Feeble sunbeams stretched through the dusty air, slipping through thin crevices in the shuttered windows and past weighty stacks of books and papers. Here and there they fell upon this or that object, bringing a sliver of it into lighted existence: a gleaming slice of a shuttered glass cabinet, the spine of an ancient grimoire, a long, narrow fragment of a worn hardwood floor. All else was invisible.
Something stirred the space of the room. The sunbeams twitched, angling away from where they had fallen and sliding over paper and bindings and close-written blackletter leaves. Dust swirled across the floor and pages fluttered in a sudden draught.
Then, with an anticlimactic little crack of displaced air, the breeze stilled and the light unskewed as a disheveled pegasus popped into existence, stumbling forward out of nothing on to the wooden floorboards. Sassaflash stood still for a moment, panting, with her legs trembling and braced against the floor. She had the peculiar impression that she had just been turned inside out, meticulously disassembled, and then pieced together again, and she wasn’t entirely sure that everything had been put back in the right place.
The pegasus took an unsteady step forward, then drew a deep breath and willed the tensed muscles in her neck to relax. It had worked. Nothing had gone wrong. She raised her head. “Mr. Mule?”
Her voice came out as almost a whisper, vanishing into the soft darkness of the book-filled chamber. She cleared her throat, and more loudly, repeated, “Mr. Mule! Where are you?”
“Over here.” The words were oddly strained. There was a faint rustle of attempted movement, and then a sharp, shuddering gasp. “I can’t—it hurts to breathe…”
A crawling chill flashed through Sassaflash‘s skin, her breath catching in her mouth. No. “Mr. Mule! Just a moment, I am coming. Just a moment.” Cthugha take this darkness! Letting her bulging saddlebag slip to the floor with a careless shrug of her shoulders, she scrambled over to where she knew her little scroll-encumbered writing desk was, knocking several stacks of books to the floor in the process, and fumbled for the switch of the glass cathode light on the desk, hooves shaking. Nothing. She muttered a curse, unhooked the bulky, long-since-depleted homemade battery from its holster, and grabbed one of the replacements and slotted it into place. With a click and a dull hum, a chalky, heatless light flooded the room.
Finally. The Dark Lord whipped around, scanning the room. “Where are you?”
“Here.”
Sassaflash shoved aside a pile of treatises on Mǎ dynasty qilin alchemy and scrambled around a bookcase. There, lying half-shadowed on the wooden floor, was the Mule, his ribs rising in shallow, shaking motions with each breath and his legs sprawled out to the side. He tilted his head as the Dark Lord came into view, his skin a bloodless white under his dark fur, and murmured, “You got through fine, then. That’s good.”
The Dark Lord swallowed, and the knot of horrified guilt building in her throat sank down into the pit of her stomach and sat there like a lump of lead. “This shouldn’t have happened...N’ghftngn’gha. What hurts?”
“My right front leg. And right side. I can’t tell if they’s anything else that’s busted up.”
“Right. Don’t—don’t move. I’ll—I have some acetylated willow bark extract, it’ll relieve the pain. Just don’t move.” She disappeared into the stacks of books, only to reappear almost instantly, a scowl on her face. Muttering something about stupidity, she put her shoulder to the bookcase standing between the Mule and the cathode lantern and pushed it out of the way, straining as her hooves scraped against the thick wooden boards of the floor. Pallid light washed feebly over the Mule, and Sassaflash trotted to his side. “I’m an idiot. Need to examine you first. Which foreleg was it? This one? Try to move it, if you please—slightly.”
After several minutes of gentle prodding and questioning and a few hissed exclamations of pain from the Mule, Sassaflash rose to her hooves. “A broken radius, I think—and probably several broken ribs. Maybe damage to soft tissues, as well; the swelling from the broken bones makes it difficult to tell, and I have no idea how the teleportation defects affect flesh. A matter for future experimentation, I suppose. I’ll need to get some fresh corpses from Angel.” She paused, marshalling her thoughts, and then whirled around and vanished amongst the books again, muttering “Willow bark” repeatedly and leaving the Mule to struggle with the problem of coming up with an innocent interpretation of the phrase “I’ll need to get some fresh corpses from Angel.”
