They were taking her to see the dead.
She hadn't spent a lot of time in air carriages since the change, and that meant she hadn't really had the chance to think about them. The unicorn who'd originally been sent into Ponyville for a stated reason which, regarded through the twin perspectives of memory and forced honesty, had been mostly making her wonder if the Princess had fallen ill... that mare hadn't really thought about how air carriages had to work, because the conveyances were just part of the world's background. You had pegasi towing at the front, which meant they needed to be hitched to something they could tow. The unicorn hadn't seen any need to look more deeply at the transport, because her own kind of magic clearly wasn't any part of it and nothing else was very important.
The newest alicorn now understood every carriage to be operating under its own set of enchantments. Pegasus techniques were woven through every part of the vehicle, turning the whole thing into a wonder. There was no other way for an air carriage to function at all -- at least, not one where the passengers would be delivered more or less intact.
They were moving fast enough to create wind streaming against them, something which should have blown back through the open carriage at a speed which threatened to send ponies tumbling: distance to ground variable, results upon impact eventually becoming just about identical. Instead, there was just enough of a breeze to let the travelers recognize that movement was taking place. And the chill of winter air, something which should have been enough to mandate heavy garments, icicles forming in her fur, and a three-day huddle under blankets until the illness went away? Heat was constantly being shifted out of the flowing air, drifted towards the carriage's occupants until the exposed riding area was warmer than every other part of the season which surrounded it. Given the scant availability of anything to shift, the enchantments needed to be reaching out for a considerable distance just to have any chance of moderating the temperature at all...
Twilight found herself inspecting the frame, looking for any portions of exposed copper: the most natural conduit for such magic. Every air carriage was a wonder, and there had to be visible signs of that if she just looked closely enough.
It was something to do during the first stage of the trip. Something which wasn't thinking about the corpse which awaited her attentions at the other end.
But the corpse wasn't going anywhere. It had infinite patience and no matter what she tried to do, it would be able to wait her out.
'Dead bodies seldom get much deader.' She'd read that somewhere, and she couldn't seem to remember the exact book.
She could think about the quote for a while.
She could request that the carriage touch down in front of some portion of the Canterlot Archives. It wouldn't take long to gallop inside and find somepony who'd recognize the source. Two, three, maybe up to twelve days if she didn't initially luck into the right department.
She could also recognize when she was stalling.
A dead body, not getting any deader...
...wait.
She looked up from the seam which joined the curve of the forward carriage wall to the floor, with her gaze passing over a total of eight legs along the way. Twilight was at the back of the carriage, the Doctors were at the front and for occupants, that was it.
Applejack had offered to come along, if only to provide a reassuring presence. Winter was the farmer's slow period, something which approached a for-dictionary-breaking-lack-of-a-better-word vacation, and she had time to give. She would have made the same offer in the heart of harvest season. And Applejack was a little more used to death because the Acres were their own little ecosystem, one where small animals often ran free. It provided background music to traveling through the orchards, and it also meant that any full patrol had the chance to come across a tiny corpse. But those were animal corpses, and... it hadn't been a very large air carriage. There was enough room to add Twilight's slim form, but bringing in Applejack would have led to multiple pairs of forelegs hanging over the sides and, if the ride turned out to be a turbulent one, just as many trails of fast-falling vomit.
Her friend didn't need to go through that. Shouldn't have to deal with a pony's corpse, and... the doctors had come for Twilight. Somepony from the palace had come for her: that had been enough to get her into the carriage. They'd been looking for the aid of Magic, and even if she so seldom thought of herself that way, regarded it as the height of misplaced ego to go around declaring the title at all times -- she was the mare they believed was needed.
Bearing an Element meant a lot of things and today, it meant she had to examine a corpse.
"Sorry about the air carriage," Vanilla Bear awkwardly said. "Most of the palace escorts are with the Princesses right now. In case they have to move the entire contingent back in a hurry. The carriage is what was left. I know it's a little public, but the Guards are going to curve around and come at the palace from the southern approach. That should keep the number of potential witnesses down --"
"-- I'm not a pathologist," Twilight softly reminded them. She had a doctorate, but 'not that kind of doctor' had never been funny and she didn't really want to operate under that title either.
Both stallions managed something collectively approximating a nod, although it still required her to gather and total their efforts.
"Fluttershy's closer to that than I'll ever be," she continued. Corpses in the fringe and wild zone, veterinary cases where she can't save the patient and the companion asks for an autopsy. Applejack comes across death every so often, but Fluttershy has it trotting at her side. She understands death, in a way none of us do.
The way none of us really want to. Because it's a burden which only the strongest can carry.
