Urban Wilds

by Rambling Writer

5 - Reaching Beyond the Veil

Amanita knew that the Royal Guard probably had some sort of cache of various magical materials. If they wanted to test rituals, or enact their own, they needed ingredients, and it wouldn’t do to have to stop by the apothecary every Tuesday. No, they needed an official store of some sort. But she was picturing a dusty warehouse that was rarely touched and everything just sort of settled wherever.

Having a secured, well-organized storage wing/vault for paraphernalia on-site where you just needed to fill out the right form and you’d get whatever you needed in a few minutes, though, was something else. Code walked through the department with an automatic ease, snatching up certain forms without even looking at them, exchanging pleasantries with various clerks by name. The second she was sitting at a table, she was filling out those forms like a machine.

Amanita looked over Code’s shoulder at the current form and gawked at what she saw. “These are all the ingredients. You can just… give me phoenix down?”

Code didn’t look up as she scribbled away. “Celestia has had a phoenix for a pet for over four hundred years. Philomena, I think her name is?” (Her voice was shockingly clear for the pen in her mouth.) “And she’s been storing Philomena’s cast-off down since day one. Canterlot’s stores have more phoenix down than anywhere else in Equestria combined and tripled.” She finished one form, pushed it aside, and started on the next one. “She’s also promised to keep sending us down as Philomena’s life cycle continues.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t. If you need materials, we’ll get them for you.”

Don’t mention it, she said, while doing something Amanita would sing from the rooftops. In the north, she and Circe had always had to make do with limited resources, often spending a week to look for (say) just the right yew branch. And here was Code, casually signing away for three tufts of phoenix down, among other things. Oh, the joys of working within the system.

Code gave her last signature a flourish and set off to the requisitions desk. It was staffed by a bored unicorn using her pencil to bounce a little paper ball around. She glanced at Code as she approached, not missing a beat in her ball-bouncing. “Hey, Code.”

“Morning, Dunnage.” Code dropped the forms on the desk. “Could you get these ingredients for me?”

“Sure.” Dunnage let her ball drop as she whistled at the stack. “Lotta forms, even for you,” she said, picking them up. “And who’s your friend?”

Amanita opened her mouth, but Code quickly said, “Amanita. She’s a deputized necromancer.”

Dunnage twitched. She looked between the nervously-grinning Amanita and the expressionless Code, her ears slowly folding back. “What’s a necromancer doing here?” she asked in a low voice. “As a… deputy?”

“Necromancing,” Code said tonelessly. “And waiting on her paraphernalia.”

“…Wwwwwhy?”

“Because you feel the need to quiz me rather than doing your job.”

Dunnage looked at Code, at Amanita, at the stack of papers. She began looking through the forms; at first, she was just confused, but at some point she put everything together and her jaw dropped. She looked up at Code with big eyes.

“Yes, I’ve thought it through,” said Code firmly. Actually, there were less firm bridge stanchions. “If you think you know better, feel free to apply for my position. You’ll get a raise. As long as we’re not still waiting.”

Dunnage nodded jerkily and scurried off into the storehouse. Code sighed and rolled her eyes, putting a hoof on the handle of her sword in an incredibly aggressive fidget. Amanita looked at the floor, rubbing her hooves together in an incredibly unaggressive fidget.

Luckily, they didn’t have long to wait. In less than fifteen minutes, Dunnage returned with a filled set of saddlebags. As she levitated them over to Code, she said, “Uh… let me know how it turns out, will you?”

“Mmhmm. Thank you.” Code dropped the saddlebags across her trunk with the solidity of earth ponies and promptly left. Amanita followed, feeling Dunnage’s eyes on her every step of the way.

As they walked, Amanita fell back into old habits. Code’s fidget had reminded her of who she was, where she was. Slowly, doubts began to creep in. Did soldiers always have their weapons sheathed on base? Maybe. The only thing she knew about the military was that it was a good idea to stay away. And Code seemed… frank and intense at the same time. The kind of pony who didn’t feel the need to hide her actions. Who’d openly wear the sword she’d kill you with.

