8 - Mean Streets, Clean Streets
“Hey, Bitterroot?”
“Yeah, Cocoon?”
“Ponies change the seasons in Equestria, right?”
“Sure. Harvest Moon 1’s in… two days, and that’s when we start the autumn changeover. Not much to do in Canterlot, but rural villages have a lot.”
“Do they… line up with other countries or anything? Like, uh… Zebrabwe. Do pony seasons match zebra seasons?”
“I actually heard that zebras only have two seasons.”
“…Wait, seriously? I thought Tambarare was full of it.”
“Who?”
“Tambarare Kubwa. She’s the Zebrabwean ambassador or an aide or something. I was hanging around the castle one night and heard her talking with ponies about seasons. She said zebras only have a wet season and a dry season, which sounded a lot like something you make up to be spayshul and younee-kuh.”
“Nope. Weird and absolutely true. All their rain is focused in the wet season. They even ride great big birds to manage it. They’re called, uh… iimpundulu.”
“See, that sorta makes sense, ’cause how else would they? Zebras can’t fly. Wonder why they have seasons like that, though…”
After some back-and-forth, Bitterroot and Cocoon had hammered out an… adequate plan: track down one of the guards from the night of the robbery, chat him up, and see what information fell out. Cocoon vaguely knew of one of them. “He’s a real night owl — I mean, ’course he is, he’s a night guardspony — and ought to be getting up soon. His shift doesn’t start for another few hours. I’d say we got time to grill him.”
Thusly, the pair was returning to the Roost to track down that particular guard. They’d just crossed the illusion line and were nearing the walkways. They’d been about halfway there when Cocoon had struck up conversation.
They swooped up and over the edge of one of the walkways, landing lightly. Cocoon was still rambling. “But then what did they do before they had those birds? Not like they just popped into existence with tamed thunderbirds ready to go…”
“No idea,” Bitterroot said. She tried not to look at Cocoon; she was a different pegasus now — stocky and emerald rather than lean and teal — but still speaking with the same voice, and that made Bitterroot’s stomach churn. “You’d have to ask a zebra.” She looked over the nearby walkways, trying to see the pony Cocoon had described.
“I could, but ponies don’t know what moved the sun and moon before the unicorns figured it out.”
“Where’d you say this guy was?” Bitterroot asked.
“Oak Branch’ll probably be on the other side of the Roost,” Cocoon said. “Close to some of the ground entrances up to Canterlot, so he likes to hang out around thereabouts. And down here in general, really. Knowing he can beat up whoever he feels like without the Guard getting involved makes him feel big. Which, of course, guarantees he’s small. Follow me. So, see, just because your species does something doesn’t mean you know what came before it. I don’t expect zebras to know, anyway, I’m just thinking out loud…”
Aiming towards where Canterlot’s rim met the mountain, Cocoon navigated the Roost’s spiderwebbed streets like a pro, taking weird turns that always pushed them in the right direction, sometimes bounding over gaps where there should’ve been a bridge, and weaving around certain ponies like she knew them. Bitterroot could’ve easily gotten lost and had to throw herself over the edge to reorient herself. And all the while, Cocoon kept talking about history in a low voice.
“-don’t really know why Chrysalis was so hellbent on stealing love,” she said. “ ’Cause when Starbright or whoever came around and we metamorphosed, free food, right? I’m cool with that. But no, it has to be stealing for her, like it’s revenge or something. And, c’mon, I was ruthless, but I wasn’t a sadist.”
Bitterroot quickly glanced around. No one was paying them any attention. That she could tell. “So how’d you join up with the Guard in the first place?”
