The Stereotypical Necromancer

by JinxTJL


Chapter 53 - Magic's Inquisition

The first voice had been a shock.

"Light? Are y'all- wait, what in tarnation happened to the door..?"

The second voice had his heart- already pounding out of his chest- leaping into his thick throat. At the very same time, the warm body pressed tightly against his went entirely stiff.

"...It looks like somepony smashed the latch open. Whoever did this might've been taking advantage of last night's chaos to stage a theft."

The third voice, tinged with nagging worry, made his suddenly acrobatic heart plummet. It hit the bottom of his ribcage like a stone: sitting and shivering in the pit of his queasy stomach.

"Do you think he's alright? Nopony's seen him since the party, and with everything that happened last night, he might've been hurt."

A fourth voice. Male, adolescent, and so heart-breakingly familiar.

"I'm really worried about him... what do you think we should do?"

The first voice came back, and finally, Light Flow was sure his battered heart was just going to explode.

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do..."

That was a familiar tone, and that was a familiar rising fear at said tone.

That was the low tone- the set jaw of an impulsive mare he knew very well. That familiar, stubborn tone of voice that had immediately preceded most, if not all of the most dangerous things that had ever happened to him or the ponies around him.

It was the voice of the mare who'd jumped off a barn. It was the voice of the mare who'd tried to catch twenty apples before they hit the ground. It was the voice of the mare who'd dragged him across town by his tail.

It was the twangy, syllable-slurring voice of the mare that bucked a new hole in his door before his wide eyes.

Splinters scattered across the floor in a dust cloud of obliterated wood as two orange rockets smashed through the area where his doorknob had been. The door- the poor door- flew back against its hinges and hit the wall with an- already far too abused- heart-stopping bang.

Light stared widely as his door creaked loosely away from the wall- on its one connected hinge- not sure whether to entirely believe his sunshine-battered eyes as an orange, apple-marked rear end filled his doorframe. The firm wrap of a banded blonde tail falling in tandem as the two faux-cannons set themselves down across the threshold with a clop.

"Light! It's me! Are y'all-" came the beginning of a worried yell as the mare with the golden hair turned in a hurried step, and then-

Emerald eyes met his, and her mouth gaped open. Her shout into the quiet room died in an overloaded stutter off her lips, while every line of her seconds-prior expression of concern and resolve wiped itself over with complete and utter shock.

And he could only stare back.

Because it was Applejack.

Wide emerald eyes shimmering like flawed jewels against the corona of filtered light behind her.

Golden blonde hair set in a messy, uncaring braid draped around her neck. The tips and strands of its frayed tail stained brown, undoubtedly from her trek into the forest- but nothing could make her any less beautiful.

If anything, knowing that she'd recently returned on a quest to save the world just made her all the more stunning.

Firm, strong hooves with their natural cords of rippling muscles: strong enough to bend trees and break doors alike, and earned through countless days of toil. Tensing and pressing the bones of her knees against the taut flesh as she stepped reflexively back- as though she wasn't sure if she should stay.

The proud plates of her stern chest: holding within its depths a softly spinning ball of bright, shining light. Every revolving line of light sparkling like pure, rich gold. The only soul he'd never wanted, but had always admired the most.

The ranch-typical stetson she'd never go without perched on her head. The white wash of her freckles on her cheeks smudged over with dirt. Glimmering golden necklace wrapped around her neck just like always- wait, what?

Light blinked in bemusement: shocked out of his admiring trance of the most beautiful mare he'd ever known by the odd necklace she sported. Intricate, golden metal hung low and tight around her neck: a shining orange jewel perfectly cut into the shape of a consummate apple in its throat-hugging crest.

That didn't seem right... Since when had Applejack started wearing jewelry..?

The hesitant sound of a cough echoed out into Light's empty home, where it miraculously found its way into his empty brain. It rattled around the dusty corridors of his mind in a desperate search for any intelligent thought, and against all odds, it found a realization.

Actually, it found two.

One: it was not just Applejack standing at his door. She was in front and first on his mind, but then there were also two not-Applejack mares standing just behind Applejack, as well.

He spared them a glance.

