“Infected?”
Twilight nodded as she poured a mug of hot cider: “And it wasn’t the only time over the last several days, just the most dramatic.”
Celestia stirred sugar into her tea and magically adjusted the shades in the solarium to reduce the glare.
“But I thought spirits settling into inanimate objects was fairly common, especially if they’ve been disembodied for a bit.”
Twilight set her mug down and levitated a biscuit from a nearby tray: “That’s true, but this is different. It’s like these spirits were being drawn to a spot or a thing. Concord, particularly, was almost sucked into that tree!”
“Perhaps they simply have very strong associations with the objects.”
Twilight swallowed as she nodded: “See, that’s what I thought too, at first. Concord planted the grove of aspens, for instance. But I just resolved a pegasus last night who was--how do I put this--entombed inside a hedge. I had to tear it to pieces to clear out her spirit.”
“And there was no connection?”
Twilight shook her head: “I asked her about it when we were in the Waiting Room. She knew nothing about the hedge, or the bone fragments buried beneath it.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow: “Bone fragments?”
“Yeah--just like the old blood shadows on Concord’s aspen tree.”
“Maybe she was lying to you?”
“No--not possible. One of the benefits to being the Harbinger is the ability to discern absolute truth when dealing with the dead. They can’t lie to me even if they want to.”
“Were you able to determine anything from the bone fragments or the tree or any of the other artifacts I assume you’ve encountered?”
“Some, but not much. If I’d been doing this job for thousands of years, of course I’d have total recall of everypony who ever died, and how.”
Celestia furrowed her brow: “Assuming Grey Thorn and his Void weren’t involved…”
Twilight frowned: “Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind! But I don’t believe so. It’s just that I don’t have a vast repository of history and recollections, since I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks.”
“So what now?”
“I don’t know. I can tell something is interfering with the normal process of death in Equestria, but I only have scraps and hints.”
“Just in Equestria? I thought you ranged all across this world, wherever there are ponies.”
Twilight nodded as she refilled her mug: “Yes, but the weird stuff seems to be localized to Equestria. I don’t have a better pattern than that right now.”
“And Reaper never mentioned this to you?”
“No. He talked about hauntings and imprinting and the like, but nothing quite like this. And I’m sure he would have raised the topic if it were noteworthy.”
Celestia nodded: “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help…”
Twilight smiled: “Besides listen and ask excellent questions, you mean?”
Celestia returned the smile as she stood, brushing crumbs from her hooves: “Yes, besides that! At a minimum I will continue to keep a weather eye out for any odd reports coming in. And I will put the Royal Librarian on-task, combing through legends and old-mares’ tales, looking for clues.”
Twilight sighed: “That’s what I’d like to be doing: digging through the archives, finding puzzle pieces!”
Celestia nodded sympathetically: “I know. You’re just going to have to trust that everypony here is helping as much as they can.”
Twilight stood: “I appreciate that, Princess--I really do. I just wish somepony had a better understanding of this sort of supernatural stuff.”
Celestia furrowed her brow thoughtfully as Twilight teleported away: “Supernatural. Hmm…”
Twilight was finishing up some time later with an old pegasus in the Waiting Room, when she felt the insistent tug of an impending death.
“It’s time, Twister. Head off toward your left, just there--” she pointed with her sword, “and you’ll find your way onward.”
The mottled grey pegasus nodded, turned and walked away slowly: “Thank you, Princess!”
Twilight smiled sadly as the pegasus dissolved like a breeze-blown mist: “My time to go, too…”
She appeared a moment later in a darkened barn on the western marches of Everfree Forest, and found a young, custard-yellow earth pony stallion, twitching from the end of a creaking rope.
“Oh, sweet Celestia, no!”
Twilight instantly focused a beam of bright violet magic on the rope, severing it, causing the pony to drop the final three feet to the dusty barn floor.
