Starlight Glimmer (Accidentally) Raises the Dead

by SockPuppet

Chapter 6

Confidence and hope swelled around Starlight. She knew that, tomorrow, she would feel horrible guilt for burning grandma Firestar’s corpse, but for now, she had a plan, she had weapons—well, booze, but beggars can't be choosy—she had the upper hoof, and she would get out of this terrible night with her horn and her neck intact.

She didn't know how late it was, but the horizon was still dark, no hint of dawn. Plenty of time to clean up.

The tan unicorn-creature staggered around grandma’s smoking ashes, snarling at Starlight. She grinned and lobbed a fifth of grain alcohol at it.

A magical shield deflected the bottle, a red half-dome that shimmered translucently under the moon. The bottle bounced off the shield and shattered against the grass, ten feet from the creature.

“Are you kidding me?!?”

Try harder! said the book, its voice clear in Starlight’s head despite dozens of yards distance. You’re the best fun I’ve had in centuries, baby!

Mystic Heart trotted up, levitating several bottles of booze, blond mane and tail bouncing, breathing hard. “Yeeeow that stinks!”

Starlight levitated the iron picket out and whacked the tan zombie over the skull. It staggered and shook its head, disoriented.

“Oh... my... Celestia. Those really are... are...” Mystic Heart leaned over and puked on Starlight’s front hooves. Starlight’s cuts from the brambles, still not clotted over, burned from Mystic Heart’s stomach acid. Starlight danced a few feet to the side, front hooves bouncing in pain.

“Gimme your bow,” Starlight said.

Mystic Heart leaned further over and puked more. Starlight huffed in annoyance and levitated the bow out of Mystic Heart’s blond mane, then tore a strip off of the fabric.

“Hey? What are you—hurrrlll!” Mystic Heart puked on her own hooves, and into her now-unbound long hair. Her mane dragged on the ground, collecting mud and vomit as highlights to the yellow.

Popping the cork out of a fifth of grain alcohol, Starlight crammed the strip of fabric into the bottle, lit it with a flash of magic, and ran toward the nearest creature. She hit the book’s shield-spell chest-first, and summoned a shield of her own.

The book’s shield around the zombie glowed a deep maroon, and Starlight’s a blinding-bright turquoise. At their intersection, a flattened-oval shape, the color was a cadaverous charcoal gray.

Starlight dug her hooves into the dirt and scrabbled forward, forcing herself through the resistance, panting, cursing, grinding her teeth, and the two shield domes collapsed into sparks and the smell of ozone.

The zombie snapped at Starlight. She flipped the bottle into its gaping maw, the glass shattered, and the alcohol touched the smoldering fabric of the red bow and lit, taking the creature’s head off in a blue fireball.

It dropped, re-dead, and she felt another of the connections cut off.

Starlight also felt blisters rising on her cheeks and neck from splashed fire. She staggered back, batting at her left cheek with her hoof, brushing flaming liquid away. It hurt bad, and was sure to leave a hideous blister by morning.

She was probably going to be taking Thursday off school and making up the homework again.

The pain helped awaken a tiny bit more of her reserve.

Mystic Heart tiphooved up. “Why did you do this?”

"But—that's how you kill them, with fire."

"No! Why did you create them!?!"

“Seventy percent stupid, thirty percent accident.”

Mystic Heart snorted. “That makes no sense at all. You make no sense at all. I hate you.”

"Why are you helping me?"

Mystic Heart blinked. "You mom's the best pony in town. She’s so nice, always, despite her... problem. I'm sad that for her one foal she ever had, she got saddled with you."

Starlight's jaw dropped. Looking up at Mystic Heart, Starlight said, "That's the truest thing you've ever said. Also, I agree with you. Look, I was trying to bring my little sister back for mom.”

“Oh. That’s.... I missed your sister’s funeral. I was... because your mom diagnosed... Vanhoover Pediatric...”

Starlight bowed her head, panting. Pushing through the shield had been a struggle, exhausting, but more physical than magical in exertion. Distance athlete or not, she was nearing her wall. Her legs shook and her teeth chattered.

“Why is it so cold?” Mystic Heart said. “It’s warm inside the town walls.”

“Tear the bow into strips. Make me more bombs. I’ll burn the zombies. I've got it figured out.”

“Stop saying the Z-word!”

Starlight looked around. “Where’s my mom?”

Mystic Heart began tearing strips of fabric, standing on the bow and grabbing with her teeth, using her magic only to stuff the strips into the bottles. “That bow was a gift,” Mystic Heart said.

“You’re older than me,” Starlight said. “Why do you always wear a bow like a little filly?”

“Grow your hair back after chemo and see if you don’t starting wearing a pretty bow.”