But Code had welcomed Amanita — and not blindly, either. She’d grilled Amanita on the ritual she’d use, personally looked it over, made it better. She’d defended Amanita’s motives before she even knew what they were. She’d gotten Amanita everything she needed to do her work and fended off doubters. All while staying professional to an absolute T. This was everything Amanita wanted and more.

Then again, if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

She couldn’t help herself. “Is that for me if I’m lying?” Amanita asked, pointing at the sword. “Be honest.”

Code stopped walking and kept looking straight ahead, flicking her tail. Then she turned to Amanita and said, without a trace of shame, “While I am ninety-nine percent sure you’re being honest, there’s always that one percent, and I’ve been burned before. My sword was silver-plated long before you arrived. I will not apologize for caution, but any anger you may have with me is justified.” Then she started walking again.

Amanita quickly trotted to catch up with her. “Well, um, actually,” she said, “if it is for me, it means you’re taking me seriously. Like, all of me, including my past and-”

She cut herself off before her babbling got worse. It was a screwy situation, but one she felt weirdly pleased by. Code was taking her skills seriously. Code was taking her terrible past seriously. And Code was taking her desire to change seriously. And Amanita liked all of that. Seriously. At least she wouldn’t need to worry about slipping back too far.

“-I mean, um, thank you,” Amanita mumbled.

Code didn’t stop, but her pace wobbled a little. “…You’re welcome.”

They wound their way through the building, Code moving with such a purpose Amanita got the feeling she’d walked this route plenty of times before. Luckily, reaching the morgue didn’t take long. Code rapped lightly on the door. “Escharia! You in there?”

The unicorn who opened the door was a deep purplish-blue with eyes that seemed a bit too big for her head. She had quite a bit of mane, although since she was on the job, it was tied up in a hairnet that seemed almost the size of her head. Amanita thought the pony was smoking until she had a closer look and realized what she’d assumed was a cigarette was actually a lollipop stick.

“I am indeed. Mornin’, Code. Mornin’, Pony Whose Name I Don’t Know,” said the mare, nodding in greeting. Her voice was only slightly muffled from the lollipop. “It’s still morning, right? Ain’t looked at the clock in a while.” A shrug. “Ah, well. What can I do you for?”

“About ten minutes. Thirty, max,” said Code. “Amanita, this is Doctor Escharia. Escharia, Amanita. She’s an outside expert.”

“Hey,” Amanita said tentatively.

“Pleased to meetcha.” Escharia gave a sort of casual salute and stepped aside to let them in. “Can’t say it’ll stay that way, but benefit a’ the doubt, eh?” She chuckled.

Laughing weakly, Amanita stepped into the morgue and the voidic smell of sterility assaulted her muzzle. Somehow, knowing bodies were approaching decomposition around her, it felt wrong; death needed to smell like death. She shuddered at what that said about her. Trying to divert her attention, she looked around. The morgue was an ordinary morgue, with hard, easy-to-clean surfaces and several gurneys and a chilly atmosphere from the coolers. With so much ordinariness, Amanita found her constantly being drawn back to Escharia’s lollipop. She couldn’t help herself. “Should… you be eating…” She pointed.

Escharia shrugged. “Helps fight the gag reflex if I smell something terrible.” She closed her mouth; the stick rotated around as she sucked. “Also tastes good. If you’re gettin’ prime lollipops…” She whistled. “Ain’t nothin’ like it. Want one? I got plenty.”

“N-no thanks,” said Amanita.

“I’ll have one when we leave,” said Code. “Can we see the victim that came in yesterday morning?”

“Cobalt Shine? Sure, but we didn’t find nothin’ wrong with her.”

Escharia rolled the body out from the cooler on a gurney and unzipped the body bag. Cobalt Shine was a thirtysomething unicorn with a hard gray coat and a still-glistening black mane. Her hooves had been polished semi-recently, as well as her horn; Amanita knew from experience that giving your horn that shine was far more a fashion choice than a practical one. A Y-shaped incision had been made across Cobalt’s trunk for the autopsy, although over a dozen stab wounds along her body clearly showed what had killed her. Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t look like she was sleeping; she looked dead. Even if you only focused on her face, she was strange, waxy, and far too still.

