The three ovines picked their way through pitch-black forest. The moon had nearly set so the only illumination underneath the canopy came from the dimly glowing eyes of the giant ram leading the way. While they walked the hour flowed into the strange temporal backwaters that could no longer be comfortably called “late” but neither yet called “early.”
Twilight hissed as her now-unfamiliar ankle turned on an unseen root. She held her balance and avoided falling but raised her quavering voice in sheepish complaint. “If I were still a-a-a unicorn, I could make some light.”
“But as you so keenly observed, you are not,” was Grogar’s sardonic reply.
A few minutes later Apple Bloom broke the silence. “How long are we going to sta-a-ay like this?”
“I must refer your question to the ewe who cast the spell,” Grogar deflected.
Twilight growled in irritation. “Since, I can’t dismiss the spell we’ll have to wait until it wears off. It should only be a day or so.”
“Ok, then” the filly answered without stress or alarm, apparently expecting a worse prognosis.
Grogar shushed the two of them, “We’re almost there. Remember, above all else: don’t run.”
The females nodded in unison, forgetting about Grogar’s scourged eyes. The strange trio then continued forward, even slower than before.
Several minutes later they passed into the clearing where the deer had once made their home. As she left the cover of the canopy, Twilight’s jaw dropped as the night sky came into view. The stars burned with an intensity she had never seen before. Even the smallest specks, usually only visible using her telescope, poured their light out in torrents. The milky way could no longer be resolved into single stars and coated the sky like a thick coat of paint. The constellations, so well known to Twilight she thought of them as companions, were rendered unidentifiable due to the presence of so many extra stars. Her eyes widened as she took in the spectacle of Luna’s creation.
At first, the only emotion Twilight felt was wonder as the unprecedented beauty of the sky touched her soul. As her momentary rapture passed, her heart fell into her stomach as she started to wonder what the display meant. Hypotheses rocketed back and forth across her brain: “Is it an expression of grief? Or is it a message of ‘good riddance to bad ponies’? Did this show hope or despair? Or did this have nothing at all to do with us or me?”
“Twi?” Apple Bloom bleated. “A-are you ok?”
“I...I’m fine,” Twilight lied.
“Then why are you crying?”
The violet ewe raised a cloven hoof to her cheek and felt the wool’s moisture. “I...” her answer stalled out after the simple word. Twilight didn’t even know how to explain it to herself, let alone to the girl. It was all she could do to not break down in sobs as she met Apple Bloom’s innocent but insightful eyes.
“If we may proceed?” Grogar harrumphed in an attempt to drag everysheep’s attention back to the task at hoof. The ram gestured into the clearing with a tilt of his curling horns. Visible in the blazing starlight were piles of bones, one for each of the revenants that had pursued Apple Bloom, Twilight, and Sweetie Belle.
Twilight immediately pushed all thoughts of her failed romance to the back of her mind. “Are they...?” Twilight asked.
“No, they’re...empty.” Apple Bloom answered.
“Agreed, but their owners are nearby,” Grogar added.
“What do we do now?” the yellow lamb asked.
“We give them what they are due,” he answered.
Twilight said the first thing that came to mind. “Justice?”
“Let’s start with something a bit simpler,” the ram replied with a small but legitimate smile. “How about we start with a proper burial?”
“Oh,” Twilight exclaimed, happy to have a tangible goal to keep her mind occupied. “Six graves, coming right up.” The former unicorn reached for her magic, intending to telekinetically scoop out the required holes, and found it missing. She nearly stumbled at the unexpected absence.
“It looks like we’ll be doing this the hard way, Miss Sparkle,” said Grogar with obvious mirth. “How ever will you manage?”
“Har-de-har-har,” she sniped back.
The ram chose to ignore Twilight’s retort. “Me and Apple Bloom will dig the graves. You can clean the bones.”
“Clean...the bones,” Twilight’s nose scrunched in disgust. “Why? Aren’t we going to just put them back under the dirt?”
“Burial customs; it was their way,” replied Grogar.
“Ok, fine.” Twilight replied, a bit chagrined by her initial reluctance. She turned to her yellow companion, “Um, Apple Bloom? Did you happen to pack a rag- Ba-a-a-ah!” The violet ewe bleated and spun around at the sudden pain in her flank. Immediately behind her was Grogar, looking as innocent as a cat and holding a large tuft of violet wool between his craggy teeth.
The ram lowered his head and gently placed the stolen fluff on the ground between them. “This should be up to the task.”
Twilight stared daggers at the ram but took the tuft of wool in her own mouth without comment. She then moved to the nearest pile of deer bones and began working.
------------------------------------
Apple Bloom’s breath took on a practiced rhythm as she worked alongside Grogar, pawing at the earth with her cloven hooves. The giant ram was able to scoop out far more soil with each movement but the filly was used to carrying out farm-work beside Big Macintosh. She added her finesse to his power with practiced ease and the hole grew quickly.
