//------------------------------// // 18 - Odium // Story: Death Valley // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Early that morning, Amanita killed a mouse. She didn’t know the time when she woke up. Three, maybe four in the morning. When she looked outside, the moon was just beginning to sink below the western mountains, but she still didn’t know what that meant in a place this deep. All she knew was that she was awake and she wanted to kill someone. She settled for killing something. She hadn’t heard any mice in the walls, but she figured the inn had to have them. Because… All the reasons she came up with were spiteful. The one she managed to settle on was “because inns always have mice”. Did they? She didn’t care. She rooted through her bedsheets and quickly found a leftover bread crumb from last night. It’d have to do. With a dimly-lit horn and a tread born of not disturbing Circe, Amanita inched her way down the hall, down the stairs (she kept to the walls, where the boards had more support and were less likely to creak). The common room was empty of ponies, so she rooted around where the wall met the floor. Mousehole, mousehole, mousehole… There was one. Mousehole, technically. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. It was amazing, the sorts of places mice could squeeze into. She rapped the wall a few times to wake up any mice inside, set the breadcrumb a few feet away from the hole, and scooched back to wait. It wasn’t long before a mouse skittered out, its nose twitching. It was fast and fuzzy and so small its nails didn’t make any sound, not even the skrting you usually heard from mice. It traveled towards the crumb in spurts: scurry a few inches, come to a sudden stop, survey the area, scurry, stop, survey, scurry, stop, survey. Amanita waited patiently, holding as still as she could. If the mouse sensed her, it didn’t deem her a threat. Eventually, the mouse reached the crumb. It put its tiny paws on the morsel, sniffed it all over with its twitchy little nose. It seemed to be edible. The mouse started nibbling. Amanita grabbed it in her magic and twisted until its neck snapped. It went still almost immediately, not even spasming. Amanita waited a few moments, just to be sure. No motion. She laid a hoof on its tiny little chest. Nothing. Perfect. She set the corpse on the bar and started moving the tables and chairs to the sides. Slowly, to keep quiet. Even for something as simple as a mouse, she needed a nine-foot circle, because she was an incompetent moron who hadn’t worked on that part of the ritual during refinement. She went through the motions: circle, runes, the lot. She felt the buzzing in the same way as she had with Pyrita. She didn’t feel any sort of happiness, not like she had the last time. It still needed to work. And if it didn’t work, she might as well pack up now, because what good was she? She had her hooves on the toadstone and the down. She didn’t bother with her mnemonics; she didn’t need them to focus. The ritual kicked in almost immediately and Amanita had jammed the mouse’s soul back in its body before she could stop herself from wasting her ingredients. Beneath her hooves, the toadstone cracked and the down was consumed. And the mouse twitched and jumped back to life. Amanita immediately grabbed its tail in her magic and dragged it over to her. The mouse tried to run, squeaking madly, its little legs grabbing at the floor. She dangled it in front of her, turning it around. It flailed like it was alive. It was squeaking, so it was obviously breathing. It looked at her with absolute terror like it was alive. So it was alive. Right? She tried to say that this was proof that Pyrita had died more than three days earlier, but she couldn’t make it sound convincing. She didn’t know why; something about simpler souls for animals requiring less work, even though she knew that that was a load of night fertilizer. Yet no matter how much Amanita shoved that reason aside, it shoved its way back. Her thoughts always, always, always circled back to that one fact: Pyrita was the one who’d died and she couldn’t resurrect. She set the mouse back down, although she didn’t let it go; the mouse scrabbled at the floor, squeaking pitifully. She almost wanted to kill it again. It didn’t matter how. Snap its neck again. Crush it. Strangle it with thread. Fill up a cup and drown it. Skewer it with a needle. Find a knife to cut it open. Tear it in half. Get creative and try something else. However it happened, it’d be something she could control. Something familiar. The mouse squeaked and squeaked and squeaked. Amanita released