There was a period of distant rattlings, clatterings, and the echoed hints of expletives in forbidden languages. These sounds were followed by a muffled exclamation, a dull thud as if something heavy had been dropped on the floor, and then an interval of almost-silence with, the Mule thought, the hint of whispered words in Aklo, and then a sound like some animal scratching or digging through loose soil. At length the Dark Lord reappeared, a tiny silver spoon and a dusty glass bottle filled with a dark liquid pinned between her wing and her flank. Kneeling by the Mule’s side, she balanced the spoon on one hoof and filled it halfway with the liquid. Turning to her wounded minion, she said, “Laudanum, not the willow bark extract. It’s a much stronger analgesic, and in any case the willow bark extract is a blood thinner, which might well have been harmful, given that we don’t know the extent of your internal injuries.” She tipped the spoon to the Mule’s mouth, and the old creature swallowed the tincture with a shiver and a horrible grimace. At his reaction, Sassaflash murmured, “I, ah, should probably have mentioned that it’s very bitter.”
“That’s—that’s alright. It don’t signify,” responded the Mule, staring vaguely ahead as he opened and closed his mouth several times, smacking his lips together as though trying to suck the taste off his palate. Drawing a shuddering, pained breath, he asked, “So, do you need to splint me up now?”
“Yes. I mean, no.” Sassaflash shook her head. “I’m good at field medicine, but I can’t risk—you need to be cared for by professionals. I sent Crowded Parchment to get some paramedics, they should be here soon—Azathoth take it, I forgot to make certain that Parchment knows this address. He doesn’t usually come by the streets.” She gave a small, nervous stamp of her hoof and continued muttering, more to herself than to the Mule, “Idiot! I should have thought of that. Perhaps Angel—no, he’s too far off, and Sweetie Belle is likely at her school at this hour. I could go myself, of course, just to make sure…” She eyed her minion, her face pinched with worry.
The Mule managed a smile. “I’ll be fine by myself, if’n you reckon you should go. It don’t even hurt so bad, no more.”
“Of course it doesn’t; you’ve just taken laudanum. It is, as I said, quite a potent analgesic.”
“Oh. Right.” The Mule blinked, and then inquired, “You mentioned a pony named Crowded Parchment…?”
“Pony? He’s—ah, yes, you have not made his acquaintance.” Sassaflash made an apologetic little gesture with her forehoof, and said, “He prefers not to be known, and I honor his wishes. I’m afraid I cannot tell you any more concerning him.” She hesitated, eyeing the Mule speculatively, and then concluded, “He can, at least, be trusted to find his way to the hospital and back again, I think. He’s quite competent in his way. I will remain, then.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure,” was the Mule’s equable response.
The next half hour passed in a quiet haze of dulled pain for the Mule, and frustrated, tense activity for Sassaflash. Bookcases and books were shoved out of the way in order to make a clear path between the Mule and the door, cloths were draped over some of the more disturbing tomes lying within view, the lock on the iron-barred cabinet holding several peculiarly dangerous works was triple-checked, and various incriminating or unnerving objects were quietly tucked away into corners where, the Dark Lord hoped, they would be unlikely to attract attention. She was contemplating the giant squid eyeball floating placidly in a jug of formaldehyde on top of a stack of texts she had stolen from a Nightmare Moon cult five years earlier, and trying to remember whether that was the kind of thing that normal ponies found concerning, when she heard the sound of hooves against cobbles outside and, shortly thereafter, a knock upon the door.
Finally. With one last glance around the room to make sure that she hadn’t left anything too obviously necromantic out in the open, the pegasus trotted over to the door, slid the numerous bolts and latches holding it shut, and cracked it open, peering suspiciously out. Old habits died hard.
Three ponies stood before Sassaflash‘s cottage. Two stood a bit away from the looming house, dressed in hospital uniforms and accompanied by a wheeled stretcher, while the third waited on the steps in front of the door. This last, a stunted, hunched figure draped in a rough cloak that hid his face from sight, gave a short nod of greeting at Sassaflash‘s appearance and asked, in a throaty voice like the whine of a hungry dog, “Is there aught of thy art in sight? Belike, those yonder would be frighted by the uncanny craft.”
The Dark Lord let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Thank goodness! Come in, hurry; all of you. He’s over here. I’ve given him ten minims of laudanum for the pain. Yes, yes, Parchment, it’s fine. I’ve cleaned things up. Come in!”
