The Stereotypical Necromancer

by JinxTJL

Chapter 66 - Undead Methodology

Life is a truly precious thing. Given the irreplicable nature of individuality, there is no action graver than to consider taking it, and if not for good reason, then may it only be for necessity. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—on Equus that may begin to amount to the sum of even a single creature's life; such is its value.

Yet life is so much more than that which animates us; it represents that which drives us. Our lives are our pasts, our futures, and all that we have come to hold dear in the limited time we may persist. It is one of the few noble pursuits worthy of killing for, and for the lives we have yet to live, there are some who would do anything to beckon it closer—to cling steadfast to that which we all must eventually lose.

What could be more desired than that which we love? And is there anything more beloved than life itself?

As it drifts away, the desire to pull it back into one's grasp is overwhelming. It seems unfair. A cruel, jaded trick. How could all that we are be snuffed out so suddenly? All that we have lived through, all that we fought for, just for it to amount to an eternity of silence? Is it so wrong to wish for more? To covet another day?

Is it not Equine to desire survival? Is it not natural to claw and scrape at barren soil for a miraculous sprout?

That is Necromancy. The purest pursuit of survival—of life itself.

- Light Flow's Compendium, Chapter 3: From Death Unto Life.

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Light flung his front door open with a shortly smothered flicker of hazy red, spilling scant moonlight into the room as he giddily pranced into his dark house from out of... well, the outside dark.

It occurred to him a moment later that his entrance would've been far more dramatic if the sun hadn't set already, but the lacking light just meant his eyes didn't need to adjust!

Best to get out of the sight of the moon, anyway. Seeing it hanging up there in the sky gave him the heebie-jeebies.

He didn't turn to close the door, instead kicking a hindleg out to catch its edge and sloppily slam it into place as he quickly moved along in a canter towards his kitchen. He was far too fixated on bending to the whim of his macabre fixations to care much about manners at the moment. The room could wait for its routine inspection.

He stopped short of the counters in the room's corner, scanning over them with a glance before he shook his head and stooped to wrench one of the cabinets open with a thoughtless tug of mana. He kept his system awake, letting his gleaming crimson gaze rove across the inscrutably shaded shelves from top to bottom until it caught on a vague shape in the dark, and a curled smile crossed his face as he willed the awaiting energy to advance.

It took a bit of wiggling to free the pan out from under its twins, but it didn't take more than a few moments before it was floating out to level with his head as he straightened. He shimmied to the side, closing the cabinet with a thought and opening the one to its side with the next. Another moment of searching later, he stood again with a matching plastic cover held aloft on the very same red cloud—though his head was beginning to pound.

He murmured to himself with barely restrained excitement as he turned, shutting the cabinet with another lazy kick of his leg before he began a trot to the murky shadow of his desk across the room. Thanks to the guiding light of his horn casting flickering shadows across his path, he slowed to a stop well before he found the chair with his knee, able to pull it out with a hoof and plop himself down with uncharacteristic ease.

His smile fell for a moment as he took in the mess his desk was, busying himself as soon as he lowered the pan and its cover to one side with gathering the books, pencils, pens, erasers, scraps of paper... etcetera...

He was sure he'd regret dumping it all into the box with Her armor later, but for the moment, it was nice to lower the overfull container to the floor and rest his hooves atop the clean, clear desk. It was like a blank canvas just waiting for a splash of color, or a cleared patch of dirt ready for seeding! Endless possibility!

Aside from the back edge. That still looked like a battleground left behind by two warring libraries.

He snaked a tickly trail of mana down the fur of his stomach to fiddle with his saddlebag's latch, letting loose a deep sigh of relief as the intermittently constraining pack was freed from its grip on him. The newfound lack of stress on his back let him straighten, pulling himself up and scraping his chair forward half a hoof-length to tower over the surface of his desk as he lifted his bag in a haze of mana to settle atop it.

And then... he let himself slump, shutting his eyes and letting his head rock back to just... rest.

Ugh. Urgh. Blurgh. Blaaaah...

What a strenuous day. He'd started out all get up and go without a care in the world aside his unfounded worries about Applejack and his underlying fear about the formerly tyrannical Goddess coming into power, but still, how would he have expected all that crap to bury him?

From the anti-Luna rally to his and Twilight's shaky reconciliation—and her offer? What a headache.

He was going to take it, obviously—he didn't even need to think twice about it—but it still marked a pretty major change in his life. Who knew how much time he'd end up devoting to his new pursuit of arcane knowledge, or how much he'd have to spend with Twilight? Scary thought.

He could tolerate her... fine, and all, but it'd been just yesterday that he'd been cozy in the hate camp for her. Now that he was alone, he was honestly considering just recommitting to the status quo and never giving her an answer. Or maybe a really rude one, instead.

...He wouldn't, but the thought was tempting.

He'd have to have that talk with Spike, too, and that thought made him want to slink and shrink into his seat until he was too small to ever have to deal with any of that. That was just... going to be exhausting.

That'd all only been the start of the day. Between Rarity's advice, the talk with Granny, seeing Applejack again...

A new wave of heady fatigue washed over him as the memories stood and raised their hooves one-by-one, bringing him to throw one of his own over his aching eyes with a groan. Too much recall rollcall.

He loved his marefriend and his faux-family, of course, but it... it was just like there were two ponies inside of him, and one of them never wanted to part from all the ponies he loved, and the other never wanted to bother with ever seeing them again. It was a constant tug of war between the two, and they never shut up!

So much energy and effort... At least... he was home now.

His hoof slid down his face, dragging one of his eyes open and trailing down his chin before it finally fell to his seat. He forced his head up with a bob, shivering as he smothered a mouthy yawn. Blinking into the darkness to peer lazily down at the contents of his desk, the corner of his mouth quirked up in half a tired smile.

He'd let the social part of him reign for a day. He'd gone out, had his epiphany, and made out with his marefriend.

He'd been good. Upstanding, in a way.

Now it was time to let the weird, solitary part have its fun.

He lit his horn, trembling at the rousing jolt of mana he urged to course through him as he scooched his bag over a little to make room for the pan sliding over. He straightened the dish with a satisfied hum, setting the lid behind it with a cautious squint before he turned to focus onto his bag again.

A wiggly grin threatened to break his detached countenance as the bag's left side latch was glossed over in humming red before his eyes, beginning to playfully pull and jerk at it—but stopping just shy of actually undoing it.

Oh, it was tantalizing, but so foreboding. The latch was all that separated him from a very fun evening, yet it also protected him from a road anypony else would've blanched at. It was a grim thing, indeed. Very grim.

But so was he, and it was important to remember that. He wasn't insane or immoral, he was just grim. He just liked macabre things—and it was his destiny, not to mention. There were tons of other ponies who were into the exact same things that he was, and unlike them, he wasn't pursuing this out of some perverse enjoyment.

Though, as the subtle line of a seam itched against his mind and the latch finally clicked open, he had to admit to himself that he'd be lying if he ever claimed he didn't derive an immense amount of fascination out of looking at and playing with dead things.

Barring any emotional connection, he surely loved dead things.

He shifted the pan over with his hoof, keeping his head low and his wide eyes up with starry wonder as the flap flipped over and his mana cautiously crept down the bag's inner lining. He shuddered with sudden discomfort as the ghost of something cold flashed across his senses, followed closely by the itchy brush of scratchy fur.

He shook the feeling off, keeping his eyes up and biting his lip with a swallow as he pushed his mana to solidify. Weight registered and began to rise, though he forced the ascent to stop for a moment before his prize was revealed to just... breathe. Take a breath. Compose himself.

He wasn't doing this because he was a freak—though he undeniably was—he was doing this to advance the pursuit of his special talent. He was doing this because this was what was meant for him—this was all for him. This was what was going to fulfill him. His life had meaning because of this.

He wasn't a psychopath, and he wasn't a monster. He was an academic.

He was a Necromancer.

And like a true Necromancer, when the dangling corpse of a squirrel rose before him, he smiled.

For the first instant, he was overwhelmed with the desire to admire it, but all too quickly, a drip of glistening red beaded on its tousled ear and fell from the upside-down animal's limp head. He muffled a curse into his suddenly stinging lip, pushing the pan brazenly forward to catch the next drip with a jerk of his mana, breathing out a relieved sigh at the sound of blood plinking against metal.

He let the animal rest without too much unabashed ogling, but only because he found it prudent to take hold of his bag and lower it to the floor. He'd made his peace with getting it bloody at the time, but it'd be far harder to clean stains out of his desk. Whichever was more likely to be discovered, blood on wood was much more obvious.

With his bag out of the way, his desk was clear save for the pan, and his focus was free save for the corpse.

Now he could look at it.

And look at it he did. He didn't bother counting the seconds or the minutes as they rolled by, spent in utter silence in the completely dark room just... staring at the dead squirrel. He must've committed its appearance to memory a thousand times over, yet he still kept finding reasons to explore it again and again.

Its little mouth was gaped open from how he'd dropped it, though unfortunately, it'd already lost so much blood that the puddle it was making wasn't quite poetically spreading out between its jaws. If its eye had been open, it'd be doused in the liquid by now, which was a very interesting mental picture.

It was kind of interesting; he didn't think he'd ever seen a squirrel so straight before. It'd been curled up and rigid when he'd found it, but the time in his bag must've jostled it enough that ramrod was the position rigor mortis had chosen for it. If it was on its feet, he could imagine it sniffing the air or poised at the sound of danger.