It was disturbingly familiar to Amanita.

It started small. A ritual here, bits of bone there, a strangled raven here, a hidebound book there. Gross? Yes. Illegal? Almost definitely. But Circe still called Zinnia back, so Amanita didn’t care.

It helped that Zinnia was so happy. She loved being with Amanita. She gushed about oh, how great it was that even death couldn’t keep them apart. She sang Circe’s praises, how smart that pony was, how kind she was to be doing this for Amanita. Given her previous acceptance of her impending death, it should’ve been suspicious. But Circe still called Zinnia back, so Amanita didn’t care.

As Amanita learned her bits and bobs, Zinnia stopped being a favor and started being a carrot on a stick. Not obviously, of course, but Circe stopped saying, “When yer done with ’er, could y’copy these fer me?” and started saying, “Copy these fer me firs’.” Amanita chalked it up to her being more Educated and Responsible. Like the adult she was supposed to be. But Circe still called Zinnia back, so Amanita didn’t care.

One night, Circe had them pack up and head north from Vanhoover into the glacial wilderness. “I think yer ready fer some more… compre’ensive instruction,” she’d said. “But, y’know these narrow-minded ignorami. Can’t stand a whiff o’anythin’ that ain’t squeaky-clean. Gotta keep this all hush-hush, y’hear?” And so she took Amanita far away from any sane ponies, far away from law and order, far away from help. But Circe still called Zinnia back, so Amanita didn’t care.

Circe brought an aged corpse over one night. A hermit, found dead of old age in his shack, or so she said. It was stiff and pallid and Amanita nearly vomited when she saw it up close and smelled it. “Get a grip, ya pansy,” Circe snapped. “You’ll be seein’ these a lot more soon.” She took the body and did something that made Amanita’s stomach turn and then the corpse was unpacking their bags at Circe’s command.

Even Amanita couldn’t ignore that for long. “Isn’t making a thrall evil?”

Circe snorted. “Don’t listen t’the mainstream, ’course it ain’t. Jus’ makin’ a dead body do some work. Ain’t like somepony’s usin’ it. ’Sides, it don’t mind. Ain’t that right?” And the thrall nodded. Of course he would. He was a thrall. But he washed and cooked and cleaned, so Amanita didn’t care.

With their new help, they started moving around a lot more. Every now and then, Circe would find another poor soul who apparently couldn’t handle the north. Even though they clearly could. After a while, she stopped making excuses and would simply return to their camp with another dead body. But those servants made life easy, so Amanita didn’t care.

Circe started teaching more advanced necromantic theory. The ways an ingredient could be used. The proper runic sentences. The symbolism behind every action. Rituals that were less effective than normal but only needed spit and prayers to work. The sacrifices required — both metaphorical and literal. The energies they channeled and shaped. After a bit of token moral resistance, Amanita began drinking it up. She studied, even when she didn’t need to, burning candles made from leftover tallow at midnight to read. Examining body after body up close. Making theories, testing them when she could. Asking questions. She couldn’t call up Zinnia herself yet, but she was getting there. Circe began smiling, praising Amanita’s skill. It was nice. The only pony who’d wanted her around before was Zinnia. And so Amanita plunged deeper and deeper into the miasmatic bog. But she was invested, so Amanita didn’t care.

One night, while they were camped on the outskirts of a rundown village, Circe dragged a bound pony into their campsite, both of them bloodied. Before Amanita could ask a single question, Circe dropped a bounty poster on the ground. Theft, assault, arson, murder, worse. The picture matched the mare exactly.

“I think it’s time y’got real,” Circe said. “Y’been dabblin’ in necromancy, but y’need t’swim.” She tossed Amanita a long, recently-sharpened knife. “Kill ’er.”