“Traveling recruiter,” said Cocoon quietly. “Thorax’s hive is nice, what with the general lack of risk that you might get your head bitten off if you say the wrong thing, but it’s all so… level. There’s good vibes, but they’re all the same vibes. Chrysalis had the same problem, actually, once you got past her sociopathy: all mean vibes, all the same vibes. Monotony.” She blew a quick raspberry and turned around, smoothly transitioning to walking backward. “Then this pony comes along… about a year ago, and he’s offering changelings jobs in the Guard. Stuff like scouting, undercover work, you the drill. Perfect for us. And this sort of informant gig lets me go in and out of different environments, so plenty of different vibes. It’s bad down here, but it just makes the niceness of Canterlot proper feel better. Perfect.” She spun back around, her head high. “Variety is the spice of life, and I’ve got variety coming out the wazoo here.”
“You should probably get that looked at.”
“I did. Doc says it’s healthy as long as I’m careful.”
Bitterroot snorted.
A little more walking, and Cocoon flared a wing to bring Bitterroot to a halt. “Alright, that guy, right there,” she said. She pointed to a big, stocky earth stallion, dark green with a brown mane, talking with another unicorn. “That’s him. Oak Branch.”
Some sizing-up didn’t tell Bitterroot much besides the obvious. Thick, muscley, probably proud of it to the point of obsession. The kind of guy who’d scoff at mares spending hours putting on their makeup to look good while spending weeks at the gym to look good. Short mane, no facial hair. Was it just her, or did tough guys trying too hard to look tough never have much facial hair when they didn’t have a certain specific type of big, wiry, unkempt beard? Maybe he thought he had a good chin (he didn’t). Overall, a prime meathead. Perfect for getting information from, she knew.
“He’ll hang around here, then he’ll head to the Bat Bar, over there.”
Bitterroot did a double-take to be sure she was reading the sign right. “The… Bat Bar?” she hissed.
“It’s actually species-neutral-”
“Not that! It’s a terrible name! I could come with a better one! Like- Leatherwing Lagers or something!”
“The Roost despises marketers. Or, to be more precise, no one who goes into marketing ever needs to come down here.”
Standing just out of easy noticing range, Bitterroot and Cocoon watched Oak and the other pony talk. It was the kind of civil enemies used when they didn’t want to be remotely near each other: not quite shouting, but it was only two or three neighbors over. They were “discussing” a debt the unicorn owed Oak; the little context she gleaned told her it wasn’t relevant to her investigations, so Bitterroot had half-tuned it out. Their words were that stilted, trying-too-hard politeness and their voices were growing in volume, with more and more ponies giving them a berth.
Cocoon was rustling her wings restlessly; Bitterroot gave her a light nudge. “You’re fidgeting,” she whispered. “Don’t draw attention. You need to be a fly on the wall, no offense.” Weren’t changelings supposed to be good at hiding?
“None taken, and I know that, but the stuff they’re talking about is so… ordinary. I’ve heard it all before from different ponies, it’s not juicy.” Cocoon gave Bitterroot a guilty look. “I’m not good at waiting.”
Bitterroot looked at Cocoon without taking her ears from the not-quite-argument. “Usually, you just pick up and move to wherever the action is?”
“More or less. I-” Cocoon’s head suddenly went up, she blinked twice, and she snapped to look at the pair again. “Anger spike,” she whispered. “I bet-”
The unicorn backpedalled, his horn glowing, and screamed an insult at Oak, one uncreatively rife with four-letter-words and their derivatives. Oak bellowed an equally uncreative one back and took a step forward. There was a flash; Oak was driven back several steps by the magic missile, and by the time he’d waved the sparkles from his face, the unicorn was gone. Muttering something uncouth, he began heading for the (bleagh) Bat Bar.
Cocoon raised her hoof, but Bitterroot quickly waved her down. “Don’t follow him too quickly,” she said. “If you walk up to him right after he’s had a bad time, he’ll think you’re taking advantage of him. We know where he’s going. Let him get there first.” Yeah. Cocoon really needed help.
“Huh.” Cocoon shifted her weight around as Oak traipsed along. “Is following ponies always this slow?”