"And you can't need somepony for that." It felt as if her tones were sliding into desperation, and if she could hear it... "I'm not saying she couldn't do it! Even if what she usually sees are animal corpses, I'm sure she could try to... extrapolate..."
Chocolate Bear's brown eyes briefly closed. She wasn't sure if it was the sheer weight of transferred awkwardness, or if anything was better than looking at her just then.
"When the time comes," the surgeon told her, "I'll do the autopsy. It's not my specialty, but -- in this case, the most likely cause of death was pretty obvious. Internal bleeding. But there's more to it than that. We need Magic, Miss Twilight."
"Because the best case is that there was some kind of magic at work," Vanilla softly added. "And that's still the greatest nightmare..."
They were passing over the thickest part of the Everfree. Twilight heard a distant roar, and then the faintest echo of teeth crunching through bone.
"You said you'd preserved it perfectly," she forced herself to continue.
Chocolate's hooves shuffled in place on the carriage floor, and she watched as a stallion with a shaved-away mane considered using his partner's display as a last-ditch refuge to hide some portion of his own features.
"More or less," the surgeon admitted.
"We stopped the clock," said the diagnostician. "Or had it stopped for us."
Twilight decided "How?" was a necessary question. It also kept her from having to voice the real one for at least a few more seconds, and so was entirely worthwhile.
Eight hooves were now trying to keep themselves from cantering on the spot.
"We didn't want to risk the damage from the chemical bath used to create medical cadavers," Vanilla finally began. "And..." Hesitated, pulled in the next breath between his teeth as if he was using them to filter the air. "You've seen Sizzler."
The wince was automatic. If you spent enough time in the palace, you were likely to spot the unicorn under discussion and if you didn't actually get close enough to see him, it was probably because you'd turned away from the smell. Her own closest encounter had been under different circumstances. The blood-red pony (with an oddly-liquid coat) was -- 'dim' was so charitable a description as to potentially switch out crown for necklace, he was proud of his mark, and he was --
-- it had taken Twilight years to recognize it, and the shame burned through her --
-- horribly, painfully, excruciatingly lonely.
He had pride in his mark: an image which, within Equestria's borders, manifested but once per generation. But it was something which set him apart from other ponies, placed him a little to the side from the bulk of the herd and if the distance increased, it was probably because they were edging away from him. Sizzler existed as something different, and it had made him so desperate for companionship as to happily go along with the most fur-brained of schemes and conspiracies, simply because stupidity having been assembled in a group meant somepony in the gathering was speaking to him.
Sizzler had very little in common with the majority of ponies, and it had taken the opening of a butcher shop in the heart of Canterlot to begin his associations with griffons. A species which had no issues with his skills, saw his mark as the sign of truest bravery while also treating it as an open invitation to attend any barbecue. He was always welcome in the Aviary, and rumor claimed he was on the verge of moving into the capital's near-microscopic neighborhood. The only pony resident of those upper levels, just to be that much closer to his friends.
"He's... dating now," Chocolate awkwardly mentioned. "Anyway... we saw him after we moved our offices into the palace. We found out what he does there, and... we learned about his trick."
The librarian sorted through internal files and came up with nothing more than an old note reading Did I ever really want to know?
"His trick," was all she could offer. "I don't know what that is. It..." and swallowed hard. "...probably has something to do with what he does in the kitchen..."
"That's the way he thought of it," Vanilla carefully told her. "That the master of the meat station --" the little shudder was just about automatic and in this case, triplicate "-- could keep meat from going bad. Every steak as fresh as the day he purchased it from Gristle's, as long as he gives the stock a little attention now and again."
She understood why the palace kitchens had a meat station: carnivores and omnivores attended diplomatic dinners, and at least one employee needed to be capable of getting a normal lunch. She just didn't want to think about it any more than necessary --
"Only when it comes to spellwork," Chocolate added, "that's not what it actually does."
-- and her perspective shifted, because now they were talking about magic.
"Really? But if it's keeping the meat fresh --"
"-- it's how he thinks of it," Vanilla broke in, "so that's how he was applying it. The reality is that he's arresting decay. Decomposition. And when you think about it..."
"...a corpse," and this time Chocolate swallowed, "is just... meat."
Her skin flushed beneath the fur, and she came within seconds of spinning in place to heave the fast-rising results over the carriage's back edge --
"He's in the barracks right now." Vanilla's thick tail was trying to take refuge between thin white legs: there was some difficulty with lack of available space. "The abandoned ones. We couldn't send him home, because -- because Sizzler: we needed to make sure he understood that he can't talk about it. He was willing to try, because the palace needed him. But when he saw the body, he... he tried, and it worked. He stopped the clock: all decomposition stalled out when his field touched the corpse. But it's not what he was meant for. Yapper's down there with him, for company. We would have gotten one of his friends, but none of them work in the palace. So we just asked his most frequent customer to stay for a while."