The request shocked Amanita far less than it should’ve. She looked between the knife and the outlaw. “Really? What if somepony notices?” To think that was her objection.

Circe shrugged. “No one’ll miss ’er. See ’ow much they’re askin’ fer her?”

The mare was a violent thug, true. That didn’t stop her from weeping until her muzzle was stained, from whimpering around her gag, from weakly straining against her bonds, from clearly pleading for mercy as best she could. As reprehensible as she was, she was, right then, pitiable.

But Circe had told her it was okay, so Amanita didn’t care.

She was yanked back to reality when Escharia said soberly, “Cobalt Shine. They found her early yesterday morning. Forensics thinks she died ’round midnight.” A sigh. “Don’t know what she was doing out that late, ’specially after seven murders, or how she’d gotten ’round the curfews.”

“I read the report. She was working late and her home neighborhood was some distance from the other deaths,” said Code. “Perhaps she felt safer. However, she was found some distance from her home and her wife didn’t know why, so I can’t say for certain.”

“Hmm. Cryin’ shame, at any rate.”

“Yeah,” Amanita said quietly. The funny thing was, she actually felt that way. For too long, whenever she saw a body, she’d only seen it as a potential tool. Or, more recently, something to be dispassionately fixed. Now, her empathy had found its way back and she was seeing a dead pony as a dead pony: not something, but someone whose life had been cut short far too soon. Of course, death wasn’t necessarily fatal when she was around, but still.

The tip of Escharia’s lollipop wiggled. “So, what do you want with ’er? Something that you can’t get from a report, I imagine.” She gave exaggerated squints at Code and Amanita in turn. “But what, I wonder…”

Code took a deep breath. “Amanita-”

“Wait, wait, lemme guess,” said Escharia, holding up a hoof. “You’re here, so it’s gotta be big. Don’t recognize you-” She pointed at Amanita. “-so ain’t never been here before. A specialist in somethin’ Code don’t usually work with. Which ain’t much.” She looked at Cobalt’s body and rolled her lollipop around. “And it’s about death. But it ain’t a sacrifice, ’cause she’s already dead. Nothing new in the autopsy, so you two learned somethin’ new about the body from what we already got. Probably from the newbie. ’Cept I don’t know what the newbie does.” Escharia hmmed, rubbing her chin with a hoof. She chuckled and shrugged. “I got nothing. Necromancy!”

Amanita laughed nervously. “W-well, uh, funny story about that…”

After a second, Escharia’s head snapped up and her ears went limp. The lollipop nearly fell from her slack jaws. “…No.”

A nod, unsure, jerky. “Yeah…”

Escharia stared at Amanita. She raised an eyebrow at Code, who nodded. “Her,” Escharia said. “A necromancer. Her.”

“Yes,” Code replied.

Escharia glanced at Amanita, who grinned uncertainly. “She could be my kid sister.”

“I could be your mother.”

That made Escharia snort. “…And it’s all legal?”

“I’ll save you the morass that is ritual legalese: yes.”

A brief pause, then Escharia shrugged at Amanita. “Well, if Code thinks you’re good. Need me for anythin’?”

The casualness of the response was immediately a huge weight off Amanita’s back. It felt like she’d just taken a breath after swimming. “Just help me clear a space.” She rolled one of the empty gurneys off to the side. “It needs to be at least nine feet by nine feet.”

Escharia glanced at Code again. Another nod, another shrug, and she moved a gurney of her own. From the way she kept looking between Amanita and the floor, she had a lot of questions, but she didn’t say anything.

Between the three of them, it wasn’t long before they had a nice, clear space. Amanita crouched down and ran her hoof across the cool tiled stone of the morgue’s floor. It’d been years since she’d done something like this. It was like slipping into an old sweater she hadn’t worn in ages, one that was rather itchy but you wore it anyway because it was so warm and it was the only sweater you had. In spite of all she now knew, even though it was far from her only sweater, it was still warm. The idea of necromancy slunk through her mind like oil across a pond. But she needed to do this. Falling into the tainted halls of muscle memory, she took a stick of chalk in her magic.