“Nah, usually it’s slower. It’s all about staying out of sight when you can’t just poof yourself a new body.”
Oak vanished into the bar and Cocoon gave Bitterroot another look, but Bitterroot shook her head. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Just a minute. Let him get settled in, let him not see you. When you go in and start chatting him up, it’ll look more spontaneous.”
For someone self-professed to not be good at waiting, Cocoon seemed quick to learn. The minute passed without too much restlessness on her part, and when the pair entered the Bat Bar, Oak was sitting alone at the bar itself, glaring sullenly at his (still full) glass like he’d bought it season buckball tickets that it’d turned down.
“All right,” Bitterroot whispered, nudging Cocoon, “work your magic.” Pause. “Do changelings have emotion-manipulating magic?”
Cocoon smoothed out her mane. “No, that’s crystal ponies.”
“Wait, wha-”
But Cocoon was already gone, sauntering up to Oak like he’d already asked her out. Bitterroot sighed and took a table not quite in the corner to watch — and jump in if it looked like Cocoon was failing.
Cocoon settled into the chair next to Oak and flashed him a grin. In a voice that had transformed into a brook flowing over rocks, she said, “Hey, good lookin’.”
Oak grunted.
“You seem down.”
Oak glanced at her, looked her up and down, eyed her rump for a second longer than anywhere else. “I guess not,” he grunted, and took a sip of his drink.
“Anything I can do to fix that?”
Bitterroot frowned. Maybe it worked for changelings, but that particular brand of flirting was not the route you took in this situation. It was too indirect. You needed to go for-
“Maybe.” Oak looked sidelong at her. Interest had given his voice a touch more life than usual. “What were you thinking?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cocoon said with a laugh. “But two nice, strong ponies like us… I’m sure we could figure something out.”
No. No. Bad route. No. Bitterroot’s wings tensed up. Oak turned back to his drink and Cocoon blinked twice as her expression slipped; just a tad, but whatever her changeling senses had sensed, she didn’t like.
“Maybe I’ll just drink it away,” grunted Oak, his voice back to a monotone. Bitterroot bit her lip. Cocoon could work with that. She just needed to-
“Alone?” Cocoon fluttered her eyelashes. (Had she always had eyelashes like that?) “Come on. Surely you want a drinking partner who can match you-”
“Not really,” growled Oak.
Yeah, this was beyond Cocoon’s capability to save, but it might still be recovered. Bitterroot wished she had some beer to slop down her clothes — speaking of clothes, they could stand to be a bit trashier right about now. But oh well. She’d make it work. She quickly but quietly scooted back to the front of the room, then, just as Cocoon was opening her mouth to insert her foot back into it, Bitterroot burst in between her and Oak. “Oh, Celestia,” she said, adding a hint of slurred speech to her words and bumping their pitch up half an octave. “Are you listening to yourself? ‘Match him.’ Ha!” She glanced at Oak and winked as coquettishly as she could. “Can you believe that?” Every patron in the bar looked at them; she cringed at all the attention she was getting, but that couldn’t be helped.
As Cocoon and Oak tried to collect themselves, Bitterroot spun back to Cocoon and leaned in close. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work on a stallion as studly as Oak here. Why don’t you fly on home, birdbrain!” So that no one else could hear, she mouthed, Sorry.
Thankfully, Cocoon seemed to get it; she gave a quick, tiny nod to Bitterroot before giving off a truly spectacular series of angry, probably-obscene splutters and storming out. And, thank the Sisters, everyone in the bar went back to their own business. Objective not yet completed, but crisis averted.
“Thanks for that,” mumbled Oak. His voice wasn’t entirely grumpy.
“I couldn’t let some half-bit hussy bother a stallion as grand as you,” said Bitterroot. Stroking Oak’s ego would help him get over Cocoon faster. “Especially when she was talking so much manure, I wasn’t sure which end of hers was which!” Such a stupid line. Which was probably why it’d work on him.