its tail and it scampered back into its hole. She didn’t go looking for it. The walls and ceiling were pressing in on her and the air felt hideously still. Amanita stood up and walked outside. About a dozen different factors combined to make it some of the coldest air she’d ever felt, something that was slowly peeling the life from her as she stayed out. But it was open and there was wind, so she barely noticed. Breathing deeply and letting icicles into her lungs, she looked up at the stars. You were supposed to be able to see so many stars in the wilderness. Less light pollution. One of the few fond memories Amanita had of her time with Circe was the magnificence of constellations in the North. It was even one of the only pleasures Circe hadn’t denigrated. Being near everything in Canterlot was nice, but when you went out at night, many of the dimmer stars were invisible in the glare. There were fewer stars here than in Canterlot. The cliffs of Midwich blocked them out. Rather than the stars simply being less bright, the night sky had to cut a gash through the black shadows of the looming walls. It almost looked like the starlight didn’t belong. Didn’t stop it from shining. Amanita looked at the light, the light that had come from so very far away to illuminate this one corner of Equestria — briefly, feebly, yet illuminate it nonetheless — and couldn’t decide whether the notion was reassuring or depressing. It was cold. She was tired. She pulled her furs tighter and walked back inside. Bitterroot didn’t sleep well that night. Her mind kept getting pulled in different directions and when she finally got to sleep, what little she remembered of her dreams was dim flashes of snow, caves, trees, and a northeast trek. When morning finally came, she felt drained. But no angry mobs had tried to batter down the door, so hey. Small favors. Everyone else was downstairs already, taking a table that the rest of the common room was avoiding. Bitterroot got eggs from a surly Cabin at the bar, scrambled them on the room’s central stove, and took a seat with the rest of the team. The eggs didn’t taste as good as the ones she’d had the other mornings. Around the time everyone’s breakfast was beginning to run out, Code cleared her throat and said, unnaturally loudly, “I’ve been thinking. We’ve been doing all of our work in Midwich Valley, but that could skew the results if the ley line is at a different elevation. We should climb to the rim of the valley for some more data. Perhaps the waterfall is the ley line’s source.” Movement rippled in the Tratonmanians around them and Bitterroot heard some satisfied grumbles. The second they died down, Code spoke again in a voice too low to be heard outside their group. “Because we need to get out of here for a while. We might learn something from this, but it’s mostly an excuse.” “Good excuse,” Charcoal said quietly. “But that means we’ll need a way out,” Code murmured. She drummed a hoof on the table as she scanned the room. “I could ask around.” “There’s a path on the eastern cliff, near the top of the shelf,” Bitterroot said. “Tratonmanians sometimes use it to climb up and it comes out near the river. It’s narrow, but we should be able to make it, even with our equipment.” “Hmm. Handy,” said Code. “How’d you learn about it?” Bitterroot shrugged and shoveled the last of her eggs into her mouth. “I guess I-” … …How did she know that? She’d never talked with anybody about heading up. She’d never seen that path. There was nowhere she could’ve learned it and forgotten about learning it. But somehow, she knew for a fact that there was a path like that in Midwich Valley. Just as she’d described. Used in the way she’d mentioned. She knew it like she’d been living in Tratonmane her whole life, the same way Canterlot’s streets had been etched into her memory. Where had it come from? “…I don’t know,” Bitterroot said quietly. She swallowed and massaged her head. “I just… I know it, but I don’t know how I know it.” Code’s ears drooped and she frowned. “Hmm,” she said in a way that had more weight than her first one. “You don’t have any sort of headache, do you?” “No.” “Have you had one recently?” “…I don’t think so, no.” Had she? Not one bad enough to remember, at least. Did that count? “Hmm.” Code and Amanita exchanged Significant Glances. Bitterroot resolved to tell them about her meeting with Pyrita before they came back down into Midwich. “Tell us if you do get a headache,” Code said. “It might lead to something worse.” “How worse?” “I don’t know. That’s what I’m afraid of.” Charming. “We’d best hope your path actually exists,” said Code, “because