. She can be a real… country member.”
“Heh.” The forced laugh sounded closer to a grunt. “I remember.”
Bitterroot stared at the ground for a second and swallowed. “Sorry I, um, tried to kill you.”
“It’s not like you would’ve done anything the bear didn’t,” mumbled Catskill.
“Still. Sorry.”
Catskill didn’t care. She really, really didn’t care. She was a few bad haircuts away from a complete existential meltdown beyond the turmoil of emotions she was already feeling, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. She suspected the only reason she hadn’t had the meltdown already was because she was still processing the fact. She was dead. How was she supposed to react to that? She ran a hoof over her leg. She could still feel the hairs of her coat. Was that normal? Could the dead feel things like that? “Name’s Catskill, by the way.”
“Uh-huh.” Bitterroot leaned over to get a better look at the hole in Catskill’s side. Rather than shuddering or acting disgusted, she just frowned, as if the fact that the pony in front of her had a hole in her body was an out-of-place puzzle piece. “Can I ask you a few personal questions?” asked Bitterroot. “You can say no if you want.”
“I guess,” Catskill said with a shrug. Anything to take her mind off of… She sat up straight. “Hit me.”
“What did you think of Amanita?”
Catskill flinched in surprise. What kind of a question was that? “What… What do you mean?” she asked. “She was a necromancer, so I s-”
“Before you knew she was a necromancer,” said Bitterroot. “Yesterday.”
Could she even answer that question? Catskill was certain that those memories would be permanently tainted with the knowledge that Amanita was a necromancer, no matter how much she tried to separate her current knowledge from her past experiences. But… “I thought she was… well-meaning,” said Catskill. She was pretty sure that was the truth. “Kinda clueless, but her heart was in the right place. Like… she knew she was being chased, and she still took the time to heal me. We might’ve been friends. After being alone for so long, I didn’t even know I’d been missing the company. I liked it. Even though she was really…” Her voice trailed away.
“Right, right,” Bitterroot said, nodding. “Anything else?”
“She didn’t belong out here,” continued Catskill. Being able to talk to somepony made her feel better, just a little bit. Maybe she could hide it, she told herself. She hadn’t known she was undead, so what were the odds of somepony else knowing? But she only felt a little bit better. “She was like some… sheltered rich kid who’d only seen the wilderness in books and plays, you know, where the valiant heroine always manages to live off the land yet uses lipstick rather than chapstick.” She paused, making sure her words were getting out right. “She didn’t know just how bad the weather could get. I mean, I offered to help take her to the Crystal Empire and she tried to blow me off. She was turning down help, in this land! Can you believe that? Oh, and she-”
Bitterroot put a hoof on Catskill’s chest and frowned. “Hold up. Not only did she not rope you into helping her, she tried to push you away? And you went anyway?”
“No,” said Catskill. “I… She thought she could get to the Crystal Empire herself. I insisted on guiding her and she caved. A ranger’s obligation, you know?” She laughed bitterly. “If only…”
“So…” Bitterroot frowned again, more deeply. She was a frowny sort of pony, Catskill decided. “She… didn’t force you to go with her. In fact, she wanted you to go away.”
“Yes,” Catskill said glumly. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She knew Bitterroot was just thinking out loud, but she didn’t care.
“Do you know anything about necromantic thralls?”
“Besides the fact that I am one?”
“See…” Bitterroot flicked her ears. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Bitterroot had never personally killed anypony before. She’d never particularly wanted to. She usually worked in Equestria, and bounties were only worth money alive in Equestria. On the rare occasions they weren’t, the Guard still frowned at civilians killing ponies, even if it was technically legal. When she worked outside Equestria and her targets died, somepony else had swung the sword or loosed the arrow or pulled the trigger. Bitterroot would’ve been willing to do the deed, but she’d simply never in position and didn’t want to force herself into that position.
That being said, Artemis was two wrong words away from Bitterroot disemboweling her and feeding her innards to ravens and crows on a silver platter with garnish.
