A Beginner's Guide to Heroism

by LoyalLiar

XLI - The Pony Who Does Not Read Good Books

XXXXI
The Pony Who Does Not Read Good Books

The road to Tartarus is paved with first impressions. Fifty two seconds. That’s how long it took me to find my heartbeat, and then my tongue, and finally, to blink back to my own mind. I coughed into my hoof, then folded it across my chest and bowed. “I’ll offer my apologies, Commander, if they’re worth anything at all.”

---

To whoever is reading this, please endure my interference; I fear I can no longer leave the story alone in good conscience.

I am the Goddess Luna, in case you are unfamiliar with a script so much more legible than Coil’s almost insulting excuse for Equiish characters.

Some time ago, the Necromancer asked that I insert a small part of this story from my perspective, as he was not actually present. You can enjoy that in a few chapters, when the time is right. Before that, however, I can no longer stand by as Morty’s tale exaggerates away any semblance of truth.

After Morty revealed his ignorance of Hurricane’s obvious identity and the Commander bludgeoned him with the truth, Morty only managed to hold his tongue in stunned in stunned silence for about three seconds. His first words thereafter were to the effect of “I… you… Commander…”

That is to say, rather than the reserved pause and the well thought out diplomatic reply he claims to have made above, Morty reacted almost exactly the way a seventeen year old colt on trial for murder by a living goddess would be expected to react.

Hurricane, ever playing the role of the humble retiree that never really suited him, replied sternly. “I’m not ‘Commander’ anymore,” were his words, I believe, though without Morty’s unsettling mnemonic magic, I don’t claim that my records are exact in any stretch.

Yes, tragically, most of his narrative has been word-for-word the truth. Even Gale’s dialogue.

Hurricane glared down at the colt who had grown up a crystal, and Morty sort of collapsed back on himself, whimpering a little bit and trying to make his tall, lanky form into something resembling a ball. The feeble effort to disappear only earned a curiosity from Hurricane, who asked “Are you afraid I’m going to kill you?” about as dispassionately and professionally as a waiter instructing a patron to ‘enjoy his meal’.

Morty, shuddering in a pile, managed to at least turn his pathetic whimpering into a decent impression of real speech. “Y-yes… I mean, no, but I…” Gone was the bravado with which he had faced down Wintershimmer’s ghost or implied that the seated Queen was suffering a bowel restriction against her throne. Instead, he was obviously feigning a confidence he did not feel to even manage those words. It came across rather like the patron replying to the waiter ‘you too’, and then only moments later realizing his own idiocy.

I regret not cutting in to observe that, as Morty had effectively been condemned, his first answer had been technically correct. Hurricane was far less concerned in teaching the irreverent colt a lesson in respect, and much more in his own reputation. He slowly dragged a hoof through his graying mane and shook his head.

Gale cut in at that point by stepping up to Coil’s side and slapping him across the face hard enough that he fell fully onto his side. “For fu— I mean, for goodness’ sake, Morty.” I am reminded of just how long it took Sister to teach her ‘god daughter’ not to swear by us. “He’s not going to hurt you!”

“I never promised that”, Hurricane replied, a tone of fatherly (or at his age, grandfatherly) wit and displeasure mixing in his voice. “And I told you to leave, Gale.”

Gale spitefully huffed and rolled her eyes, gesturing to her rather slimming and expensive formal outfit. “Yeah, whatever. Not like I spent two hours getting done up like this.” Gale’s imitation of her father was impressive, given the sixty years of age and gender that separated them. “‘Young mare, you’ve got to learn how to interact with ponies.’ I put on the stupid dress and the makeup and—”

Hurricane, for his part, took a single step toward his youngest foal. “There are only two occupations in the world where makeup on a mare is mandatory, Gale, and you have not been acting like royalty today.”

Gale was, blessedly, struck mute by that. After searching desperately around the throne room for where her tongue had vanished, she huffed, turned sharply, and started marching for the doors.

Thankfully, by this point, Morty really had recovered enough of his wits to return to his usually smug, arrogant self. I’ll leave you back with his narrative, though why you’ve read so much already is, frankly, beyond me.

---

Momentarily spared from the Butcher’s brutal gaze, my thoughts finally began to flow again.

“Gale, where are you going to be when I’m done here?”