Oak grinned a most punchable grin. “That’s putting it lightly. Can you imagine? She thought she could drink as much as me. Heh. I’d drown her beer.”
“Oh, I know,” Bitterroot crooned. “Somepony as big and strong as you… She’d never match you, even if you weren’t an earth pony. Look at me. I’m big for a pegasus and I’m still blown away by you.” Which, to be fair, was true. Even among earth ponies, the guy was built like a locomotive. “You are not in her league at all.” Bitterroot barely even knew Cocoon and she knew that if Oak were in her league, her standards would’ve slipped. “In fact, you’re…” She twitched her ears, blinked twice, and let her smile slip. “You’re not even in mine,” she whispered, turning away and rustling her wings. She needed to look vulnerable and something resembling cute and-
“Hey.” Oak not-entirely-gently laid a hoof on her back and Bitterroot looked him in the eyes again. “I guess I can relax my standards for one day,” he said, and winked.
Rather than following her heart and sucker-bucking his lights out, Bitterroot managed to twitter out a little high-pitched giggle. “Oh, wow. Today’s my lucky day. I don’t suppose I can buy you a drink?”
Oak chuckled. “I suppose I can allow that.”
Score. Bitterroot’s next laugh wasn’t entirely faked.
When Amanita and Phalanx arrived back at Canterlot Castle, Code wasn’t in her office. It took a little bit of asking around to find out where she was: in the mess hall, eating an early dinner. Amanita was surprised at how late it was, but between waiting for Code to first arrive, Cobalt’s questioning, and going to and from her house in the city, maybe she shouldn’t have been.
Guardsponies were scattered around the mess, but not too many; even if dinner was being served, it technically wasn’t dinnertime just yet. Code was easy to spot, eating some soup near the door. As they approached her, Amanita noticed that her mane was about as much of a mess as a mane that short could be, making it look more like a pixie cut than a military-grade haircut. And she wasn’t just eating soup, she had her head in her soup bowl like it was a watering trough, slurping it down endlessly and without a single care for anypony who might be watching (although to be fair, everypony else was ignoring her).
“Ma’am?” Phalanx said.
Code didn’t look up. “Yes?”
“We’re back. Everything went… acceptably. Cobalt still seems stable and Pinwheel is… adjusting.”
“Good, good. You’re dismissed. Amanita, could I talk to you?”
Phalanx saluted and whispered, “Good luck,” to Amanita before he trotted away. Amanita didn’t think she needed it; Code was reasonable.
The second Amanita sat down across from her, Code raised her head, licking some soup from her muzzle. “So?” she asked. “How do you think it went?”
Words failed Amanita right then. Her brain churned for a few seconds and she eventually said, “Fine for me, emotionally for Pinwheel.”
“Cathartic or unstable?”
“…Overwhelming, then cathartic.”
“Mmhmm.” Code nodded in sympathy. “Not surprised. I can’t imagine what they must be going through. I hope they can adjust.” She gestured to her bowl. “Would you like me to get you some soup?”
“No, thanks.” Amanita was hungry, but didn’t feel much like eating at the moment.
“Good,” said Code. “It’s terrible, terrible, terrible. It’s also free and here, which is what I need for tonight. Some important work got delayed by our ritual, so I need to stay late to get it done.”
“Sorry,” mumbled Amanita.
But Code snorted. “You’re the only person I can think of who would apologize for inconveniencing someone after bringing a pony back to life. Besides, I get overtime.”
“Hrrng. So, uh, do you… need me for anything more?”
“Not today, but you said you could call up the spirits of the dead?” Code asked promptly. “Let them confer with the living?”
“Yeah.” It was obvious what Code was heading to, but Amanita let her talk.
“Does that have a limit like the resurrection ritual?”
“I, I don’t think so. If it does, it’s on the scale of centuries.”
“Then would you be willing to perform that ritual for the victims’ families?”