Opening the door wide, she gestured for the three visitors to come inside, surreptitiously motioning Crowded Parchment over to one side to stand in front of the skull of a thing that was not quite a pony and not quite a fish. The hospital orderlies, a pair of unicorns, shot a nervous look at their guide as they passed under the lintel, and gave him as wide a berth as possible as they maneuvered the stretcher through the cramped open space Sassaflash had cleared within her bookish lair. Evidently he had made something of an impression on them during the journey over.
They made no comment, though, and beyond a few wide-eyed, disturbed stares when the stretcher accidentally knocked the shrouding cloth partially off a wire cage and a slender, glistening tentacle emerged from between the bars to pull the cloth back into place, they seemed mostly focused on getting the Mule safely on to the stretcher and out of Sassaflash‘s home as soon as possible. He was levitated up without any problems, and after somewhat blearily reassuring his employer that he would make certain that the hospital staff knew to admit her for visits, he was trundled out the door and down the street.
The Dark Lord remained for some moments on the stairs in front of her home, watching them go, and then with a small sigh she turned and went back inside, locking and bolting the door behind her. “Thank you, Parchment. Thank you so much. I couldn’t have borne—I do not wish for him to be damaged.” A shadow detached itself from the shadows, and the cloaked figure of Crowded Parchment glided forward with a faint clack of hooves against the hardwood floor. Sassaflash gave a small nod, and in answer to the unasked question, said, “Yes, they’re gone. It’s safe.”
There was a rustle of fabric among the stacks of books as Crowded Parchment doffed his cloak, and then the Dark Lord’s associate stepped forward into the light. His body was gray and hairless, his naked skin lined with rubbery creases, while his hooves had split open into heavy splayed claws. He raised an earless half-equine and half-canine head, his eyes sunk deep into the sockets of his skull, and grinned a grin that was far wider than should have been possible. “I wit not why thou sent for the leeches. I could have dealt with him in my own way.” Huge, strong carnassials, built for crushing bone and shearing meat, gleamed dully in his mouth.
Sassaflash frowned. “I don’t abandon my own, ghoul.”
“Aye, aye. ‘Twas but a jest. Fresh meat is not to my liking, in any case.” The ghoul gave another cadaverous grin, and then shuffled over to the Dark Lord’s side, hoof-claws scraping on the floor. “Wilt thou spring thy trap this e’en, or on the morrow? How much time have I to dig my shelter?”
“As I’ve said, a shelter shouldn’t be necessary. I don’t anticipate the Princesses allowing the battle to range widely. Regardless, the point is moot; it will be some weeks, at least, before I’m able to open the conduits to the Canterhorn basin.” Trotting over to her saddlebag, lying on the floor where she had dropped it in her worry for the Mule, the Dark Lord slung it on to her back and picked her way over and around several bookcases to the stairs leading up to the house’s second story.
“Weeks?” Crowded Parchment followed her up the creaking stairs, squinting in the light as she swung the door at the top open to reveal a glass-roofed room, its humid air rich with the spice of strange flowers and herbs and the scent of black, fertile soil. He tilted back on to his haunches, claws crossed across his belly, as Sassaflash laid her saddlebag on the floor and began to extract several bundles of fresh worrywort cuttings from within. “Is thy work still undone, then? I had thought…”
“No, no.” The Dark Lord laid down the sachet of powder she had been pouring into several small jars of water, and shook her head. “All is in readiness. But, well...Mr. Mule felt that I was being hasty, and we came to an agreement of sorts. He is to attempt to determine Celestia’s motives for her actions, and based on that, I will...consider whether it is wise to move forward. And,” she added, throwing a stern glance at the creature at her side, “I do not wish to hear any wise remarks from you on that subject.”
“From me? Why would I have aught to say? It matters not to me who made thee see sense, so long as thou hast seen it. I am content.”
“Yes. Well.” Sassaflash placed the last of the cuttings in the nutrient solutions she had prepared, and headed for the stairs. “I confess I had hoped, when I had consented to his plan, that I would only be facing a delay of a day or two. Several weeks, or months, or however long it will take for him to be well enough to travel to Canterlot, was a bit more than I had expected.”
“Aye, ‘twas hardly considerate of him to break his leg. Very selfish, to be sure.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” Trotting down the warped stairs and making her way to the front door, she called over her shoulder, “My thanks to you, incidentally, for tending to the garden in my absence; it would have been in an utterly impossible state without your care. Now, I have business to attend to with Sweetie Belle and Angel. There is a sealed funerary urn in my saddlebag; would you mind placing it with the rest of the essential salts in the second dungeon? Among the mages, I think—next to Pegacelsus would be appropriate.”