Just beyond the frame of his door stood a pretty white unicorn that he immediately noticed sported a nearly identical necklace to Applejack. It was not normally in his nature to notice when the white unicorn was wearing new fashion- that usually lead to a wasted hour- but given that the other point of contention was her hoof brought to her open mouth in genuine mortification, he'd be forgiven for trying to focus on something else.

Meanwhile, at his best friend's shoulder stood another unicorn: the lackluster purple one. She was wearing what he could only describe as the most ostentatious crown he'd ever seen in his life, and that was including the fake crown of thorns he'd once made himself out of paper.

Her expression was one of lidded, unrestrained disappointment- but he was thinking he should've been giving her that look. That crown was just-

...if he'd ever had to imagine the condensed essence of a cuteceanera's vomit-inducing, fillylike expression of wannabe-princess attire, then it still wouldn't have quite measured up to what she was wearing on her head with no seeming reservations! Had nopony told her she looked like an eight-year old playing dressup?!

Should he?

...Leaving his building aneurism from looking at the stupid crown behind, there was a little green-ish dragon who had pushed past the unicorns to stand beside Applejack. He'd been the one who had coughed, and he was far from the only one who was now staring at him with wide, blank eyes. The soul within his chest- sweet heavens above that was interesting to look at- sat nearly completely stilled in its motion: very much like Applejack's.

Numbers one through four were far and away the most evident things to him in the first few moments. At first, he felt nothing but heartened to see two of his friends and the love of his life. They'd clearly made it out unscathed from their ultimate confrontation with Nightmare Moon- Rarity honestly looked as though she'd spent the day in the spa- and now, they'd come to check on him. Because they cared.

It really made his heart swell. The safety of his favorite friends had been confirmed, and there was still a chance Rainbow Dash had fallen in the line of duty. Life for Light seemed amazing in those first few moments, and if he'd had hooves free, then he'd likely have run to sweep Applejack into a hug.

The next few moments were dominated by his second realization: the startling reintroduction of big fat number five.

Number five being the big fat mare sitting on his chest, who had not said a word or budged from her position entirely on top of him. They were stomach to stomach, chest to chest, with their legs intertwined and his hooves firmly wrapped around her back.

Light Flow was not very often savvy with situational awareness. He'd once earned a black eye by remarking that birthdays were a self-pitying tradition made up by losers with nothing else to celebrate. His saying so had, of course, come from his mouth on the day of Applejack's fifteenth birthday, while he was at her fifteenth birthday party, while all her relatives were in earshot.

He hadn't much liked nursing that black eye, nor did he ever like Applejack's responses to his childishness, however deserved.

That was why, ever since the fourth time Applejack had given him a black eye- two disasters after the birthday fiasco- he'd tried to practice scarce empathy. Putting himself in others' horseshoes, and imagining what they were thinking before he said the wrong thing and earned a smack.

Well, he was... lying on his back with his hooves around a strange mare. They were both covered in blood and dirt. They probably both smelled like blood and dirt. They were wearing matching metal bands like it was a fashion statement and not indicative of servitude or worse. His front door looked like the victim of a vandalism... and...

...did he really need to come up with any more?

Best case scenario: they'll think the mare is a robber who was in the middle of attacking him.

Worst case scenario: they'll think they've just walked in on him having intimate relations with an apparent stranger.

If he asked her, would Bon Bon snap his neck, instead? He'd really just- he'd vastly prefer being dead to the situation he was in just then. His second life'd been good while it lasted, but he was about ripe and ready to die again. He'd seen all he needed to; he could rest in peace, now.

Though he and Bon Bon both seemed to be sharing their silent panic attack, Applejack was not. She stepped hesitantly forward as her jaw worked wordlessly up and down: searching the scene before her with a myriad of questions he had absolutely no idea how to answer. "Light... I was... What are you... Who..?"

Her voice- he'd missed it so much- was a sudden shock out of his trance, and he was suddenly aware that- yes, he had hooves, and he could move them! The heartbeat he felt against his- fast and resounding- was all the incentive he needed to embrace the rush of righteous anger.

"Get off me, already!" he quietly snarled at the mare as he wormed his hooves in-between them, and pushed. The stunned mare let out a quiet yelp as her weight shifted and she tumbled to the side- but aside from resisting the urge to smile, he really didn't care to see how she reacted. He had more important things on his mind.