Though a lot of its fur was covered in its own blood, so it was a twisted image either way.

It was beginning to look a bit sickly under its fur, too, but that was just normal corpse behavior. With none of its organs working, blood had to go somewhere, so whatever hadn't leaked out through its head had pooled at the sack of bones' bottom. Its side, in this case, since that'd been how it'd been laying.

If he stared at it for a couple hours longer, he'd see a purple squirrel.

Funny thought.

Speaking of funny thoughts, the thought crossed his mind to cut off its tail, and for a moment, he looked over his shoulder towards his kitchen for a knife. The only thing that stopped him was the fact he wouldn't have anywhere to put it, and he'd not be able to display it like a Griffon hunting trophy because... he wasn't a Griffon.

It would've been really cool, though. He could've started some kind of collection...

His marefriend would disapprove. Actually, she'd have been seven different shades of disapproving if she'd known so little as his murder of the poor creature on his way to visit her, so he should probably nip that kind of thinking in the bud. He'd keep his love life and his work life separate.

Eventually, his mind did drift to other topics, like what he was going to actually do with it. That track continued with a bit of tepid silence before it hit a junction and suddenly roared to life along with his smile.

He had an idea. A while ago, actually, but it was there, regardless.

He pushed out from his desk, rubbing a hoof across the back of his neck as he tweaked the aching joint with a grimace before he turned and stood up. A few moments later, the desk was illuminated by a flash of mana as he sat down again, soundly slapping a fresh, fancy notebook to the open side of the pan.

He huffed out a satisfied breath as he scooted his chair back in, scanning over the side of the desk to float a set-aside pencil over as the book rose and turned onto its first page, dimly illuminated by muted, flickering red.

If he was going to do this, then why not do it right? He'd make it real research. Instead of poking and prodding at the carcass like a filthy scavenger or a mad scientist, he'd detail his methodology and his process like a productive mad scientist! It wasn't quite the same as note-taking, but more like a field journal!

And like any good field journal cataloguing a new discovery, he'd need illustration.

He lifted the notebook closer, hunching down to it with his pencil at the ready as he scooted an inch to the right to get a nice, even profile of the squirrel. He'd stared at it long enough that the pose should come easily enough, but for the angle... he'd need another minute of objectification.

He lowered himself, bracing his hooves and pressing his chin onto the table's surface to squint at the squirrel's front, then after a moment, he poked a hoof forward to tilt the pan a little.

Another flick, another moment spent staring.

Light worked his jaw in lazy circles to keep his mind active over the minutes as he gradually absorbed as many of the squirrel's facets as he felt he could. He wasn't exactly building a diorama, here, but keeping the relative physiology of the creature in mind would do his picture good.

That was what an artist did, he was pretty sure. It was about capturing a moment, and to consummately capture a moment in as much detail as was necessary, he had to take in as much detail as possible. He had to become one with the scene; such a venture demanded nothing less than his complete and utter focus.

For as much as it took, and for as long as it took.

Although, halfway into the pan's third go-around, he remembered that he'd only meant to do it once, and so he straightened with a pop of his lips, recentering the cookware with a gentle prod and a murmur. Satisfied with its place, he flicked a glance over to his floating notebook, lifting the pencil from its crinkled page.

His muzzle scrunched in distaste. Shattered heavens above, that looked awful.

Absently doodling while staring aimlessly had worked out great last time, but this time, it seemed as though trying to keep all the angles in mind all at once had just... warped his perspective. The squirrel didn't look consummate, it looked impressionist. About-to-be-fired impressionist.

He shook his head, flipping the pencil around and beginning to rub the eraser across his mangled art with a sigh. Leaning onto a hoof, he watched the picture disappear line by line with a melancholic feeling of wasted time in the back of his mind, eventually flipping his pencil again and sweeping a hoof out to shoo the shavings away.

He'd try again. Art didn't always come out right, he was fairly sure. He was new to it, but failure felt like part of the process. He'd just have to trust in the process, however much the process hurt.

Turning back to the squirrel again, he let his notebook float a bit closer—just in his peripheral. He'd take a more proactive approach, this time. From the squirrel to the page, he'd try a more shackled tracing.

Time passed, and as it passed, Light continued to draw. He kept his word to himself, keeping his eyes furiously focused on the page when they weren't scrutinizing every inch of the squirrel from the angle he'd chosen.

He'd decided on just the one perspective for this drawing rather than trying to keep them all in mind. He was sure that must've been his problem. Too much at once. He should've thought smaller.

Except... as his second attempt scratched in its last tuft on the squirrel's curled tail, it still looked... off. What was even worse was that this time, he wasn't even sure what he'd done wrong. All the squirrel's extremities were consummate, and he'd nailed the pose, but its proportions just... weren't. They weren't right.

It was better, though, and he didn't think it was outright worth erasing, so he compromised by tearing the page out and placing it to the side. On the second—sorry—the first page, he began again, splitting his wandering attention three ways this time.

One perspective helped the pose to form more accurately, while keeping the forming drawing in sight helped to keep everything squirrel-shaped. With the added help of his failure, occasionally flicking a glance down and letting a curve glide just a smidge longer, he was eventually left with... something decent.

A moderately shaded, intelligently detailed picture of a straightened squirrel corpse from a diagonal angle. Its hindlegs no longer looked disconcertingly thick, its fur was darker where he was sure there'd be shadows if there'd been any light, and—hey, this time, he'd managed to capture the frailty of its open jaw!

He turned away, raising his notebook to his face and blowing the eraser dust onto the floor. He brushed a hoof over it once, twice, then straightened the page with a little tweak of mana, and there it was. All done, and it looked so professional as a header!

As he laid the pencil down to the desk and allowed himself a proud smile, reveling in the stoked warmth in his chest—perhaps his souls were dancing—something occurred to him. Staring down at the finished product, something stood out as missing, and he was sure it wasn't better drawn paws.

He bit his cheek in a sudden moment of discontent, sucking on the inside of his mouth as he tilted his head one way, then the other, then over to the squirrel for comparison. Had he... no, was it... or maybe...?

It clicked, and Light let his cheek pop out with a silent exclamation. Bending forward again, his pencil raised and followed his line of sight to the page, where it gently traced up the squirrel's splayed form until the dulled point nestled securely onto the top of its head.

And then he began to fill in the bloodstain.

Just a dark splotch on the cranium... a little extra ruffle here to simulate the torn scalp... draw the cloud around its head... fill it in... ixnay the foalish cloud metaphor... and...

He leaned back out, placing his pencil down and allowing himself a satisfied breath for the actual final product. Looking at it then, he couldn't believe he'd forgotten something so important as the cause of death. Or... what would've been the cause of death had he not yanked its existence out.

He only wished he had colored pencils to make it pop out more on the white page, but it was still all well and sorrowfully poignant. How tragic. A dead squirrel. He'd better hold a funeral.

It was a job well done, and for how much effort he'd put in, he wanted to slump back in his chair—maybe lay his head on his chest for a nap—but then, he'd not even really begun, had he? He still had to do his actual research.

What a doofus he was, expending so much time on something so trivial just because it made him marginally happy. That wasn't how he lived his life. Thinking of it, though, how much time had he spent drawing?

Looking over his shoulder, it was—okay, he didn't really need to look to know it was still pitch black outside given it was pitch black inside, but it only really felt dark now that his horn wasn't lit. Couple that with falling into a creative trance as he'd drawn, and it'd hardly felt like any time at all was passing.

His head kinda hurt from channeling, but nothing really ached, and he could still prod his mana to life just about as easily as when he was topped up, so it couldn't have been that long. He'd be sleepier if it'd been hours.

That made him feel a little better. It helped him to straighten a little.

He couldn't bow out and shunt his work aside now, when he'd hardly devoted any time at all. He had plenty of energy left; he was just fine to move on and start the initial research! Autopsy? He was thinking he'd have to be a little more medically inclined to call it an autopsy. He'd go with research.

And of course, his research wouldn't write itself, so he soundly put a stop to his time-wasting and scooted his chair a little closer to the desk. Raising his pencil, he cleared his throat, shuffling the pan and the notebook over a little so everything was a bit more centered. He rolled his shoulders, smacking his lips to wash away the taste of inactivity as he deftly lowered his pencil to the page under the drawing.

He pushed forward—then stopped short, readjusting his aim for font size. No point in wasting page space.

Subject A: Common Squirrel

Initial examination and argumentation prior to further experimentation.

Cause of death: Blunt force trauma to the parietal bone followed by removal of soul.

He paused. Did squirrel skulls have a parietal bone section?

...The better question was whether it mattered, and Light was suddenly sure it didn't.

Rigor: present

Livor: lateral, partial, discolored

Time of death: noonish

Damage: external, spiritual, likely internal hemorrhage

Age: unknown

Sex:

Light paused again, pursing his lips.

He gave the squirrel a sidelong glance.

Then he continued writing.

Sex: I'm not checking

Length: straight

Weight: squirrel

Eyes: black, emotionless, squirrel

Fur: scratchy, brown

Body Heat: dead

Decomposition: initial

The subject appears to be in good health aside from its sudden death, only appearing to possess limited malnutrition as expected for an animal of its demeanor in the Everfree forest. The initial damage to its head caused by the projectile stone impacting it above and parallel to its right eye was enough to cause severe sensory confusion and possible concussion, a state of shock and full-body paralysis, and would have likely led to its eventual death by blood loss.

