Once More, with Feeling

by Amaranthine Thought

Chapter 4: Uncertainty and Lessons

Twilight was feeling overwhelmed the next day. There was simply too much for her to know and get used to, from her newfound place in Equestria, her responsibility as the alicorn of the stars, her newfound power of magic, even her own body.

Really, being a reaper was the simplest part of her life right then. At least the magic of death didn’t require a touch that couldn’t be felt and a strength that demanded full effort and yet the greatest of care.

Celestia and Luna were doing their best, and shielded her from the true weight of her newfound place. Ponies desperately wanted to know about everything, from who she was to what her existence spelled for their lives. Celestia and Luna were dealing with that, leaving Twilight with her own problems.

Right then, she was dealing with Dusty Quill, the castle’s resident steward and etiquette teacher amongst other things.

Twilight had actually taken a few lessons from him before, and even with her exacting nature, it had been a difficult thing to please the old unicorn. He could see imperfection by margins of a millimeter, and Twilight had been hard pressed to please him with something as simple as the proper curtesy and hoof shake.

And that had been when she was familiar with her body.

“No!” Dusty yelled. “Gentle, wings not touching the sides, a gentle, careful, grace! And smile!”

Twilight wondered how she was supposed to smile with him yelling and having a minor fit at her. And to think that these lessons had been a favor from Luna.

The nobility were going to throw a ball for her tomorrow, to celebrate her arrival and ascension.

And Celestia was absolutely certain that they were going to try and somehow benefit from her inexperience in politics.

While that varied from making promises that she shouldn’t to something as sinister as trying to overthrow Celestia and Luna, there was no good outcome that either elder alicorn could see. Especially considering the sudden interest, sudden ball, and massive list of ponies who were coming.

And Twilight wasn’t sure if she thought Celestia’s disarming action was going to save her, or doom her.

As the princess of Equestria, she could invite to the ball as well.

She had invited the bearers of the elements of harmony.

Twilight’s friends. The same friends that had to kill her before. The same friends that she was perfectly comfortable around to the extent that she sometimes failed to notice their existence and talked to herself around them like a mad mare.

And there was a new bearer for magic.

So it wasn’t particularly surprising that Twilight was having a hard time focusing on Dusty’s lessons.

“There! Perfect!”

“What?” Twilight asked, disrupted from her thoughts and stopping whatever she had been doing.

Dusty’s eye twitched, but then he sighed.

“Perhaps it might be best if you do not focus on yourself Princess, and instead focus on something else. And if you focus on something happy, then that smile will come unbidden.”

“Along with any modicum of grace.” he added in a quiet mutter.

“Try to think of something happy.” he ordered.

She paused, and then thought about her friends. She feared and couldn’t wait for their upcoming meeting, but memories were harmless.

As she focused, she smiled and Dusty felt a touch of hope.

“Now walk…” he said, speaking softly.

Twilight stepped forward, and he nodded.

“Perfect, perfect.” he whispered, and his eternal frown almost flattened when he saw that she had achieved the perfect pose as well.

Head high, eyes focused on up instead of down. Wings slightly extended to allow them to flutter slightly as she walked, tail with a gentle and predictable sway. If only she could get her mane enchanted, and she might be right at home next to Celestia and Luna.

He shuddered at that thought though. He had tried the magic first, reasoning that magic was hard to mess up.

But Rest seemed to think her magic was very weak, and overused it in everything with little to no control until she had tried several times. Which usually meant at least two destroyed objects, either crushed in her magical grip or simply snapped in twain.

Normally, his tutoring would take about a year to truly learn. From table manners, speech, minor diplomacy, and even singing and the ability to at least be able to play one instrument. Everything a member of the noble class would ever need, and special classes in case something special was required.

Based on Rest’s start, he had estimated three years, and told Luna as much.

She had said that he had about 36 hours, and that he might be the difference between peace and chaos for Equestria.

He was far too old for this.

He came back to himself when he noticed that Rest had walked right past him, and just as he noticed, she tripped over the dinner set.

He only winced, well used to the sound of crashing and wood breaking by then. He glanced at a clock and sighed.

Ten hours in, and she was just good enough to delay making an absolute fool of herself.

“Perhaps a small break?” he suggested partly for himself as much as it was for her.

Twilight got to her hooves again, and nodded, tired of messing up. It was just as she was leaving that she heard Death.

You are needed.

“I…” she glanced around to make sure she was alone and then nodded. “Where?”

You go to meet the other reaper in Manehatten. The graveyard there requires emptying once again, and the city’s streets searched.

This would be difficult for life. The other reaper will show you the proper usage of my power.