As soon as he was free and there was open air on his fur, he braced his hooves onto the floor, and rolled himself over. With an apology to his bruised shoulders that took the brunt of the motion, he managed to push himself to a fully standing position.

A standing position only hoof-lengths away from Applejack. Close enough that he could feasibly reach out and brush her coarse fur- and the urge to do so was so violently appealing. He nearly caught himself raising his hoof- blinking as his muscles twitched, and forcing the need to fade.

She probably wouldn't appreciate his random touching of her face, though he wanted to so badly. It'd been so long since he'd hugged Applejack- which wasn't even his fault! The last time she'd offered- what was probably months ago by now- he'd gladly taken her up on it. He'd felt so terrible at the time, and so beyond thrilled at the prospect of comfort, that he'd skipped straight past pretending to be obstinate.

Just enjoying the warm embrace for what it was, away from the pretenses; so blissfully peaceful that he'd nearly fooled himself into believing there were no voices whispering in his ears.

The silence really was different when it was silent, he mused.

He wished he could skip the formalities again, and just ask for a hug- but then again... she probably didn't even want a hug. She was- well, he wanted to say her eyes were full of hurt and sorrow, but it was really all just confusion. Applejack just looked confused.

He couldn't blame her; he'd be confused in her situation, too. He'd gone over how it looked, after all.

He'd gone twenty entire seconds of staring at Applejack and not saying anything, he realized- and that thought took another three seconds. Maybe he should say something to his evidently confused- bordering on leaving- friend.

"Applejack- I- I swear what you saw was- it's not what it looks like!" He'd started calmly, then almost immediately at watching how her muzzle twisted at his voice he'd begun to stammer. His ears had splayed against his head- he hated how they began to burn- and everything else came out in a rush.

He'd had something confident and witty in mind, hadn't he? Something to adequately explain the situation and defuse the tension all in one? Yeah, it felt like he'd had something like that in mind.

So why, for the forgotten sakes of all the condemned souls in Tartarus, had he said the most overdone line in the history of misunderstanding tropes?!

He was an idiot who didn't deserve his precious few friends. They'd all be better off with somepony who didn't act as though their life was a bad drama. What was next? Was he going to pretend Bon Bon had just fallen onto him? He was such a freakin' mule...

At his... admittedly poor denial, Applejack only seemed all the more conflicted. Her jaw still working for words that didn't come; her eyes, full to the brim with confusion, constantly flicking between him and the mare he presumed was still behind him. Or maybe Bon Bon had run to his bedroom and jumped out his one openable window; he had no idea what her prerogative was in this situation.

He knew it wasn't to take the blame, at least. Governments... government workers... they were all pretty much the same.

Though everypony involved in the Minotauran standoff seemed to have lost the ability to speak, the fourth party they'd forgotten had no such deficiencies. She, in fact, was apparently eager to speak.

"I don't know how else we're supposed to interpret what we saw." The voice- dry and purple- acted as a hammer to the still portrait of regret they'd all been painting. Three sets of eyes turned to the mare as she stepped past Applejack- but he didn't need to see her to remember Twilight Sparkle.

Neatly trimmed bangs shading critical purple eyes; a crown and a saddlebag sharing the same large, purple star emblazoned on her flank; a small, seeming ever-present frown.

What the mare wore as her short walk ended seemed to wear on him as well, and he could feel the simmering joy he'd had at seeing Applejack just begin to die. Twilight's air of perceptive annoyance, even just standing quietly, was just as aggravating as the last time he'd seen her.

Not even the sight of her soul overlaid on her chest- predictably purple- redeemed the moment, unpredictably. After all, souls were a typical fascination of his. He usually loved to stare unabashedly at them instead of ponies' faces- and he loved guessing their emotional states even more, though... when he was talking to them, they usually just began to tinge red with anger.

Twilight's soul was... dull. Its spin was slow, and boring. Its color was purple, and boring. Its depths were still and boring. It was like looking at a pond.

Why did Twilight strive to annoy him such? Even unconsciously?

"You're clearly in some sort of relationship with that mare, and denying it only perpetuates your obvious desperation to hide something," accused Twilight, who somehow managed to make some of his favorite words sound boring. The matter-of-fact way she spoke just... was she speaking to him or lecturing him?

