//------------------------------// // 10 - Day's End // Story: Urban Wilds // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Bitterroot would’ve had a spring in her step, but she wasn’t walking, so she had a whistle across her wings instead. Today had been a goooood day. Okay, maybe not that good. She still didn’t know who had raided the Hangnail’s stores. But it was far more than she’d had before, and that made her feel incredible. She had leads! Her tips had been catalogued! (She’d even asked the clerk about Cocoon, just in case. That particular clerk just so happened to be the same one Cocoon reported to. Good day.) Finally, she had something she could follow rather than throw away. Granted, she wasn’t sure how she’d follow it, but, you know. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. The only thing that came close to ruining it was the possibility of Amanita… well, just completely flubbing her impression with the Guard. Necromancer. Twilight seemed big on forgiveness, but that didn’t necessarily extend to her employees, even if Amanita had served her time. Worst-case scenario, she was in a jail cell right now. If that was the case, Bitterroot resolved, she’d drop this lead right now and get to work on getting Amanita out. Snatching a bounty wasn’t worth leaving her to rot, even if she’d get out quickly. Fortunately, when she dropped onto the street right before her house, Amanita was sitting on her front steps, her back against the door and nose deep in a brand-new book called The Imperial Criterion. Lenore was sitting on her head, making irate croaks at her. As Bitterroot approached, Amanita spared a second to look up. “Hey, Bitterroot.” “Hey. Didn’t I give you a key to the house?” “You did.” Without taking her eyes from her book, Amanita levitated a key from a pocket. “I decided I just wanted to stay outside for a bit.” She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. “Canterlot doesn’t feel like anyplace else, does it?” “It’s the thin air plus the weather team keeping it warm,” said Bitterroot. “Most mountains this tall are chillier than this.” “Bread!” Lenore squawked, and pecked Amanita on the head. Amanita didn’t seem to notice. “Speaking of bread,” said Bitterroot (she ignored Lenore eyeing her), “the Mearhwolf’s got some weird taste in crimes. She stole rye bread and grape juice from an illegal bar.” Amanita lowered the book and one of her ears. “Did she?” she asked, frowning. “Rye…” “She did,” said Bitterroot. “Although, technically, they were just collateral. She was really after a bunch of ritual ingredients.” Amanita immediately scrambled to her feet as best she could on that downward slope. The book rested halfway down, forgotten. Lenore squawked irately and flew off. “She was?” Amanita asked. “But… Code said…” She shook her head. “Never mind. What was she after?” Bitterroot blinked at the suddenness of Amanita’s reaction, but shrugged it off and dug out the paper. “Uh… Manticore venom, lunar lily extract, eitr, hemlock, black dog eyes- Wait, are those black eyes of a dog or eyes of a black dog?” “Probably the second,” Amanita said, looking at nothing in particular. “And it’s not any black dog, it’s the aetheric creature called a black dog… Yes, it’s confusing…” “I’ve got the full list right here if you want to see it,” Bitterroot said, passing it over to Amanita. “Mean anything to you?” Although Amanita looked over the list, Bitterroot got the sense that she wasn’t really reading it and her mind was elsewhere. One of her ears slowly drooped downward. Eventually, she shook her head. “Not these together, no. It’s just a jumbled list of ingredients, nothing really ritualistically connecting them. It’s not even illegal to own hemlock, so I don’t know why she stole that…” “We’ll figure it out later,” Bitterroot said, shrugging. “In the meantime, could you move aside so I can get in?” “Oh, right! Sorry.” It was late enough that Bitterroot soon decided dinner was in order. No frozen pizza cop-out tonight, though; baked potatoes stuffed with corn, black beans, and shredded cheese was the way to go (with Amanita’s blessing, of course), plus some extra veggies. Amanita offered to help several times, but Bitterroot always turned it down. It was easy enough. Amanita was quiet as they ate, but Bitterroot didn’t think she was distressed. Just pensive. She was loose and almost relaxed. When Bitterroot asked her some questions about her day, her answers were more detailed than they would’ve been if she’d been overly stressed. It wasn’t long before Bitterroot just backed off entirely. Better to let Amanita figure things out on her own time. Eventually, Amanita spoke up. “Bitterroot? I… I need to ask you something. And… You kinda have a bad habit of doing this, so don’t just laugh and wave it away. I need a full, honest