“I don’t really have the time Master, but I will.”

That is where the second reason comes into play. Go. You will discover it soon.

Twilight wondered what Death might mean, and focused. Teleporting that far sounded impossible.

But on the other hoof, she had never turned a fork into a metal ball just by picking it up, so… Maybe she could.

Teleporting that far was the first time Twilight really knew the true extent of her new power as an alicorn. She anticipated a difficult teleport.

It was easy. It was very easy. She could truly feel the strength of the magic within her, and it truly dwarfed anything she could have imagined.

Was this what Celestia and Luna used every day with such care and grace?

Some ponies might feel like a god with that power. Twilight did not.

She saw the responsibility she carried with it, and knew that it exceeded her command. She felt humbled by it, and in awe that Lux had the power to give her it. That he had the trust in her to give her immortality and the power that came with it without ever having met her.

Or perhaps he had. Maybe Death had told him about her. Her life, laid out for him to look over before making his decision.

As she traveled in the magic, she frowned. The thought made a distressing amount of sense.

Why would Lux be so happy and carefree? Because he knew everything about her. Why did he trust her? Because he knew everything that she had done and therefore what she would do.

Did that change him? Was the happy, friendly alicorn merely an act?

Celestia and Luna had thought him unthinking, prone to sudden actions. But were they tricked?

Who was he, really? What did he do, really? Where did he come from? She didn’t have an answer. He had more secrets than Death thinking about it.

Was it all an act that spanned an impossible amount of time?

Or was he, the alicorn of light itself, really like that?

She suddenly felt that she needed to know.

Arriving in Manehatten she gasped, finding herself in rain. It was cold, and the lights in the city shined off of the wet walls and streets. Everypony was inside, and very few made their way through the streets in the downpour.

It struck Twilight that she should remain unseen. She had no idea if the knowledge of a new alicorn had gotten as far as Manehatten.

Walk unseen.

Twilight started, feeling the deathly magic within her move on its own. As she watched, she became ghostly, and she was almost invisible in a moment. And ethereal as well; the rain fell through her.

“How...?”

A simple use of my power. Go to the graveyard, and take the time to explore my power.

She did so, taking care to try and puzzle out the ethereal form. It was like something she had done during her undeath, but much, much more specific.

Death’s magic was unlike anything she had ever seen, and with the warmth of life, she noticed something that she never had.

It was cold. It was very cold, and outright freezing when Death used it on her.

In comparison with her new power, the Death magic did everything she wanted it to, but denied her natural way of using it.

It wanted specific forms. Carefully constructed webs of magic that only worked one way and only if they were made correctly.

The spell on her was like a cloak draped over her. The same spell she grabbed souls with was similar to her normal magical grip; a rope thrown to catch and pull. It was very different magic than what she was used to.

Whereas a unicorn could learn new magic simply by trying, Death’s power seemed to require a teacher. The patterns seemed complex, and making one by chance seemed impossible.

Or course, just by having it, she had a teacher. Death itself whispered in her ear.

She was thinking a lot about her existence and the powers that were shaping it. Whether that helped her make her way forward in her new life, or bogged her down in questions that she would never have the answer to, no one could know.

Perhaps it was both.

She found the cemetery soon, the graveyard surrounded by a large stone wall and blocked by an iron gate.

Which she walked through, reasoning that if rain went through her, so would it.

She nearly screamed when she saw the other reaper. He stood unmoving in the graveyard like some specter, a ragged cloak around him that hung heavy in the rain.

What little of him she could see was that of a long dead corpse. And he still had flesh. Some of it.

He nodded. “Twilight.” he said, in a perfectly neutral tone, lacking any indication of anything.

She shuddered. “You’re… wait a moment, how do you know me?”

“I told you. I broke him. This is little more than a puppet I occupy.”

“…Master?” Twilight asked.

“It is I. And yet, it isn’t.”

“I don’t…”

“I am one and many. I am the rest and the guide and the gatekeeper. I am Death in any way that must take form.”

“And this broken body is one of them.”

Twilight nodded slowly. “Alright… so… I learn from you like that, and yet you can’t just tell me when you talk to me in my head?”

“For you to have life and my power, yes. First, create this design with my power.”

Twilight watched, and nodded, recreating the strange creation in front of the reaper. Then she was done, and for a second, felt nothing had happened. Then she noticed.

The rain had stopped. Each drop pinned to its place in the air.

She brightened when she realized what Death had meant by a ‘second reason’.

For as long as she used the spell, time stopped. She had all the time in the world.

“This is how you will need to guide souls once you attain mastery.”

“This is so useful!” she said, bursting with happiness.