Queen Platinum coughed heavily from the dais, where she had returned to her throne. “You will find, young mage, that the princess is not receiving visitors today. Especially not suitors.”

“Suitors?” I scoffed. “Implying there are others? Correct me if I’m wrong but given how ‘the princess’ greeted me, I’d say I’ve already won that competition.”

Unfortunately, turning back toward the now-open throne room doors and Gale meant catching the eyes of Commander Hurricane. And it was then that I first learned just how dramatically the crystal ponies had underemphasized the power of the legendary warrior.

He said nothing. He moved nothing. There was no glow on his wing, no fire, no ice. He just looked at me. Just stared. And suddenly I found I couldn’t breathe. The world was black and white around me, the air turned to lead, and all life froze save the slowly growing frown on Hurricane’s face.

And then, abruptly, it stopped. Hurricane’s eyes jumped suddenly from me to the Queen. “Actually, Platinum, I think it won’t be a problem for them to visit.”

“It won’t?” the Queen asked, behind me.

“No. Morty needs a place to stay here in the city, and Celestia specifically asked me to provide him somewhere other than the dungeons. The villa has plenty of space, and I’d like to get to know him better. I’m sure Gale would be ecstatic if we had him for dinner.”

And then, if there was any doubt as to exactly what was really going on in that conversation, Hurricane turned away from the Queen, stared straight into my eyes, and smiled at me.

I still see his teeth sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep.

The sound of the throne room’s doors shutting served as a sorely needed balm for my quickly fraying sanity. After a few deliberate slow breaths, I turned around again to once more face the triumvirate.

“Well, that was fun!” Chancellor Puddinghead announced. “Now do we talk to the wizards?”

“No, I do not think that will happen today.” The Queen adjusted her shoulders. “Diadem and Star Swirl can deal with Coil at their leisure, at the Commander Emeritus will take responsibility for him from there. This audience is adjourned. Herald, please fetch the next petitioner.” Platinum dramatically flung her fur and velvet cape onto her throne, and then in an elaborate motion belying her age, collapsed across it. “And a brandy.”

Typhoon glanced down the dais to the literal alicorn in the room. “Lady Luna, can you take him to Diadem?”

“Trivially,” Luna answered. Without so much as lifting a hoof, she ignited her horn in starry indigo.

And the world vanished.

---

Luna’s magic deposited me a good few inches above the floor of our destination, and I landed on my chin with a rather resounding thud. As I groaned and rose to my feet, a new voice spoke up.

“Luna? What are you—oh!” The voice was a mare’s, not high pitched but obviously high strung. “I wish you wouldn’t just pop in on me like that; your presence is always welcome of course, but we are studying magic here, and I’d hate to have you pop into something unstable. Oh, and you’ve brought somepony… This is Mortal Coil… I mean ‘Morty’, right? Sorry about that.”

I recovered from the brief vertigo of the abrupt teleportation and found myself in a sizeable private library, walls covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves except for a single door, and a not-insignificant window on the opposite wall. Tables, cushions, and candlesticks were scattered here and there, and just in front of the window I took note of a cleared space on the floor where a ritual circle with a six-pointed star of powdered silver was glistening in the morning light. Not far from that light was the mare who had spoken.
The mare, who I assumed (correctly) was the Archmage Diadem, was younger than I expected. Probably thirty or so unless she had altered her appearance by magic, the grown mare seemed to have gone out of her way to look like the stereotype of a bookish scholar. From her teal mane trimmed into a straight line of bangs out of the way of her eyes and knotted into a firm bun behind her head, to the oval glasses perched precariously on her muzzle, her attire meant business. She wore a full robe that was sure to interfere with her hooves if she ever found need to so much as jog, but at least the garment was devoid of decorative elements beyond a tasteful jade coloration. The only element of her appearance that was obviously disparate from the platonic ideal of a bookworm was her namesake, a diadem set with seven massive aquamarines that matched the color of her coat resting just atop her mane and hooked behind her ears.

“You have guessed correctly,” Luna observed, pacing around the room to stand near Diadem and opposite me. “He has made a most… amusing impression on the court. I wonder which of the Crown Princesses’ parents will kill him first.”