if not… there’s a lot of wall to climb.” It existed. The second Bitterroot was finished with breakfast, she’d flown out to check and had come back confirming it. From the way she spoke, finding the path so easily, just knowing where it was, was unnerving. Amanita couldn’t blame her. Charcoal and Code worked out that they only needed two geothaumometers for this. They weren’t so bulky that carrying two of them on a single sledge up the path was insurmountable, or so Bitterroot said. But as Amanita helped float one out of storage, she certainly felt everyone’s eyes on her. Carrying something like a geothaumometer suddenly felt wrong. It marked her out. She didn’t belong and it’d be better if she left. Without necromancy, she had nothing to contribute that someone else wouldn’t do more effectively. She still held her head as high as she could. It was when they were arranging the geothaumometers on a sledge outside the inn that Amanita noticed something on the other side of the Ash. Ponies were clustered near the town hall and in a field to the side of it. The groups were larger than she’d seen in Tratonmane before and there were more of them. More ponies even than there’d been around the Ash last night. “Does anyone know what’s up with that?” she asked, pointing. When Bitterroot looked, her ears drooped. “That field’s the graveyard,” she said. “I… think they’re getting ready for Pyrita’s funeral.” A knot formed in Amanita’s stomach. Code didn’t say anything, but, as the one hitched to the sledge, immediately turned and started pulling it in a more roundabout route that didn’t pass near the cemetery. Ponies were trickling towards the graveyard as they walked through Tratonmane. Every one of them gave the group some form of stinkeye. Sometimes, words drifted through the air and into her ears to settle in her mind and refuse to leave: monster, liar, arrogance, more. It ought to start getting blunted, Amanita thought, but it still stung as sharply as before. Maybe because more and more of it was directed at her than the others. Maybe she just had thin skin and couldn’t handle the heat so she ought to get out of the kitchen. Yeah. That sounded right. At one point, Amanita was suddenly swung out of the group and found herself face-to-face with Midwinter. Before she could say anything, Midwinter was saying, “Why would you do that to Arrastra?” “I don’t know,” said Amanita. She immediately blanched at how it sounded. “I, I mean, it should’ve worked, I don’t know why it didn’t-” “You promised her much and spat in her face.” “I swear, I, I don’t-” And then Code was between them. “We’re busy,” she said to Midwinter. Without another word, she pulled Amanita away and back into the group. When they left, Midwinter looked more disappointed than anything. Somehow, that hurt the worst. The trek through Tratonmane didn’t take long, and soon Amanita was craning her head to gaze up at the sheer wall of the cliffs. It had seemed nearly flat from a distance in the dark. Up close and in the dark… It was still pretty flat, but now Amanita could make out crags and clefts and ridges all across its face. If she really needed to, she could probably climb it. “The… path’s right over there,” Bitterroot said. She pointed out a not-too-narrow road that had clearly been carved out of the rock by pony hooves. It looked risky, winding up the cliff face, but even in the dark, it seemed manageable for the sledge. Code took a deep breath. “Alright. Let’s get to it.” She started walking. Amanita glanced at Bitterroot. She hadn’t moved yet, but was staring at the path. Her wings were restless and she pawed at the ground, her head bobbing up and down. Amanita gently nudged her in the side. “How’re you doing?” she asked. “About the… path.” “I’m… I don’t know.” Bitterroot shook her head. “It’s just weird. I… I think I’m fine. Really.” She set off in Code’s footsteps. That was one of them, at least. The sun was beautiful. There were better words for what Amanita was feeling, certainly. Someone with an actual talent for words could wax poetic for hours about the sunlight and the sky in comparison to Tratonmane. Words like “glistening”, “sapphiric”, or “coruscating” would be used to compare seeing a sunrise to the grim depths of Midwich. It could be one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in Equestrian history. But all Amanita cared about was that the sun was beautiful. Amanita hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the light. The floor of Midwich was dark, dour. Cramped, even, with the towering cliffs. On the rim of the valley, the sky gleamed above her and stretched from horizon