She started by facing north. North was the top on maps. The circle would go down, then return to the top, just as she would reach into the underworld and pull someone back.

She turned counterclockwise, just as she would turn back time.

She kept herself in the center of the circle as she pivoted, just as she was the constant around which the ritual would revolve.

She drew the circle nine feet in diameter, three threes.

The moment she closed the circle, it started. A low infrathaumatic resonance that could set one’s nerves on edge right down to the roots of their teeth, regardless of tribe. It was nearly impossible to notice unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. Indeed, Escharia didn’t react, unless continuing to suck on her lollipop counted as a reaction. Code, however, twitched her ears and tightened her jaw. She noticed. She knew. But she didn’t go for her sword.

Amanita cut a gap in the eastern side of the circle with an athame, enabling her to step back out without breaking it. She walked over to Cobalt’s body. “Help me bring her to the circle,” she said, taking Cobalt’s rear hooves in her magic. Immediately, Code hooked her hooves around Cobalt’s shoulders. Together, they carried Cobalt’s body to the circle and laid it down, her head facing north.

As they left the circle, they locked eyes. Code nodded and stepped aside.

Next, Amanita licked the chalk, putting a bit of herself onto it. Circe had told her to use blood, but Code’s rewriting of the ritual said saliva worked just fine, thank goodness. The way the hum remained constant as she re-sealed the circle seemed to bear that out. Then she set to the runes.

No one really got runes, and anyone who said they did was lying. Even Circe had admitted she didn’t know what was up with them. Oh, sure, ponies knew what each rune symbolized and how to put them together, but how runes worked was another story entirely. Those odd, angular letters of unknown origin could work strange magic all by themselves if you used them right, somehow. It was like the alphabet of the gods had been stitched into the fabric of reality. Maybe you could do even more by merely speaking, but no one had figured out the language yet.

Amanita walked around the edge of the circle, carefully but quickly sketching out each rune, her actions guided by blithe skill. She didn’t know the words or sentences they made, but she knew they worked. At each of the cardinal directions, she scraped out some sigil, unlike any other runes, where her chalk made a grinding sound twice as loud as usual. As she wrote, she murmured, “If high on a tree I see a hanged mare swing, so do I write and color the runes that forth she walks and to me talks.” Pointless for the ritual itself, but it helped focus her mind. Code walked behind her, carefully examining her technique and never saying a word.

With each stroke, the resonance grew, bit by bit. It wasn’t any pony magic, not from any tribe. No, this was something deeper, more fundamental, like the mathematics behind musical harmony, the facts behind the planet’s magnetic field. As it strengthened, Escharia slowed down licking her lollipop. She looked at Amanita, at Code, at Amanita again, and took a step back, keeping her tail close to her body. Her pupils were half their usual size.

When the last stroke was made, the hum pulsed. Escharia winced; Code’s only reaction was to have the candles ready. Amanita laid them out on the cardinal sigils according to their color. Yellow, air, north, first and last. She would start with nothing and end with the breath of life. Green, earth, west, second. She would make the flesh, the firmament of the body, whole again. Blue, water, south, third. She would make the blood run again. Red, fire, east, fourth. She would give the body vim and vigor again. She lit the candles one at a time, in the order she put them down, starting with the yellow one. There was no wind, but as she was lighting the blue candle, the yellow one went out. And so was air both the first element invoked and the last.

Amanita sat down south of the circle. Code was expressionless, while Escharia looked ready to run. Amanita ignored both of them. She closed her eyes and waited, muttering mnemonic nothings under her breath. Underneath one of her front hooves, she had a toadstone, health; beneath the other, three tufts of phoenix down, rebirth.

Then the paraphernalia’s symbolism opened up.

Nothing changed physically, but she half-fell, half-rose into a hole in existential mindspace. What lay beyond was an abstract place of thoughts, associations, emotional links, and metaphysics. Even calling it a “space” was to assign it far more physicality than it possessed. Amanita saw nothing and felt everything. Ideas and perceptions churned and roiled around her, threatening to cast her out, but she’d trained as a necromancer; staying in was as easy as breathing.