She knelt down next to the stallion, and rolled him to his side, checking for signs of life. He coughed weakly, and struggled to sit up.
Twilight heaved a sigh of relief: “Thank the Sisters! What were you thinking, Sureshot?”
Sureshot blinked unsteadily: “What happened? Am I dead?”
“No, thankfully not! I arrived just in the nick of time, it appears!”
Shurshot dropped his head to his chest and wept: “Why? I just want it to end! I can’t handle the pain and the emptiness anymore!”
Twilight rubbed her temples: “What’s wrong? What could possibly be so bad that you want to die at the end of a rope?”
Sureshot began sobbing: “She--she’s leaving me! She doesn’t want to..want to…”
Twilight took a deep breath and put a foreleg around his shoulder: “I know. I understand that it must feel like the end of the world to have somepony special reject you, but--”
“How in Tartarus would you know anything about that, Princess of Friendship?” Sureshot spat back. “Have you ever been told you’re not good enough? You’re not important enough? That there’s more out there than you?”
Twilight rocked back in surprise: “If she said those things, Sureshot, then you need to let her go, and move forward. You’re young, and she’s hardly the only mare in the stable!”
She stood: “But ending it here isn’t the answer. Life is so much more than just one pony. Get some sleep. Visit a friend. The pain will get a little less every day.”
Sureshot hugged himself: “But I know she’s meant for me. I’ve known it ever since we first met. She’s all I can think of anymore, all I can see! We’re fated to be together!”
Twilight closed her eyes and set her jaw: “There is no fate, Sureshot! You have a thing for this mare, and I get that. But you need to get over it, or your pain will just grow.”
Sureshot curled up and cried softly, as Twilight peered up into the gloom of the barn’s roof. Something caught her eye, but only for a moment.
Sureshot broke Twilight’s concentration with a great, sudden gulping hiccough. She shook her head and looked down at the shuddering stallion.
“So no more ropes, no more rafters. If you need to cry, I understand, but this--” she pointed above her head at the severed rope, “isn’t the way.”
She began to fade out: “You’ll find somepony for you, Sureshot, and you’ll get past this pain.”
Sureshot rolled to his back and stared into the gloom.
Twilight sat down heavily on a park bench on the outskirts of Baltimare and stared at the setting sun for a minute. She had spent the previous two hours tracking down the spirit of a unicorn that had gone missing for four days. She finally found it, ensnared in a heavy patch of water grass at the bottom of a duck pond.
She opened the bag slung across her shoulder and removed a flask. She took a long drink of fiery apple liqueur, and leaned back, attempting to stretch out her neck and shoulders.
“Spike, take a note...oh, crap. Right. No Spike.”
Twilight reached into her shoulder bag again and pulled out a notebook, quill and inkwell. She set the ink on the bench next to her and opened the notebook.
“Another ‘infestation,’ another plant. Trees, hedges, vines, more trees, water grass. Why plants?”
She sat in silence for several minutes, scribbling notes, condensing events and incidents of the last several days into lists and timelines.
Exhaustion overtook her, and she slipped into a light slumber, filled with fleeting images of grasping vines and shadowy silhouettes. She found herself chasing the dark forms, only to come up against walls and locked doors. And always she felt a strange vibration in the ground beneath her hooves.
She started awake with a snort, and wiped a line of drool from her cheek. She hastily put away her notes, ink and quill, and took one last swig from her flask, before standing up and fading out.
She appeared moments later in the shadows at the back of a hospital room in Canterlot. An old, pale-pink unicorn lay in a bed, surrounded by several family members. A doctor stood off to the side.
Twilight stayed phased, and watched quietly as the old mare’s breathing became increasingly irregular and shallow, then stopped altogether.
The deceased’s daughter choked back a sob as the doctor stepped forward: “She’s gone, Candy. It’s over.”
Twilight slipped up unnoticed beside the doctor and touched her horn to the old unicorn’s temple, then disappeared as the shimmer over the body faded, and the weeping began.