“Yeah. When? Tomorrow?”
“If you feel up to it. I haven’t made contact with anypony yet, so-”
“Tomorrow’s fine,” Amanita heard herself say. “If I have the ingredients.” Might as well be tomorrow, anyway. At least compared to resurrection, spiritualism was quite clean.
Code didn’t pause. “Excellent, thank you.” She ducked down beneath the table and came back up with a pen and parchment. Pushing them over to Amanita, she said, “And could you write out the method you plan to use? Simply so I can verify it.”
“Sure.” Amanita clicked the pen, hunched over the parchment, and began writing. Memories of Zinnia’s spirit flitted through her mind, but they were gone before she could push them away. This didn’t have the same… revulsive qualities as other parts of necromancy, even though it was associated with worse memories. This was easy. It didn’t even require a mantra for her to convince herself of that.
“I’ve been thinking about your resurrective ritual,” Code said suddenly. “How do you know it’s putrefaction that prevents it from working over time?”
“W-well, uh…” Amanita bit her lip and hesitated in her writing. “I… don’t, really. It’s just, when you work it out, there’s one variable that keeps getting weird values after about three days, and, and putrefaction usually takes about three days to set in, so I… figured…” She shrugged, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something.
“Because I think, after three days, the person getting resurrected won’t want to come back.”
“…Really?” Amanita asked, raising her head. “But-”
Code interrupted her like she’d been waiting for this moment. “Putrefaction sets in closer to two days rather than three. And your ritual restored some of Cobalt’s organs. The state of the body clearly doesn’t matter. However, that variable is in the same clause as Circe’s original ritual that includes the necromancer binding a thrall to their will, yet still appears in your resurrection ritual, so it’s clearly related to the mind. I think three days is roughly the amount of time it takes for somepony to want to leave this life behind. I’ll need to study it more thoroughly to be certain, though.”
Amanita tilted her head. The idea of somepony not wanting to be resurrected wasn’t that surprising, but the ritual taking something so fuzzy into account into its creation was. “Do… rituals include stuff like that?”
Code blinked, then slouched forward, groaning. “Something. Resembling. Academic. Rigor,” she mumbled. “Sweet stotting Celestia, that’s all I ask.” She straightened up again. “Yes, indeed. Rituals work in the liminal space between ideas and objects. And if your teacher had had any interest in the art of necromancy rather than the perks, she would’ve known that and told you.”
“Art. Right.” Amanita rolled her eyes and went back to her writing.
“With an attitude like that, it’s no wonder you’re scared of yourself.”
What?
Amanita slowly, stiffly looked up. Code was tucking into her soup, utterly unperturbed. “The ‘art’ of necromancy?” Amanita asked. She couldn’t quite keep her voice from sounding accusatory. “The ‘art’ of enthrallment? The ‘art’ of lichdom?”
“Yes. And the art of resurrection,” said Code. She licked a drop of chowder from her muzzle. “An art can be deplorable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not art. Once Circe got what she wanted, an enthrallment ritual, she let it stagnate. She had no interest in refining it or exploring some of its other applications. It’s disappointing, really. She didn’t even teach you ritual terminology, for Celestia’s sake! And here’s you, having served your time for necromancy, shying away from knowledge just because you don’t like someone who used it.”
“J-just because-” sputtered Amanita. “Everypony in history who’s used it has been called an enemy of the state and hunted down! I was a target of one of those hunts and I wasn’t even that successful of a necromancer! But- But I feel better doing it than I have in years, so what if that continues? I mean, power corrupts, doesn’t it?”
Code nodded. “Oh, absolutely. That’s why Celestia and Luna were despotic tyrants and we ought to kill Twilight now. Oh, wait.”
“It nearly happened with Luna,” snapped Amanita. “Then there’s Discord, Kioschad, Sombra, the Cecaneighs, Chrysalis… Not to mention every famous necromancer. How can an ordinary pony with that kind of power ever turn out good?”