It is uncertain without a full examination of its internals, but the sudden ejection of its soul, henceforth referred to as Subject B, is likely to have caused an immediate cessation of its vital processes. It is as yet unknown whether its unique cause of death has impacted the decomposition process, or whether the decomposition process itself will affect the subject's resurrection.

Hypothesis: as has been previously theorized and as is supported by the subject's expiration upon removal of Subject B, reintroduction of Subject B into a compatible container will cause Subject A to reanimate and undergo continued existence for as long as Subject B remains unviolated. Without proper philosophical examination of the boundary between the soul and the individual, the reanimated subject will henceforth be referred to as Subject C for ease of comprehension.

It is not yet known whether Subject C will experience sensory input, whether sensory input of any kind may apply to a reanimated being, henceforth referred to as a Zombie Undeath, or whether a state of Undeath may parallel a true state of living. There is no telling whether Subject C will be the same being as Subject A, whether the removal of Subject B has any impact upon it, or whether Subject C will show awareness of its expiration. These questions may not be answerable following experimentation.

Initial thoughts conclude with the beginning statement of intent by the researcher, Light Flow. The current course of events will be expulsion of Subject B, reintroduction of Subject B into Subject A, and subsequent monitoring of Subject C. Afterwards, Subject C will be made to expire, Subject B will be reacquired, and Subject A will be stored for further study.

Study of Subject C recorded on page two ~>

Light dropped his pencil with a clatter as he rose from the page, biting his lip to muffle his second yawn as he stretched his hooves up above his head. He waited for the satisfying... click, blowing out a fatigued groan as he settled back into his seat and blinked lethargically down at the scribbled-over page.

Whoof. He liked writing, and all, but he hadn't expected to get so tired so soon. He really couldn't just ignore that he'd had a whole day before this, no matter how nostalgic it was to write faux-medical documents like he'd done as a bored little colt.

Not that he even felt as good at it as he'd been back then.

It... okay, it looked consummate and mechanically obtuse like he'd learned from the slapdash medical documents that Ponyville General Hospital made publicly available, but he couldn't help the feeling it read as amateurish.

Looking at the thickly penned syntax neatly pressed together on the page before him just made him feel...

...unfitting. He felt dumb. Dumb and sleepy and kind of hungry like he usually wasn't.

Bleh.

He leaned forward, shifting a glance to the other side of the room where his bedroom door tantalizingly called for him in that motionless way it did. It wouldn't be so bad to pick this up in the morning, would it? What was he trying to prove by doing this all at once? Really, he'd perform much better on a full night's sleep.

His gaze returned to the squirrel's corpse, where he could imagine the pleading in its closed, otherwise glassy eye. Surely, it must've wanted to resurrect, right? Closing his eyes and focusing... he couldn't feel anything from the pulse of its soul, but he was sure that was because it was just a dumb animal. If it'd had the capacity, it would've asked him to bring it back to life.

How... presumptuous of the squirrel. Didn't it realize what it was—theoretically—asking him? He was supposed to defy nature and the due course on so little as its say so? He'd go that far for an animal? Not to mention this'd be his first time resurrecting something. This was what he wanted to cash that card in on?

And... if he did, then... he'd be one soul down.

The thought was immediately sobering, and in such a violently full-body wave that he could taste the acrid lash of bile crashing against the back of his tongue at the tail end of his shiver.

...He was committed, alright? It was just... it was frightening to imagine putting himself in that position again. Honestly, he'd assume the memories to be more forthcoming considering he'd only just come into possession of three at once, but the difference between two and three was so stark in his mind that he genuinely couldn't imagine what the cold had been like before.

The cold of two souls. He'd been used to it, but now he knew better. He'd felt... better.

How could he live like that again? Even for a moment? An hour at most?

It was inconceivable. He'd be giving up... just...

...it'd feel wrong. What he felt now... he didn't think he could go back.

He'd barely spent three minutes deliberating, but when he finally tore his gaze from the squirrel's unmoving corpse—the sight of it burnt into the backs of his eyes like a looming specter—he felt as though he had the bags and wear to match an hour. At that point, his choice seemed obvious, if even just for his physical wellbeing.

No experimentation tonight. No hard choice. Sleep.

Light puffed out a weighty sigh as he braced his hooves on the table's edge and pushed his chair out, sidling off and falling on all fours to the floor. He took what pleasure he could in the weighty clop of his hooves on wood before he turned to give the squirrel-laden pan a last, forlorn glance, shaking his head and making his way to the bedroom a moment later.

His mind wasn't on the short trip, nor was it on the automatic reflex of pushing his door open. With his eyes tracing the floor between every hoofstep in and out of sight, he could barely raise a glance for long enough to properly rear his hooves onto the bed to pull himself up. By the time his head hit the pillow, his eyes had long since been closed in silent reverie, just... thinking. Trying to commit it to memory.

His souls. His warmth, the way it was then. Not before, not yesterday, and not as he'd once been.

Just him. The present moment. What was his.

Himself.

The core of his being—what he was crowding with lives not his own, yet that planted seed of vigor was so comforting that he just couldn't muster the guilt to repent for it. His rational mind knew he should've, but inside, deep down his throat and bundled in his chest, his mind held no sway. There was no weight to logic there, in his most sanctified retreat.

Within, there was no weight. No thought, nor volume, nor sound. There was only the warmth, and how it suffused him.

How it fueled him—filled and fulfilled him with sustenance and passion; it gave him the strength and perspective to see life for how it truly was, battering away the clutches of monotonous apathy. He could see it, and he could feel it; every time he closed his eyes, he was hit with lapping waves of appreciation for all that he had.

For all that was there. All that he was.

The effusive ocean of purely metaphorical being within—like an upside-down sky just out of sight, yet at the fringe edge of his awareness. He was never very far from himself, and in himself, he had stolen away those whom he had desired. Like pockets of air at his recesses, they were always clear to see. They were always felt.

There was nowhere to hide. There was no impulse to hide. There was only him and what he possessed.

They made his being boil, and as he reached for them, he grew warmer with every fathom closer. There was no pressure, nor was there depth to the metaphor; no matter how far he dove within, he would never move from where he was. There was no direction, and there was no space. He was simply within, and as he was within, he was without.

And within him, he found three points of shining heat, nestled together like pearls of pure, luminescent light.

The largest, the steely grey, stuck out like an unfitting anomaly between the others. Where the others were calm, settled against the bed of his being as though they had simply resigned, the grey was restless. Ill-fitting. Its spin was not stilted, nor was it slowed with apathy. It was frenetic, even then. It was disturbed.

He drew closer, and he could feel its sadness radiating off of it. The misery. The barely-constrained homesickness.

Such pain, yet just out of view. It stung at him like the ruthless press of a knife, yet even that was paltry in comparison. The agony it had weathered, in life and in death, was more than he might ever be cursed enough to witness in his time. It was like a thorn stuck into a gash on his sense of self, and it spewed its essence as a flowing wound.

Loss. Of its home, and of its life. Of everything it had known and yet more until there was nothing left.

How could he possess all of this within and feel none of it? How had he ignored it until now?

He was sorry. He was so sorry.

He moved on, yet there was so little more. The darker of the smaller two, so deeply grey that it bordered on black, had long since lost itself. The rhythm of his existence had become its own, and within the abstract sea of himself, he could hardly differentiate it from the current. It did not speak to him, but neither did it have nothing to say.

What he could feel was dull, barely enough to register. There was only a long-faded sense of fear.

He held no interest for it. The gift had been given with ill intent, and dwelling would only exacerbate the betrayal.

The last, the grey that had revealed itself so brightly as to seem white, was not like the second. This one was vibrant enough to truly feel its wakeful tremors in his core, and what he could feel was... overwhelmingly turbulent. Looking upon it, it seemed just as calm as its sibling, yet within... within... the more he focused within... the closer he drew...

He could. There was so much beneath. Its warmth ran so deep—so hot—so alive. Such intense recollection.

He felt like he could become lost in it.

And suddenly, he was.

Turbulence. Disquietude. Dissonance and frantic fear. The world was spinning. He couldn't find his way out.

It hurt. Something hurt, but he was so overpoweringly dizzy—he couldn't tell where the hurt was coming from. The warmth... the warmth... too hot... it burned. He was on fire. His every nerve was burning. The taste of deeply rich iron overwhelmed him, and in that moment, he knew nothing but.

He was sick. He was going to be sick. He'd already been. He was covered in sick, burning his skin like poison.

There was something else. A memory. Weight in his paws. The grass underfoot. The beckoning forest. A woody taste.

Movement. Movement to his side. Instincts kicked in and he swept his eyes to the danger.

A massively imposing figure, four-legged, brown-furred, with crimson eyes full of deadly intent and predation. It was crouched in the dirt and so close to him that he could smell its wrong scent of nothingness under death and fading decay. The blazing red light like a burning pyre on its head was enough to fill him with fear he'd spend the rest of his life running from, and how he wished to run and leave those maliciously grinning jaws behind in his wake.

But then the pain was back.

His head. He was bleeding. He was upside-down. He was spinning. He couldn't breathe.