“Aye,” said the ghoul. Sassaflash gave a curt nod of satisfaction, and then swept out the door, leaving her associate standing there in the pallid corpselight of the cathode lantern, a pensive expression on his hyena-like face. At length he murmured, “Such concern for this mule of hers...and all these ‘would ye mind’s and ‘thank ye’s! Thou’rt changed, necromancer. Thou’rt changed.” He gave a lopsided shrug, and shuffled over to the Dark Lord’s saddlebag, lying in the shadow of a stack of grimoires.
-----
The shadows falling on Haybale Lane had grown long and deep when the stillness of the narrow side street was disturbed by a dark-clad pony, slinking past one crooked building after another. She came to a halt in front of number 108, and with with a series of metallic clicks and creaks undid the door’s multiple locks. She stepped into a chamber dark as the caverns beneath Voormithadreth; evidently Crowded Parchment had taken his leave. Letting her cloak slide to the dusty floor, Sassaflash felt her way around the books to the lantern. She turned it on, and for several seconds stared into the phosphorescent tube, her face a tired blank. Then a small frown flitted across her face, and raising a hoof she turned the light off again and headed for the spiraling wooden stairs leading down to the tunneled chambers beneath her home.
The heavy padlocked door creaked open, carrying the faint but stinging odor of preservative chemicals, the fire of foreign herbs, and other less identifiable scents with it as it swung wide. Sassaflash closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. Amber and formaldehyde, brimstone and rue, rosemary and rotting flesh (presumably Crowded Parchment had gotten at the chipmunks again)...The smells of home. The smells of her foalhood too, for that matter. Half-forgotten scenes swam through the darkness, their faded colors brightening and their smells, sounds, and sensations sharpening to new life, free at last to be recalled and revisited now that the stifling blanket of worrywort had been lifted.
Whether it was the scent of the rosemary or the deceased chipmunk that brought the thought back, she couldn’t say, but she found herself suddenly remembering an early spring morning, when languid ropes of mist drifted among the dark and silent pines clustering in the gorge of the Hollow Shades. Her hooves had been moist with dew as she stumbled through the woods, following the slender grey figure of her mother, soft and shadowless in the twilight. The pegasus mare turned to look back at her daughter, a familiar half-smile on her aquiline face. The filly had been scurrying to her side when her nose had wrinkled at a subtle hint of decay. She had paused and looked around her. There. Hidden from scent and sight beneath a clump of wild rosemary lay the stiff body of a red squirrel, staring into nothingness with sightless eyes. As she watched, a black burying beetle, its elytra splashed with vivid cardinal patches, whirred down from out of the mist and landed beside the little corpse.
She had found a body. She had found a body! This would be perfect for the revival of that ancient Kesmetian cat mummy. “Mama! Mama! Come see, Mama! I found a body! A real, live body!”
“It doesn’t look very ‘live,’ my little ghoul,” smiled her mother, stepping over to her side.
She had shaken her head in exasperation. “You know what I meant. Is it a good one, Mama?”
The grey mare had knelt beside the little carcass and given it a cautious sniff, before bestowing a warm, proud smile on her daughter. “A very good one. We might even be able to use this without balancing the ratios. You’ve got a wonderful nose; I can hardly smell it at all!” Turning, she had withdrawn a thick cloth from an exterior pocket on her saddlebag, and with it held like an oven grip in her mouth, she scooped the prize up by one stiff leg and tossed it into her saddlebag. Tucking the cloth away again, she had continued, “Now, let’s keep looking. We need to find more than just raw materials, you know.”
“I know, Mama.” She trotted after the graceful mare, excited and shivering in the pre-dawn chill. “Like hemlock! Can we get hemlock next? I know we don’t really need it, but I’ve been practicing how to harvest it right with Princess Platinum’s Lace, and I really want to try it on the real thing.”
“We’ll see, little ghoul.”
Sassaflash blinked in the darkness of her home, an unaccountable stinging sensation in her eyes. The memory itself wasn’t new; she’d always known that that had happened. But before it had been...grayed out. A series of emotionless events, a dull goodness buried in her mind alongside the dull pain of her mother’s death. Now, though, it was—now was different.
The mare stumbled forward, edging down the steps to the stone flags of the dungeon in uncertain fits and starts. It had just been pain when she had first run out of worrywort, pure, senseless, mindless pain—but now the reasons for the pain were unfolding one by one in her mind, burning like orchids and birds of paradise among the leaves of a southern jungle. It hurt her, yes—but it was a sweet, melodious pain.