Bitterroot was confused — really, truly confused — as to how anypony, let alone Gale, could stand being Artemis’s traveling companion for any length of time, if she acted like that. Her tact was so nonexistent it had drained tact from the other ponies in the mill. Hence the threat on Artemis’s life. Bitterroot had never seen soul-crushing despair like that which she’d seen on the ranger’s face, and then Artemis seemed to want to go out of her way to twist the knife. The ranger had attempted to kill Bitterroot, true, but rubbing her face in her betrayal and death was too far in response.
So when Artemis had protested that she’d shut up and Bitterroot was already feeling the wind on her face, it had taken a lot of self-control for her to follow what the princesses advised and give Artemis a second chance. Just because the environment would kill ponies without a second thought didn’t mean she had to. But that didn’t mean she needed to tolerate it, either. Celestia may have been polite and forgiving, but you couldn’t rule for over a millennium by forgiving unthinkingly. Bitterroot didn’t have the patience of a millennium. She barely had the patience of an hour. This was Artemis’s last chance.
After some fire-spitting, their group split into pairs and retreated to opposite corners of the room. Artemis was seething at Bitterroot, but Bitterroot was far too busy not caring to care. “Thanks for the help,” she whispered to Trace.
“Don’t mention it,” Trace said. “Anything to put Artemis in her place. And I must say, not killing her in that sort of situation? You’re a better mare than I.”
Bitterroot snorted. “Only a little.”
Her gaze eventually wandered back over to the fireplace, where the ranger was sitting, huddled, staring at nothing. A pile of bandages was sitting at her hooves, and Bitterroot cringed at the size and depth of the wound in her side. It being bloodless didn’t help at all. She thought back to the bloody, pointy rock she’d seen near the bear, and cringed even more.
Then she thought back to the rock again. It’d been an awfully big rock, bigger than that hole. And all that skin didn’t have any hair on it… Maybe-
No. Bitterroot shook her head. That didn’t matter. Amanita was a necromancer, and necromancers didn’t do things like that.
…But why shouldn’t they? Technically speaking, necromancers simply talked to and raised the dead, nothing more. Who was to say that, for once, necromancy hadn’t attracted some good-hearted pony rather than the pathological megalomaniacs it usually did?
Bitterroot looked more closely at the ranger. She certainly didn’t look mentally enslaved. She’d surrendered.
Making up her mind, Bitterroot walked over to the ranger and introduced herself. She had some questions.
The ranger — Catskill — agreed to the questioning… not exactly with resignation, but pretty close. Bitterroot hated to put her on the spot so soon after learning a life-changing revelation like… that, but she needed to know now. But Catskill’s answers only made things more confusing; by all accounts, Amanita had seemed relatively normal. Awkward or nervous, even. Yes, Bitterroot knew ponies could lie and act, but she also knew — from experience — that sheepish self-awareness was one of the harder personalities to pull off. Amanita faking being that kind of pony just didn’t add up.
Then there was the matter that Catskill hadn’t realized she was dead for… almost a day. Even then, not until it’d been pointed out to her. It was like, instead of trying to make a servant, Amanita had tried to make Catskill as close to alive as possible. And if your servant couldn’t act against you, why bother covering up the wound at all?
Then she heard about Amanita pushing Catskill away and her suspicion crystallized into conviction.
Deep breath. Time to see if Catskill agreed with her. “Do you know anything about necromantic thralls?”
“Besides the fact that I am one?” Catskill asked sarcastically. Not morosely, at least. Good sign.
“See…” Bitterroot’s ears twitched. “I don’t think that’s true. From what I’ve heard, thralls can’t disobey their masters. As in, on a- psychological level or- something, they can’t even think of it. But you went and forced Amanita to do something she didn’t want to do.”
Catskill suddenly sat up straight and flicked her tail. “I don’t see why that matters.” But Bitterroot could see the gears working behind her eyes. Slowly, but working nonetheless.
“You did what should be impossible for a thrall. Even if you’re… dead, you’ve still got your own mind. Heck, you were still able to surrender. And as far as I know-”
“What? What?” snapped Catskill. “I. Am. Dead. Don’t you get that? If Amanita didn’t want me to be her slave, why didn’t she just heal me up or let me die?” She picked up a rock and hurled it across the room. “Would’ve been easier for both of us,” she mumbled.