“Oh.” Starlight shook her head, dizzy, wishing for just one of the pints of blood back. Not both, just one would do.

What would she say to dad if something happened to mom?

The book spoke to her. I’m impressed! I had you pegged for the ‘Teleport to Las Pegasus and screw the others’ kind. You’ve stood and fought like a champ. Ever wonder how your dad got those Guard medals he won’t talk about? Think about how your mom trudges through the snow to appendectomies or foalings. ‘Stand and fight’ seems to run in the family. I misjudged you.

“Shut up!” Starlight screamed.

Mystic Heart yelled, “I didn’t say anything!”

“Not you, my stupid book! It’s who told me to do this!”

Mystic Heart just nodded smugly. Hypothesis, confirmed.

The book sneered, You’re gonna die, and so are your mom and your cute little friend! But I’m proud of you. You’ve fought better than any victim in my loooong life. Hey! One of the zombies is a fresh enough corpse that its cock still works. I’m going to break your spine and make you watch it rut your gray friend to death. In fact, I won't even kill you, I'll leave you paralyzed for Constable Keystone to arrest. Celestia can pick you up from town jail.

“Mystic Heart’s not my friend!” Starlight screamed at the book, ears flattening.

“You can say that again...”

Is there a word for that? asked the book. When the dead rape you? Inverse necrophilia? Necro-necrophilia? I’ll have to find a talking dictionary to ask...

Another fifth, with its cork out, a torn fabric strip in, levitated up to Starlight. She nodded in thanks to Mystic Heart, grabbed the bottle in her own magic, and trotted toward the nearest creature.

In that fashion, over the next ten minutes, or maybe it was seven centuries (Starlight had no clue about time’s passage anymore), Starlight and Mystic Heart burned out most of the hell creatures.

Then, there were only three left. Starlight was able to count the magical connections easily, thanks to the lessened interference. Three, definitely. The creatures were dumb but not totally stupid, and they huddled fearfully near the edge of the woods, afraid of Starlight and recognizing their doom.

Then, everything got worse.

---

Levitating the iron picket, panting in exhaustion, steps staggering, dripping sweat, Starlight prepared to finish the last three creatures. Her subconscious had been chewing on the problem, and she decided the cold—it was below freezing, now, she clearly saw frost on the grass—had to be an effect of the book pulling the very energy from its surroundings. Or perhaps the book was from the outer depths of space, and connected to its origin, somehow, and the warmth of the world was leaking into the black depths of Yuggoth. Who knew? She only cared because the exhaustion was breaking her concentration and making her mind wander.

Either way, Starlight began harrying one of the zombies, a light yellow former-pegasus, with the picket. She was way closer than she liked, less than twenty feet away, but her weakening magic meant that was as far out as she could hold the heavy metal stave. She whacked it, hit it, worried it, herded it, separating it from the other two remaining creatures.

She was down to only vodka, out of grain alcohol, and vodka burned poorly. But it was all she had.

Once she thought it was far enough away from the other two zombies, she lit the fabric strip in the mouth of the vodka bottle with a tiny hint of magic, and charged in....

....crap. It hadn't lit. It had not lit!

Her magic was so low she couldn't even light a small fire.

The zombie staggered toward her.

"Mystic, run!" Starlight said.

"My name is—"

"Shut it and run!"

Mystic Heart ran, trotting to a distance, into the fenced graveyard, still levitating the six bottles they had remaining, and she kicked the shovel handle out of the gate, sealing the fence to the graveyard. She ran to the second gate on the far side, ready to escape farther.

Starlight staggered, hooves dragging, barely a step and a half ahead of its snapping jaws.

And that, Starlight thought, it why necromancy is the death penalty: one bite, and you join them.

She momentarily envied the pegasi and earth pony foals. They didn’t have to sit through the scared-straight lectures in magic kindergarten and grade school. Starlight wished she's paid more attention to those lectures.

Exhausted, cross-eyed, desperate, she spun, levitated the picket and jammed it down the zombie's throat, the pointed finial first, impaling it though its thoracic cavity and out the bottom of its ribcage, near the sternum.

The zombie gagged, then its eyes crossed, and it disappeared in a puff of flame and ash.

“Oh, by Celestia’s diapers! I could have just done that the whole time?!?”

She levitated up the picket from the pile of ash, and the iron picket fell apart, burned to iron oxide. “Oh.”

Sensing she was weaponless, the two remaining zombies looked at each other and then began to walk, staggering fast, spreading out to either side of her, preparing to pincer Starlight.

“Starlight, watch it!” Mystic Heart called. “They’re getting smarter.”

Gasping in exhaustion, Starlight ran for the graveyard and entered through the gate, slamming it again behind her.