His being hurt. It was fading away. It was leaving him. He'd never felt anything like it.

He was being torn in two. He couldn't feel his body. He could feel everything but himself.

Nothing was right. Everything was wrong.

Pull.

He couldn't.

Grasp.

It hurt.

Tug.

And then it didn't.

Out.

He jerked up, whipping his head forward and forcing his suddenly present voice to tear up his throat in an agonized scream. The noise pounded into his cottony-feeling ears, and he instinctively... pressed them back?

He caught a fresh breath full of... what? The taste of musty air..? Before his wide-open eyes, wherever he jerked a blurry glance to, there were... walls? When he tried to raise his... paw? No—no, he had hooves, but when he raised one to his head, bearing his teeth in a seethe as he expected a hot flash of pain, there was... nothing.

Nothing hurt. He wasn't in pain. He was... no, that was wrong... not... him... he was... Light Flow.

He was Light Flow, and he was... a unicorn.

But he hadn't been.

Light levered himself off his forelimbs, sitting upright and ignoring how his back groaned in protest as he began to sort through whatever in Taratrus' unholy name that had been. His glassy crimson gaze roamed once more across his room, finding his door closed to one side and a still darkened window to the other.

Everything... was fine. For how loudly he could hear his heart pounding in his ears, his room was as silent and dark as it'd been when he'd gone to bed. And then, the suddenly apparent memory of his laying down and drifting off was at once a soothing balm to what... he supposed was just a dream.

That's all it was. A bad dream conjured from his waking misdeeds had visited him in the fringe of slumber.

How comforting.

And yet, as he gathered his cramping back legs under him to sit properly, brushing his matted tail aside with a hoof before raising it to smother a yawn, something... felt off. The nagging sense of unmet urgency took a moment to sift through, leading his limb up to rub sleepily at one eye and dragging it down his groggy face all the way down to scratch at his chest before it hit him, and his hoof stalled where it laid above his lethargic heart.

It took everything he had to keep his mouth pressed firmly shut, deliberately pressing a heavy swallow against the back of his throat. He considered himself very well versed in managing his panic reflex, and so the throaty gag came just in time to dam a wave of acid thrown up by an involuntary heave from the bottom of his stomach.

He felt the quelled shudder like a bump under his frog as it reversed direction, scraping down his esophagus until it landed in the pit of his stomach and began to smolder like a burnt-out coal.

That was the only warm part of him. The acid reflux sitting, unsettled, in his gut.

Because in his chest, beneath the hoof he held there for dear life for so little as some backwards hope that it would magically resolve itself, there was only cold.

Two souls.

There was the realization, and if that hadn't been enough to just stop what remained of his fractured heart like the merciless twist of a poisoned dagger, the following thought, first on its tail, was enough to restart it with a unsettled, juddering inhale.

It hadn't been a dream.

His hoof sank from his chest with a jerk and slammed to the floor, used in a moment of pure maxed-out adrenaline as a pivot to push himself up and around—except the sudden overflow of sheer desperation that flashed across every one of his senses at once was by no means enough to make Light Flow anywhere near sure-hooved. As surely as he was frightened, he was clumsy, and as he scrabbled on three hooves to throw his entire body in a turn, his anchoring hoof slipped.

As had his hoof, Light crashed into the floor chin-first with his hindlegs flying up behind him—granted, to his credit, facing opposite to where he'd started. From there—though it took a moment for his brain to catch up—his back somehow bent in, bringing all the weight of his dangling haunches down on his already aching shoulders.

Ouch.

Through the clenched line of his jaw, Light breathed out a tired sigh, oddly content for a moment to rest on his chin and chest with his lower body bent above him like the letter C, though the wash of zen in the midst of his current storm only lasted for as long as it took for his stomach to fall to the floor with a wince-inducing whump.

His legs spread straight out around him, he blinked dazedly into the shadows under his bed, finding... light spilling out across the floor from the other side. It took a moment to register through the muted shock of his acrobatic acts, but as soon as it did, he sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes went wide with realization.

He was right. His first panicked theory that had leapt through his mind too quickly to process had been right, and as he forced his throbbing legs to get over themselves and support him, he'd already mentally prepared for confirmation by the time he curled a hoof around his bedpost to propel himself across its width and past the other side to see...

...a greyish soul, a little bit larger than the size of a cherry, gently bobbing in the air above the floor beside his bed.

For the first moment, Light wanted to scream—perhaps in joy, or maybe it was unbridled horror, though the urge passed with a single breath out, and it seemed as though he'd missed his chance. Then came the urge to just... leap forward and retake the wayward existence that had wandered from its rightfully misappropriated home.

He almost did. With its ever-shifting light casting a low, refracting light into the oppressive dark—the only point of light in the room—what he could only describe as the beginning cravings of an unsated addiction within him were nearly agitating enough to sway his unsteady hoof to just move.

It was the cold that compelled him—that screamed for satiation—but it was Light that abjectly hesitated.

And it was Light that took a deep breath in, held it, then let it out as he took a quiet step forward.

He approached the lonely soul on its own in so little as two more steps, only deigning to stare in conflicted pity down at it for a moment before he stooped to lower a hoof towards it. As his hoof crept in, a sudden rush of desire swept through him, and if it had been any other day... he just might've lost control.

But when he closed his eyes, barely an inch away from touching what he so needed, the overpoweringly fond memory of warm fur on his under an orange sunset flashed before him, and the urge... didn't seem so bad.

When he opened his eyes, straightening once more on three legs, his stolen soul of a squirrel floated above his outstretched hoof before him. Detached, alone, and so innocent.

Watching how its core danced and swirled with its still-magnificent streams of light, even for just a squirrel, Light couldn't help but sigh. It genuinely hurt him to be so close, and to not just take it. Even as he stood there with it literally within his grasp, he couldn't believe he had the willpower to continuously abstain.

He felt twitchy. Squirmy. Like his skin was loose and unfitting, and beneath the writhing, itching insects filling his veins, his heart was beginning to freeze and blacken. No lifeblood beyond pus and sludge.

He could swear its beat was slower, and that what was pulsing through his veins was somehow less.

This was what it was like to have two souls. Like everything was grey and... he wasn't... right.

Incomplete. Inordinate. Sluggish.

Broken.

Something occurred to him, though a smile did not rise on his face, nor was the feeling much like satisfaction.

All the same, at least he was clear-headed.

He turned, keeping his hoof steady in his amble toward the bedroom door with his newly lost treasure held close enough to his chest that he felt his fur warm with every staggered step. He pushed the door open with his shoulder, swinging it back to knock quietly against the wall as he stalled in the doorway to stare into the dark.

Standing there in the in-between, with his path only barely lit by the kaleidoscopic iridescence of his lost soul, a stray resemblance crossed his stilled mind. A bit of dramatic prose to lift his wandering spirit.

He was like a wanderer in the void standing at the edge of the abyss. As he took his first step towards that which should never be found, he had no idea whether his hoof would find the floor or if he'd careen to his doom.

But it did, as did the next. He made his way to his destiny in the dark.

Unimpeded.

He ferried his escaped soul across the way to his desk with a silent frown on his face, feeling it grow deeper as he drew up to his workstation and the barest edge of metal glinted in the pale light cast over it. In the back of his mind, a resemblance stuck to his passing thoughts like a clinging mote, though he quickly shook it off.

His approach slowed, nearly growing cautious as he stepped up to his askew chair from where he'd forgotten to push it in, sweeping his lidded gaze from the perpendicular plastic lid to the perfectly straightened pan sitting front-and-center in the middle of his workstation.

Sat within, just as he'd last left it, was the still and stiff body of a squirrel in a small, sticky puddle of dark blood.

The squirrel that he'd seen through the eyes of.

He pulled his chair out to better sit on with a quiet flicker of mana, jerking his seat forward twice to bring him closer to the edge of his barely-lit desk, where he finally lowered his hoof to let the demure ball of light gently float off above his notebook.

Some... insatiably greedy part of him bemoaned the loss as the soul regained a new equilibrium without him, but as he sat back to watch the condensed existence bob in the air for a moment, the incredulous nature of the situation was enough to bring a small smile to his face.

Though the expression died in its infancy as he turned to face his victim. There was really no point in mincing words: after the experience he'd had, he couldn't deny the furry little corpse that lay within his pastry pan was only there because of him. He'd killed it. He'd robbed it of its life.

And then he'd dared to take more. Not even its memories were safe from him.

However he wished it, nothing welled from his chest besides a dull throb of apathy, so Light let his head hang forward to rest on an outstretched hoof with a sigh. How cruel he was, unable even to pity the sorry creature whom he'd thoroughly exploited.

He could count himself lucky, at least, that he was continuing to learn more about Necromancy. In a way, it was actually kind of enraging to think that he'd made such a pivotal discovery not a week after he'd vowed to begin his exploration in earnest, when he'd spent the eight years prior doing absolutely nothing.

It was mostly heartening, though, and if he was only able to feel more than a blip of that emotion, he'd be well and truly ecstatic to make such a genuinely captivating discovery.

He'd not been robbed of his analytical sense, though, so he could appreciate his new... ability? Yes, his new ability was fascinating enough to warrant its own entire chapter in his notebook, and whenever he got around to testing it further, he'd surely pen it. At expository length.