Contained within the circle was a fact: Cobalt Shine was dead and this should not be so. The various symbols used in the ritual — the candles, the runes, the ingredients, the circle itself — kept the fact strong within that area, holding it as far above “the princesses are important for Equestria’s future” in importance as that fact was above “blue is pretty”. Reality began coalescing, slowly pulling Cobalt back from the dead, but at this rate, the resurrection would take decades — assuming the body didn’t decompose and the circle’s magic didn’t degrade, both of which would happen within weeks at best. That was where Amanita came in.

The fact of Cobalt’s death being improper was so strong that Amanita didn’t need to know a thing about Cobalt herself to pull her back. She just needed to find where reality had diverged from the truth. With reflexive ease, she pulled herself back along the corpse’s timeline, feeling it get wheeled out from the cooler for the ritual, get sliced open in the autopsy, get laid in an ambulance cart after being found on the street. None of this hurt; a corpse couldn’t feel pain.

Then she stopped being Cobalt’s corpse and started being Cobalt. She felt a dagger plunge into her body over and over, a metaphysical disconnect keeping her from hurting. She felt Cobalt scream in pain and shock as she struggled against the ropes that bound her; Amanita’s heart twinged in sympathy, but she kept following the line back. She felt an impact on Cobalt’s head, then a sense of calm as she lapsed into unconsciousness. Cobalt was walking through the streets at night, unaware of what would befall her.

This was right. This was where reality stopped being true.

And so Amanita dove into the hardest part of the spell, relatively speaking: following the path Cobalt’s soul took from her body upon death. Thanks to her preparations, it was clear and obvious, but that didn’t make it easy. Weaving together a spell, she went away, away, away, in directions that weren’t directions, twisting magic all the while. After an imaginary second, she found Cobalt’s soul, forced out of the afterlife by the ritual. Amanita seized her patient in the torrent of magic and traveled back, across the voids that said she was dead, to the small bubble that said she was alive. It was a complicated affair, skipping across fates and planes of reality, and the actual specifics of it defied words or thought. Most ponies would’ve found it maddeningly difficult at the absolute best, but it was even easier for Amanita than usual; she didn’t have to worry about binding wills anymore, thanks to Code’s ritual.

Cobalt’s body and soul rejoined the second Amanita returned to the circle, and the fact truly took hold. As the gap between truth and reality shrank, Amanita let herself fall back into her body. Not an iota of time had passed in the physical world, but she felt the effects of her actions and her head spun like a gyroscope. Short of breath, she nearly toppled over; by the time she put out a hoof to keep herself up, Code was already at her side, ready to catch her with an outstretched leg. “Are you okay?” Code whispered.

“Yeah,” Amanita gasped. She rubbed at her temples, trying to get rid of all the pins and needles inside. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The funny thing was, it wasn’t half as bad as her old ritual, where she definitely wouldn’t have been able to stand up straight already. Katabasis, diving to the underworld, was an intense process, although the strange satisfaction of a job well done helped her get over it. She clapped herself on the chest, coughed once, and looked up.

The runes she’d scribed were wiggling, like seen through a heat haze. The toadstone had cracked in half and the down had been consumed by the magic. The candles continued to burn smokelessly. The thaumatic hum was running up and down her nerves. And Cobalt’s body was repairing itself.

It was slow, but faster than in any ritual Amanita had used before. Cobalt’s flesh writhed as edge met edge and closed. Stab wounds were wiped away and the autopsy cuts sealed up zipperlike. She made jerky, vibrational movements as if every muscle in her body was twitching intermittently. Ponies didn’t move like that. Nothing did. The motion was uncanny, abominable, the sort of thing primal instincts warned you against, the kinetic equivalent of vomit’s uniquely revolting stench. Escharia was only a foot away from the wall and staring at the body the way one would a train crash in progress. Code’s jaw was clenched. Amanita didn’t budge. She was used to it. Compared to the usual, this was quite nice, actually.