As the work progressed, Grogar began to make a low, rumbling sound in the back of his throat. At first, Apple Bloom thought it was some sort of breathing difficulty and began to grow concerned for the ancient thing. By the time they were starting the second grave, the filly deciphered an odd rhythm to the droning and realized that the old goat wasn’t in any distress but was singing. It wasn’t a proper song, at least no how ponies sang. The pitch never changed as the ram droned on. There were no verses, it just seemed to continue on forever.
As they began the third grave Apple Bloom was concentrating more on the god’s chant than on the work before her, something that would have earned her a cuff back on the farm. The rhythm was strange, she tried to count along to the pulsing beat and kept finding herself falling off the beat somewhere around seven-and-a-half. She eventually gave up on finding the beat and turned her concentration onto the sound itself. The filly could find syllables and other gaps between consonants but could find nothing that she could parse into actual words. She wondered if the chant was simply abstract, a series of noises, or some unknown tongue, ancient and occult.
The duo began their work on the fourth grave. Apple Bloom started to notice shapes moving at the edges of her vision: the ghosts were back. The girl turned towards Twilight and inhaled, intending to inform the librarian about the return of the spirits. However, before she could speak, Grogar’s soil-covered hoof pressed against her lips. Once she turned to lock eyes with him, the ram shook his head to request silence. As he pulled his hoof away from her face, she could feel the grave-dirt adhering to her lips. She ground the back of her foreleg against her lips but couldn’t completely rid herself of the dark soil’s tannic tang.
The pitch, tempo, and volume of Grogar’s chant all increased in response to the ghostly audience. Further adding to the strange, not-song, the ram began to stomp his right-front hoof at odd intervals that somehow landed in-time with the surging rhythm. This movement caused a chorus of high-pitched bells to sing out. Their jingling voices somehow lingered in the air, adding a layer of sound each time the god stomped his hoof. The aural miasma grew thicker with every beat, filling the clearing with a hypnotic blanket of sound.
Apple Bloom’s stomach dropped as she felt the clearing fall away from the world at-large. The further they fell, the clearer the six, cervid ghosts became. Instead of just seeing their luminous shapes, the filly could now see the hairs of their fur and the irises of their eyes; they looked real. She began to whimper as the clearing sank deeper and her own flesh began to melt and run. The false form she was wearing fell away from her soul and the matter that comprised her body rearranged itself to match the truth of her. She was once again a pony and her Mark burned on her flank, shedding a sepia light around her.
Blinking her restored pony eyes, Apple Bloom saw yet more shapes encroaching the clearing. Dozens upon dozens of faint glimmers were waxing brighter with each beat of the chant. As the motes brightened they began to take form. These too were ghosts of deer, so long dead and forgotten as to be nothing more than glimmers back in the real world, even to Apple Bloom’s gifted eyes.
Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, the filly turned her eyes back to Twilight. She watched as the purple ewe’s body gradually shifted back into the shape of a mare. The process looked gross and painful but it looked like Twilight didn’t feel anything nor even notice the shift. The mare simply continued scrubbing at the stubborn stains, now with a mouthful of her tail.
While the unicorn worked, the ghosts of the six deer whose home this was closed in on Twilight.
“Twilight,” Grogar said the unicorn’s name, the words somehow being spoken without interrupting the god’s chant.
Without stopping or looking up from her labors, the mare made an interrogative noise.
“I forget, what was it you first said these deer were owed?”
Apple Bloom watched in rapt attention as Twilight spat out her own hair. The hair kept moving under its own volition and creeped towards the unicorn’s truncated tail which now rippled and flowed as well.
Twilight cleared her throat even as it lengthened, “I said they were owed justice.”
“Why?” Grogar prompted as Apple Bloom mouthed the same word. The six ghosts inside the clearing paused in their approach, evidently listening to Twilight’s answer.
Twilight fluttered growing wings in agitation, gathering her thoughts before replying. “They were murdered by my people. Those who did it may have thought they needed to do so in order to have a home for themselves but there had to have been another way. What happened was inexcusable.”
“That is the sin but what about justice. How can you give justice to the long dead?”
The longer sentence allowed Apple Bloom to compare Grogar’s words to his mouth’s movements. Everyone within the clearing heard those words but they did not come from the ram’s mouth.
Twilight sat for a few moments, searching for the answer while her body finished shifting around her. Still deep in thought, she resumed her cleaning, using her hooves to guide the flowing divine essence that now comprised her tail over the filthy mortal remains. “I don’t know,” the goddess eventually admitted. She pulled her eyes away from the bones to look over to Grogar and Apple Bloom. Her sight-line passed blindly through one of the spirits surrounding her.