“Because…” Bitterroot motioned Catskill closer and leaned in, lowering her voice. Their muzzles were almost touching. “What if keeping you alive like… like… that-” (She unconsciously flicked her ear.) “-was the best she could do? I saw the rock you fell on, and I’d’ve thought it’d make a larger hole than that. But look. You’ve got a place where your coat hasn’t grown in yet. What if she couldn’t save you normally and-” Bitterroot suddenly bit her tongue and looked away.
“And zombified me,” Catskill said dully. Yet not quite as dully as before.
“Yeah, that.” Bitterroot turned back. “And did that to you so you couldn’t die while she healed you more slowly? Even the best healing magic can only go so far.”
“Well… Yeah, yeah…” Catskill clicked her tongue. Suddenly, Bitterroot wondered if necromantic magic was preventing rigor mortis from setting in and keeping her insides pliant. “I… guess that makes sense, kinda,” Catskill said in a voice suited to conceding to a conspiracy theorist. “But… necromancers don’t… do that. They’re… not… nice like that.”
“What if Amanita’s not the usual necromancer? You wouldn’t have dreamed she was one when you met her, would you?”
After a moment, Catskill nodded. “Necromancers aren’t that awkward, either. So…” Her voice sounded brighter, tinged with hope. “Maybe I’ll be able to live again?”
“Don’t bet on it,” Bitterroot said quickly. “I could be-”
“I’ve already hit rock bottom at terminal velocity,” said Catskill, somehow light and serious at the same time. “It’s not like things can get worse for me.”
“Yeah, but until we know what sort of magic’s in you-”
“Could your unicorn figure that out?” Catskill pointed at Trace. “If she can, I’d like to know.”
Bitterroot glanced at Trace, who was scribbling something down on a parchment. Yeah, that could work. “You’re sure? If you’re wrong-”
“I’m one of those ponies who prefers closure over happiness,” Catskill said resolutely. “Definitely sure.”
“Alright. Wait here.” Bitterroot stood up.
“Um, hang on a sec,” said Catskill. She swallowed. “Sorry I, uh, shot you.”
Bitterroot’s bad leg twinged. After a second, she smiled. “Don’t worry. You missed.” Catskill was going through enough already. No need to make it worse. Praying she wasn’t limping, she walked over to Trace, who was deeply immersed in whatever she was writing. “Trace?”
Trace didn’t look away from her parchment. “Yes?”
“Any chance you could take a look at any magic in Catskill? The ranger, I mean.”
Trace froze and slowly turned her gaze on Bitterroot. “You want me…” she said slowly. “…to examine the magic… inside her.” She pointed at Catskill.
“Did I say something else?”
“I thought you wanted to let her adjust,” Trace said, shocked, “and now you’re simply-”
“It was her idea,” said Bitterroot. “Look, I’ve got this theory I told her about…”
She laid out her idea as quickly as she could. With every word she said, Trace looked less and less put-out. By the time Bitterroot was done, Trace was looking thoughtful and unconsciously tapping at the ground. She glanced at Catskill and her ears twitched. “It would… certainly make sense for her,” she said, “but what of the other mare? Or the bear that attempted to kill Artemis?”
“Look, I don’t know,” said Bitterroot. “There’s a lot of things about this that make no sense. I mean, why would she enthrall Catskill and not the mare? Why would she take Catskill with her rather than having the blunderbuss-equipped zombie throw herself at us? But we can find out what’s going on in her, so… Look, she and I just wanna know, okay?”
Trace set down her quill. “Fair enough,” she said with a shrug. She strode over to Catskill and extended a hoof. “Hello,” she said. “Catskill, was it? I am Leafy Trace.”
Catskill nodded and they shook. “Bitterroot told you-”
“Everything, yes, so let’s get to it.” Trace’s horn started glowing and a faint haze surrounded Catskill. She twitched in surprise, but didn’t otherwise move. “Try to hold as still as possible,” said Trace, “and this will only take a minute.”