Code didn’t say anything at first. From the slouch in her shoulders, she almost looked… exasperated? Then, with a sigh, she took off her glasses, folded them, and put them on the table. “Amanita,” she said. “Who am I?”
Amanita faltered a little at the sudden change in subject. “R-restricted Code.”
“Professionally.”
“The… High Ritualist.”
“Exactly. And what does that entail?”
“Knowing rituals and… how to counter them?” They hadn’t precisely gone over that, had they? But really, how bad could it all be?
“Again, exactly. I know almost every ritual that has been performed within Canterlot’s borders and plenty that haven’t. Which means, absent any interference from the princess, it would only take me a week to level the city and walk away, not just an alicorn, but a bona fide goddess. Because all those spells for enslaving spirits? All those equine sacrifices for immortality? All those horn-grindings for increased magic power? They’re all stored in here.” She tapped her temple. “And not only do I know them, I know how they synergize. Summon a demon, take its ichor for a blood sacrifice, and, well…”
Ah.
Amanita tried to swallow, but her spit had apparently congealed into a rubbery mass. Circe had scared her with knowledge of necromancy; now, Code was scaring her with her knowledge of everything but necromancy. In recent years, it was easy to forget that sometimes, somepony in a high position was in that high position not because of any personal or familial connections, but because they knew their way around a magic circle like nopony else.
Code was still talking. “There’s really only one thing keeping me from taking my chances with Princess Twilight and trying it anyway. Would you like to guess what that is?”
“…It’s… bad?”
Code smirked. “Heh. First try. You wouldn’t believe how many ponies run themselves in circles trying everything but that. Yes, that’s what it amounts to. I have principles. Do I want the power of a goddess, enough magic to flatten every single being in Equestria without thinking of it? Oh, absolutely. Be honest, who wouldn’t? Do I know how to get it? Probably. Do I think it’s worth the cost? Absolutely not. If I have to kill a single pony, it’s not worth it. No, I don’t care if you pick the most evil pony in history, I won’t do it. And something like that is hungry for a lot more than just one pony. I’m not going to hurt anyone for power.”
“Well, you know, I could… resurrect them.”
“Wouldn’t always work. Based on your ritual, the soul needs to be intact for that, and most equine sacrifices consume the soul of the dead pony. Otherwise, you could just get a thousand mice and kill them for the same amount of life force. And if that sounds oddly specific, yes, somepony once tried that.”
Code folded her front legs across the table and looked Amanita in the eye. “So, if power corrupts, how long do you think I have? Because I’ve been the High Ritualist for seventeen years and haven’t slipped up.”
“You’re stronger than me,” Amanita said bluntly, reflexively. “I- I took up necromancy and barely even thought about it just because my marefriend died. I could-” She folded her ears back. The urge to look away tugged at her like a hook in her nose, but she resisted it. “I feel good when I’m doing necromancy now. Like I’m useful. And if I keep doing it, I- I don’t- I’m scared that someday, I’ll do something terrible with necromancy on an impulse just because it’s easier than doing the right thing. I mean, I still know how to enthrall ponies.”
Why was she doing this? Why was she spilling her guts to some random government official? She’d always danced around the issue with Bitterroot. But… Bitterroot had danced with her, no matter how awkward it was. Code was reminding her that they weren’t dancing, they were working. Kindness wouldn’t do any good if what you needed was a slap in the face or some good, old-fashioned brutal honesty.
Code stared at Amanita, her ear flicking. “You really haven’t looked at yourself, have you?” she said. “You say you’re weak. But you sabotaged a lich’s rejuvenation ritual and ran across the Frozen North alone with no map to give her phylactery to the authorities and turn yourself in. If that’s weak, I’d love to hear what you think is strong.”
“It- was the right thing to do,” protested Amanita. Yet all this time, she’d been protesting that she wouldn’t do the right thing, even though the one time it’d actually mattered, she’d done the right thing. Nothing quite like your own actions to shoot your legs out from under you.