Twilight returned to Luna’s chambers several minutes later, after dispatching old Rose Blush from the Waiting Room. She sloughed off her shoulder bag and collapsed on the couch, falling at once into a dreamless sleep.
She awoke a few hours later with the distinct feeling she was being watched.
She rolled over and looked at Luna’s chair. Discord was sitting there, paw and talon steepled together, eyes half-lidded, regarding her with an almost bored expression.
He pulled a pocket watch out of thin air: “Well good morning sleepy-head! And by ‘morning,’ I mean three in the morning!”
Twilight sat up shakily and dragged a hoof across her muzzle: “Why are you here?”
“Well, why are any of us here, really? I represent the randomness and possibility that infuses all life and…”
Twilight clenched her teeth: “No! Why are you here--in this room? At this time?”
“Oh, that! I had a lovely dinner earlier this evening with Celestia.”
Twilight glared: “And?”
“Well the topic turned to things of a supernatural nature, and she wondered if I could be of any assistance in unravelling some mystery or other.”
“Can you?”
“Can I what?”
Twilight sighed heavily: “Be of any assistance?”
Discord conjured a set of books and reading glasses: “It’s hard to say. Celestia was a bit vague on the whole supernatural angle. She couldn’t even differentiate between a standard spectre and the far rarer ghast! So naturally I had to give her a tutorial, involving--”
“Discord!”
He peered at Twilight over his glasses: “Hmm?”
“I really need you to focus. Spirits are being pulled into trees and hedges and the like, evading me, making it difficult to reap. I’m wondering if there’s some pattern, and anything you might know could be very useful!”
“Ah, well, I don’t know. Could you perhaps describe one of these incidents, and I’ll see if anything jumps out at me.”
Twilight took a deep breath, but just as she was about to begin, she felt the urgent call of imminent death: “Hold that thought--I have to resolve a new death, hopefully before it slips into this “supernatural” category, too!”
She disappeared, leaving Discord stroking his beard thoughtfully.
Twilight appeared in a darkened greenhouse, and illuminated her horn, bathing the space in a cool white glow. She came around a raised bed of strawberries and saw two forms lying on the floor beyond.
“Oh, no.”
She rushed forward and the smell of urine filled her nostrils. She saw a young, dusty-blue earth pony mare, barely more than a filly, entangled and wrapped in a wet, stained bedsheet. The sheet was wrapped tightly around her neck, her tongue hung from her mouth, and her dark, glazed eyes bulged slightly from under their lids.
Lying beside the mare, facing her, was Sureshot, the other end of the bedsheet twisted around his neck, secured with a stick, like a tourniquet.
The two ponies’ legs and loins were entangled, the mare’s semen-matted hide glistening faintly in Twilight’s horn light.
Twilight stood stunned for a moment, holding her breath, eyes wide in horror.
Suddenly the greenhouse was flooded with a bright flash.
Discord stood next to Twilight and looked down at the grim tableau: “I will never understand what kids are into these days!”
Twilight blinked slowly and knelt behind the young mare: “Oh, Wild Sage...”
She looked next at the stallion’s bloodied and swollen face: “Why, Sureshot? Why?”
Discord tapped his chin: “You seem shocked but not terribly surprised. I assume you know what happened?”
Twilight nodded slowly: “I found Sureshot yesterday hanging himself in despair. I stopped him.”
Discord raised an eyebrow: “Wait--did you come in on him as he was prepared to do the deed, or after?”
“After. He was hanging from his barn’s rafters.”
“I see. So instead of simply doing your job, you tried to meddle in, well, Fate. Don’t get me wrong--as a being of randomness I despise the concept of Fate, but even I have to grudgingly admit its power occasionally.”
“My job? I’m the Princess of Friendship, and I--”
Discord cut her off: “No, in cases of death, you’re the Harbinger. You let your pride interfere, thinking you were above Fate’s judgement.”