“Hm?” Diadem mercifully seemed confused, instead of somehow inferring my less-than-ideal introduction to Equestria’s power. “Well, the court doesn’t matter for the moment. It’s a pleasure to meet you Morty.” The mare walked over to me and extended a hoof, which I shook rather limply, still trying to recover my bearings. “I’m Diadem, called ‘the Mentor’ if you’re much of one for titles, though please don’t feel obligated. Welcome to my library. Master Star Swirl is actually away from the city, if you were hoping to talk to him. For now, hopefully I can be of some assistance. How are you doing this morning?”

I considered my words carefully. “I… How do I put this? I barely slept last night, trying to figure out how the most powerful archmage of our generation is possessing golems and stealing souls—both effects at a distance—despite the fact that he’s currently dead and therefore short a horn to actually do any magic with. I came up with absolutely no explanation, because he’s a better wizard than I am. If I can’t prove how he’s doing his magic, Typhoon is going to have me executed. Lady Luna seems did an excellent job of explaining all that magical theory to the court, so they’ll probably order my execution tomorrow. And I have this sinking suspicion that I might not even last that long. Commander Hurricane blatantly threatened my life after his daughter gave me a horn job in the middle of court.” I rubbed a hoof down my muzzle. “So basically, I’m doing just fine. How are you?”

Diadem blinked in shock. “Well… I… Umm…” At last, she gave up on the thought that refused to appear and hung her head. “Oh dear. This isn’t at all how I’d imagined meeting a new student.”

“You won’t have to worry about it after tomorrow.” I retorted dryly.

“There’s no need to be so pessimistic, Morty.” Diadem donned a cheerful smile that she obviously didn’t really feel and turned her head slightly. Her voice grew a bit higher, as if trying to comfort me. “I know Queen Platinum and Commander Typhoon can be a bit heavy-hoofed, but that’s what they have to do for the nation.”

I frowned. “You don’t need to use that tone of voice. I’m not a colt with a scraped knee.”

“Oh? I’m sorry if I’ve offended you; I just wanted to help cheer you up…”

“If what Wintershimmer always told me growing up about your skill as a wizard is true, you can’t.” Diadem recoiled at the comment, and I shrugged. “But he’s lied to my face before, so I’ll give you a chance. Like I said, I need to figure out how Wintershimmer is able to control his golems. Either he’s somehow able to create the illusion of being seanced without actually being in the Summer Lands, or he is somehow working magic within the Summer Lands without the use of a physical horn.” I sighed. “Luna, with all the appropriate respect for your tiny role in saving my life in River Rock, you can go to Tartarus now.”

“You would damn a god to her face?” Luna asked, apparently not so much offended as genuinely curious.

“I’d just as soon assume you live there comfortably. Lots of ponies you can get off to condemning and torturing, like your little show in the throne room—”

“Morty!” Diadem coughed into her hoof. “Lady Luna, I hope you can understand, Morty is in a troubling position, and these stresses he’s facing—”

“You do not need to apologize on his behalf,” Luna replied. Then she paced to the corner of the room and sat down. “Wintershimmer taught the colt how to steal a soul, so I do not think I will be leaving you alone with him, Archmage. I will, however, be quiet and let the colt tie his own noose.”

I walked over to the nearest table I could find, and swept my legs over it to clear a surface for work. Diadem very nearly tackled me in a lunge as her horn lit up, catching a single book I hadn’t recognized was near the edge. Swallowing heavily, she seemed to consider rebuking me for a moment, before biting her tongue and turning toward Luna.

“I… I hope I don’t come across as rude, My Lady, but… you sent Wintershimmer to the Summer Lands?”

“I did not—”

“I did,” I interrupted. “Accidentally. We were testing a spell to map physical space to the Summer Lands, and the spell collapsed on Wintershimmer. Ripped out his soul, just like his own spell would. At first, I thought that spell might be how he was getting out of the Summer Lands, but to do that kind of magic takes a huge ritual circle and two extremely gifted necromancers. As far as I know, the only eligible ponies alive are Luna, Star Swirl, and myself.”

Diadem just stopped. She stood there, and blinked, and stared at me. I waited for her to speak for a few moments, and then started looking around the room for a piece of chalk or a quill or something to draw with. It took me only a few moments to gather and inkwell and a piece of parchment, and I was shocked when I found one of Luna’s feathers floating through the air in her telekinetic grasp to serve as a quill.