“Precisely,” said Code. “You know, I’ve always thought Lord Hockton was a bit oversimplified with that ‘power corrupts’ axiom of his and Roebuck Maro had it better. He said that power doesn’t always corrupt, but it does always reveal. Think about it: when somepony can suddenly do whatever she wants, you see what she always wanted to do. Do you think necromancy turns ponies into power-hungry maniacs, or that power-hungry maniacs sought out necromancy? Now, look at you. You were given power over life and death, and you turned it down because it was hurting people.” She took a sip of her soup. “I’ve been in this line of work long enough to look at every school of magic from all sides. Necromancy can be used for good; it’s just that it attracts bad ponies. If you want to use necromancy in this case, simply resurrecting murder victims, you have nothing to worry about. And besides…”
Code’s grin was remarkably predatory for how flat her teeth were. “If you slip up, I’ll be right here.” Then she put her glasses back on and went back to her soup.
Amanita stared at her, lost in thought. Was it really that simple? That she’d somehow miraculously proved that she was fit for necromancy? That she’d shown she could use necromancy without it going to her head, unlike everypony else?
…Well, yeah. The second she’d realized what she’d been doing to Zinnia, she’d stopped. It wasn’t like somepony was hovering over her shoulder, telling her to enthrall someone or else something terrible would happen. For all the things enthrallment could do, she didn’t want them, not if the cost was binding another pony’s will. It sounded arrogant, but, yeah, she was different from every other necromancer.
Right? That wasn’t just the beginning of everything going to her head, right?
Right?
She quickly devoted her attention to the ritual, scribbling out words and lists to divert her thoughts. Ink flowed easily from her pen as she recalled the instructions, branded onto her mind, the last spell she’d done before her world had upended itself again.
Maybe it was her focus on the ritual that made her mind suddenly take a hard left turn. The deaths had always been three days apart. And she’d seen a map of the deaths in Bitterroot’s office, a map that made them look very circular. Two patterns in what could’ve been a random series of deaths. One could’ve been a coincidence, but two…
She couldn’t help herself. She had to ask. “Code?” Amanita tentatively raised her head slightly. “Is it… possible that these deaths are… part of a ritual?”
“No,” Code said immediately. She didn’t look up from her soup, although she’d pulled her muzzle from the bowl. “We’ve already looked into it. The alignment of the deaths isn’t nearly precise enough, there’s no pattern in the victims themselves, we couldn’t detect any malign magic at the murder sites, and none of the deaths were done with any ritualistic craft. There’s no hope for this to be a ritual.”
“Really?” Amanita frowned. “But the deaths are always three days apart… You’re sure?”
“Positive. It might be a coincidence, it might be a pattern of some sort, but it’s definitely not a ritual.” A pause. “No matter what it feels like.”
“Hmm.” But it still nagged at Amanita as she wrote. Declaring it wasn’t a ritual like that just didn’t… feel right.
She crossed the last T in her instructions just as Code finished her soup. She passed it over and Code’s gaze began flitting over it. With every line, Code read more and more intently, leaning in as if magnetized, until near the end, she was holding the parchment scant inches from her face. “This,” she whispered, “is magnificent. It’s so simple in its sophistication…” She pulled away and started rereading it. “Yes, I’ll be sure to have everything you need tomorrow. Stars above, I wish I was doing this myself…”
“Um.” Amanita coughed. “How should I… go about… coming here?”
Code rolled up the parchment and stuffed it in her saddlebags. “Come here by the same entrance at 8 or 9ish. Tell the receptionist who you are and show them that badge. I’ll leave a note with her and she’ll know to come get me. How does that sound?”
“Yeah, I, I can do that.”
“Excellent. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Code stood up. “I have a demon to summon.”