He let his eyes rove over the principally boring mare once more, before he let them rest on her face. "That's... Denial doesn't necessarily equate to secrecy," he objected- and it was surprising how much force he managed for his words. However enraging Twilight as a pony was to him, it did wonders for his confidence.

Twilight, the mare whose quirked eyebrow confirmed a theory of his, spoke doubtfully. "Uh-huh... And you're choosing to argue the plausibility of argumentation itself rather than actually defending yourself?"

He opened his mouth- then shut it.

She had him there, and that discrepancy was difficult enough to rectify that he didn't really know how to respond.

Light simmered in uncertainty for a moment as Twilight's glare left him, and roved across the room behind him. "For a stallion to whom I can evidently relate for a love of literature, I find it very difficult to believe you actually live here."

Her gaze returned to him: clearly disgusted by what she'd seen. "Applejack told me you were quirky, but your home honestly looks abandoned- and that's only the outside. Don't you ever clean?"

He was going to punch her. He really was. She had the gall to come into his home-

He didn't even get the chance to finish seething and plotting violence before something roughly shouldered him aside. He stumbled away on shaky hooves: only barely managing to stop a near-reunion with the floor and turn, completely offended, to see Bon Bon lower herself into a deep bow before Twilight.

"Miss Applejack- Lady Sparkle, this really isn't what it looks like!" Bon Bon's desperate plea was met with nothing but a raised eyebrow from... Lady Sparkle? Had Bon Bon just called her lady? What in the deepest hells made anything about Twilight ladylike?!

Applejack had long since been relegated to standing in the sidelines and looking bewildered, and Light joined her readily as Twilight regarded the mare laying prostrate before her with leering perception.

"...We met at the party, didn't we?" she asked slowly, to which Bon Bon raised her head and quickly nodded. Twilight nodded back, and cocked her hoof towards the floor-bound mare. "You're Lyra's marefriend, right? Your name is Bon Bon?"

Lyra. Oh, wow it was coming back to him.

He'd met Lyra at the party, too, and- and that was why she'd acted like she knew him when he'd seen her at- um...

...nevermind. He'd never gone to Bon Bon's house. He'd met Lyra at the party, and that was it.

Forget it.

Twilight's scrutinizing gaze raised to him for a disquieting second- not what he wanted while distracted- then she returned to the mare. "You'd told me you were taking Light to the hospital when he started to have a breakdown..." she spoke seemingly to herself: resting her hoof on her chin as she lowered her head to the floor. "It would make some sense if you were here just because you were bringing him home... That seems likely enough by itself..."

His memory of that party was surprisingly spotty, especially of what'd happened before Applejack had come downstairs. He remembered arriving and some after, and he remembered leaving and some before. It was... pretty much the interim of Applejack going up that was just so... foggy.

His trance rushed away- his blood chilled as Twilight's purple leer landed back on him. It felt like she was looking straight through him. "Except... Applejack told me that you and her spoke at length after I went upstairs."

He found an objection- then the words jumbled and stuck in his throat, leaving the junior detective continuing unimpeded: Light balking uselessly as her piercing stare filled with accusation.

It wasn't as though Twilight intimidated him or anything so silly, but when she looked at him like that... as though she could read his every thought from a glance alone...

He could almost imagine her purple eyes lengthening into slits.

"If you actually stayed at the party after you were seemingly taken away-" She turned her stare and her hoof to Bon Bon, and he could swear he saw the tiniest bead of sweat matting the mare's forehead. "-then you lied to me, which means you must have some sort of ulterior motive when it comes to Light."

Her eyes fell to the ground at his hooves- no, to his hooves. "It's unrelated, but I can't help but notice you're both wearing mana-conductive bands engraved with noticeably intricate sigilwork."

Light quickly- or belatedly- hid his banded hoof behind its twin, but Twilight simply swapped her stare to Bon Bon. The usually secretive mare who did absolutely nothing to hide: seeming stuck in distressed silence as Twilight narrowed her eyes at his cuff's twin. "They're both on the same respective hoof, not to mention."