On one hoof, he didn't want to jump to outrageous conclusions yet, but on the other, he knew logically that what he'd experienced had been far too vivid and consummate to fly as a dream. He didn't have dreams like that, where he walked in another's... paws? He surely didn't have dreams about being other species.

Not to mention the dream's memory wasn't fading; he could still clearly remember how he'd felt, what he'd been thinking, and even... the pain. Oh, he surely remembered how it'd felt to have his skull cracked open.

Like a scrambled sensation of fire spreading across his face as the burning air pressed in.

His free hoof very consciously rose to hover over a suddenly sore spot under the mats of his mane, while he fought the urge to seethe at a pain that wasn't even really there. Hopefully, that particular ghost would fade soon.

He vaguely remembered the plotlines of some of his more interesting dreams over the years—and he'd never forget his midnight meetings with Her—but it wasn't like him to hold onto minutia like that.

And... it just didn't feel like a dream. It hadn't felt at all like he'd even fallen asleep. From his recollection, he'd laid down, delved into his inner self, and then been shocked out. He had no way of telling—he'd broken all the clocks during his possession—but it'd only felt like half an hour or so. It was certainly still night.

He hadn't fallen asleep, and it hadn't been a dream. He'd... connected with the squirrel's soul.

He'd become the squirrel.

That thought, even with just two souls, was enough to spark an ember of scintillation within the cold dregs of his heart, and it helped him to rediscover his weary, wayward smile as he raised his head from his hoof. Peering down once more at the squirrel's rigid body, his expression edged so far as to seem like a grin as he laid his hoof down and leaned over the pan's edge.

"You really saw me as... a predator, huh?" he murmured into the quiet, lidding his eyes with scrutiny as they wandered idly from the squirrel's tail to its tip, stopping at its limp head and fully closing them to just remember. Its thoughts, translated so poorly into what he could understand. Its priorities. Its own blurry recollection.

From its eyes, he'd looked so dangerous. Powerful. Like a sharp-toothed threat stalking through the undergrowth, sure-hooved and self-assured in his every action. On the prowl for his unassuming prey.

Seeing himself like that... it made him feel so strong. Confident.

Fearsome.

If only his younger self had experienced this, he'd probably never have strayed from that whole villain schtick.

Maybe it wasn't too late.

He rose from the squirrel with a deep breath, finding some satisfaction in catching a whiff of the foggy scent of iron as he straightened. It was almost assuredly best that he'd not discovered he could do this until now. Who knew what depths of depravity he'd have delved chasing after other creatures' memories without the discipline he'd earned through all his extended suffering? He'd probably be an actual murderer by now.

...No, that was not something he should imagine fondly. Heavens, he had to get this thing over with and get that soul back in him before he devolved to aggrandizing a life of crime. He wasn't a foal anymore.

Light turned, keeping his posture straight and his head away from the tantalizing scent of blood as he focused back onto the erstwhile soul above his notebook. He stared for a moment, quirking a quiet chuckle out of the corner of his mouth as he willed his system to awaken, lighting his horn with a surge of mana that... huh.

He shook his head, keeping his suddenly tired eyes open with a flutter and a shaky breath in as a faded red light buzzed and flickered over the lonely corpse of the squirrel, before finally sputtering out and blooming to life anew. A deep sense of wear washed over him as he dropped his heavy head onto a hoof, blowing out a tired breath in time with an interesting pinch from somewhere within him while his horn remained defiantly lit.

That should not have been so hard. He'd managed, all in all, but wow—was that the way he confirmed whether possessing souls somehow enhanced his magical ability? It'd been a theory on his mind that he'd been terrified of testing—it'd throw even more kindling on that possessive fire—and he really couldn't say whether it was even correct—could just be mana exhaustion—but if it was, then it was majorly disruptive.

He just hoped he had the strength left to do this.

He rose from his hoof, gnawing on his lip as he turned again to the soul and his notebook, eyeing one, then the other, before settling on the floating ball of light and reaching out with a tendril of mana to make contact. He went rigid—breathing in the flavor of acidic electricity—as his hold coalesced, making a concerted effort to not melt in the full-body pleasure of that delicious contact of warmth.

It was a removed tactile sensation, though, which he could confidently say was the sole reason he kept his focus steady enough to float the soul over to his right as his notebook lit with light and floated into the air after it. He kept the soul where it was, flipping the cover of the book over and glancing across the desk to find the pencil before he raised his attention to skim through the pages until blank white greeted him.

...Then something occurred to him, and though it cost a little more energy than he felt was probably necessary, he turned a page back to glance from the decent picture of the squirrel down to his neatish scrawl.

He eyed the pencil rising into the air, murmuring to himself for a moment before he pushed it forward.

Sex: I'm not checking Male

He had qualms with how he'd found out, but at least he hadn't had to check firsthoof.

He flipped to the first blank page, hovering the book and his utensil a little closer as he turned his attention back to the awaiting soul. The... missing part of him that it was suddenly very hard to stare at knowing what he was about to do, gleaming with its off-white light not quite smothered by a film of buzzy red.

Shifting... shining... swirling...

He sucked in a breath, forcing the dreamy stars of desire out with a blink as he straightened. Nope. No. He was not taking it back right now. It was out, he hadn't had to take it out, so he was going to capitalize.

Time for research.

He firmed his jaw, clearing his throat as his gaze fell again to land on the prone corpse. He glanced back to the soul, then to the squirrel as it floated gently forward, keeping his expression even and stoic as the two approached contact, though as it crept on, the wrathful need inside of him furiously railed against its cage.

He didn't want to relinquish it. He wanted it to go back in him, not the stupid squirrel. He needed it way more than it did; what was it even going to do with something so precious? Run around? Eat nuts? It didn't deserve such a wonderful gift. He did. It was his. It should've been going to him.

In the exact moment just before the soul made contact with its former owner, Light nearly gave in to his screaming urges of greed. In the back of his mind, he could so clearly see the world where he pulled away and reclaimed the soul for nopony but himself. He'd lie back, breathe out a sigh, and bask in the blissful warmth.

Everything would be better. He'd have the capacity for true joy again, and though he'd stall in his research on Necromancy, it wouldn't be forever. He'd just wait for a better time, and in the meantime, he could enjoy his life for once. He'd love his marefriend, tolerate his friends, and forget all about that stabbing cold.

It may have been the single thought he'd had in the meantime that compelled him to push forward.

He wasn't doing this for the squirrel. This was still for him.

The soul and the squirrel were his.

He wasn't losing anything.

He was only gaining.

With only the slightest bit of resistance, the soul made contact with the squirrel's unmoving side, pushing past its fur and sinking through its form as the phantom sense of grip in the backs of his eyes peeled away with every inch inward. He watched with wide, unblinking eyes, barely able to spare thought for breathing besides the spectacle of the corpse's side blurring into nonexistence behind the still-visible soul stuck halfway into its body.

Even as the soul sunk into the squirrel—pushed through by a twinkling sheen of red on one side—he could still see the orb inside of it. Of course, he was always able to do that, but with such an unnatural contrast struck in the in-between, it really looked as though there must've been some big hole in the corpse.

Until the soul slipped a bit further in, and he was reminded that he needed to cross his eyes a bit to distinguish the soul from the fur it was under. It'd used to give him a headache seeing through other creatures, but he'd acclimated throughout his life. It was massively jarring to see the phenomenon introduced, though.

It wasn't until there was a little less than a quarter of the soul left that something occurred to him, and he bit back a curse with a heavy swallow as three thoughts collided at once in his head. He looked to the pan's lid at his side, then his notebook, then back to the squirrel as the last few wisps of grey embers trailed from the soul's retreating tail and smothered in the air as it sunk fully in.

A heady rush of focus hit him as he kept his eyes squarely on the soul beginning to tremble within the still squirrel, grasping around to his side with a newly freed trail of mana to pick the lid up and haphazardly flip it onto the pan as he raised his pencil to where he could see it in his peripheral.

He cast his gaze down for a moment as he reared forward to press the lid shut with a click, scratching out a title on the page and raising his eyes just in time to see the light of the corpse-laden soul begin to brighten.

He had a strange sense of foreboding all of a sudden.

At first, it was almost unnoticeable, perhaps just a lumen or two brighter. Then it began to shine, and at seeming response, something within him twinged. The twinge became an itch, and the itch became a burn under his suddenly shaking hoof clasped to the fur over his heart.

The burn, beginning to smolder and smell like brimstone in his nose, rose from his chest to his throat, then to his eyes as Light grit his teeth, only managing to stay upright by virtue of his hoof falling from his chest to support him as he kept his eyes on the corpse—no, the squirrel as a single claw on its unmoving paw twitched.

It hurt like a searing brand, and the hurt was rising from where it had stalled behind his eyes—blurring with the growing light of the soul—to his head, where it was beginning to pound as though he had a fever.

He couldn't comprehend what was happening, all the less so with how his whole body was starting to feel like he'd been dunked in a boiling pot. Was this in response to... what would this even be in response to?! How could putting a soul in something else have an effect on him?! Was it just because it'd been in him? Because he was the one who'd put it in? Just because he was nearby?!

Everything was getting fuzzy. He'd dropped his notebook to the desk, and at some point, he'd thrown his pencil aside with a far-off clatter. He could barely keep his head up or his eyes open, but he still wanted to watch.

This was his first resurrection. He wouldn't be denied his life's fulfillment.