“Thank you,” I told her as harshly as I could.

“I am intrigued to see you at work. It would be a shame if you did not live up to your ‘legend’, necromancer. And I so look forward to Celestia’s reaction when your deception is revealed.”

Diadem finally spoke just as I was dipping the quill in ink. “You can open a portal to the Summer Lands?”

“Not alone. For one pony the magic is just a gateway, but the other pony has to push their magic into the Summer Lands and open the matching gateway there. I still don’t know what the practical purpose behind it was; there’s no meaningful benefit over a seance if you just want to talk to somepony dead. He said it was going to make him immortal, though obviously that didn’t pan out quite the way he’d hoped.”

My slight chuckle at my own understatement earned me a surprisingly deep scowl from Diadem. “He may have been an evil stallion, Morty, but that doesn’t justify mocking his death.”

There was that tone again. “Alright, Diadem, I’ll take this more seriously. Wintershimmer framed me for murder, nearly had me executed, saw me exiled from the Crystal Union probably forever, tried to trick me into assassinating Clover—” I intercepted Diadem’s reaction. “She’s fine, I promise. After that, he framed me for murder again, tried to steal my soul, and then cut off my friend’s leg and stole her soul when she saved me. So frankly, not only am I glad he’s dead, but if I had the opportunity, I’d either send what’s left of his soul to Tartarus, or just disperse him completely. You’ll forgive me if a little bit of cynical humor slips out every now and again, but I’ve been on the front lines dealing with this bastard long enough that I can’t pretend I have the luxury of false good spirits while I emulate an ostrich on a beach made of books!”

When I stopped, I was panting, and Diadem to her credit stood strong through my tirade. Though at times she winced and frowned, she didn’t shrink back or interrupt, and it wasn’t until I was finished that she took a long slow breath.

“I’m sorry, Morty. I understand that the amount of time you’ve been traveling must have been hard for you. And you have every right in the world to be angry at Wintershimmer. But whatever else has happened, I promise, I want to help you if you’ll let me.”

I took a deep breath of my own, glanced back to the quill in my grip, and set to work. “What I’m drawing now is a ritual formula. It’s necromancy, so it’s based on a seven-school theory. I’ve heard you teach six-school theory, so let me know if any of it doesn’t make sense and I’ll explain.”

I started drawing, circles and lines flowing from Luna’s offered feather with a practiced grace that seemed to slow the passage of time. Diadem occasionally spoke up with a minor question, but the need for explanation was minimal. Despite that flow, it took almost an hour for me to complete the elaborate glyph.

When we were done, Luna spoke from the corner. “Would that work now, if I helped you?”

I shook my head. “Even if we had the two master necromancers the ritual requires, ink isn’t a stable reagent for the glyph. We’re well past Sad Sac’s third threshold. Powdered diamonds and draconic bone marrow were our go to, though pure diamonds should be sufficient.”

“Not tourmaline?” Diadem asked. “I would think the tendency of diamonds to discharge violently would be a big risk in a spell like this.”

Again I was forced to shake my head. “The discharge is part of the goal. The ritual leader casts their spells into the diamond powder, and then the supporting mage discharges them just as the Serpentine Loop on the portal edge is stabilizing. When you tether that to the leader’s horn, you get a Kleine Manifold…”

“...which lets the ritual leader walk into the Summer Lands without their horn being inside the spell effect. And you bypass Haversack’s Limit! That’s quite impressive, Morty.”

All I could offer was a disappointing shrug. “Mostly Wintershimmer’s work. He’d done most of the research before I was even born.”

“Oh?” Some of Diadem’s sudden excitement faded. “Well, still, the fact that you remember all this… Do you have that entire ritual memorized? Or are you using a mnemonic charm to keep it all in your head?”

“I don’t have the kind of magic to waste on a mnemonic charm every morning. By necessity, I’ve gotten rather good at numerical memorization and memory palace theory. But honestly, Wintershimmer usually liked to make lessons involved and dangerous, specifically so they would stand out mentally.”

Diadem grabbed another piece of parchment and laid it down next to my work. “Can you jot down the individual cantrips each of the mages is using at each stage? I’d love to study this. If I can get up to speed casting it, maybe the two of us can work out what Wintershimmer’s goal with the spell actually was.”