Her head raised along with her hoof, which flicked in a short motion between the two bands. "Artificing is a tricky subject that I'm not entirely well-versed in, but I believe displacing identical sets of sigils between two spatially sound objects could result in a resonant connection..."

Twilight hummed curiously as Light- and everypony in the room- stared widely at the mare. Was it him, or could he feel everypony thinking the exact same thing?

What?

The moment- completely confusing in every way- only grew more so as, to his unbelieving eyes, Twilight's horn lit in a dazzling shimmer of maroon haze. The glow coalesced around the latch to her saddlebag, and in only a moment did a paper and quill float out.

And then she began to write.

"Without knowing the exact writ used, I can't make a definite accusation, but imprinting the exact same binding sigils while assuming an allowance for individual mana signatures could create a resonance between the two objects: creating a functional link that, assuming the purposeful lack of a contingency, would result in a fabricated burst of feedback triggering on severance of the link, say... to distance."

Twilight actively read out every word as her quill- pre-inked, apparently- scratched them into the unfurled scroll sitting in the air before her chin. Not blocking her view; she simply didn't care to look.

Functionally breaking down the science and the method behind the tag that linked him to Bon Bon while simultaneously writing her thoughts down- after having only stared at the bands- and she was doing it while ignoring the ponies she was accusing of wrongdoing.

Selfishly wrapped up in her own thoughts while four ponies stared at her in disbelief, and one dragon rolled his eyes.

...Was this what it was like to speak to him?

Twilight's leer rose from her paper- as her quill continued to write. The sheer speed of her self-record barely even faltering- her soul sitting calmly in her chest- as she peered keenly into the gloom behind them.

"I think I've read about that machine on the ground over there, as well." The uncertain verb proved useless as her tirade continued confidently with a point of her hoof. "It's an arcanic crystagram. It receives mana frequencies through internal resonance and outputs its reading through conductive crystals."

Bon Bon had leapt to her hooves by then: turning to stare, shocked, at her loudly identified device. Her mouth worked up and down noiselessly as she whirled back to stare at Twilight, whose discerning gaze didn't falter in the least as she stared accusingly back. "It's an archaic method of isolating a pony's mana signature, but given fine-tuning it can also be used to detect minute differences in mana circulation: such as is obvious when a pony is lying."

Never had something so technical dripped with so much penetrating implication.

Light felt like every breath was a struggle not to choke on, and even Bon Bon- the unflappable secret agent- seemed too stunned to do anything but watch as Twilight literally and figuratively put her hoof down. Speaking to the room at large as the two ponies on trial felt a simultaneous skipping in their hearts.

Her quill had stopped; her paper rolled itself up. Now, Twilight had everything she needed.

"You're both covered in mud; you're both obviously exhausted; you've both been seen together at least once before; you're likely bound to each other by some kind of connecting magical signature; Light apparently lost his memory on the day of the Summer Sun Celebration and then went missing that night- and we discovered you two in the seeming midst of an altercation with a broken lie detector in the room."

Her gaze swept between the two of them: a radical hint of anger in their calm, purple depths. "Does this, or does this not have anything to do with last night and Nightmare Moon?"

Three voices gasped, Light blinked, and the scene before him blurred as the full force of a forgotten memory hit him all at once.

Warm fur against the concept of his back, and cold breath on his nape. Smoky blue background, and black feathers scattered on the formless ground.

Her whisper in his ear. Low, and purring, and plotting.

"My sister has trained a protégé to oppose me. A filly plucked from mediocrity and woven into the tapestry of destiny: bred and weaned on a doctrine of lies and deception before her open eyes.

"A gifted prodigy with mental aptitudes beyond the mortal mind; her foalhood stolen from her and burned away as fuel for her abilities. Every day spent in preparation for a future atop the world, and one she feared above all else.

"Not since the age of Starswirl the Bearded has Equus witnessed one so talented in the learned arts. The sheer scope of her genius demands accomplishment on end, and failure as an impossibility. Her drive to achieve borders on mania, and there is little so dangerous as genius led astray.

"We must fear what she may become if not removed."

Light let out a cool, shaking breath as the sucking void of the memory within a dream fled again to the recesses of his mind: the message left behind burning like the mark of a brand in the emptied space.

Fear Twilight Sparkle. Remove her.

Would Her whispers ever go away?