Every breath was a massive effort—an agonized pant—and for every second that passed with his head burning like a torch had been taken to his mane and his eyes stinging in the now-overpowering corona of light that was a previously dim soul, he rapidly oscillated from uncertain states of being sure that he'd pass out or just die.

In the midst of his fever, he was taken back in rending throbs of pain to a million scattered points of familiarity.

Brown bark, the hard floor under him, and poison burning his system from the inside out.

A shapeless blob of light that revealed itself as the moon, lacking a shadow for the first time in recorded history, and there was something warm running from his nose.

A tepid argument. The laughing of foals. A muggy atmosphere choking him. The setting sun. A foggy canyon.

The corpse of a green pegasus. The growl of wood scraping together. His nerves erupting into fire.

Closing his eyes. Stepping forward. The deafening rush of wind battering his flailing body.

A hot flash of pain, and it all swept away.

And it all swept away.

Light jerked his head up with a deep inhale that filled his lungs from their bottoms to their tops, searching out his surroundings in a panic that was so immediately familiar that—heavens above he'd passed out again.

His head shook on its own as the world reasserted itself, revealing the chair under him, the desk before him, the dark around him, and his senses free of pain. It only took a few moments after he was assured of his physical wellness to quell his frantic heart, but that was probably just because of his recent familiarity with the situation.

He wasn't fond of that sentence.

For all the places he cast his eyes to, it seemed truly contrived that he'd looked seemingly everywhere except the pan, as he realized the moment he laid eyes upon it and its occupant. The moment he did—the very instant he saw the squirrel—something... shifted in his head, and the still-prone side of the animal shivered.

Under its fur, the freshly dimmed light of its soul began to twinkle.

His hoof flew to his head as the whole body of the squirrel seemed to clench in what he was suddenly sure was a first breath, and the uncertain presence in the shallow waters of his mind intensified from what he could only describe as the internal feeling of a tug.

His lip drew back in resultant confusion, while his eyes remained fixated on the animal as its paw stretched out and scraped against the pan's bottom as the rest of its body began to shake and heave. Its soul, still in motion from his first glance, was already beginning to gradually restart its continuous motion, spinning and pulsing as its innards whorled in a frenzy of modulation.

At the instant that it blinked its eye open and focused on him, and he could read the pure, animalistic agony within that deadened black gaze as its soul spun at once into a hue of painful red, three thoughts came to him.

One: that he'd done nothing to heal the squirrel and that it had been undergoing rigor and livor for hours.

Two: that looking at the squirrel made the weird feeling in his head solidify.

Three: that it was alive and he'd made it so.

He had a lot more thoughts after that, but the following moments gave him little time to explore them all.

A second passed of the squirrel's beady eye staring him down, though it only took a second before its body curled out amidst the numerous squeamish sounds of snapping muscles as a shrill screech mutedly emanated from within the closed pan, which thankfully seemed to shock his stilled brain from its inaction.

"Crap—my notes!" he cursed out loud as he tore his gaze from the former corpse's lively spectacle and its suddenly frantically spinning soul, lighting his horn with as much insistence as he could to lift the book from under his sluggish hooves.

He bent his head away from the rising notebook, actively casting the light of his horn about his desk in a search for the pencil he'd lost as he continued to murmur fitfully to himself—all the while feeling his panic at being unprepared grow as the scratching noise of frantic activity escalated from within the pan in front of him.

He was letting himself down. He was an idiot. He was blowing his first resurrection. Pencil. Where? Pencil?

The pan shifted away with a thump, and Light bit a much more severe curse into his lip as he threw his attention from his desk to the faux cage. The squirrel was standing, crouched at the back corner of the pan with its beady eyes fixed on nothing at all and its grossly discolored sides flush with too-rapid breaths. For all that he had seen of terrified animals, this one's recently gifted soul was in the highest caliber of frenetic, and so muddled.

That answered a lot of questions, and he needed to record the answers.

"It must've fallen on the freaking floor," he growled at the squirrel, seeming stuck in perpetual life-or-undeath panic, before he raised his focus to the mess at the back of his desk. He physically reached forward, jostling the pan a bit closer and hopefully freaking the squirrel out as he placed his notebook down and ran through a few rapid mental paces. Gritting his teeth and bracing for the drain, he wished himself good luck as he pushed mana through his system to bead as a speck of glowing red light from the tip of his horn.

It felt nice to properly cast the Spark spell, even though it was the second spell usually taught to foals and therefore very basic. Either way, the floating wisp gently wafted forward at his mental insistence, casting its decently illuminative light over the cowering animal in the pan and to the wall, sticking there and continuing to shine as he searched out the surface below it.

There. A pencil.

He smothered the flowing stream of energy within him and the light it was powering, bringing the more familiar internal path of Levitation to bear with a victorious smile. He grasped the pencil from where it was stuck in the junction of two books pressed spine-to-spine in the next instant, leaning back into his chair with the utensil in tow as he raised his notebook once again.

He didn't waste any time, letting his pencil bring the steady stream of thoughts in his backlog to life on the page.

Subject C: Reanimation

Obsv. 1.: Following Subject B's sudden egress from my body, I followed through with its reintroduction to Subject A in my first recorded attempt at creating a reanimated being, heretofore globally termed Subject C. There was an initial amount of resistance* between Subject B and Subject A, likely due to the soul's partially physical existence.

*This confirms that souls do not only physically interact with a Necromancer, but introduces the question whether said interaction is facilitated by perception. Further argumentation and testing required.

Obsv. 1. Cont.: In the process of reintroduction, the soul remained wholly visible throughout, and did not result in any transitory reaction from Subject A. Following total assimilation, Subject A remained unresponsive up until an unknown sensation* began to well from inside of me and Subject B began to brighten, following which Subject A visibly twitched, though it is as yet unknown whether this was an initial sign of its transformation into Subject C. Both phenomena continued to escalate until I lost consciousness for an unknown period of time, causing the proceeding events to go unobserved.

*Said sensation began innocuously inside my chest, but grew hot and painful as it rose to my head. From my experience thus far, everything involving Necromancy causes great pain, as does everything else in my life.

He was a fairly speedy writer, but as it was, by the time a new scrabbling noise rose to prominence before him, he had to write a few lines without looking as he diverted his attention to the squirrel. He forced a throaty hum up through a thick, cottony wad as he found the squirrel had finally moved from its terrified position to the side of the pan, pressing its head uselessly against the lid and scratching fitfully at the seam that held it into place.

He glanced down at his scrawl as he finished the last sentence of his first observation, scowling at the messy hornwriting before he looked up to watch the squirrel retreat from the pan's left side to scurry to the right. Watching it move, it was clear to see that it was hobbling in an odd, scampering limp, and that the left side of its body in motion was far slower than the right. Even its good side was clumsy and slow, though.

As his lingering eyes identified, it left a blotchy red smear on the part of the lid where it had pressed its face.

"You know there's no escape, right?" he murmured with his lidded eyes still on the bloodstain, casting them to the side until the increasingly tumultuous quaver in his head calmed at the sight of the squirrel trying its new trick on the other side of the pan.

For a moment, he almost expected it to turn and look at him.

It didn't, of course, and the anticipatory sense of action in his head grew restless once more as the squirrel ceased its foolish attempts and hunched into itself, staring blankly at the wall as it trembled and made its aggravating keening noises. He watched it for another quiet moment before he shook his head with a scoff, turning back to the page and erasing the last lines of chicken scratch so he could rewrite them.

Obsv. 2.: Upon my awakening, it remained unclear whether Subject B's reintroduction into Subject A had caused the creation of Subject C. Upon visual contact, however, the formerly deceased subject took a breath and began to move, signifying the reanimation process had been successful. As yet, its behavior shows no signs of abnormalities for a squirrel in its situation, though that means very little. Further questions about the existence and recollection of an Undead must wait for a sapient subject.

Obsv. 3: Following resurrection, Subject C continued to breathe with regularity, though it is unknown whether this is due to habit or an actual vital process. Confirmation will be recorded following the deprivation of air in the subject's container. Additionally, its movements have been noticeably beleaguered, most predominantly relating to the left side of its body. As that was the side it was left to undergo livor, it is likely that its internal structures have been affected to the point of sluggishness.

Obsv. 3. Cont.: There should be a great many deficiencies within the subject's body, such that movement should be impossible, yet it has remained animated. This lends credence to the theory that Undead are able to persist despite their body's physical state, though it raises questions about the limiting threshold of damage, and whether Undead are able to process pain.

He raised his attention for a moment, finding Subject C—the squirrel, he meant, to have moved to the middle of the container to futilely press its paws up against the lid. His gaze stilled on its heaving sides, likely a sign of hyperventilation. It'd been breathing that since he'd resurrected it.

It wouldn't be long now.

He didn't bother to smile or anything so deranged, only humming to himself thoughtfully before dropping his attention back to his notes. It was just a waiting game until it did something interesting.

Obsv. 4.: Subject B has regained all the typical characteristics of any living creature's soul without any seeming anomalies. As has been observed previously, souls do not drastically alter their benign behavior following forced removal from their natural place, and this fact seems to hold true upon reintroduction, though it has regained emotional tells at the least. Although my experience earlier in the night raises questions about the soul's existence, the current information available is not sufficient enough to make any further educated guesses.