Then the body went still.

The final wound closed up.

The candles all went out.

The hum vanished.

And Cobalt Shine, dead approximately thirty-four hours, opened her eyes.

Comments

[TerribleSpeller]

The description of the ritual and all the actions that occurred after it in the end of this chapter is... well, really well written in my opinion. It flows, and captures the mood of an experienced necromancer tampering with the veil between life and death.

[hehelover]

The description of the necromancy process is extremely well-written. Bravo. Also:

The unicorn who opened the door was a deep purplish-blue with eyes that seemed a bit too big for her head.

…Just how big were her eyes?

[Level Dasher]

That was quite a ritual. And done in only the span of seconds in the outside world. Dayum. Gonna be interesting to see Cobalt's reaction when she actually comes to.

[N4rwh41]

Now that's some good magic writin'. None of that faffin about with words an incantations, just good old runeage and symbolism. Love it!

[Frustration in Excelsis]

The description of the ritual was really well-done. The process and logic behind it all was very well-reasoned and coherent, and the actual writing was wonderfully evocative. This is probably one of the best descriptions of magic in action that I've read in my recent memory.

[Bloody_Tofu]

Ohh dang. Amazing job on this.

[FanOfMostEverything]

The unicorn who opened the door was a deep purplish-blue with eyes that seemed a bit too big for her head.

That’s an impressive feat for a pony.

In any case, brilliant work in capturing the experience of invoking the occult. A reminder that for all of her well-earned issues, Amanita is very good at what she does. Now to see what Cobalt thinks of all of this. And what, if anything, she remembers of what were her final moments.

[SIGAWESOME]

I sure hope this does not (eventually) blow up in Amanita's face.

Restricted Code just seems a bit... off and sus. Something about the way she acts is raising some "⚠ CAUTION ⚠" flags in my mind (it is not paranoia if they are out to get you...). I know Code has security authority clearance with her rang, but her bull-rushing Amanita's skills and proceedures without regards to the others in her division, Guard procedures, or chain of custody just does not sit well in my mind, like she is rather blasé about the fact there is a necromancer sharing her knowledge and skills.

At any rate, I cannot wait for more!

[hehelover]

11084323
Judging from the plot twist in Hinterlands Code being the bad guy is definitely a possibility, but right now we know too little. Why was the killer killing ponies? No robbery mentioned, targets seem completely random, bodies left in the street to be discovered, it seems that the only goal the killer could possibly have was spreading fear, which doesn’t seem quite right to me.

[Shachza]

Giving myself some time to think after reading this was a pretty good idea. Not because I didn't like it. No. If I hadn't, I'd probably mostly be following in 11083857 's shoes, talking about how cool and evocative the entire ritual was, and I'd've missed out on posting fun follow-up thoughts.

Like... I bet, given a couple more sequels, Amanita will have pared the ritual timing down so far, that she can just anime-smash the ground with a hoof, circle and runes blazing into existence for a moment as the components evaporate away, and almost instantly the corpse pops back up as a fully-alive, very surprised pony.

But that's silly...

No, things like, I bet the largest portion of the meeting where Code (and others) considered Amanita was not whether to take her up on the obvious offer. I think they spent most of the time actually deciding public talking points, how to present zombies/thralls, how necromancy might interact with the trial process in the courts, what rights discorporeated spirits might have within society, and well... All the fiddly bureaucracy that'll come into play. It just amuses me that they quickly agreed to utilize Amanita, and then spent forever arguing over the paperwork.

And now...

A whole new brand of paperwork will need to be invented to cover deceased-no-longer ponies.

And just think of the serial killer. "Wait, didn't I murder that pony last week? Da heck?!"

[Mocha Star]

Brilliant chapter

[Lurks-no-More]

Damn, that description of the resurrection ritual was good.

[AppleTank]

"For you, it was a twisting of life and death.
For me, it was Tuesday."

[Rivernight]

Awesome description of the ritual, it's always nice to see well-written magic