"He'd stopped crying when we left," Chocolate miserably added. "Barely. And we might have to ask him to do it again, or the hospital could wind up borrowing him. All because we looked at things a little differently."
"It's funny," Vanilla finished, and did so in a tone which stated it wasn't. "Just how many unicorns never think about what their personal spell could really do..."
Canterlot was getting closer. She could make out the main gatehouse now. A portion of the Heart and its many shops, added to some small section of the Tangle: just as many businesses, but it was best not to ask what some of them sold.
"I don't think I've ever heard about your trick," Chocolate desperately attempted to change the subject.
Which instantly focused Twilight in Any Direction Other Than That One.
"I'll have to see him," she quickly told the physicians. "Get his signature, so I can separate it from any other magic which might be present."
They both nodded, and it brought her to the question at last. The one she could no longer avoid.
"What happened?"
They told her.
Centuries had passed without a Royal Physician in the palace. Now there were two, and they needed space in which to work. It had led to the relocation of multiple departments, because their patients recognized that it was going to take more than one room and, according to palace rumor, also wanted all non-medical personnel out of hearing range when the needles came out. Or worse, went in.
It wasn't Twilight's first time within that space. She had been examined for injury there after the Bearers had returned from Trotter's Falls: they all had, and she'd been through the all-too-typical pangs of helplessness as the physicians desperately tried to figure out if Spike was hurt and if so, what anypony could do about it. But she'd just been in the main examination room, and had been hustled in too quickly for any real look at the layout along the way.
She'd also had other things on her mind at the time.
It wasn't her first visit -- but with the main door (a surprisingly plain one, with a simple grey RP worked into new wood) right in front of her, it was about to be her first real chance for inspection.
There's a corpse in there.
Trotter's Falls had seen her witness births. This was... the ultimate conclusion of the result. If she just tried to think of it that way...
"Nearly all of us trembled like that once," gently wafted in from behind her.
"You don't get through medical school without studying a cadaver," the deeper voice added.
"Ponies donate their bodies," Vanilla told her. "Some of them know they won't ever have a normal burial because of it. Just a marker. But they donate, because... they know the next generation of doctors can't exist without them."
"We give them nicknames," Chocolate quietly told her. "Because we spend so much time together. We... know them better than some of the ponies who were with them in life, in the end."
"But before our class went in," Vanilla finished, "just about all of us were shaking. Because it wasn't a corpse. It was somepony who'd lived and galloped and loved once. And anypony who wasn't shaking a little, who just wanted to see a body or didn't want to acknowledge that there had been a pony... most of them didn't finish."
"The ones who go to their first cadaver with their eyes bright," Chocolate concluded, "because it's a thing they can study... those are the ones to watch out for."
They didn't touch her, not from behind when she was stressed. But they came close enough to show that they were willing to do so if asked.
"You wouldn't be normal if you weren't shaking," they told her. "Even just a little."
Her left forehoof came up. Touched the narrow rib cage, moved outwards again. Over and over.
"Stress exercise?" the diagnostician asked.
She nodded. Finished, and then turned her head quickly to the right, teeth slightly parted --
-- winced, blushed, and twisted back to face the door.
"And that?" the surgeon inquired.
"...waiting for somepony to pass me the hat." She could hear them blink. "It's... hard to explain." Not as hard as it had once been: the doctors knew about the hybrids, and had been trying to figure out how some of those bodies operated on the medical level -- but it could still take a long time to offer any level of explanation for Pinkie. "I'm ready to go in."
They nodded.
"There's a Minder on my desk," Vanilla told her. "Empty. You're welcome to use it."
She shook her head. Twilight respected the majority of devices, and something portable which stored sound had all kinds of uses -- but each new generation of Minders was distinguished by a marginally-increased syllable storage count, and the numerical difference served as a near-exponential increase on the previous model's price. There were more practical ways to record information, and the usual one didn't have to worry about the internal spools going bad.
"Do you have a notebook you can spare?"
They both nodded.
"We're out here if you need us," the Doctors Bear told her. "Try to remember that. When it gets bad."
There was only a single office, with two well-padded benches. The desks faced each other, and the gifted notebook was on the left one. She tried not to look at the pictures of the thin mare wearing a medical garment which decorated that desk, because the images had been captured across several years and the sequence ended with an empty frame.