“I don’t believe in Fate!”
“Says the creature with a life-defining tattoo on her butt. Or should I say, two tattoos!”
“Yes--and my first cutie mark was telling me--”
“To interfere with the second mark’s imperative.”
“Fine. You can put it that way if you like. I am free to judge how to execute and order my duties based on--”
“Hubris.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pure pride, Princess. Believe me, I recognize a lesson in hubris when I see one now!"
A large, throne-like chair appeared. Discord sat down in it, wrapped in ostentatious judicial robes: “Answer me this: how did you find yourself in Sureshot’s barn yesterday? Did your cutie mark glow? Did the map tell you?”
Twilight furrowed her brow: “No. I felt the draw of death, same as this time.”
“So what would the Harbinger Reaper have done?”
“He’d likely have reaped Sureshot while he hung there in order to spare him a final few moments of agony.”
Discord nodded: “Instead, the Harbinger Twilight made an executive decision in the style of Princess Twilight to subvert Fate (your Boss, I remind you) that turned yesterday's tragedy into today’s two-for-one sale!”
A green eye-shade visor now appeared atop Discord’s head: “Never put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today!”
Twilight cringed.
“Unless of course you were just looking to pad your stats. I mean, all these ponies are so much mulch-in-waiting anyway. What's one more or less?”
Twilight’s eyes blazed as she whipped her sword from its sheath and advanced on Discord.
“Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth!”
Discord’s eyes widened as he put up his paw and talon, tumbled out of the throne and took a long step backwards: “Whoa, there Twilight! I don’t think either one of us wants to find out what would happen if Mr. Pointy there were to touch me! Even Reaper never waved that thing in my face!”
Twilight’s ears drooped and she hung her head. The sword fell to the floor: “Oh, you’re right! I killed poor Wild Sage!”
Discord shrugged: “Well, strictly speaking…”
“Yes, I know, Sureshot killed her, but it never should have happened that way!”
“Lesson learned, Twilight: Do the job the way it has to be done--the way it’s been done since time immemorial. Death is not to be trifled with.”
Twilight nodded silently as tears dropped to the floor.
“Speaking of: I don’t think this fellow’s quite dead, is he?”
Twilight looked at Sureshot and closed her eyes for a moment: “No, but he will be shortly. Too much brain damage from having his oxygen cut off for so long.”
She walked to his side, summoned her blade, and drove it down between his ribs. His chest rose one last time in a ragged, shuddering breath, then fell slowly as a thin, pale mist formed above the body.
Twilight bent down and touched her horn to the aura: “Maybe he’ll have some answers when I see him in the Waiting Room.”
“Oh, yes--and as for answers, I have none.”
“What?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t do death.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, to be sure, some ponies over the years may have died along the way due to my overenthusiastic machinations, but it was never my intent.”
“And I’m sure it just tore you up inside…”
“Actually, I take no pleasure in that at all. Death is the negation of all that I am--it ends all possibility, drives beings into a single state. It’s just so boring, so terminal!”
Twilight shook her head distractedly: “Thanks anyway, Discord.”
He turned to go: “Oh, but I can tell you one thing: there is something going on under the earth, or in it or something. It’s faint, but persistent, and it’s almost familiar. A kind of...hmm. “Controlled chaos,” perhaps? I realize that’s an oxymoron.”
Twilight nodded: “That’s useful. Thank you.”
Discord disappeared in a flash, leaving Twilight alone with the two dead ponies’ bodies, and an almost hour-long search for Wild Sage’s spirit.
She finally found it lodged deep beneath a brier patch at the edge of the Everfree Forest. She reaped the spirit and reduced the brambles to ash with sheets of magical flame.
Only after she had located the nearest Border Ranger to inform him of the murder-suicide at the Sage farm did she finally return to her couch in Luna’s quarters, where she downed three shots of apple liqueur and fell into a stupor.