In response, I levitated the quill in her direction. “The ritual leader starts with a seance, and—”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Remember Ivory’s Rule. If I write it down, I might misinterpret your notation or intention. You write it.”

I groaned and stepped back. “I’d prefer not to try and write at the same time as I’m talking.”

Diadem replied with what she surely thought was an encouraging pat on my back. “Well, you don’t need to speak aloud. I can just read once you’re done. Go on. We don’t want anypony getting hurt.”

I winced. “I’m sure it will be fine…”

“Is something wrong?” Diadem asked.

Luna broke into the rather frantic conversation with a laugh; I might have called it hearty if it weren’t so bladed. “No. No, I cannot believe it.” Her laughter grew louder, and I glanced away in shame.

Diadem looked up at the alicorn. “Lady Luna, what is so funny?”

“Here.” She grabbed a book at random from the pile I’d pushed to the side of the table, and held it open near my muzzle with her teal magic. “Read me just the first line.”

I swatted the tome away—and Diadem once again lit her horn to save it. The motion barely registered, though, as I turned away from Luna. “Clearly, you know I can’t.”

“Hah! Truly?” She tossed the book aside, and Diadem lunged to catch it. As the archmage fumbled with the tome, Luna paced forward. “Rarer than a four-humped camel. Are you honestly an illiterate wizard?”

The words hung in silence, stinging me. Luna seemed to be waiting, expectantly, for some sort of quip that I was uninclined to deliver. Her amused smile slowly fell, though it stubbornly refused to disappear. Diadem recovered from her dive and turned to me. Behind her glasses her eyes were wide.

I didn’t feel like giving them the honor of saying it.

Diadem set down her book, and then adjusted her glasses. “Did Wintershimmer never teach you?”

I took a deep breath to restrain the first few replies that came to mind—not because they were spiteful and cruel, although they absolutely were, but because they were too lazy to convey how wounded I felt. Instead, I spoke softly, factually. “He taught me arcane notation, like with the glyph. Then he wanted me to learn Equiish on my own. And I never figured it out. Instead, I mastered deliberate memorization.”

“But plain Equiish is so much simpler than magic.” Diadem seemed to realize just a moment too late what she was saying—probably off of my expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.” I shook my head as if the motion would wipe away the lie. “I just never grasped the manifold structure, and without that, I couldn’t wrap my head around the grammar.”

Diadem cocked her head. “Equiish doesn’t have a manifold structure… You just read from left to right…” For just a moment, behind her glasses, Diadem’s eyes searched the library. At last, she produced to heavy brown tomes and set them gingerly on the table next to my copy of the ritual. “I can teach you if you like. And Lady Luna, I am prepared to trust Coil will not harm me. If you would please give us some space, your laughter is not helping this situation.”

Luna ran the ridge of a wing down her muzzle. “All his talk about his mastery of magic… I had hoped to see your ego taken down, Coil, but this! This is priceless.”

I gritted my teeth as Luna walked out of the room, still chuckling to herself. When the library door closed, I felt a warm leg over my shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of in not being able to figure it out yourself, especially when somepony led you to believe that the language is as complex as magic. Given that you’re this developed with magic, I think teaching you won’t take very long.” She gestured down to her books. “Here, let’s start with this.”

“I don’t need to learn to read.” I lifted Diadem’s leg off of my back with my own magic, coming to the verge of flaring my horn even as I stepped away. “I’ve already gotten this good as a wizard without leaning on books, so obviously the skills aren’t correlated. And honestly, I’d rather be out there actually using my magic than in here studying it. Maybe I’m better off the way I am.”

From the way Diadem locked up, you’d think I had rewritten the fabric of the universe so that pi was exactly three.

As a note to any up-and-coming young mages, the above is not nearly as good an idea as it sounds. It may be irritating to deal with an infinite number, but it is absolutely worth the hassle to avoid all those eyes and teeth and tentacles. Trust me.

Nyarly, if you’re reading this… It’s not you. It’s me.

After her mind recovered from what must have been an identity-defining struggle, Diadem adjusted her glasses. “I think you’re very much mistaken, Morty. Books are a treasure. They let us talk to ponies who are long gone and gain insight into things we never imagined.”