Move further down the artificial hallway, and there was the storage area. There were subsections within it: things which held medical devices, instruments and tools which operated without enchantments, file cabinets passively radiating the energies of a dozen security spells. There was also a large refrigerated cabinet, and multiple half-domes of light with the glow directed inwards indicated minor stasis spells at work. Three of the largest red-filled vials had been labeled with her mark.
Blood.
It was a reasonable precaution, and it was nothing more than what the Royal Physicians had been doing for the sisters. Alicorns were like nothing else in the world, and the Princesses had only allowed the resumption of highly-classified medical studies about a year and a half ago. Everything the Doctors Bear discovered in their investigations was a matter of national security and, in the case of two siblings simultaneously falling ill, would also be a matter of life and death on a global scale.
The physicians had something in common with the Bearers. They were ponies tasked with potentially saving the world, and if the need to try ever arose... an alicorn was like nothing else under Sun and Moon. Equestria understood blood transfusions and with such a limited population to draw on, the physicians were storing some alicorn blood in case it ever needed to be transfused back. The majority of Twilight's limited stockpile was here, with an emergency remainder in Ponyville's hospital. The doctors there occasionally complained about having to deal with the myriad of security spells, because it was better than having to use what was kept behind them.
She went through the main examination room after that: more devices, extra instruments, and a significant amount of soundproofing. There were two padded tables there, each larger than they would have had to be for any other pony. Three complete anatomical charts served as decoration for the walls, and space was reserved for whenever the fourth was finally shipped in from the Empire. There were also singe marks on the floor, because Luna had a very particular way of indicating when she'd reached her weekly limit on tests and generally managed to aim it away from the offending pony.
The last room had multiple untouched devices on low shelves. A few of them were experimental because if the room ever became truly active, then experimental might be all that was left.
Lights illuminated every corner of the room, and then kept going from there. It was a place without shadows, because any patch of darkness would conceal the one thing you needed to see.
There was an anatomical chart. It was a rather recent construct, occasionally went through minor revisions, and would have normally been hidden under needs of national security if anypony lacking in security clearance were to approach the room. It generally didn't get put away because nopony wanted to approach this room. To get within a body length was to start thinking about the potential need for it and shortly after that, the terror would begin.
The central table was kept sterile by the soft chartreuse glow of a spell which had recently been activated for the first time. To look closely at the surface was to spot a number of tiny tilts, because you had to funnel blood to the built-in channels somehow.
It was a huge table, because it had to be: the excess area had allowed for the placement of multiple items around the edges. But when it came to its intended purpose, the table had four possible occupants, and the eldest took up a lot of space when prone.
The last room was the surgery, and the first patient it had ever seen was beyond saving.
The little mare swallowed again. Forced her legs to shift forward into air which was just a little more chill than the rest of the palace, crossed the threshold where Sizzler had not and closed the door behind her. The cook had just projected his field through the opening until his magic had located what, to it, was nothing more than an oddly-shaped arrangement of meat...
Yapper had been stroking the fur of the tightly-curled form, down there in the junk-filled basement barracks. Bringing it back to its proper lie and grain. A Diamond Dog trying to comfort a pony.
(He was dating. There had been a moment when she'd wondered 'Who?', and then felt ashamed of herself because the word was doing a rather poor job of covering up the actual 'What?')
He'd ignited his horn for her, when she'd asked: something which had taken two attempts. It was still enough to let her learn the feel of his magic. She would be able to separate his efforts from...
...whatever had happened.
"He appeared just outside the border walls. There was some night traffic, and from what the witnesses said..." Chocolate had drawn a slow breath. "...he was alive for about three seconds. But he didn't try to move towards anypony, and he -- couldn't have said anything. He... bit through his tongue, just before he died. Speech would have been impossible."
"At the same time," Vanilla had added, "the lockdown alarm in the palace went off. The automatic response we get when somepony tries to teleport in and doesn't make it. But those ponies usually show up at their starting point. Our theory -- part of what we need you to confirm -- is that he sort of... bounced. Skidded off the edges and reappeared in the first clear space."
"If it's the last spell he cast," Twilight eventually, cautiously tried, "I can try to get some of the feel from his horn. It'll just be overlapped with everything else he did in the last few hours. But most of that is probably going to be basic manipulation --"
That would have been the usual hope. And then the surgeon had dashed it.
"He's an earth pony."
The back half of the corpse was covered with a sheet. Various portions of the front had seen some of the skin dome up, bulging partially through the fur. Mottled red discolored those distortions.