“Take care Twilight.”

She hesitated. “What’s wrong?”

“Staying in this state is very hard on the body. Too long, and you will lose your empathy for life.”

Death snapped her spell, and time started again and Twilight was chilled suddenly. Both from the fear that she might become another monster, and from an actual cold.

“Use it with wisdom, and practice. Get to know your limits, and take the greatest of care not to go too far. If you feel yourself freezing, that will be your only warning that you are going too far to return.”

“I understand.” Twilight said. “Thank you for the…”

She hesitated. “Thank you… you.” she pointed at the reaper. “…Death?”

“Yes Twilight?”

“Why can I call you by something other than Master?”

“Because you now have two powers. You do not live because of me. And I granted you your life to use as you see fit. It would not be true for you to call me Master.”

“… Can I call you something other than Death or Master?”

“No. That is not your choice.”

“But either Death or Master is fine.”

“That is your choice, but we begin now. Recreate the spell on your own.”

Twilight nodded and began working. It was a little hard to truly memorize the designs, but they weren’t particularly hard. Of what she had seen, they had specific shapes; a cloak to be ethereal, and a web to ‘catch’ time.

The other uses might be the same way.

She spent no time following the reaper through Manehatten, Death showing her how to search for souls. Of which there were many.

The reaper was fast and impossibly efficient, catching and jarring souls without a single hesitation.

Twilight noted that in doing so, he upset the souls. After a time, he stopped, and allowed her to try.

She did so, and took the time to try and speak with the souls. Most were far too gone to talk back, but a few did. They normally expressed the greatest of relief that it was her, and not the reaper, that was guiding them.

And it was no time at all that she was back in the graveyard, shivering in the chill from the spell’s aftereffect.

“You have done well.”

“Thank you. But how do I tell how much time I spend in the spell?”

“… I can imagine that you can craft a timepiece for you to carry. Something spelled to keep it safe. That should suffice.”

She nodded, smiling. “Thank you Master.”

“Now go. To your own business. I shall summon you when you are needed once more.”

Twilight vanished in a faint pop of magic, aiming for Canterlot castle.

She arrived in the library, and saw Luna nearby.

“Princess!” she said, not yet realizing that her etherealness was still working, “What are you doing here?”

“Rest?!” Luna yelled, starting suddenly, glancing around her. “Where art thou?”

“Oh. Right.” Twilight tossed the magic off of herself, and Luna started slightly as she came back into view, soaked. “Sorry about…”

“Art thou alright? It looks like you have been in a thunderstorm.”

“Just some rain.”

“Where?”

“Manehatten.”

“And why were thou in Manehatten?”

“I was…” Twilight stopped herself, wincing internally. Her being a reaper was not necessarily a secret, but… she didn’t want other ponies to know. It just sounded bad at the best of times and might encourage questions about her past life again.

“I… just wanted to see it.” she said.

Luna nodded. “You should dry yourself off. There is a bath nearby, just a short ways from here. Ask a guard for directions if you require them.”

Twilight nodded and left and Luna gave a tiny sigh of relief. Then she turned back to what she had been looking at and sighed.

She was in front of a row of romance novels, looking for some kind of help to her problem.

Rest seemed to be… in… in lo…

She shook her head rather violently. She must be imagining things. Rest merely admired her, and had simply been startled by Luna during the first night. And the constellations were just coincidence, surely.

She nodded to herself. She was just thinking too hard about things.

“Excuse me Princess?”

She turned to see a guard, waiting.

“Yes?”

“Princess Rest was wondering if you could join her in the baths. She wished to speak with you about something personal.”

Luna froze. “I… we…” she stuttered, giving thanks that her blush was hard to see.

“Tell her that we are needed elsewhere!” she suddenly yelled, running away, leaving a baffled guard behind.

And Twilight, relaxing in a warm bath, wanted nothing more than to ask Luna for any advice the alicorn could share for the upcoming ball. After all; Luna was the pinnacle of stone faced when she dealt with the nobility. Surely she had some advice to give from her own life and experience.

She simply shrugged it off when the guard told her that Luna was unavoidably detained. She could ask later.

Comments

[ParodiaTheSilent]

Bro, that misunderstanding is becoming...
Problematic.

[Wolfren]

I apologize for forgetting about two of your stories, and boy did I miss out.

The patters seemed complex, and making one by chance seemed impossible.

I noticed one error here. The "n" in "patterns" is missing. I apologize if there are others I missed or you would prefer if I looked at the more recent chapters... Sorry.

[Direct Access]

8367541
I think right now it's rather funny. Until Luna's feelings are not hurt, it's okey.