Bitterroot only saw the haze wibbling and wobbling, but from Trace’s reactions, she must’ve been getting something. No retching, not like the bear, at any rate. When the glow vanished, Trace simply frowned. “Hmm.”
“Good ‘hmm’ or bad ‘hmm’?” asked Bitterroot.
“That’s part of the ‘hmm’. I’m not sure. It’s… a mixture of bad and good, good and bad. Unpleasant, but nothing worse, and not entirely so.” Trace spent a few moments hmming and hahing. “Think of it this way: if magic were smells, this would be slightly spoiled milk mixed with delicious clementines. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. The bear — which was definitely a thrall, by the way, Catskill — that was rotten fruit that’s been sitting in the sun for weeks.”
“Any idea what it is?” asked Catskill.
“Not entirely, unfortunately,” said Trace. “It’s a very… odd combination of magic, nothing like I’ve ever felt before. But if I were to take a wild stab at it, yes, it would be a mixture of healing and necromancy. I can’t feel your life force, but I can feel your magic. And your magic… is… It’s like the external magic is duct tape and it’s the only thing holding your magic together. Normal healing magic is a metaphysical band-aid on physical ills, but this feels like a metaphysical band-aid on metaphysical ills.”
“You sure like your weird metaphors,” said Catskill.
“And when I’m a better wordsmith, I’ll use better descriptions!” said Trace. Her eyes narrowed a little. “Neither of you know what magic feels like, so this is the best I can do. Believe me, I wi-”
“I want to find Amanita,” said Bitterroot quietly. She almost had to, at this point. She had so many questions about… everything. As a bounty hunter, she wasn’t supposed to care that much about the specifics of her target’s crime, but this was hardly a usual hunt.
“-sh I could…” Trace blinked and gazed at Bitterroot. She lowered one of her ears. “That’s precisely what we’re doing, that,” she said in a voice that was trying so hard to not be patronizing. “We’re bounty hunters. It’s our job.”
Bitterroot held up a hoof. “No, I mean fly out as soon as the storm is over, find her before Gale gets a chance to shoot her in the head or Artemis shuts down any of her attempts to defend herself.”
“I told her to follow the river if we got separated,” mused Catskill. “If she’s still alive, she’ll do that. If she’s dead…” Her ears drooped. “Well, her body will wash downriver, anyway. But why do you want to find her so quickly?”
“Because if I’m right-” Her conviction made Bitterroot flare her wings. “-and she’s still alive, then she might be willing to come quietly. Easy job for us. Even if I’m wrong and she’s just as bad as we all thought she was, she’ll be so cold she’ll probably have trouble standing upright. Necromancer or not, I think I can take a single hypothermic unicorn long enough to stuff a suppressor ring on her horn.”
“And then you’ll what?” asked Catskill. “Kill her?”
“No. I’ll drag her back here and grill her about you.” Bitterroot looked over her shoulder at a certain corner of the mill. “Maybe then, Artemis can put her bone-headedness to some use.”
“Beg pardon,” Trace said lightly, “but I believe I’m the bonehead.” She pointed at her horn.
“I thought that was ‘pinhead’,” said Catskill, smiling a little.
“That, too,” acknowledged Trace. “Anyway, Bitterroot…” She nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me. To be honest, I’m dying to know what’s inside her.” She gestured at Catskill.
Catskill shoved Trace’s hoof to the floor. “If it helps you learn more about me, I’m fine.” She lifted her hooves up and examined them like they were treasure maps. “This is just so weird…”
“And that’s three for three,” said Bitterroot. “Once the storm dies down, I’ll tell Artemis I’m going out for some ‘scouting’. I’ll fly out, see if I can find Amanita, and bring her back ASAP. And, please: don’t tell Artemis what I’m really doing. I don’t want to give her another reason to try to stop me.”
Trace smirked. “Would never dream of it.” She mimed zipping her mouth shut.
Bitterroot smirked back, then pivoted an ear towards the door. The wind was quieter than before. The storm was passing, but it wasn’t gone yet.