Holding her hoof beneath a sconce driven into the wall, the Dark Lord muttered, “fm’latgh,” and a burst of fire erupted upwards into the scorched chunks of wood resting in the iron brazier, setting them alight. Warm, flickering light rushed out into the room, swatting back the shadows and revealing a small stone chamber, tidy except for the layer of dust and cobwebs that had accumulated in the months of her absence. The writing desk and washbasin, the simple brown Nippony bed roll in a corner, and of course the small stack of books beside it—a dog-eared copy of the Hieron Kesmaion, the Book of the Climbing Lights, and the Liber Ivanner, among others. Nothing too heavy, just bedside reading—were all where she had left them. Even the little teacup perched atop the books was still there, crusted with dried worrywort dregs.
The Dark Lord stared at the teacup, its rim stained with forgetfulness. She started to turn, as if to make her way back to the stairs coiling up to the library and the adjacent kitchen, but hesitated. Then, moving with the slow uncertainty of a waking dreamer, she turned away from the door.
The scent of rosemary and carrion drifted on the air.
One of the strangest things in my Favorites, but I fear it's just such that keeps it from piling up the likes lighter fare acquires. Given the quality of the writing, a shame.
Mr Mule took a real hammering there, and makes you wonder which bits of Sassaflashs mind were strained as well.
For a moment there yer darkness, I thought I was in that there bookcase.
For a moment there Mr Mule. you were.
"There is a sealed funerary urn in my saddlebag; would you mind placing it with the rest of the essential salts in the second dungeon? Among the mages, I think—next to Pegacelsus would be appropriate."
...Because of course. :D
It was, as you said, a bit short, but I think that it did indeed serve. :)
Yes... Ghouls always were one of the most reasonable Lovecraftian races, even if there always was a risk they'd decide to eat your face. Interesting to see her interact so amiably with one but apparently never have gotten close enough for it to have had similar effects as Mr. Mule. I like the relationship established, though one wonders what barriers kept them from that closeness, whether they were the ghoul's or Sassaflash's. Or perhaps the ghoul just never went on life-risking adventures with her.
Conflabbit, I forgot to put this in the author's notes. A comment shall do, then; this is something I wanted to...well, not address, exactly, but mention. I figure it might be interesting.
When I originally started writing this story, as I've mentioned, I planned a much larger role for Sweetie Belle; she was to have accompanied the Mule and Sassaflash into the wastes of Hippoborea (although not into the depths of Voormithadreth itself; she would have stayed at the camp, and hidden during the attack of the Formless Spawn). I eventually shied away from this partly due to difficulties with the fact that it would have had to involve Sweetie Belle vanishing from home for three or four months, which would have been such a big deal that it wouldn't have been probable that it wouldn't have been mentioned in the show--and nor could Sassaflash, in good conscience (and she does have one, albeit a weird one), have brought her with her into the north; the quest would simply have had to be aborted.
If she HAD traveled with the mare and mule, though, this chapter particularly would have been very different. Before I decided to write the Mule as having broken a leg and a few ribs, I actually had had him dying, with Sassaflash managing to revive him via a creative series of bodges and cobbled-together stopgaps, rather than normal necromancy. I decided, though, that there wasn't much point to actually killing him; other than allowing Sassaflash to show off, it didn't really have much purpose, narratively speaking, as he ended up being revived almost immediately, with no lasting effects of the resurrection one way or another--or at least, none that couldn't be managed equally well with something less sensational. I hope the excision of that particular sequence isn't a great disappointment to y'all; I really would have liked to let the Dark Lord step high, wide, and bountiful in her necromantic displays, but ultimately I decided that it was just too self-indulgent--and too indulgent of HER, as it gave her a major success at a point when her development demanded that she be faced with a failure--and had to put it on the chopping block.
Anyway, before that, I had actually planned for Sweetie Belle to have been the one to die and be revived--and the method of revival, as I had originally planned it, involved Sassaflash removing her brain, placing it in a Mi-Go brain cylinder (for those unfamiliar, basically a piece of Lovecraftian alien technology which allows a brain enclosed within to be sustained in health for an indefinite period of time), and then building around that brain cylinder a clay body, which would then be enchanted to create a golem controlled by Sweetie Belle from within the brain cylinder, all clothed in a magic illusion to give Sweetie Belle's new body a normal appearance. So, in other words, Sweetie Belle would have been turned into an artificial lifeform, hidden in a seemingly organic body...
