> Death Valley
>  by Rambling Writer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue - Run
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pyrita was too old to be running at the speeds she was running. But if she slowed down, they might catch her.

Midwich Valley narrowed as she scrambled across the rough, snow-swept rocks and the vertiginous cliffs above felt even taller than usual, looming high enough to block out the moon. She wasn’t young enough to fly up and over them, not in one go, but she could speed herself up along the ground with small flaps of her leathery wings. So she did, fighting arthritis and the temperature alike to stay alive.

Her breath misted before her as she forced frigid air into her lungs, out of her lungs, in, out, in, out, even though her very diaphragm felt stiff. Her muscles screamed from overwork and her heart was ready to give out. But they’d seen her, she knew they had, so she had to keep moving. Adrenaline didn’t ease the pain, it just made it too easy to ignore. But she didn’t need to keep this up for long. She just needed to reach-

As the opposite walls of the valley met each other in a curve, she saw it: the entrance to the mine, yawning darker than midnight black at Midwich’s apex. Pyrita wanted to take a rest, to ease off for just a few moments, but she couldn’t afford that. She ran into the drift, giving a quick chirrup of echolocation.

Yet what came back was muddled, messy. Her hearing was beginning to go on the best of days, and now exertion had turned her heart into a drum pounding directly in her ears. Pyrita couldn’t make out enough of the return sounds to get a clear image and she didn’t trust her memory of the mine’s layout. She risked coming to a halt and chirruped again. Her ragged breathing made the sound too fuzzy for anything and what she heard back was even worse.

She couldn’t go into the mine. It was too dangerous. She couldn’t leave the mine. It was too dangerous. Panting like a dog, she looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t see them yet, but it was only a matter of time. It had to be. Her lips twitched as she instinctively mouthed out a prayer, a wish, for anything that could help-

Then she saw it. Right at the entrance, glinting in what little starlight there was. A discarded lamp. Which miner had lost it, Pyrita didn’t know. Maybe she had someone looking after her. As usual. She dove, grabbed it, gave it a rattle. Still had some oil (pity it wasn’t a gemmed version). She patted the ground around it, hoping for- Matches. She struck one — in spite of her shakes, she did it on the first try — and tried to light the lamp. And, stars above, the cussed thing caught immediately. It’d give away her position, but that was a risk she had to take; this was the only way she could move forward.

Holding the lamp aloft and murmuring out a prayer of thanks, Pyrita plunged into the mine.
> 1 - The Fool in the Crazy Eights
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Necromancy had a PR problem.

Not without reason, of course. It was hard for it to not have a PR problem when its most prominent adherents took to evil more thoroughly than a duck did to water and had a nasty recurring issue with enslaving the souls of the dead. It was enough to give most ponies knee-jerk anxiety on hearing a word that began with necro-.

Unfortunately, that anxiety meant necromancy’s less harmful uses were often neglected. Many arcanists avoided working with death at all, even for something as harmless as talking to the spirits of the deceased. That wasn’t even getting into more complex uses, such as resurrecting the recently dead. There were applications of necromancy that could do nothing but help ponies, enough applications to fill a spellbook or ten. Yet countless ponies refused to even think about them, simply because they involved the word “necromancy”.

But if Celestia could abdicate, anything seemed possible. Three moons ago, Princess Twilight had started the Necromancy Corps, an initiative to study necromancy in-depth in contexts that wouldn’t make the average pony balk in fear, to rework necromancy’s image into something more palatable than four simultaneous zero-anesthesia root canals. Not only would its benefits be found, but such knowledge would make hostile necromancy easier to counter. And the unicorn heading the Corps, Amanita, was experienced, unrivaled, easily the most powerful necromancer in the history of the Royal Guard.





The only necromancer in the history of the Royal Guard had stage fright. Her clothes were too tight even though they’d been fine when she’d put them on and she was going to break out into a sweat at any moment and she was short of breath and her mane was probably definitely absolutely so frizzy it looked so terrible and she still wasn’t that great with the memory-display spell and had she really memorized the path of her speech maybe she ought to skip the presentation today to go back home and-

The short, slim, spectacled earth pony next to her jabbed her in the ribs. “Breathe, Amanita,” murmured Restricted Code.