to horizon. The horizon existed. Sunlight reflected off the water of the nearby river before it tumbled into the rift below. It was like a vise had slowly been crushing her chest, only to suddenly spring open once she left Midwich. She could breathe. She could see. And even though the air was still cold — they were still in the North, after all — it still felt warm compared to the valley floor. Work up here was preferable to relaxation down there. As she watched Charcoal set up one of the geothaumometers, Amanita asked, “It can tell if the ley line’s going down, right? How?” Charcoal nudged the planisphere another degree. “Little things. Uh, when the pendulum swings, instead of going like this-” She made a broad swinging motion with her hoof. “-fwoooooo, fwoooooo, fwoooooo — it’ll go like this-” A quick back-and-forth arc, barely an inch long. “-fwit fwit fwit fwit fwit — because the ley line’s pulling it down. Uh, the res- the reser- the reservoirs will fill up differently. A lot of things.” She shrugged. The path up had been long and a bit narrow, but not too steep and mostly uneventful. Between earth pony strength, pegasus flight, and unicorn and kirin levitation, the geothaumometers had been hauled up without too much difficulty over the course of several hours. When they’d reached the top and come into the sun, Amanita had felt like the world had opened up to her and the exhaustion from trudging up the slope was irrelevant. Code even let them rest a minute for basking. Charcoal released the quartz and set it swinging. “We’re done here!” she called out. Some distance away, Code called back, “Just finished this one! Meet you at camp!” Because they did have camp, of a sort. Food. Various diversions anyone had wanted to bring up. Textbooks. Just evidence that they were planning to stay up there a while, set up next to one of the streams that fed the waterfall. Everyone reconvened there and Bitterroot quickly asked the obvious question. “So now what? We just wait?” “We could go back down to Tratonmane,” said Code. “But everyone raise your hoof if you want to.” No hooves went up. “I thought not.” Amanita looked out over Midwich. It was astonishing, just how dark the valley was when seen from above. Light was beginning to climb down as the sun climbed up, but much of it still remained black as coal. There were little specks here and there: lamps, torches, hornlight. They all only made the darkness deeper as they flashed in and out of visibility. Amanita couldn’t even make anything out on the valley floor. Between that and the company, she really didn’t want to go back. Her thoughts swirled, images of Pyrita dead. With her brain emptied out from work and the climb, those thoughts began piling up. A dead pony, perfect for necromancy. A dead pony she couldn’t work necromancy on. A simple promise unkept. The skills she’d thrown away her conscience for, broken. There was the mouse, true, but it kept feeling like a fluke. It should’ve worked. Why didn’t it work? Code took a bite of dirt. Then she sighed, walked over to the edge of the cliff, and sat down on her haunches. “I ought to have prepared more for… this,” she said, gesturing at Midwich. “This was supposed to be easy and I never stopped to consider what would happen if it wasn’t. This ley line ought to have been simple.” Amanita actually giggled at that, a choked wheeze somehow escaping her. “You think the ley line’s the problem?” she asked. “Not me?” “Amanita,” Code began, turning around. “Because you brought me here to learn,” Amanita continued. “And the first time I don’t do what you say, oh look, the entire town’s turned against us.” At some point, she realized she wasn’t talking so much as voicing her thoughts. She didn’t bother stopping. “And it was just the one thing I was supposed to be good at-” “Amanita, there’s more to-” Buried thoughts she hadn’t wanted to admit surfaced as Amanita kept babbling. She was barely even aware of her surroundings. “You might as well replace me! Get someone with an actual background in this! Because you hired me to be a necromancer and that’s clearly not working out! Everything I know is wrong! Somepony died right in front of me and I couldn’t bring her back!” “Amanita, why do you think I’ll drop you if you’re not a necromancer?” “Because that’s all I am!” Amanita yelled. “I’m- I’m a necromancer. And that’s it! That’s all I’m good at! Nothing else! I- The only reason I have any worth is because I was too stupid to let my very special somepony rest in peace! I ran away from home with a stranger and trashed my life on a whim, my family doesn’t know I’m alive, they wouldn’t care