She staggered along the fenceline, searching for another loose picket. None were loose, none were loose, she needed a weapon!

She tripped, left rear hoof stinging, hit the frosty grass chest-first, scrambled to her feet, and looked down to see what she had tripped over.

Oh, gross. It was Grandma Firestar’s detached left leg. The huge, gleaming bulb of the artificial hip’s ball joint glinted in the moonlight.

The ball was about the size and shape of a shillelagh's head. It would make a nice club.

Starlight was no metallurgist, but she knew a lot about magic. Cold iron—like the fence pickets—could have a small deadening effect on magic and magical creatures.

Complex stainless alloys—like, say, artificial hip joints—were even more anti-magical. No wonder the grandma-creature had shed the hip as soon as she reanimated!

But how was she going to separate the metal from the rotten meat and decayed bone? Her magic was gone. She doubted she could levitate five pounds.

“Well,” Starlight said to herself, “what would an earth pony do?”

Her lips drew back, grimacing and gagging in anticipation of the taste.

---

“Mystic! Fast!”

“Mystic Heart,” she automatically corrected, trotting close. “What?”

“Levitate this up.” Starlight pointed a hoof at the severed leg. “Can we get the meat off? I need the metal.”

Mystic Heart looked down, looked up at Starlight, said, “Meat?!?” and gagged.

Mystic Heart levitated up grandma’s leg and Starlight used both hooves to strip the rotten meat off the bone and metal implant. It only took a few seconds, given how decayed the connective tissue was. The whole bottom half of the leg separated with a plop.

And then, there it was, held in Mystic Heart’s off-white magical aura. The white bone, grown attached to the silvery metal, the meat all gone. Well, mostly gone.

Starlight knew what was next. Grab the bone, use her magic if she had the strength, use her teeth like an earth pony if not.

Only two of the zombies left. Break their skulls, or crack their chest cavities, or, or, or, or something!

She tried to levitate the bone club. Her turquoise aura just sputtered out. The buttercream of Mystic Heart’s aura, holding the bone vertical, wavered.

“What, what?” Starlight said. “Did you speak?”

“I said, 'They’re rattling the gate!' Do something.”

She bit the white bone at the opposite side of the heavy metal hip joint and strode to the last two beasts.

And, yes, it tasted bad. Unlike anything Starlight ever tasted before or since. She got bits of sinew between her teeth.

Starlight gripped the bottom end of grandma's femur deep under her left molars, reared her head back, and swung over the top of the fence. She wasn't quite tall enough, and the metal of the hip joint struck the top of the fence. Starlight's head rang. A tooth cracked, a sharp flare of pain like the earlier splashes of burning liquid that had blistered her skin.

Panting around the bone, she kicked up with her forehoof and unlatched the gate. The first beast was leaning against the gate and staggered through, surprised and off balance when the gate suddenly opened. It went down, chest-first, hooves scrabbling for purchase, and Starlight swung down with the makeshift club with all the strength in her neck muscles. Its skull cracked and magic sparked. She swung again, hitting the spine just above the heart, and—

Whoosh! Another swirl of ash.

The last creature snapped at her head. Starlight dodged, dropping to the ground, landing in the fresh ash and feeling it burn into her skin, like rolling in the remains of last night's campfire.

She kicked upward with her forehooves, smashing it in the jaw, saving herself from the bite-worse-than-death by about ten inches. Ichor sprayed and landed on her chin and neck.

It shook its head, broken jaw flapping out of time with the motion of the rest of its skull. She tucked into a ball and got her rear legs up and bucked again, hitting it in the chest and staggering it backward.

Mystic Heart ran in, spun, and bucked it, too, smashing it backwards further, out of the gate.

Starlight, panting, vision dark with anoxia, head pounding, got halfway up, forelegs extended, rump down, and swung her club again, an uppercut, hitting the creature between the forelegs. Magic flashed as the stainless alloy smashed into its eldritch field.

Mystic Heart bucked it once more. Starlight smashed it in the head, again, a third time, and it flashed to ash.

The last connection was gone.

The zombies were gone.

She dropped the club, looked at Mystic Heart, and said, “I need a nap,” and slumped down to the ground, dazed and panting.

Damn, said the book. Bravo, my little purple slut. I didn’t think you had it in you.

Starlight crawled to the other side of the graveyard, sharp blades of grass cutting into her fresh burns from rolling in the ashes, pain filling her vision with stars, heartbeat pounding in her ears, and she heaved herself to her feet, levitated up the book with the last of her magic, and looked at Mystic Heart.

“Now,” Starlight said, “for the hard part.”

Author's Note:

Thanks to mishun for commenting on this and the remaining chapters!

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I'm on a trip next week but I'll still try to post the final two chapters Wednesday.