The most probable cause of death was internal bleeding. The question was how those wounds had been inflicted, and... there was a chance that it wasn't Twilight's question to answer. She couldn't perform an autopsy, and... when it came to the shadows within her, she hadn't really made any serious attempts to draw on their skills. (There had been one major, somewhat non-serious attempt, and it had ended when the expanding yeast had punched a hole through the oven door.) Calling on Fluttershy to the point where there might be any medical knowledge available... even if it was possible, it felt as if it would mean delving deep. Too deep.
There were three ponies in the world who could advise her on whether it was possible at all. One of them visited regularly to see how she was doing, and might have been amenable to inquiry. The second was out of reach. She was still trying to figure out just what the third was to her now, and feared that the eldest continued to feel the same way.
They were speaking again. But they had so much trouble finding things they could speak about...
Internal bleeding. Something severed within. Blood pooling in places where it was never meant to be, leaving waiting organs in a state of starvation.
He had lived for about three seconds -- after he had appeared. She wondered how long he'd been suffering before that. Even if there had only been three seconds, that was still more than enough time in which to contain an eternity of pain.
The palace hosted an expert on pain.
Sizzler's trick had been used on a pony who had died from internal bleeding. Could the blood coagulate? Or would the most basic contact with a hoof make liquid shift under the skin --
-- she shuddered, and forced her gaze to move. There was something she wasn't supposed to be looking at yet, and avoiding that brought her to his face.
"An earth pony," she'd carefully repeated. "Completely alone?"
"In the sense that nopony else appeared nearby," Chocolate had replied. "Some things -- partial things -- showed up with him, but nothing living."
"Did any of the unicorn witnesses sense a burst of magic in the area?"
"No," Vanilla had eventually said. "But they were shaken: it would have been easy for them to miss that. And we -- didn't necessarily find all of them."
"How much of where he appeared is untouched?"
"The police managed to cordon off the arrival point, but not everything surrounding it," Chocolate told her. "And... there's no good way to say this: he set off a stampede. That moved away from him, but it disturbed the surrounding area. Plus the police did their own investigations, and the Guards came out to see what was going on... it's not completely uncontaminated. Why?"
She'd taken a shallow breath.
"Because of the obvious," Twilight had told them. "Earth ponies can't teleport. And when a unicorn is escorting somepony, they almost always have to go with them. Whoever took him along would have appeared at the same time."
Unless they were invisible.
Or effectively so. But she only knew of one pony who could do that, and... he hadn't been capable of teleportation. There was a chance that he wasn't currently capable of breathing.
"You said almost," Vanilla had immediately indicated.
"If you're really close to somepony -- a few body lengths -- and you push, you can get them into the aether. But it isn't easy, and the maximum distance is however far you were from them in the first place," emerged as an instinctive lecture. "The weight limit is also lower than for normal escorting. A lot lower." She'd barely been able to manage Spike's body mass. "This is a full-grown earth pony?" Picturing the smallest of Ponyville's adults, and wondering if she could have moved Stile. "Normal height and build?"
They'd nodded, and the mystery developed extra layers.
It wasn't just the question of how the transport had taken place at all. Earth ponies avoided teleportation. They could brace themselves for it, try to make it look as if everything was normal -- but the process still disrupted their connection to the land. They were uprooted, and it could take precious seconds to center themselves again. For an earth pony to seek the fast route of their own will...
...but it hadn't necessarily been his decision. And even so, when she looked at his face...
Decay had been stopped, decomposition put on indefinite hold. Muscles would still be supple: Sizzler had reached the corpse that quickly.
There was blood soaked into the muzzle: the bitten-through tongue had done that. But there was no rictus. And when that tension had no way to be present...
The stallion's last smile was locked onto his features. Thin and, under the too-bright lights of the surgery, somehow vicious.
Her horn ignited at the lowest possible level. The left saddlebag opened, and the donated notebook emerged.
She wasn't good at sketching. Diagrams, that was fine. The symbology which ponies who'd been gone for generations had once used to record their thoughts about workings -- she could manage those. But drawing something... no. The best she could manage was the rough outline of a pony body, one which had no curves at all. Small spots of ink indicated where the blood pools were, just in case that became important later.
"The stampede created more problems than disrupting the area," Chocolate had told her. "He appeared with things. Rent saddlebags, scraps of paper -- everypony who investigated saved as much as they could. But even with street traffic galloping away from him, they created wind currents just from movement, and that still applies to the ones who stayed on the ground. The pegasi didn't exactly help matters. And with the jurisdictional conflict -- the Guards got there first, but the police may have their own evidence collected. It'll take time to get everything together, and even after that, we'll be missing pieces. Some of those scraps may never be found."
"Paper," she'd checked. Hoping.
"Words," Vanilla had confirmed. "And that's not all."
It was somewhere else to look. Something she could inspect before she moved on to the worst.