if they did, I spent years of my life getting abused and not caring, and the pony I would’ve given anything to stay with probably hates me down to my soul! Necromancy’s all I have! And- And now it’s not working and I don’t know why! I’M USELESS!” Her words bounded up and down Midwich, echoes twisting and warping them. She was breathing heavily. Standing at the top and the end of Midwich, it felt like the entire valley’s attention was focused on her. And she couldn’t stop talking, thoughts and insecurities spilling from her like blood from a wound. Bitterroot stood up, her wings fluffing out slightly. “Amanita-” “You, you all-” Amanita pointed a shaking hoof around the group. “You’ve all got things that are, that are interesting. You’re the High Ritualist. You’re a great environmental mage. You’re a bounty hunter who fought off and captured a lich. You know what I’ve got that makes me interesting? The bounty I got from turning myself in. And I was bad enough that it was a big bounty.” She hung her head, pulled her hooves together, folded her ears back. Her vision grew wet and hazy. “I… I’ve killed ponies. Innocents. I’ve… done a lot of bad things. Vile things. Things that would make your stomach turn. And… maybe… Maybe this is stupid, but… I don’t… I want to make up for it. But necromancy’s all I have to show for it. So if I can’t use that… I… I’m just a sunblasted black hole of karma. I… I d-don’t want to b-be ashamed of l-living.” “But you tried.” Amanita blinked at Charcoal’s words and looked up. Charcoal was sitting across from her, her ears turned forward in concern and her tail was flicking back and forth. “You told Arrastra that you were a necromancer so that you could help her. Even if you’re the first- the worst person in the world, you’re trying to be better. If you’re ashamed of that, then… I…” She shrugged helplessly. “She was- Her sister just died and-” “You told her you were a necromancer. How many people would do that in the first place?” “Most people aren’t necromancers,” Amanita said automatically. Charcoal tilted her head. It actually took Amanita a moment to realize. “Most people don’t think they’re necromancers,” she amended. But it sounded hollow. “Amanita,” Code said. She didn’t raise her voice, but everyone had to pay attention to her all the same. “I’ve seen your work. You are a necromancer. You’re working on anti-zombie tactics. You can call up the souls of the dead-” “Only if they want to come.” Code almost scowled and one of her ears twitched. “Because you refined that from your old ritual. Tartarus, you’ve resurrected over half a dozen ponies!” Charcoal’s ears went up. “Wait, half a dozen?” she yelped. “I thought it was just two!” “You’re probably thinking of me,” Bitterroot said. “I was resurrected twice.” “No, I thought it was just you and that one Mearhwolf victim, but…” Charcoal stared quizzically at Amanita. “Resurrected twice,” she repeated, pointing at Bitterroot. “But,” Amanita protested weakly, “those were all-” She wanted to say “luck”. But it hadn’t been, had it? Code had analyzed the resurrection ritual herself. The High Ritualist had approved her work. “Amanita, it’s been less than twenty-four hours,” said Code, still a bit shy of irritation. “We haven’t had the time to do any real work on it. We still don’t know what’s wrong with this ley line. No one here knows why Pyrita wasn’t resurrected. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure. That just means we don’t know. Maybe there’s some edge case we’re unaware of.” “I know,” said Amanita, “but- I can’t stop thinking about it.” “Because you’re pretty awful at dealing with your emotions,” Bitterroot said bluntly. “You and I went over this yesterday.” And Amanita caught herself smiling, if only a little. If nothing else, that was absolutely true. “Also, uh…” Bitterroot coughed and shuffled her hooves. “There… might be something more going on.” Amanita blinked and her smile vanished. That tone of voice was one you ignored at your own peril. And if it hadn’t been Pyrita who’d been moving around, that peril could very well be literal. Code seemed to have noticed as well. Bitterroot took a deep breath. “Before Pyrita died, I’d- been visiting Arrastra. I just wanted to be sure she was okay. She said Pyrita had been… quieter than usual. Not as animated. She said…” She closed her eyes and rubbed her head. “…something about worms and my line being severed twice and… sewists watching through me, I can’t really remember.” Deep breath. “And then she branded me with a fireplace poker.” The atmosphere shifted immediately, everyone getting to their hooves. “She branded you?” Amanita