“Or I could just talk to them directly,” I countered. “Remember, I’m the greatest necromancer alive?”

“That’s not…” Diadem gesticulated impotently for several seconds, and then groaned when her mind failed to produce a counter-argument. “Look, let me prove it to you. What’s something you’d like to know? Is there some fact or secret that you’ve never found anypony able and willing to explain?”

“Sure. How is Wintershimmer able to be seanced from the Summer Lands, but also able to possess his golems in the physical world?”

“That’s… well, that is an excellent question, but I don’t think—”

“Exactly,” I muttered, utterly disappointed with the fact that I had won our minor debate in a single phrase. “Right now, the imminent threats to my life from Wintershimmer framing me for murder again and Typhoon’s corresponding paranoia are just a tiny bit more pressing to me than learning how to read foal’s stories.” I thrust Luna’s gifted quill and a blank page toward the archmage, and with somewhat widened eyes she took hold of them. “Here’s why I can’t prove my innocence. If you take the notes, you can share them with Star Swirl later, and I won’t have to repeat myself.”

“Alright. Defining one’s problem is an excellent first step toward solving it.” Despite her formal, conciliatory tone, I could tell my impatience and my anger at my own helplessness were grating on the archmage. I saw it in the knot in her muzzle, just above the bridge of her eyeglasses, and the way she avoided my direct gaze as I started to lecture.

“First, Wintershimmer should not be able to cast magic in the Summer Lands. He would need a physical horn, or for somepony to actively seance him, and then to cast through their horn.”

“I heard from the Princess that you seanced him; did he do anything then?”

I shook my head for a moment before pausing. “Well, actually, he did briefly choke Gale telekinetically, before I stopped him. Apparently, her ‘disrespect was no longer amusing’, if I’m remembering correctly.” (I was; Chapter 11 if you don’t believe me.) “But I would have noticed a binding.”

“I see.” The dark blue quill scratched on parchment, apparently devoid of any need for ink. “I assume you know of nopony else who would seance Wintershimmer?”

“Queen Jade, maybe, but given he admitted to poisoning Smart Cookie, I doubt she wanted any more to do with him. The Candlecorns could have done it, if somepony gave them the order, but that wouldn’t get him very far.”

“Why not?”

“Problem two,” I answered. “Wintershimmer is somehow still able to be seanced while he’s controlling the candlecorns.”

Diadem nodded, and began to pace around the shelves of the library as her quill scritched back and forth on her page. “So… He’s in the Summer Lands and in his golems, which are not in the Summer Lands? Simultaneously?”

“How many times to I have to tell you I don’t know how he’s doing it before it sinks in?”

Diadem winced almost as if I’d struck her, though the expression only lasted a moment. “I can see this is a thorny problem…” Diadem’s quill scratched. “Anything else?”

I collapsed beside the table, resting a foreleg on its surface next to Diadem’s basic reading books. “After Typhoon came to get me, she told me we were going to stop in the Hollows because of some story about a monster attack. Wintershimmer was there, waiting for us, but Typhoon and I dealt with the candlecorn easily. Afterwards, Typhoon told me there weren’t any real stories about monster attacks from the Hollows, and since I was the only pony who knew we were heading there, that proved I was controlling the candlecorns and causing the attacks.”

Diadem stopped pacing, and without loosening her grip on quill or parchment, adjusted her glasses. “So then it follows Wintershimmer must have been tracking you somehow, right?”

“Somehow...” I lifted my hoof from the table and pressed it against my forehead. “In Typhoon’s hooves, I’d almost certainly think I was guilty.”

The mage’s quill stopped and she looked up over her parchment. “That doesn’t strike you as oddly… involved?”

I stood there in silence for a moment, before nodding. “You mean ‘why didn’t he just kill me instead of making Typhoon do it?’”

“If Wintershimmer just wanted you dead, what is the advantage of this elaborate deception? Why even approach you at all?”

“Well, I actually found him first. Or rather, the ponies whose souls he stole. So if he hadn’t shown himself, I probably would have kept chasing him.”

“But he didn’t wait for you to be vulnerable?”

“No.” I gritted my teeth. “I have a hard time believing Wintershimmer would leave me to my own devices, giving me time to grow stronger while knowing I was actively out to get him. But what good does that do me? How do I know he didn’t just want revenge for my ‘betrayal’?”