Obsv. 5.: Alongside the resurrection of Subject C, the formerly painful sensation that had accompanied the following moments of Subject B's reintroduction quelled to a benign presence* within my head. The feeling has not abated, however, and has, in fact, continued to vary in intensity based on as-yet unconfirmed stimuli. It has been empirically observed to coalesce into a physical feeling of attraction based on my personal perception of Subject C, appearing to grow unsettled if unobserved.

*The presence is unlike either Nightmare Moon or the voice that came after Her, existing both within and without my mind. It is most like the feeling of being watched has evolved into a direct sense of an outlying presence, growing more prevalent if visual contact is achieved.

Obsv. 5. Cont.: Though proof has yet to be established, Necromancy is a highly subjective school, and so my current prevailing theory is that my resurrection of the subject has established some kind of connection between us. It is unknown whether Subject C feels this connection or whether this merely signifies that I am the progenitor of its current existence, and so this theory may have to wait until the resurrection of a subject which can speak. At the current moment, it seems undeniable that this creature owes its life to me, and by that token, without me, it may no longer have the means to live. This lends credence to the possibility that, were I to expire, anything I resurrect would expire as well.

What a curious notion. If he didn't feel so emotionally deadened, it'd probably make him feel dreadful.

He raised a creased expression to the squirrel, wondering for a moment if...

...huh.

His conflicted expression melded into mild shock as he came to witness the squirrel standing once more upright, but instead of pressing against the lid for escape, it now had a paw raised to its head as it clawed at the newly glistening spot of red there.

It had discovered the blow he'd inflicted to incapacitate it.

Light pursed his lips, flipping his pencil around to knock the eraser against his jaw as the poor, undead animal continued to push its nails against the opening in its head. He pushed the pencil up against his lip as his jaw drifted slightly open, chewing on the pink end in morbid fascination as the gruesome spectacle before him further devolved to a rather frantic scratching, as though it were being spurred on.

"You... probably shouldn't do that," he advised the squirrel from out of the corner of his mouth, but in a seeming bid to defy him, the squirrel hunched further into itself as its self-clawing grew jagged. Violent. Before, its motions had been cautious, in a way, but now it seemed urgent. It raked its claws over its own increasingly gummy flesh again and again as its pitiful, muffled cries grew louder and more deeply distressed.

Light only watched, feeling so detached from its plight even as it jerked back with a squeal as tatters of fur and frayed flesh floated to the ground amidst a spray of revitalized blood painting the pan's floor.

It was chiefly interesting.

He watched the squirrel writhe around the pan for another moment as a new spring of blood thoroughly ruined its fur and his cookware, before he finally let the end of his pencil out of his mouth and spun it around to its lead.

Obsv. 6.: It is highly likely at this point that Subject C can feel pain, if even a facsimile. It was witnessed clawing at its mostly closed head injury in a seeming fit of animalistic madness, undeterred but undeniably disturbed by its state, as it continued until the removal of a not-unsubstantial portion of its flesh and the full reopening of its wound. Judging by its subsequent motions of agony, there is little doubt it has not lost the ability to feel pain at the least.

Obsv. 6. Cont.: It was additionally observed exhibiting signs of fear, shock, and panic, all of which beg the question of whether these emotions are genuine or simple habit. Its capacity for pain, at least, suggests the theory that the soul may retain these memories in such vivid quality that they are able to be substituted on behalf of the brain and the nervous system, as those processes are in an unknown state following Subject A's limited decomposition. Barring a grave philosophical turn, it is unknown how these theories may-

Light happened to glance up in a half-interested stupor between pencil strokes, though he was shocked enough to trail off a sentence entirely as his pencil slowed to a halt and his focus gradually dimmed to his subject.

It had stopped moving, laying on its side where he'd last seen it in a fresh puddle of its blood.

Its soul was... stilled. Beginning to darken.

A genuine pang of concern stabbed through him as, in his first thought, one of his most interesting hypotheses may have just been disproven. If the squirrel died from something so paltry as blood loss, then what did that mean for the all-encompassing existence of the soul? What about his unkillable undead?

As he stared in mortified disbelief, though, his zeroed-in focus caught a subtle twitch from the former corpse, bringing a solid wave of comforting relief washing over him. He raised himself to grasp at the pan's edges with his hooves, shuffling it closer and staring more deliberately at the squirrel to see what it was doing.

It was still, but not as still as he'd initially thought: its chest was still rising and falling, but kind of... erratically, and its paws were twitching and grasping at nothing by its sides. With every half-awake motion, its deadened eyes fluttered with obvious weakness, the poor thing.

He worked his jaw in thought for a moment before he nodded to himself, and gently shook the pan in his grasp. Once, and the squirrel went still once more, then he did it again to roll it over onto its back.

It didn't move from there, continuing to lay where it'd been jostled. Beneath its ruffled, bloodstained fur, the halted motion of its previously frenetic soul was by and large the second most interesting thing happening, as the longer he stared, the dimmer its light grew. It was almost... blackening.

He'd never seen such a color. Was that because it was undead, or was it just a foreign emotion? If so, then which?

Maybe it was despair.

It'd run out of air, after all.

A smile wormed its way over his face as he straightened, pulling the pan closer once more to tower over it and watch, with bated breath, what would become of the creature. He didn't know what was going on inside his undead squirrel, but if its heart was beating all this time, then without the precious air it needed to oxygenate the blood he also couldn't confirm was rushing through its veins, would it stop?

Undead could feel pain, but could they die?

Not be killed—that wasn't what he was asking—he wanted to know if they could expire.

Would it lose its soul?

The seconds ticked by, turning to minutes slipping down the drain as he sat and stared, and the squirrel sat and squirmed. He wanted to say it was disconcerting to watch it wheeze for breath it couldn't have and squeak out the pitiful noises of its lungs bubbling with acid, but he'd be lying. It was so enthralling.

This was an undead, and every moment that it clawed at the metal through its own blood pooled around it was another moment that should've been impossible. This was the natural limit nature placed on the living: the vital processes that made all things possible.

The brain allowed for thought, and the heart, among other things, supplied the brain its precious blood, and that blood was only ripe because the lungs supplied the body with air. Without air, the body would fail.

But Necromancy made the impossible possible.

And after counting the seconds of five minutes, his smile grew wider.

Because the squirrel was still gaping and gasping for air, kicking its flimsy little legs out in pitiful desperation.

And its soot blackened soul hadn't budged an inch.

Light let himself fall back onto his hocks, throwing his hooves up and letting out a resounding sigh of satisfaction as he crossed them behind his head. Oh, how wonderful! The squirrel hadn't suffocated or undergone serious brain damage after the time it really should've, which meant it probably couldn't die!

Not from air deprivation, anyway, which was dire enough to have some radical implications!

He leaned off his celebratory stance, leaning once more into the desk to push the pan back to where it'd been so he could make room for his notebook. Speaking of it, he turned to where he'd left it beside the pan to lift it and his pencil, casting a last cursory glance to the perpetually choking squirrel before he returned to writing.

It was alive, but it hadn't moved in all the time he'd been staring, so it was probably okay to ignore it for a minute.

He had all the time in the world.

Obsv. 7.: Subject B was observed dimming in luminosity and color as Subject C ran out of air, fading from a bright grey to a dark shade of black. Otherwise, it has displayed a drastic reduction in vibrance and motion, and although the lines of light which comprise its makeup continue to shift, it is largely incomparable to the average. Additionally, rather than the typical hueing* which emotional states present as, Subject B's blackening has completely replaced its former color; the lines themselves have taken on this new appearance.

*It is possible that this change in color is as benign as all emotional states are, and that this dim shade of black only appears so stark due to its nature. However, I have never witnessed any other soul adapt this behavior, and I would further question which emotion black would represent. The most forthcoming answer seems to be despair, or perhaps a breakdown of its sense of self.

Obsv. 7. Cont.: It would be hasty to presume that either change in state undergone by Subject B was caused by reanimation, though it remains a possibility. In actuality, the relative unknowns present within the situation completely obscure any possibilities under a veil of equal opportunity; there is simply no method currently available to truly discern the cause amidst the situation's whole. If this happening does harken a fundamental difference in principles based on resurrection, however, then my inquisitive mind gleefully boggles at the possibilities in spite of the added element of complexity in this research. A more vigorous array of testing is in order to uncover this mystery's root cause.

Obsv. 8.: I am now certain the nature of Undead causes them to strongly resist death. Subject C has been confined to a space in which no fresh air may be recycled, and after some time in captivity, it was no longer able to breathe. The subject was observed in visible agony, unable to support itself or move beyond the bare minimum; this lends credence to the theory that Undead can, in fact, feel pain. As it stands, the subject was left in a situation which should ordinarily have caused it to expire, yet even after a period of more than five minutes, its soul remained and it continued to live.

Obsv. 8. Cont.: As I write this, I can hardly contain the radical mixture of blending excitement and disappointment that suffuses me at this discovery. Air is a wholly basic need for mammals, and the prolonged lack of such should rightly cause the failure of several of the body's functions, yet the subject lives on. This points to the possibility that one or more—or all of the body's functions are unnecessary for an undead, as air deprivation should cause a great many unobserved deficiencies. It is, of course, undeniable that the subject is not able to properly function in this state, and it is saddening that its pain is real enough to cause shock, but that is a minor caveat at best.

Pain may be overcome. Death may not.

