Now, when dealing with Discord, the thing most ponies have to keep in mind is that he’s basically a god. For any average unicorn, no spell, despite how well it should theoretically work, immediately flickers and dies like a particularly dispirited candle in a tornado in his general vicinity. Twilight, however, was not most ponies.
Having been raised from a very young age with the awareness that knowledge is power, Twilight had made it her mission to know everything. And after reading every book in her libraries, as well as everypony else’s libraries—which, well, she was a Princess. Times four. Technically, all libraries were hers anyway—she knew that due to Ponyville originally being an earth pony settlement, some of the old traditions were still followed even after that stopped being the case. Such as winter wrap-up being completed using only passive magic, or the fact that most ponies were still buried directly under whatever plot of land they happened to drop dead on.
And, given how easy necromancy turned out to be, all she had to do to gain a whole heap of free servants was simply spread her magic through the ground and recite a certain name in her thoughts.
I can give you power beyond imagining, young one…
Excellent, she was already hearing voices. Every mage knew that the forces beyond the veil didn’t bother tempting just anyone—you had to be pretty powerful already to get something old and evil to start whispering in your ear. She’d ask Pinkie to plan a celebration party once this was all over. For now, she needed to focus on raising the dead. By now, she’d pumped enough power into the ground that some of it was seeping into the ambient mana field, which made her job easier. Actually, that much necrotic energy floating around might have some side effects…
Well, now she knew the topic for her next thesis.
Twilight flapped her way over to the nearest source of telepathic wailing and begging, admiring the magic trailing behind her as she did so. Then she settled in to wait beside an innocent-looking patch of dirt, idly flapping her wings and mentally noting down the floaty, sparkly effects that lingered after them. Nopony, no one in history had ever had this kind of opportunity. Maybe Tirek could wait. She’d have to make her stalling look believable though, or Celestia might finally trigger the death curse she’d put on Twilight back when she first broke into the restricted section. Actually, on second thought, best not to risk it. Tirek was a book killer, he needed to die sooner rather than later.
A shower of dirt burst into the air, interrupting her thoughts. It looked like this long-dead earth pony was finally breaking out. And, judging by the screams, so were all the others.
They gathered before her like a shoal of rotting fish, except somehow less appetizing. Sure, there were a few skeletons that had been picked clean before they’d been found and buried, or those that’d been in the ground so long that worms and bacteria had eaten away all their flesh, with only her immense magical power keeping them intact. Those ones were fine.
That left the rest of her little zombie horde, which smelled really bad. It kind of detracted from the impact of having an undead army, not that any of Ponyville’s living inhabitants seemed to agree. She’d already had to zombify three ponies who thought she’d turned evil, which was just unfair. At worst, she was amoral.
“Okay, minions! Listen up, we have two villains on the loose. If you see a centaur, kill him. If you see a noodly-looking creature, kill him too, unless he apologizes and promises to fix my library.”
They stared at her.
“Well? Get a move on. And I want to see more enthusiasm. I can see the skeletons are grinning, but the rest of you look kind of … droopy.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, they started moving out. Twilight frowned. “I thought necromancy was supposed to be powerful. This is just disappointing.”
Right then, a rainbow blur zipped right up in front of her face. “Twilight! Oh, thank Celestia, you’re here! Quick, we need some sort of anti-zombie spell, stat!”
She sighed. “Dash, it’s fine. They’re under control.”
“Wait, you did this?”
Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly legal, given that I was recently given supreme executive power.”
“What—Twilight, I don’t care about how legal it is! Granny Smith spontaneously turned into a zombie and Applejack just said she’s going to murder the pony who did this. Also, Rarity will probably help, seeing as her best customer also got turned into a member of the walking dead.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, try not to get too badly hurt. It seems one of the side effects of having so much death-aligned magic in the air is that the spell treats anyone who’s too close to death as raw material. I’d say don’t do anything that would land you in the hospital, but knowing you—”
“Twilight! You need to stop this. I won’t tell anyone it was you, mostly because you’re immortal and you’ll probably kill anyone who tries to murder you over this, but you really need to make the zombies go away. And bring Granny Smith back to life, if you can. Her pies are really good.”
Maintain the necrotic field effect for another day, and I will remove the curse of death that permeates your essence, whispered an evil entity trapped outside of reality.
“Deal,” Twilight said, then turned back to Rainbow Dash. “I have to leave it up for twenty-four hours, otherwise something about variables and spell matrices and other babble that sounds vaguely scientific.”
“Did you really just say something about variables? Twilight, I can’t—you know what, sure. I’ll tell them you said you’re working on it, but you think it will take at least another day.”
“Applejack can sense lies.”
“Whatever! I’ll get Rarity alone, and get her to tell Applejack. And do something about Tirek, I know you could have him six feet underground by now if you really wanted.”
The pegasus left an afterimage of herself floating in the air behind her. Twilight drew an illusory mustache on it, then teleported a ways above the town and watched her zombies stumble through the streets.
“Well, at least I’ll know if they find either of them.”
One of them walked into a mailbox. And then kept walking into the mailbox.
“…I think this calls for another visit to the archives. This is just ridiculous.”