Amanita blanched. “Uh…”
“It’s an ongoing experiment,” said Code, as if she’d been waiting. “We’re trying to see if making friends with a demon will make them more open to a summoning with minimal power if the need arises. We’re on week 8 and things are looking good.”
“I… see,” said Amanita. So maybe Code being so blasé towards necromancy wasn’t so shocking. “Does… Princess Twilight know you’re doing this?”
“Are you kidding?” Code smirked. “It was her idea to begin with, well before Celestia and Luna ever brought up abdication. She was ecstatic at finally being able to test it. Farewell.” And, taking up her tray, she left without another word.
Code was summoning a demon in the middle of Canterlot with the princess’s endorsement. Sweet Celestia. But if it was week 8 and nothing had gone wrong yet… But Amanita still caught herself shaking as she got up and made her way outside. If demon-summoning could be done in Canterlot…
No, no, she didn’t need to worry about it. Code had it under control, everyone she was working with had it under control. They’d be fine. And to her surprise, Amanita believed that and her tension loosened up a little. She stepped out into the sun, heading for-
…She didn’t have anything left to do today, did she?
She actually had to think it over to realize that no, she didn’t. After years of Circe and jail, the idea of true free time, with absolutely nobody telling her what she could and couldn’t do, was genuinely alien to her.
…Books. She had nothing to do at Bitterroot’s and she needed some books.
And money to buy the books. Good thing she still had money left over from her own bounty.
Darn shame she didn’t know where anything was, though. Keeping a close eye on the street signs, Amanita set off into Canterlot.
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Code was acting real suspicious and Amanita could soon learn wandering around in Canterlot at night during these days might not be an excellent idea.
I see references to The Other Side of the Horizon and Cold Wind Blowing. How long before all of your stories form a single canon?
I wonder if Amanita will end up bumping into Moondancer. That'd be fun.
11094965
I actually write as if all my works take place in the same universe, unless it's impossible (an alternate universe fic or something). For instance, the idea for Iron Phalanx originally came about because I got the idea that, whenever I needed something weird to happen to a named guard, it should always happen to the same guard, regardless of fic, and that guard was Phalanx (he's made a few minor appearances in How the Tantabus Parses Sleep). I try to keep any references low-key, though, so that if a reader recognizes them, they can go, "That's from the other stories!", but if they don't, they're not missing much. Sometimes it works out nicely; The Amulet Job is a heist fic with Starlight as one of the main characters, so I needed a way to remove Twilight from the equation. The Other Side of the Horizon was a ready-made excuse to hurl Twilight to another continent for a few months, so Twilight's gone in The Amulet Job because she and Spike "left for the zebra homelands to initiate diplomacy for the first time".
Heh. Code's appreciation for skill and knowledge not for the aim to use it in anything but just to know it as a goal in itself is definitely something I can relate to.
The befriending a demon thing honestly doesn't even sound that far-fetched. I mean, technically it already worked with Discord, didn't it?
(Actually, what does Discord count as in this context?)
No matter what it feels like? If that isn't a professional trying to ignore a gut feeling than I don't know what it is. She feels like far too obvious a suspect, especially with how she keeps creeping Amanita out. But I know she has a suspicion of what's going on, even if she would rather not contemplate it without more pieces to the puzzle.
Code is so suspicious, it’s hard to think she’s not the villain or big bad or whatever, but at the same time, she’s too suspicious and it’s so obviously her, that there’s no way it’s actually her.
11095006
Snrk.
I love it.
Ever have Phalanx comment on how the weird things always happen to him?
(I haven't forgotten your PM. Not really...
Does she truely know though? I mean Celestia has been around for over 1000 years. Who is to say she has subtly altered the recorded rituals as part of a 50+ generation disinformation campaign?
Damn that's a good line. Is that fully original? Cause it feels like something I might have read in something by Terry Pratchett, or something like. It's a good frigging point, too.
11881521
It's an idea paraphrased from Robert Caro, an American biographer.