Most of the paper scraps were blank. There were sections of a softbound spine available for inspection, and the width told her the stallion hadn't come anywhere close to filling the majority of the book. (She made a quick note about seeing if any of the largest blank pieces had a full watermark: it would potentially provide a clue as to where the volume had been bound and sold.) Some of the smallest bits did have writing, but... individual characters. A jigsaw where the pieces had been scattered across a city, there was no picture on the box, no box, and the edges were too battered to line up.
She spotted three words during that first inspection. Two of them were on the same piece.
void, hollowed
Twilight copied it. Moved to the next scrap.
fungible
It wasn't a commonly-used word: Twilight understood the definition, but hardly ever heard the term itself brought out in public. It was a curious sort of word, and it had no reason to make her feel so cold.
Fungible...
Metal glinted under the lights, and her attention shifted.
Half of a thin gold rod -- well, no: that was a presumption on her part. It was a section of rod, because she had no way of knowing how large the missing portion had been. The diameter was no greater than the tip of a pony's tail. Part of a broken jewel was just barely attached to the sundered end, and hours spent in the Boutique noted its lack of quality.
Threads of silver wire stretched from the broken portion. Pulled like taffy.
A device. But she didn't recognize it. Not that the unfamiliarity really surprised her: Twilight's mark wasn't for devices. She kept up as best she could, and she owned a book which cataloged the ancient and forbidden, but -- things slipped past her. She didn't know this one -- but it provided something which could be studied.
She got as close as she could, tested the air around the metal with unlit horn.
It had done... something. There were enough fragmentary thaums in the rod's vicinity to definitely state that it had recently channeled magic. But it didn't allow her to gain a signature, because for a unicorn to construct a device was to send their magic through carefully-crafted inanimate distortions. Inspecting multiple devices made by the same pony would eventually allow some sense of their creator: to examine a single specimen just gathered a single impression, and that wasn't enough. Plus -- oh, yes, there it was: somepony had already made an occlugraph. An unusual one, even for a device: all jagged lines --
-- no. A closer inspection revealed it as one line, endlessly bending as it stretched across the length of the carefully-carved rectangle of glass. But when she truly looked... there were multiple breaks. It stopped in one place, resumed at the exact same angle a few tail strands away. Over and over. It only appeared whole until she allowed herself to see it as something else.
The scratches were deep blue at the bottom of the little channels, with hints of black. Not necessarily a match for the caster's natural corona hue, with a device involved.
There were other things to examine. The next stage was checking the body for magic, and she found a fairly intense signature there -- but it matched the weak one which was quickly fading from the broken device.
She took a few more notes, and then her field shifted the rod.
Twilight didn't really think about where she was moving it. The rod needed further inspection, and --
She won't do it.
She won't even talk about it.
I've been trying to talk to her for moons...
And yet she put the rod away.
"We wanted to identify him before the conflict was sorted out," Chocolate had told her. "And we thought that was going to be easy, because there was one characteristic which nopony could remember ever having seen before."
"Characteristic?" had been a natural question. Just as natural as the word choice had felt odd.
The stallions had looked at each other again. Four ears had bent down towards the skulls.
"Give us a second," Vanilla had requested. "It's..." A too-shallow breath. "We were bringing the corpse through the palace. Multiple levitation loops. Keeping it level and steady. And we passed..."
"You've met her," Chocolate had taken over. "Abjura."
Twilight had nodded. About eight years older than she was, fully passing through the Gifted School before Twilight had ever arrived. One of the palace's researchers. A professional, and a talented one.
"It was just coincidence," Vanilla told her. "But she -- she almost fainted. She nearly fell on top of the corpse. She thought she recognized him. She called out a name, on instinct. Linchpin. Surname is Keystone. A professional contractor and architect. They dated for a while, but she lost track of him after they broke up. She thought it was him, there was a second when we all thought we knew who he was, and -- then she saw the corpse's mark, and she started laughing and crying at the same time. Because it couldn't be him. It was his fur and mane colors, just about his face except for a few extra years, his height and build -- but it wasn't his mark."
"You've probably heard the line," Chocolate had decided as the palace towers sharpened. "'Separated at the hips.' For ponies who are just about twins in everything but their marks. We promised to ask the police about locating Linchpin, and brought the body to our offices. The surgery, because that was the room which offered the most privacy and the best conditions for inspection."
They'd both stopped again, and it had taken a precious minute for the shivering to stop.
"There's... a relatively new procedure," Vanilla had slowly said. "Pre-autopsy, not that we thought we'd get that far. For documentation."