But even as I asked it, a memory leapt to mind.

Never assume somepony’s motivations, especially if they’ve told you what they want. Words are cheap, actions are everything.

Diadem, oblivious to the memory, gave a little shrug. “I hardly knew the stallion, so I can’t say for certain, but let me ask this: was Wintershimmer the kind of pony to raise an army of golems and attack a city? Or would he wait until you were more alone?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “So I’m special? I’m a threat to him somehow?”

“That would be my strongest guess. What do you know about him that nopony else does?”

“How am I supposed to know?” I slapped my hoof against a table, and the books jumped. “I’m the only good necromancer alive. I’m the only pony who really knew him for the last twenty years… I have his spellbook, too, but—”

“You do?” Diadem practically jumped at me. “An entire lifetime of magical theory from Star Swirl’s only peer, and you’ve had it this whole time? You should have said something!

“Do you honestly think it’s going to have the answers?” I rolled my eyes and adopted as bitter and hollow of a tone as I could manage. “Dear Diary, today I plotted to murder my student. Here’s a comprehensive summary of why. I sure hope nopony reads this.” Then, returning to my more natural and infinitely more pleasant tone, I shook my head. “Besides, I don’t have it on me. It got left in Platinum’s Landing when Typhoon dropped out of the sky and dragged me off. Hopefully Tempest or Blizzard thought to grab it.”

“Hopefully,” Diadem agreed. “Well Morty, you’ve reached the end of my immediate ideas, at least until that book arrives. I don’t know Wintershimmer as well as you did, and my knowledge of what you’ve seen is third-hoof at best. Perhaps the best way to progress from here is to get a full account of what’s happened since his death, from your perspective. Star Swirl and I can go over that when he returns and see if we can make any headway.”

I sighed. “Alright. Well, it started on my way back from the Union Market, with these three idiot guardsponies…”

Comments

[N4rwh41]

Luna is such a hippocrit XD

[SIGAWESOME]

“There are only two occupations in the world where makeup on a mare is mandatory, Gale, and you have not been acting like royalty today.”

Somepony call a pyromancer nurse! We have a critically sick burn here!

[RoboRed]

Daaang, Luna. Fking roasted him in that early interruption.

Hurricane, for his part, took a single step toward his youngest foal. “There are only two occupations in the world where makeup on a mare is mandatory, Gale, and you have not been acting like royalty today.”

WOW

[ponygrad]

This goes beyond strange teaching techniques. Wintershimmer was not honing him into an apprentice and barely even an assistant. It's becoming more clear that Wintershimmer was playing the long game not just with his rivals but even Coil, who you think may possibly be the one person he would level with. Of course, a few chapters in we learned this was not true and he has set up a gambit to accomplish more than revenge, so we should have seen this coming. With how restrictive his upbringing was, it's lucky morty has any positive characteristics at all (besides his good looks of course).

[djthomp]

Morty, shuddering in a pile, managed to at least turn his pathetic whimpering into a decent impression of real speech. “Y-yes… I mean, no, but I…” Gone was the bravado with which he had faced down Wintershimmer’s ghost or implied that the seated Queen was suffering a bowel restriction against her throne. Instead, he was obviously feigning a confidence he did not feel to even manage those words. It came across rather like the patron replying to the waiter ‘you too’, and then only moments later realizing his own idiocy.

Amazing.

Gale cut in at that point by stepping up to Coil’s side and slapping him across the face hard enough that he fell fully onto his side. “For fu— I mean, for goodness’ sake, Morty.” I am reminded of just how long it took Sister to teach her ‘god daughter’ not to swear by us. “He’s not going to hurt you!”

That was probably needed.

“No. Morty needs a place to stay here in the city, and Celestia specifically asked me to provide him somewhere other than the dungeons. The villa has plenty of space, and I’d like to get to know him better. I’m sure Gale would be ecstatic if we had him for dinner.”

He's doomed.

This first meeting with Diadem is going well. And so far I mean that seriously, though Luna could be more helpful.

“If Wintershimmer just wanted you dead, what is the advantage of this elaborate deception? Why even approach you at all?”

Because that isn't the point of this long game.