answer.” Bitterroot felt her wings begin to curl. This was going to be one of those Big Questions, she could already tell. Even if Amanita hadn’t asked for a full answer, it was in the way she said it. Her tone was… portentous. “Alright,” she said. “Promise. Cross my heart, hope to fly.” She traced an X across her chest. Amanita smiled slightly, then took a deep breath. “I’m a necromancer. Are you scared of me?” Huh. Not quite what Bitterroot had expected, but not far off-base either. “Scared?” she asked, just to be sure. “Scared,” Amanita repeated. “Of me. Yes, really. Like, actually scared. Don’t just brush it off. I- I need to know.” Her expression wasn’t really pleading, more… demanding. Bitterroot took a breath. “It’s complicated.” She ran a hoof through her mane, sorting out her emotions, trying to find the best way to phrase it all. Eventually, she said, “I’ve worked with the Guard a few times, doing mercenary grunt work when I’m short on cash. A lot of them are real nice. Sweet, funny, friendly, all combinations of them. But they’re still soldiers, trained to kill. Take a look at them when they’re fighting something that can’t curbstomp alicorns and you’ll get it. I once saw an earth guard crush a ribcage with a single buck. I’m scared of all of the Guard, to one degree or another. But it’s a very small part of what I think of them, nothing more than a respect for their skills. You’re no different. Yeah, part of me’s scared of what you could do. But most of me knows that you wouldn’t do it.” She shrugged. “It’s a strange feeling, but you’ll get used to it. It’s like… knowing Celestia could’ve melted Canterlot in a few minutes if she felt like it while also knowing she’d never feel like it.” “But you know me,” muttered Amanita, “so…” She picked at her potato and shoveled a bunch of cheese into her mouth, chewing slowly, not really looking at anything. Bitterroot gave her a minute to think (a minute in which she attacked her own potato), then asked, “Rough day?” “Not really,” Amanita replied through a mouth half-full of carrots. “Just- Busy. Busy with necromancy.” She swallowed. “I- I went to therapy while in prison and I thought I’d gotten over my past, but that was when I thought I’d never have to think about it again. Now, every- every hour of these past few days, I just- see myself crawling back into that hole, and I know just how deep it goes, and I feel good doing it, and- I, I don’t know. I’m, I’ve got support — from you, from other ponies — but you’ve all got… motives to say that and I keep second-guessing myself. If all that therapy was based around me avoiding necromancy and now I’m at it again literally the day after I was released, does… Am I failing?” “At what?” “At recovery. I feel like I’m doing good, but what if I’m just walking the same path again, claiming that I know what I’m doing?” Bitterroot opened her mouth, quickly closed it again. Her reaction would’ve been casual, dismissive, exactly what Amanita wouldn’t have wanted. She cut up her food as she thought and put her answer in a better way. When she had it, she set her silverware aside. “You want my opinion? It’s been one day, and a really weird day, at that. Don’t get yourself so worked up yet. Just- find out what works, get your feet under you, and don’t worry about figuring out what you’re going to do once we catch the Mearhwolf until after that actually happens. It’s not like if you flunk recovery, you never get to try again. You’ve got time. I don’t think necromancy on its own is a sign you’re quote-unquote failing, anyway. You were doing it for yourself last time, but you’re doing it for others now. And if you’re ever worried, I’ll be here to listen. Even if you buy your own place and move out.” For a second, nothing. Then Amanita said in a small voice, “Thanks. For- For all of that. It’s… It’s nice to have somepony to rely on.” “What’re friends for?” Bitterroot said with a shrug. “Seriously. I’ll be here.” Silence. After a moment, Bitterroot went back to her food, only for Amanita to speak up again. “Even if I…” Amanita swallowed. “…decided to seriously apply necromancy in a moral context?” Bitterroot’s wings twitched in surprise, but she still knew her answer. “Absolutely. You’ve been thinking of doing that?” “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s like… I’m helping in ways nopony else can, and I like the results, and I’m good at it, so… if I’m not going to slip back, why not do it? But… if I keep doing this, I’ll be… I’ll be doing things nopony’s ever done before. And… I might seriously be… creating new branches of philosophy. Like, is any resurrection ethical?” Amanita grinned weakly. “I- What’ll happen to me? If I make one mistake-” “Amanita,” Bitterroot cut in. “If you really mean that, I promise I’ll stand by you, no matter what. Go into- private