Twilight grimaced around the taste of chalk in her mouth as she glanced once more over the large circle, squinting her gaze at each little squiggle and marking of the countless runes dotting the outside. She didn't have a lot of practice with Furthark Runes, having previously considered them little more than an ancient and obsolete writing system. She wasn't really sure how these sharp-edged squiggles were supposed to do anything, but her rather annoying 'assistant' insisted that they were an important part of the process. "How about now?" The lich-in-training grumbled, looking up to the lazing draconequus in the hammock nearby.
Discord yawns and stretching, pulling off his thick black sunglasses and putting down his magazine to glance at her work. "Eh... your Othala is still a bit lopsided... but I suppose it's good enough. Now you just have to wiggle your little hooves and say the funky words and shazam! Ritual complete."
"And tell me again..." Twilight drawled, spitting the piece of chalk out of her mouth and swigging some water to try and get the taste out. "...why we're trying to summon someone's spirit?"
Discord shrugged in response and cricked his neck. "Well, I can't be here to babysit you the entire time, and you don't have enough knowledge or control of your powers to read through that little book of yours on your own. We need to get you an actual necromancer as a teacher, but all of them are a tiny bit dead. Luckily, this ritual is pretty easy to perform, you don't even have to be a necromancer or lich to pull it off! It only requires that you yourself had been the person to kill the pony you're trying to speak to, and that you're not afraid to get your hooves dirty. Luckily, you meet both those requirements!"
Twilight grimaced. "I didn't kill him! I just... sort of intentionally caused his destruction. That's not the same thing!"
"It kinda is." Discord replied, polishing his fingernails with sandpaper. "But your crumbling sense of morality aside, you should be all good to start. I do have tea with Fluttershy in an hour, so if we could hurry this up that would be appreciated."
The lich only huffed in response and turned back to the circle, poking it gentle with her hoof. "So how do I... uh... make it go?"
Discord snapped his fingers and a very surprised and upset chicken appeared before Twilght, along with a knife.
Death groaned as he sat at his desk filling out more paperwork. Honestly, actually going up and dealing with the souls of dead creatures was the easy part of the job. Why he had to fill out forms in triplicate for every wayward soul he guided was anyone's guess. He didn't even know who was supposed to read them once they were filled!
Grumbling as he finished signing off on the death of some donkey who kept insisting that he was alive and had just taken a long nap, he smiled down at the almost completely processed inbox. He was almost done for today, and could finally rest. Maybe he'd even pay a visit to Miss Twilight! She always had the best snacks, and was always so nice to him. Maybe he should introduce her to his sibling some day. Pain and Sickness would probably like her a lot!
A sudden blinding flash of purple flame interrupted his daydreaming, the colt shielding his eyes with his hoof as a piece of paper exploded into existence in front of him before slowly drifting back and forth through the air, coming to rest on his desk atop all his other paperwork. Most of his documents had always been delivered by the soul of an unpaid intern that the previous death had conned into working for him for eternity, so the sight of the parchment appearing with such a spectacle of light and sound spooked the young colt.
Rubbing the spots from his eyes, he snatched the paper up and skimmed the parchment. "Imprisoned soul exchange application?" He asked with a grumble, pulling out his massive binder to cross-reference the document and see how to handle it. "Let's see... sponsor is... Twilight Sparkle..." He slumped and placed his hoof against his forehead. Why did that mare have to make his job so complicated. He didn't even bother to read the rest of the document, imprinting it with an ink-covered rubber 'approved' stamp and tossing it into his outbox.
Twilight grimaced at the blood covered chicken at her hooves in the center of the circle, tossing the knife away and wiping the foul fowl blood from her fetlocks. "That was disgusting." She grumbled, feeling queasy.
"Well, the sooner you can get a hold of your magic, the sooner you can do these rituals properly without all the blood and viscera. It's only a crutch to help those without the ability to cast, not really designed for long-term use. Unless you own a chicken farm, I assume." The chaotic being said in response, laying back down in his hammock.
"So... now we wait?" Twilight asked softly.
"Now we wait." Discord agreed. "It might take a few weeks, the amount of review and revision your request is going to have to go through is an absolute nightmare of bureaucracy. Gone are the times when you could just call up souls of ponies all willy-nilly using chicken blood. So we might as we-"
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the dead fowl bursting into a rush of black flame, somehow surprising even the lord of chaos himself. "Nevermind! Nepotism really works wonders." He commented, shielding his eyes from the glow of the cursed fire. Twilight still wasn't sure how something could glow black, but she was getting used to it now.
"Is this supposed to happen?" She called to Discord over the roar of the flames, gritting her teeth as alternating waves of boiling heat and freezing wind barraged her form. The chaotic god-like creature only shrugged unhelpfully in response, pulling his sunglasses back down over his eyes as he hid his face behind the fabric of the hammock.
After what felt simultaneously like hours of waiting, yet no time at all, the flames slowly began to die away, leaving the skeletal remains of the poor chicken laying in the middle of the singed circle. Then, with a faint rattling noise, the fallen bones began to rise to their feet, glowing red embers replacing where the eyes in his sockets should have been. The skeletonized poultry glanced around a few times, an ugly sneer on its boney face, before it finally opened its mouth to declare: "Who dares summon me, the lord of shadows and darkness, King Sombra!"
The deceased chicken then began to idly peck at the ground.