But now it can be.

Author's Note:

You know what makes me feel better about taking so long between chapters? Rites of Ascension—a phenomenal fic, by the way—updated a few days ago after nearly two years of inactivity.

At least my chapter is long. please don't yell at me for that joke, it was the only marginally funny thing I could think of, even if it's been a while since I read it. I adore RoA

Yeah, so, hi! Sorry for disappearing for a month for the billionth time. I really thought this chapter would be more forthcoming, but in the process, a lot of upheaval went on in my life. I've not been in a good place for writing.

To cut a long story short, my father was in the hospital for a week, and suffice to say, I'm still coming to terms with the implications of the whole... shebang. A lot of things have had to change because of it, and now I'm in a different position than I've ever been in before. I'm not gonna delve into all the sordid details, but just know that there's a reason I was gone for so long.

I do love writing, but that doesn't change the fact that it's hard. I need to remain extremely concerted and mentally fit to do it properly, and for a long while there, I really wasn't.

...Anyway, there's my tragic excuse/backstory taped on so that I don't get disapproving looks. I'd be really happy if you focus on the chapter and not my situation if you're going to write a comment, by the way. The only reason I put that exposition here is because this will impact my writing, and it's more likely to reach everyone's ears than if I put it in a blog. I'm not trying to garner pity—and I desperately hope it doesn't look that way.

This chapter's really big and exciting, so let's focus on that, because I put a lot of work into it.

You really don't know how happy I am to finally get us to what was supposed to be the focus of the story nearly three years ago, now. Weird, freakish experiments and lengthy exposition about Necromancy was what I always wanted to write, except my stupid sense of integrity took me by the throat and demanded that I flesh out the setting and the characters.

Another reason this took so long was that I really wanted to get all the details of this right and that everything was copasetic with my personal notes and hypotheses concerning Necromancy. I have certainly distilled the essence of the school down to a few, key points, and the events of this chapter epitomize most of them. I made sure of it.

First was the recollection Light went through. Now, as to avoid ruining the tension of the plot, I'm not going to confirm whether Light actually lived the squirrel's memory through meditation and synergizing with its soul, but he seems to think so. There have been a few hints of that sort of fugue in a few chapters before, when Light felt a bit of what Zecora did by mentally drawing close to her soul, but this would obviously be a drastic next step.

The implications for future endeavors are deliciously tantalizing, I'm sure we can all agree.

This also marks Light's first resurrection! Yippee! It only took 500k words!

Now, there's a lot about this situation that seemed muddled, given that the subject is a squirrel, and all. Without means of communication or more thorough observation, much of the squirrel's state remains unclear. What is it really feeling? What are its internals like? Does it feel a reciprocal connection with Light?

That was something else: Light was able to, in a sense, feel the squirrel. That was very confusing! If it is how he thought: that resurrection inspires some magical bond between the subject and the Necromancer, then what does that imply? Is it like a tracking device? Can he exert his will over it? To what extent are they connected, and can the squirrel feel it? Why did Light pass out?

These are the kinds of questions that we need a subject that can speak to answer.

Necromancy is, in the end, an extremely subjective school. So far, Light is having to base all of his theories off of the unrealistic fiction he read as a foal and whatever turgid emotions are bubbling up from inside him. Without concrete readings or a large data set, any theories postulated are subjective and shaky at best. As things progress, it's important to keep an open mind, just as Light is attempting.

Hypotheses are made to be disproven, after all.

Comments

[jaceblackfire]

Always glad to see a chapter from you! And while I've loved all the plotlines so far, we are Finally back to some real necromancy! You love to see it. Love the analytical style Light is taking, it's always something I've wanted to see expanded upon anytime it's brought up.

[JinxTJL]

11847862
D'aw, thanks jace! I'm always glad to see you!

Yeah, I'm big into the whole faux-scientific style of prose Light was using here; it's the same syntax I strive to use in all my notes. It occurred to me that it might seem a little out of left field for our favorite overthinking grump, but then I figured Light was the sort to try really hard to seem smart in such a trivial way. Like me!

Plus there's the whole two souls thing—or, to be more accurate, getting used to three and then not being prepared for how it felt to have two despite him living for an extended period of time only having the two. That was another thing I was worried about translating well, but I suppose it worked out!

Anyway, he was feeling a little emotionally deadened, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to shoehorn a little heavy-handed jargon in and showcase some of Light's smarts! It's easy to forget besides all his posturing and fumbling that he is a major nerd, and unlike me, he knows enough about anatomy and whatnot from his troubled youth that he doesn't need the helping hand of google! 'cause I'm definitely not a doctor or coroner, though neither is light. take everything he writes about with a grain of salt

And you don't need to worry, this is only the beginning. More and more magical nonsense is on the horizon!

Thanks for commenting, and for reading!

[ChakatRedstripe]

Awesome chapter, it's always nice to see a update.

[Oreng Pingvin]

It was a long chapter. I just finished reading it, although I like these types of chapters, but I myself am an answer from such lengths.
I really liked necromancy itself and how it was presented. I have never seen such a performance. The chapter itself is quite interesting from Light's side, and his mental health, his notes and reaction to the squirrel's condition seem a little crazy, although it is quite obvious for a necromancer.
Also, you shouldn’t rush or make excuses for writing deadlines. As a reader, I invest my time and attention because I enjoy the story and its presentation. I'm not sure how much you spend, but I tried writing and it was quite tiring for me, I'm not sure I could write 16 thousand words in a month.
Thank you

[Screw]

Happy or not, I want to at least acknowledge your situation.

I wish you and your close ones are well.

---

First necromancy! At last! In spite of how much he fumbles and almost lost his nerve releasing a soul. I suspect it gets easier to release a soul with quantity since the warmth and safety would not likely get exponentially alluring. Probably...

I vaguely remembered my last comment, but I believe it was along the lines that 'necromancy doesn't truly require a living or once-living thing to resurrect creatures. Bones are non-living. Rise of the skele-bois and all.

But, it seems that if the body once has a soul before, it is much simpler to let the soul self infuse the vaccant body. Almost like there is a soul shaped ephemeral hole that are not present anywhere but the once living.

The question is, what if Light encountered a non-living object with such property? How would he deal with an Annabelle doll equivalent?

Is it possible to just cram more than one soul in an entity that doesn't practice necromancy?

What about memories? Well... it was answered that the soul remembers their last moments. But could they remember all their memories, maybe even since birth?

Because that implies Light could just transplant a being to another. Would the zombie undeath remember the soul's life as well as their body's life? What about cutie marks too?

Unrelated, but not really, could Light Flow find souls that has long since parted from their body? Like his mom?

Because that blackening soul feels like it is more than just emotions alone. It could also mean a soul is fading emotionally and 'physically'. And this soul is probably being grounded from disappearing by whatever bond Light's magic did.

I like the idea that this squirrel ends up as Light's pet. Also probably much to his disappointment because it is very squirrely.

I love Light's journal entries. They kinda binds the story now.

[JinxTJL]

11852078
Screw, I am always so happy to see you, because your perspective is a massive help in shaping this story. That may seem ingenuine or a little cloying, but it's true: your thoughts and, to a just a bit of a lesser extent, everybody else's provide a great deal of clarity on how events could theoretically go.

Comparing alternate possibilities to what I already have in mind allows for a greater breadth of reason to how events unfold, and for how in my head I get in the process of writing, that's a truly invaluable gift.

So, thank you! Your comment helped me to realize that what I was going to make the next chapter about—and had already started on—would have been a terrible course of events! Truth be told, I was already on the fence, so your thoughts just kind of sealed the deal.

I just want you to know that all of your questions will be answered in future chapters—in the year 2025, at my sedate writing pace—but I want to draw your attention specifically to where souls go when they die. The answer was actually all the way back in chapter fifteen! According to one of the first books Light got—you know, those ostensibly fraudulent books that Nightmare Moon denounced—upon death, the soul is ferried to the Underworld!

...I came up with that about a week after I started writing, so yeah, it's uninspired, but I've already thoroughly expanded upon the concept in my notes! Let's just say... it's gonna be important. it's probably the arc I'm most excited for in the future

I'm writing this at midnight, so I'm just a little sleepy, and I can't think of anything else to mention! Thank you for reading, and for commenting, as usual!

also thank you for the well wishes. it's very kind of you

[hyperiumon]

Now I just gotta wait until he attempts to revive zercora but unfortunately that'll be awhile sadly. Now I wonder when light reanimated the squirrel does it keep its flesh until it eventually falls off, or does it just stay basically in suspended animation forever unless damaged or does it mean that it's a whole another process to remove flesh to make its a skeleton instead of a zombie thus maybe making it stronger and better but more "dumb" ? Just some speculation.

[hyperiumon]

11852078
Lights magic grounding their soul from leaving sounds crazy interesting. Just hope celestia doesn't find out somehow.

[Direct Access]

I'll be honest, it's a real doozie:
The book is great, amazing even, but because it gives me anxiety every time I really don't want to read it.

Like, is protagonist ever safe? Everything about him is under constant surveillance and malice from various forces, his relationships are shaky and his mind is unstable and infiltrated into a sieve.
The tension is killing me.
And his thought process is rollercoaster of paranoia, ego and indecisiveness. Moreover, writing style is immersive as heck.
If the story was from first perspective, it would be even worse.

What to do?