“What about ‘blood for blood’?” the ram asked as the faded spirits pressed against the edge of the clearing.
“No,” Twilight quickly replied. “That’s just revenge.” Another long pause, “This guilt, it’s so remote but pervasive at the same time. It’s huge, it...” She brushed at the bones in her hooves, “stains everything but those whose did this are long dead too.” The alicorn shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the distasteful thought. “I am to blame, just by being a unicorn living in Equestria, through no action of my own.”
The spectral stag lowered his antlers and shifted his weight. His intent was obvious to Apple Bloom, he was going to impale the mare in the throat. The filly shouted her name in warning, “Twilight!” The ghosts paused and turned their heads as one towards the filly. Grogar’s breath hissed inwards in alarm. She gulped.
The eponymous alicorn’s raised her head and focused her eyes on Apple Bloom. Her brow creased as if just now noticing that the filly had once again become a pony and began to question that fact. Apple Bloom heard Grogar’s chant falter and strain as she saw Twilight fighting to clear her mind. The purple goddess shook her head and the clearing shook with it.
The ghosts surrounding the clearing didn’t fade as Grogar’s spell began to come apart at the seams. Instead they began stepping through the unseen barrier enclosing the clearing, intent on the alicorn who still couldn’t see them. Apple Bloom heard the great ram’s voice straining and gasping as he struggled to hold the spell together in the face of a goddess’ disbelief.
Apple Bloom turned as she saw Grogar fall to his knees. The god couldn’t speak, as he fought to put one syllable in front of the other. His empty eyes were begging her to do...something. The filly fought against the blinding terror that threatened to consume her mind as more and more ghosts filled the space around them.
Twilight, still unaware of any threat, finished fighting free of the hypnotic effects of the chant. She looked up at the stars blazing in the night. To the alicorn, they seemed further away than before in some indefinable way. Within her mind she lined up her recent treatment of her mare-friend against the words she had just been saying. To no one she whispered, “Oh Luna, I understand now.”
The pieces fell together in Apple Bloom’s mind and she said, “What do you understand, Twi? What about justice?” she prompted while forcing herself not to scream the words.
“All I can do is apologize and beg for forgiveness. I can’t give them back their lives but I cannot allow them to take the lives of others.” Twilight’s eyes stayed riveted to the stars above, as ghosts pressed around her, only inches from her exposed throat. “I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” Tears ran freely from her eyes.
The last strands of Grogar’s spell snapped and the clearing crash-landed back into the real world. Apple Bloom’s eyes had closed in the magical impact and when she reopened them Twilight, the unicorn, was sitting in the same spot where the goddess had been just a moment ago. Hundreds upon hundreds of ghostly deer surrounded the purple mare. The crowd far exceeded the capacity of the clearing and spread out into the woods. The great white stag, antlers just inches from Twilight, raised his head and pulled the deadly points away from the mare. Twilight’s eyes shifted to meet the stag’s and she whispered, “I’m sorry,” to the undead cervid.
The world froze, as if Gaia herself were holding her breath. The stag silently regarded the unicorn, while Apple Bloom silently counted her panting breaths. “One, two, three, four, fi-” The stag moved, a subtle nod amplified by his branching antlers into a graceful gesture. He closed his unearthly eyes and the filly felt him let go. It didn’t become invisible or move to some other part of the forest, the stag went to whatever came next. The glowing essence of the spectre lost its sharp edges and blew away on whatever ethereal breeze tugged at alicorn manes. Spreading like a forest fire, the other ghosts followed the stag’s lead and the deer discorporated into quickly fading plumes of aether. In a matter of seconds, they were alone.
Apple Bloom was still staring into the now vacant trees when Twilight spoke. “Hey, you two. Stop staring at the trees and let’s get this done. I have to get home and read some letters.”
The filly turned back to Twilight mouth hanging open in incredulity. “You’ve gotta be-!” Apple Bloom felt a large hoof drop onto her shoulders, cutting her off. She turned her face to Grogar and pleaded, “But how-”
“Does it matter?” the ancient ram asked her, again interrupting her.
“But-”
“To one or hundreds, she said what was needed.”
“But-”
“Moreover, she was who she needed to be at that moment,” he said.
“What do-”
“It is a rather short list: those who are able to apologize on behalf of an entire nation and have it count.”
“But-” Apple Bloom had expected to be interrupted once again and found herself entirely off-balance and clawing for something with which to follow her objection.
“Yes?” he asked.
“But....” Apple Bloom looked back and forth between Twilight and the piles of bones before sighing. “Just...but.”
The filly received the eyebrow in response.
Twilight cleared her throat impatiently from her spot besides the bones. There were five piles of clean bones with only one more left to go. The mare glanced meaningfully at the nearly complete work.
“We should get digging,” Grogar whispered to his apprentice, “we wouldn't want to leave Her Highness waiting.”