"You take pictures." Chocolate's head had dipped. "Of everything. Because you're trying to capture images of how the corpse looked before anything starts. And we needed pictures to send out, as part of trying to find out who he'd been. We knew he wasn't Linchpin. We needed a name."
"We started with his face," Vanilla had recounted. "Full body, taking measurements. Tail. A close-up of the mark. It's standard."
White and brown bodies pressed against each other.
"Those pictures were developed before we reached you," the surgeon said. "It stalled us. But we put them in the surgery for you. Most of them are on the board. The last... it's the only way you can see..."
The images had been attached to a small square of corkboard, and the corpse could have almost been smiling for the camera.
They'd photographed the entire body, including that which was currently under the sheet or simply on the other side of the corpse. There was a small puncture wound between the seventh and eighth ribs. It caught her attention because it was the only external wound, the blood had been partially absorbed by the fur, and -- there was a discoloration to strands and skin. A reddening, as if the area had been lightly burned.
There was some soil on his hooves. It looked oddly dark.
Twilight took a slow breath, and moved to the central picture of the display. The mark.
"We thought it would be so easy to identify him..."
Because agencies existed to track the scarcest talents and when you'd never seen a mark before, there was the chance for it to be unique. Singular marks were recorded, and with this one...
Just about anypony who'd been through their fourth year of primary schooling had the chance to recognize it, although only mathematicians, accountants, and spell researchers continued to actively use the symbol beyond graduation. It had a prominent place in the Last Question, it had been rendered in the plainest of white, and it had the simplest of meanings.
Not equal.
Just about anypony might recognize the meaning. But Twilight had never seen anypony who had the symbol as a mark.
Still, it didn't necessary represent a unique skill. Based on the mark, the most ready guess at the talent was mathematics itself: if not a researcher, then perhaps a teacher or bookkeeper. But if looked at as something more -- abstract...
Finds a way to distinguish what would normally be identical pieces. A crafter?
More abstract.
Breaks the relationship between that which should have been together. The talent is for initiating fractures. Physical. Social. Insidious.
Even further.
'I am not equal.' No matter who he met, what their skill was, he would be lesser or greater than they were. Never matching...
...too abstract.
Not equal.
She didn't understand. She wished she had the hat. She wanted to do anything in the world, as long as it wasn't what had to be done today.
She was trying to use her field as little as possible, and it meant her teeth just barely nipped the trailing edge of the sheet.
The little alicorn shivered. Shook. Braced herself, and found nothing holding her up from within. Terrified, every fur strand twisted against the grain, corona wavering and manestyle coming apart, with nothing she could do except --
I have to do this.
-- move forward anyway.
It was terror. It was standing on the verge of horror. It was also the perfect conditions for momentarily channeling Fluttershy.
Her head whipped to the left, and the sheet fell away.
"I had the camera," Vanilla had told her at the last. "But we both looked. It's a natural reaction. You think you see something moving, and you look. I just --"
Stopped. Shook.
"We both screamed," his partner had quietly said. "Then we were huddled together in the hallway outside the cells. I don't remember how we got there. Just that we must have galloped, half the palace staff came in behind us to see what was so wrong, and we couldn't tell them. We... still don't know how to tell them. But we had to go back in there. With it. Because we knew we needed help, that you would need evidence, and..."
A brown forehoof gently rubbed the shaking white flank.
"...he screamed," Chocolate had finished. "We both did. But he brought the camera along, all the way. And he took the picture."
The image was resting a short distance away from the stallion's belly, partially tilted into one of the table's little channels by the abrupt movement.
She looked at it. Then she looked at the corpse's left hip.
Then she moved, and did so just in time.
It was a surgery, and so there was a trough available for washing up. It took multiple tries from the taps before she managed to rinse the last of her vomit away.
I should have stopped at the tree. Picked up the crown...
Which was just a way of wishing for retroactive stalling. The Elements only worked when they wished to, and never did so alone.
Twilight rinsed out her mouth again. Spit, and forced herself to stop when it felt as if she was about to cough up the lining of her throat.
The physicians had given her a full briefing, and part of that had included a very specific talk about decomposition because she had to know how things normally worked. A pony would die, and their body would decay. A mark, on the surface level, was simply fur which grew in different colors, ones which had been arranged into an exacting pattern. Fur would eventually fall away from a corpse. The natural colors of life would fade and vanish. A mark, as part of the outermost layer, would be gone long before the body was reduced to bone.
But for that part of the corpse, for its process of decomposition -- the mark went last. Everything else would have faded and as long as fur was present, the mark would still be bright. It hung on as long as possible. There had been bodies found locked in the ice with eyes glazed by cold and a mark as soft and colorful as the day of manifest.