That's right. What would have been one of the key plot moments in this story, since removed because, well, it turned out to not actually be all that key, was an elaborate Sweetie Bot joke.
6187590
I have to admit, Mendacity kind of spoiled me regarding the reception I could expect from a story; for the first few chapters of this tale I thought I must have somehow become an immensely worse writer (this could, of course, still be the case, but y'know. Keep a sunny outlook and all that). I suspect now that the fact that it focuses on an essentially unknown background character and draws on a much less philosophically accessible mythos than Mendacity did are rather more responsible for the quieter response--but that said, I am absolutely delighted with the response it has gotten, and am immensely grateful to all the folks who have taken the time to give it a look-see, and immensely gratified by those who enjoy it.
6187596
Teleportation: Much, much trickier when you're not a unicorn.
6188008
It's a little from column A and a little from column...well, C, I suppose, really. Crowded Parchment has lived a long, long time, and as 'Sash mentions in an earlier chapter, he's learned not to form attachments, as he inevitably outlives them. Beyond that, though, he's a fundamentally stay-at-home creature, who isn't very good at moving around above ground and prefers to stick to one particular area and never stray from it, so he and the Dark Lord never really had any chance to have the sort of traumatic bonding experiences she shared with the Mule.
6188236
A hearty welcome to you! There's been surprisingly little necromancy up to this point in the tale, actually, but it'll come before the end.
6188473 Wait. You're saying... We came THIS CLOSE to having a brain in a jar version of Sweetie Belle? And you chose to cut it? What on earth were you thinking?! There are barely enough disembodied pony brains in MLP fanfics as it is (Most of them Twilight's) without people deciding to cut them from their stories! Is there no possibility at all that it could be worked back in?
That bit aside (seriously, why did you have to let us know about that? Now I won't be able to rest until that exact scenario has played out SOMEWHERE!) I'm quite enjoying this fic. It seems like you intend to end it before Discord's release, but I kinda wish we could see Sassaflash's reaction to it. I imagine the look on her face when she realizes how -wrong- she was about the Mane 6's ability to defeat discord would be hilarious!
Speaking of Sassaflash's being wrong, I get the distinct impression that she is overestimating the strength of the lovecraftian elements of this story, underestimating the strength of the more mundane elements, and just flat out wrong about a lot of things. The one that most readily springs to mind is the possible existence of the outer gods. I mean, part of the reason a lot of Lovecraft's works were originally so horrifying, and part of why they are significantly less so to modern readers, was because the idea that humankind (or ponykind in this case) was neither alone in the universe, nor its undisputed masters was a REALLY BIG DEAL in his time. Nowadays we've become kind of inoculated to the idea as aliens and such things become more common. I just get the sense that she's hyping them up to be bigger than they are because she personally is having difficulty coming to terms with the idea.
Also, was I the only one who thought that Starswirl might be safely summoned if she didn't bother to put any of the normal wards or precautions in place at all? The whole thing could be a secret test of character. By putting those spells in place, it would be a signal that she wishes to -control- that which she summons. But without those restrictions, it could prove to Starswirl that she really ISN'T just calling him up for her own personal benefit.
Well, any landing you can walk away from... Er, you know what I mean.
In any case, Sassaflash has changed quite a bit over the course of her journey to the north. It should be very interesting to see where she goes from here, especially now that she has so much time to think about her cause and her motivation. I do hope she decides to forgo the worrywort in the future.
I am in no way surprised that Angel deals in slightly used corpses.
Fluttershy can't save every sick animal that comes to her afterall...
...and then there's what happens to any stallion that tries to date her, just so many tragic carrot related accidents
6188473
Okay, well, whileI know I'd originally mentioned characters feasibly dying and still remaining within the story because of the necromatic themes of the story, I hadn't quite expected anything like that. In any case, I'm glad to know the directions it could have gone and the direction it did go. I wouldn't have minded seeing some of those ideas in action, but I feel like the story as it is is much more sincere, if I could use that word there, than if you'd included Sweetie Bot or what have you.
In any case, the lack of reception I think is almost definitely because of subject matter. I've had drawings that I'm infinitely more proud of than others, but they don't get the same amount of attention because they're not small-horse or fandom-related. Within the fandom space, interests definitely diverge with the characters used. Your writing's still top notch!