resurrection services or something, the Guard, whatever, I don’t know, I’ll still stick with you and give you whatever help I can. But until you actually start dipping into it, don’t worry about it. It’s just pointless.” “Easy for you to say,” Amanita mumbled. “You’re not the one whose head it’s bumping around in.” “A 4-4-0 locomotive is one with four leading wheels, usually on a bogey, four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels,” Bitterroot said. “They’re especially popular out west.” Amanita frowned. “Um, okay, that’s, that’s neat, but where-” “If all you can think about is necromancy, I’m going to give you something else to think about. Remember what I said before we left the Crystal Empire? I can talk about trains for hours.” It was a rich field, a lot more detailed than most ponies gave it credit for, and the development of railroads had done a lot to shape modern Equestria. “Now, the locomotive that pulled the train from the Crystal Empire was a-” “Wait,” blurted Amanita. “Do, do you know rail history?” “Sometimes. It depends on where.” “Canterlot. How did the whole… railway up the mountain happen?” Bitterroot grinned inside. Not only was she distracting Amanita, but this was a topic she knew quite well. “That’s actually the third or fourth track up here, depending on how you count it. Canterlot didn’t have a direct rail connection for a long time because, well, mountains, but after a while, it became too valuable to ignore. The first railway was a dedicated rack railway, one of the first, connecting a station in Canterlot with a terminus in the foothills. Opened a little over sixty years ago. But constantly unloading and reloading passengers and freight was a hassle, so after seven years…” Bitterroot’s remarkably detailed account of the Canterlot Main Line distracted Amanita from thoughts of necromancy during dinner. The enjoyably absurd arcanothriller plot of The Imperial Criterion distracted her after dinner. But in the few minutes between going to bed and actually falling asleep, Amanita’s mind decided to make up for lost time. Moral necromancer. Brand new experience. Absolute unknown. She was supposed to just ignore it until it was relevant, she knew. But her mind kept screaming that it was relevant right now. Every step that she took toward that path had consequences — if nothing else, she’d be shaping ponies’ perceptions of her. And what if she became certified or licensed or whatever, only for it to turn out that, whoops, nothing she did was moral after all? And, no matter how much she beat the idea down, it remained: what if she returned to her old, soul-destroying ways? What if this was all a lie? What if- But even her most active thoughts couldn’t beat down a year of scheduled routine, and soon she was out like a light, wandering the corridors of memory. Some of the worst memories of her life. Memories that told her exactly where she’d stand. Your soul wasn’t just a part of you; it was YOU, the core of your very essence, everything that let you grow, change, live. Yet Circe spoke of removing it like one would a splinter. Just because she was scared of what lay beyond the veil. You didn’t say that to her face, though. Amanita learned that quickly. Perhaps Amanita might’ve understood if avoiding death was all that was part of becoming a lich. The threat of death was why she had risked running, after all. But then Circe revealed another truth behind soul jars. “Body’s only thing built t’hold a soul. Everythin’ else can’t take th’strain fore’er, not wi’out some… lessay ‘maint’nence’. Gotta fix ’em up some’ow.” Amanita didn’t want to ask about the “how”, but she dreaded learning about it in other ways. She asked, and Circe simply smiled. “You’ll see.” She led them and their thralls to a small mining town called Grayvale, miles from help, isolated by a thick forest. The ponies were friendly, welcoming, open. Amanita wouldn’t have minded living there. Over the course of a few meager days, Circe and her thralls systematically massacred every last pony, young and old. Some of the dead, Circe resurrected as her soldiers. Some of them, she used for experiments. None of them, she thought twice about. All of them, Amanita tried to look the other way. The townsfolk fought back. Oh, how they fought back. They were valiant, bold, courageous, noble. The ferocity with which they fought would’ve downed any mortal pony. A few made a self-sacrificing charge to reach Circe, to attack her, to wound her, with no hope of escaping the crush of thralls. When the last pony fell, Circe had been stuck with so many weapons she was a pincushion. It didn’t even slow her down. “I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout keepin’ trophies,” Circe said as she pulled a sword from her chest. “Ev’ry weapon that ain’t killed me. Whaddya