asked, aghast. “Why didn’t you say anything?” “Because I forgot about it when Pyrita died,” said Bitterroot. “And… Look.” She raised her head up and pointed at a part of her neck. “This is where she branded me. But there’s nothing there now. After Pyrita went outside, it just stopped hurting.” “Did it,” muttered Code. She leaned forward and brushed at Bitterroot’s neck; Bitterroot flinched but didn’t pull away. “Did you see what it looked like?” “Yeah, it was a crossed circle. Arrastra recognized it.” Memory jolted through Amanita like a lightning bolt; she and Code looked at each other, agape. “The mother,” whispered Code. “The what?” “The grain mother,” Code said, rubbing her forehead. “The- item Arrastra was using to try to heal Pyrita. That was a crossed circle as well. Duplicating the shape was part of a rite that woke Pyrita up to begin with.” “So…” Bitterroot rubbed at her neck. From the way she moved, Amanita wasn’t sure she knew what she was doing. “What does that mean?” “I don’t know,” said Code. “You haven’t been feeling strange, have you?” “Not really, no.” “Any bad dreams? Excessively vivid ones, not just regular ones.” “…Not even regular bad dreams, just… weird, hazy ones.” Code’s head twitched back an inch. “Really?” “Does that mean anything?” “Effh.” Code wiggled a hoof. “It’s hard to say. If you’re being mentally influenced, bad dreams are often one of the symptoms of your mind fighting back. And I’d say being marked in the manner you were was a clear attempt by someone or something to claim you. Possibly…” She glanced at Amanita. “…whatever had taken Pyrita, if that’s what happened to her.” “Like a…” Bitterroot rubbed her neck. “Like a curse mark or something?” “Exactly. But without any dreams, I would guess you’re not being mentally influenced, particularly with the method of marking being so haphazard. Brands applied like that never work neatly.” “I definitely don’t feel like I’m being taken over. Yet, anyway.” “Perhaps, but that leaves the issue of the brand disappearing-” “Um.” Charcoal coughed. “If the- mother- thing was vent- meant for healing, then… maybe it… healed itself?” Her grin was nervous and half-hearted. “Hnng. Possibly possible, but extremely unlikely. Amanita, do you have any ideas?” “Well…” Amanita tapped the ground as she thought. She only really had one idea, so she decided to run with it. “It has to mean something to Tratonmane. You said Arrastra recognized it and, Code, remember, you sketched it out from the flow. So, maybe it’s… some kind of sigil or crest with a greater meaning?” “Maybe, but when Arrastra saw it, she was really scared,” said Bitterroot. “But that doesn’t make sense if she was using it to heal Pyrita.” “Of course not,” murmured Code. “We’re missing something.” Silence, except for the blowing wind. “They’re hiding a lot of stuff, aren’t they?” Charcoal asked, pointing down at Tratonmane. “Almost certainly,” said Code. “Small towns like this always have their secrets and townsfolk have their own personal secrets. Yesterday, I would’ve said it didn’t mean anything. Now…” No one said anything. The wind continued to blow. For the first time, Amanita noticed the low tones it made as it hummed through the valley, almost like a Prench horn. She could feel her bones almost ready to rattle. Deciding to shake the feeling away, she swallowed and said, “So now what?” “For now, we wait for the geothaumometers to finish,” said Code, nodding at one of the devices in question. “We can’t do much else. Bitterroot, let us know if you feel something unusual. As for waiting… Charcoal, remember how, at the river yesterday, you and I discussed working on sharing magic again?” Charcoal immediately started grinning and she jumped to her hooves. “We’re doing it? Right now?” “We’ve got nothing better to do. We might as well.” “Woohoo!” Amanita found her interest piqued as well. The four of them had tried sharing magic with each other… yeesh, was it really less than two days ago? It felt like forever. It’d been interesting, but they’d never had much of a real chance to follow up on it. Not one that hadn’t been overshadowed by other things, anyway. “If you two’re doing this, I’m interested,” she said. “Count me in, too,” said Bitterroot. “Excellent.” Code grinned and rubbed her hooves together. “Let’s all gather round. Where were we? Bitterroot, I think you were on the verge of accepting my strength…” Conversation fell into talk of sharing magic. Methods, feelings, effects. They practiced, worked, tested. The geothaumometers swung on. The sun moved. And Amanita never noticed that she’d stopped thinking about not being a necromancer.