6188473 A fascinating glimpse into might-have-been. I'm happy you shared.
On the subject of sharing, I just had something interesting happen. I was reading a completely unrelated fanfiction, and came across a reference to one Paracelsus, alchemist and creator of the homunculus. It doesn't take a bright spark to connect this with "Pegacelsus". I had never heard of him before—at least, I don't recall it. My local paper's Bulletin Board humor section refers to this as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, named so because the phenomenon was first noted there in relation to the German biker gang or something by that name. The more general idea that this sort of thing happens with startling frequency is apparently known, more boringly, as the frequency illusion cognitive bias.
Ponies and Lovecraft... Man, I can't help but love you for this.
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
6188642
1) Sweetie Bot fics sorta kinda fit the bill
2) There's a fic submitted in May of Apple Gloom, Scootaling, and Sweetie Bot
3) A fic of my friend's has a fic where the M6 + 2 are cyborg badasses. Somewhere in the 22nd century, the man who would later become Rarity invented a device called the Phylactery (a joke of the origin of the term, a soul jar for a lich). Like its origin, the Device allows the user to exist independently of the rest of the body. After 3 centuries, the "Mane 8" as they called themselves, have basically become brains in a robotic spider than can join with different bodies at will (barring mechanical issues)
This fic is called "Sufficiently Advanced" Please read it. Its my duty as his self proclaimed #1 fan to advertise it.
4) My own current fic deals with actual liches, and is 50% a tribute to the ideas Dorky expressed in his fic, and 50% rule of cool.
6195501
1) It's less the idea of Sweetie Belle as a robot and more the idea of Sweetie Belle as a brain in a jar that I'm fixated on.
2) I've read that! It's really good so far!
3) I've read that as well! Or, The parts of it out so far. It is ALSO quite enjoyable, and the next chapter cannot come out soon enough!
4) I think pony brains in jars happen to be really cool! My complaint isn't that there aren't -any- in MLP fan fiction (there is in fact a pleasantly surprising amount. I myself run a tumblr blog called Brainy Twilight. Three guesses what it's about and the first two don't count), but that there aren't -enough- pony brains in jars.
A nice chapter that helps us see Sassaflash processing living without worrywort. Also good to see she brought Starswirl's ashes with her. Even though she's not stupid enough to try animating Starswirl herself, Sassaflash could still get a huge amount of money or trade for other rare resources by finding some other necromancer with more ambition than sense (i.e. almost all of them) and trading Starswirl's ashes to that poor fool. Heck, if those ashes are used properly as a bribe, maybe Sass could even buy her way back into the good graces of Hollow Shades.
6195601
Oh. Wait.
Its you.
Why the hell am I trying to advertise to you. I'm an idiot.
And I think I vaguely recall going across that blog.
On that note, I'm coming up with convoluted reasons to turn Cheerilee into an Adam Jensen expy, Using the "Oct" in Octavia's name into an elaborate Doctor Who Regeneration joke, Sweetie Belle to slowly turn into a cyborg, and Cadence seeing ghost trains and knowing what that means.
And one or two subtle crossovers with fictions relating to dead people.
6196750 Heheh. It's fine. I think it's been a while since we talked, so it's understandable that it would take you a while to remember me.
Question! Are all of those ideas for the same story, or for individual ones? Because either way, I am looking forward to seeing them!
More specifically, I imagine he knows how to get to Cold Storage in the morgue section...
I image the EMTs finding other, disturbing things in her room:
"Miss Sassaflash, why do you have a levitating, glowing unicorn skull on this chair over here?"
"Uhhh... It's ummm... a nightlight. Yes! A nightlight for Classical Era Peloponysian foals!"
"Its turning to follow me around the room ! It has fangs and there is some sort of black ooze flowing out of its eye sockets!"
"Its a novelty Nightmare Night nightlight! It is part of a larger water feature with bamboo chimes and a pebble bed stream that makes soothing sounds!"
"Why do I hear anguished, far-off screams of 'liberate tute me ex inferis'?"
"Classical Peloponysian lullaby. Nothing to be concerned with..."
6190595
That would certainly explain Ponyville's gender imbalance...
6191933
After hearing about the possibility of Mi-Go Belle, I had this barmy picture of most of Ponyville's residents as Cthulhu Mythos beings in disguise:
Dash: Colour Out Of Space
(That is why she likes to hang out at Sweet Apple Acres so much)
Cheerilee: Shub-Niggurath
(All her thousand young are now in school...)