And still... they faded, over time. It just happened more slowly. The soul had departed, the body fell apart, and the talent had been lost to history. Given enough moons of normal decomposition, the mark would be gone.
They faded and fell away.
They didn't vanish.
The stallion's hips showed no blisters of blood under the skin. No bruises from twisting injuries, or a repeat of that odd little puncture wound. They were as pristine as the day he'd been born. A state he would take with him to the grave.
Vanilla Bear's eyes had been caught by movement, and a twinned flicker of instinct and field had triggered the camera's shutter. He'd captured a portion of something which might have only taken eyeblinks to complete. Something which had never happened before, an event which should have never happened at all.
In the picture, the outer edges of the mark are already gone. In the center, there is still white on brown. But there is a zone in between and in that area, color is rising from fur as something very much like steam. Wisps are fading into the air, almost invisible. Leaving behind something pristine.
Clean.
Pure.
Blank.
And then she was vomiting again.
There had been nothing left to bring up, and all she could taste was acid on her tongue.
Before. After.
A picture of the mark. A picture of -- what had happened. Somepony would need to get a current picture of the fur...
She considered herself to be improving. Extra experience at being in the presence of what her soul insisted to be abomination had a way of doing that. She was getting exercise in having her mind trying to raise itself through the unthinkable. When she'd been in the spy loft, learning about the process which created hybrids, she had screamed. This time, she'd just repeatedly vomited. She'd already decided to see the vomiting as a step up.
Her heartbeat was too loud. It seemed to be taking place partially outside her body, at a significant distance. Her ears twitched to a steady four-beat of pounding.
I want my friends.
Twilight pushed herself away from the washing trough, used her forehooves to awkwardly splash a little water in her face before pushing the oversized taps closed. She didn't want them to be in the surgery with her, because she loved them too much to put them through any of it. But she had to tell them, and... fifthhoof horror wasn't going to be much of an improvement.
Her heartbeat seemed to be getting closer to her own body, so that was good. It also felt as if the sound was getting heavier.
Who was he?
What happened to him?
How do we make sure it never happens again --
And then the heavy sounds reached the surgery's door, just before a flare of sunlight pushed it open.
"Go home."
It was a stark sort of order, one in which she could hear both the restraint placed on its force and the power in a voice which was trying not to break as purple eyes took in all the sights of the surgery at once, doing so from the highest of perspectives. It had been spoken by the oldest mare in the world. Her liege, her mentor and, on a very real level, the reason Twilight existed at all.
She had spent moons trying to figure out how she was supposed to relate to the possessor of that voice. What they could say to each other, while counting all the things left unsaid.
She didn't know what to say now.
So she said "No."
The huge white mare stepped a little further into the surgery. Heavy hooffalls echoed on impact.
"Go home, Twilight."
"We... we need to find out what happened to him." It was nearly a whisper, and her vision blurred as she forced herself to look up. Seeing through pain, the remnants of splashed water, and fresh tears. "We have to --"
"The doctors told me everything," the ancient mare stated. "Including the fact that they went to get you. They involved you. Not me. This isn't a mission. He'll be studied, Twilight." Another step, and devices shook on their shelves as the little mare shrank into her own withers. "Identified. We can't contact his family until we find some way of solving this, but he'll be held for burial, or whatever other rite they might want to conduct. I promise. But this isn't a Bearer matter." The pastel colors of the mane twisted against their borders as the white head slowly shook. "I'm just hoping unto Sun that nopony in that stampede managed to get a picture. 'Body appears outside the palace' is enough of a headline without a photo --"
Thin legs pushed against the cold floor, and the little mare rose to what passed for her full height.
"-- how is this not a Bearer matter?"
"I call the missions," the white mare stated. "I didn't call this one."
The purple head violently shifted, once to each side. Water and salt flew away, and the direct glare which followed was clear.
"Unless Discord does," the youngest alicorn declared from the heart of sudden anger. "Or Luna, because I'm pretty sure Luna has the authority to call a mission. Once she knows what's going on --"
"-- it's going to be investigated." The librarian was no longer capable of hearing the first hints of desperation. "Just not by you --"
There were so many things they hadn't been talking about, and three unspoken words had been the loudest.
"-- I'm not him!"
They stared at each other, as the tears began to flow again. Faster this time, burning tracks down the little mare's face and through her heart.
Celestia's eyes slowly closed.
"Go home."
Twilight didn't move.
There was a flash of yellow light. The white wing touched her back, and then she was on the balcony outside her bedroom.
She turned just in time to be half-blinded by the next flash. And once the dazzle had faded, all she could see was the singular set of hoofprints which had abandoned her in fresh snow.