think?” “You’d probably have a lot of them,” Amanita said vaguely, trying to ignore the metallic stench of blood. There was a lot of it. How could she still look the other way? “Eh. Pr’y right.” And Circe gutted the last pony like a fish. With every last pony in Grayvale dead or kept in thrall, Circe set to work on the final steps. Nauseating sigils were etched across town. Ponies were butchered. Houses were destroyed. Amanita suspected that Circe was doing some of it just because she wanted to. She kept her mouth shut. It was the only way to stay alive. Circe showed Amanita a crystal on a chain, an innocuous little thing that glowed like a dying flame and twitched like a beating heart. “Beauty, ain’t it?” Circe asked, staring at it with an adoring affection she’d never given to Amanita. “I’ll show you ’ow t’make your own one day. Ain’t earned it in full yet, but ’ere’s how I’ll fix it.” The rejuvenation ritual horrified Amanita to her core, well past all delusion. Even if everything else she’d done were to be seen as acceptable, still this thing would be vile. Abhorrent. Deplorable. Primally WRONG in ways she couldn’t understand and didn’t want to. She tried to hide her reaction as best she could. It wasn’t enough. Amanita retched. And Circe noticed. “Ah, fer Grogar’s sake, grow up! I ain’t givin’ this up fer some namby-pamby armchair ph’losopher in ’er iv’ry tower ’oo’d vomit at plumbin’!” Amanita had a dozen different responses to that, but she knew Circe had one response shared between all of those: feed her to the phylactery as well. At best. She desperately babbled out an excuse, empty words about reflex. Circe appeared convinced. But Amanita could no longer sit around and watch. No matter what she’d told herself before, this was EVIL. She’d stop it or die trying. Circe prepared to enact the ritual that very night. She kept Amanita close. As they entered the mine, Amanita laid simple force spells on the supports. Circe didn’t notice. The thralls didn’t have enough sentience to care. When the time came, she could snap them like twigs. As Circe performed the ritual, Amanita lurked in the background, desperately holding in her bile. Circe gathered the spirits of the dead, forcing their energies together. She chanted words in some black language, incantations to keep her soul from departing. She directed the unholy energies of the ritual with the sickening, enthusiastic ease of an old master. And in the seconds before her immortality was renewed, she raised her hooves, lost in the throes of ecstasy. Then Amanita hit her on the head. A ritual such as this required supreme control. When Circe lost focus, it spiralled away and in strange directions, souls released to beyond, foul energies birthing and aborting monstrosities in eyeblinks, winds howling in confinement, timbers groaning with weight. In the chaos, Amanita grabbed the phylactery, bolted, and triggered her spells. With their supports blown to splinters, the entrance tunnels of the mine caved in, burying Circe beneath thousands of tons of stone. She wasn’t dead, of course. Already thralls were converging on the mine to dig her out. But Amanita was unharmed. And Amanita was free. As she stood before the wreckage, taking heaving breaths and feeling her muscles ache, those wondrous curses of life, she reflected. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, a few meager supplies, the weight of guilt, and Circe’s phylactery. But she knew where she needed to go. She knew where she belonged. She knew she couldn’t wait. And so she took off, off through the gutted corpse of Grayvale, off into the Frozen North, off across Equestria’s hinterlands. Less than two weeks later, the phylactery was in the possession of Shining Armor and the Crystal Empire to be destroyed, Circe was in special confinement, Amanita herself was in jail, and she was pen pals with Bitterroot. Thus began her recovery. Amanita’s dreams swirled into a misty, unremembered haze after that, but that particular dream remained clear as day when she woke back up, as if it’d happened seconds ago. It’d been about the absolute worst week in her life, the crux of why she was so worried about what might happen if she continued practicing necromancy. So why hadn’t it felt like a nightmare? For the reasons Code had said to her: she’d run. She’d brought a half-millennium-old lich to justice. Then, if only for a few moments, she couldn’t bring herself to worry. She knew the feelings would probably return in time, but as she looked at the ceiling in the darkness with nothing but her thoughts, she tried to imagine the worst and found it laughable. In fact, she had vague memories of a dream where she turned down infinite necromantic power to go bowling with Bitterroot — and she didn’t even like bowling. She might want to stay away from necromancy for a while, but that was just because of bad memories. With luck, those would fade. So. She had a chance to sit in bed and relax again. Just like yesterday morning. Naturally, Amanita found something else to worry about. Specifically, she couldn’t stop imagining that Code was wrong about the murders not being part of a ritual. Even though there was nothing that actually could be part of a ritual. And once that thought grabbed hold of her, it buzzed her up, got her just awake enough that couldn’t think of anything resembling sleeping in at all. She already knew approximately what it’d say, but Amanita stole a glance at the nearest clock. 