Pinkie: Nyarlathotep
('Nuf said)
Derpy: Yog-Sothoth
(You though those bubbles on her bum were because of her ebullient personality?)
Bulk Biceps: Cthulhu
6197230
Yup, same. Most of them are only going to come into play in Act 3. Need to set things up in order to satisfy my rule of cool.
6197991 Well alright then! I eagerly await the curtain rising upon the third act then! And while you didn't mention it, I maintain the hope that Mi-go brain cylinders will become important to the plot at some point.
6198051
Well, since half of it is tribute to Dorky's SA, the phylacteries are basically going to be eventually be upgraded to work rather similarly.
But, since I have the mad idea of trying to go through 1200 years of history, this is going to take a while.
6198201 Wait, 1200 years of history in this story? Wow.
I noticed that this story does not have the alternate universe tag. Now this means either one of two things; either you are in the habit of not adding tags to your story until you post a chapter to which they are relevant, which is a very meta way of making sure your audience is surprised, or the events within the story are meant to be able to take place alongside canon without altering it in the slightest. If -that's- the case, I really cannot wait until we get to see the look on Sassaflash's face when she realizes how wrong she was about the mane six being unable to defeat Discord.
Comments. So many comments. So many comments that Dromicosuchus has not responded to in anything remotely resembling a timely manner. Bad basal crocodylomorph. Bad.
6188858
Wait and see! Things are going to get very interesting, very soon.
6190595
My personal headcanon is that this is how Fluttershy (or Angel, rather; Fluttershy would be horrified if she found out) obtains the funds to get medical supplies, food, etc. for all of Fluttershy's various animals. Angel has been supplying veterinary schools, biology labs, and (occasionally) necromancers for years, both with animals that don't quite make it and (more often) with corpses that he comes across in his wanderings outside, which he gets rid of so that they don't distress
his pethis owner, should she happen to come across them. He's like a little one-bunny morgue.6191631
Heh. What with the recent appearance of "Haycartes" in the show, I consider my use of "Pegacelsus" to be completely justified.
6191933
Glad you're enjoying it!
6196687
Both distinct possibilities. Wait and see!
6197839
It is possible he makes the occasional snack run.
6221997
Concerning the blocks of ice, I had been planning to return to that, but unfortunately I never really found a good place in which to do so. It's not terribly plot-relevant, in any case, but as it's not kind to leave things up in the air, I'll just recommend that you think about where, exactly, our overlord and minion are, ponder the events shown in the Hearth's Warming Eve episode, and...think about the implications.
6254567
Honestly, I wasn't quite sure whether to make use of the alternate universe tag, for reasons that will become apparent later on. Let's just say that everything that will happen in this story can, indeed, be reconciled with canon, even when that appears to be impossible at the time.
6255026 I don't think it would be very difficult at all to reconcile this with canon so far. The way it's looking, Sweetie Belle intentionally sabotaged Discord's prison on Sassaflash's orders (knowingly or not), and Sassaflash was just wrong about the Elements of Harmony being unable to stop him.
6255026
So the hospital is like a cross between the home hardware aisles in a B&Q and and the cold cuts counter at the supermarket delicatessen?
6197839
Wait.. what do you mean possible Mi-go Belle? How did I miss that?
6266400
6188473 mentioned it in his comment earlier:
Wow, that went so much worse for the Mule than for Sass.
Laudanum? Yeah, that ought to be pretty effective.
It says something that basically all of Sassaflash's associates have been opposed to her larger plan (well, we don't know how Angel lands on the topic). I suppose just because you're evil or evil-ish, it doesn't mean you want the world destroyed or the current order of things upended. It's also interesting that in spite of this Crowded guy having previously opposed the plan, it was the Mule that got partially through to her.
Dangit, Sass. I had a feeling that she'd do something silly once she didn't have the Mule looking over her shoulder.
That is such a strange mixture of adorable and creepy.
Yes, a dash of opium makes everything feel better.
I suppose I'm daaa first one to point dis out. But ain't it raskovnik cuttings that she had in her bags, to try and cultivate, instead of worrywort? Jus' a minor lil' thing. Otherwise, this feels like a short but overall good chapter, showing just how the travels she's had have changed her from all this time away from Ponyville. I look forward to what comes next.