6:32. What time did Bitterroot get up? 7? There was enough time for a walk around the block before breakfast. By now, Amanita wasn’t just awake, she was restless. The air outside was brisk, but Amanita didn’t bother with a coat. She’d been cold while running from Circe, she could be cold now. Lights were coming on in the houses lining the streets, and there were even a few ponies out already, traipsing their way to work as they cast nervous looks around, darting from streetlight to streetlight. Stupid Mearhwolf; it might be busier if not for her. Maybe the night had done wonders for Amanita’s self-esteem, but that just meant the idea taking up residence at the front of her head was about the Mearhwolf and rituals. It just… felt right. She’d seen the map of the deaths, two vague circles. She’d seen the dates, three days apart all the time. It being a ritual was… satisfying. Amanita turned a corner. The cloudless sky above was slinking from purple to orange, and she could get a better look at the houses around her. No wonder Canterlot felt old; all the houses were this marble-y white and had styles from centuries ago, even if you knew that there were no centuries-old townhouses around. A stylistic choice on somepony’s part, maybe? But at the same time, the Mearhwolf trying to perform a ritual just didn’t make sense. The deaths were vague circles, not sharply-defined ones; the necessity for an accurate circle didn’t go away just because the circle was big. A lot of the ritual items stolen had been illegal, but not all of them, and they weren’t used in the same rituals. Manticore venom was for ailing your enemies, lunar lily extract was for clarity of mind, eitr was destruction on a metaphysical level, hemlock was regular old nonmagical poison… Maybe they were collecting things for many rituals, but then why steal them all? They were obviously comfortable going to the Roost, they could do business there. Second corner. Somepony out for their morning jog was a ways up the street. The second she saw Amanita, she moved to the other side. Amanita waved as they passed; to her credit, the jogger did a semi-friendly nod back. So then why were the deaths in circles at all? What was up with Cobalt getting moved and killed later? Was it really a coincidence that all of these materials had been stolen just as this whole thing was going down? Why had Cobalt been killed by a group? Was there just some small detail she hadn’t been told because she was a civilian? Some large detail nopony had mentioned because it was so well-known in Canterlot? It not being a ritual just didn’t fit. Third corner. More lights were coming on. Amanita could spot some pegasi flying through the sky, high above the roofs. What sort of air traffic laws were there in cities? Bitterroot had sounded like some rules had been broken when Canterlot was flooded during the coronation. Yet… coincidences did happen. Circe just happening to find some bounty hunters immediately after Amanita left her. Amanita just happening to be released just as there was a serial killer in Canterlot. It was possible that all of these were just that: coincidences. Code thought so, and she knew rituals inside and out. She could probably see a dozen secret things Amanita hadn’t noticed. Or maybe there was another, non-ritualistic pattern the Mearhwolf was following. Fourth corner. The very tops of the buildings were sunlit. In the distance, Canterlot Castle’s towers were ablaze with the dawn. And it might’ve been her imagination, but Amanita thought she could see a certain purple pony in the tallest tower of them all. The ideas played tennis with each other as Amanita returned to Bitterroot’s house and collapsed on the sofa, exercised but her mind no clearer. There were too many clean, simple facts on both sides that fit one and only one possibility while discounting the other. There were too many patterns for it to realistically be a coincidence, but all of the specifics were way off-base, but all of the stolen ingredients had ritual potency, but none of them had anything in common besides that p- …OH. And suddenly Amanita was racing upstairs, screaming, “BITTERROOT! Bitterroot, I got it!”