Easy for you to say, Amanita panic-grumbled to herself. Code had more years of experience in ritualism than Amanita had years of life. Code was Equestria’s High Ritualist, the top pony in the Royal Ritualist Commissioned Division. Code had had the ear of Celestia herself for over a decade and a half (a period that had ended when Celestia, not Code, had stepped down). Code was here in a fancy-schmancy dress uniform with a chest full of medals that wasn’t even all of them. Amanita, on the other hoof, had been with the Guard for barely three moons and didn’t have much experience with presenting like this. Her last actual job had been nearly half a decade ago and in retail, for Celestia’s sake! Small-town retail! Four moons ago, she’d been in jail! For necromancy! The very thing she was-

Another, sharper jab. “Seriously, breathe,” said Code, almost disapprovingly. “You nearly destroyed a lich. You helped capture a spree killer.”

“And this is totally different,” hissed Amanita. “I can’t just murder the audience when things go wrong and bring them back later!” (She wasn’t being facetious. That technique had served her well in the past. Multiple times.)

“No, but I can help cover for you,” said Code. “And my help is more useful than murder.” She glanced at the clock. “And I believe that’s my cue.” Without further ado, she walked onstage, leaving Amanita with nopony to talk to and pawing at the ground.

Both too slowly and too quickly, Code reached the lectern. She cleared her throat and spoke with well-worn confidence and no notes. “I’d like to thank you all for coming to this talk. I know necromancy is still feared, but…”

As Code talked, Amanita peeped around the curtain and took another look at her audience. It was sparse, thanks to necromancy’s reputation, yet, with one exception, the few ponies present were some of the brightest minds in Equestria, the cutting edge of arcanics, the sorts of ponies laws of metaphysics were named after. That wasn’t even getting into Princess Frigging Twilight Sparkle, Starswirl the Frigging Bearded, and Celestia Frigging Herself What on Frigging Equus. Under normal circumstances, the only way any single one of these ponies wouldn’t be the smartest person in the room was if one of the others was also in the room.

And they’d come to this conference so that she could teach them.

Holy…





On the cusp of adulthood, Amanita had lost somepony close to her. A lich had taken advantage of her grief and carefully, gleefully pointed her along the path of necromancy. Yet Amanita had eventually had an attack of conscience and backed out, turning herself in to the authorities. After a stint in prison (only two years — she was lucky), Amanita was the only pony in Equestria who knew necromancy in-depth and wouldn’t get thrown in jail for it the second a guard laid eyes on her.

Technically speaking, Amanita wasn’t in the Necromancy Corps, she was the Necromancy Corps. Oh, sure, there were other ponies involved, but if Amanita decided to leave, the Corps simply couldn’t function. Which both made her incredibly important and the place where all the weight was laid.

Everything about necromancy, the Guard came to her for. Counterspells, mostly. The worst part about it was the way most of Amanita’s work was so trivial. Yes, of course fresh eye jelly worked best, why did they even need to ask? Because they didn’t know where to start, mostly. When she was able, Amanita distracted herself by properly cataloging the necromantic artifacts the Crown had collected over the centuries. And since a surprisingly large chunk of her work had involved rewriting CONOP 8888, Equestria’s own anti-zombie-apocalypse plan, the Necromancy Corps had been temporarily dubbed the “Crazy Eights”. It had taken a little bit of doing to reassure her that it was affectionate rather than derogatory. After all, given the antics of Princess Twilight and her friends, crazy was the new hip.

Once Amanita had straightened out existing data, she started poking her nose in what was uncharted territory, even for her. Between Code’s watchful eye and her own conscience, she stayed away from anything resembling zombie creation or enthrallment. Thanks to body donations, she even had a decent amount of cadavers to test with, once she’d needed to move up to actual ponies from rat corpses. She threw herself into her studies with the same fervor she’d once devoted to the sort of magic that gave you a bounty of six hundred thousand bits.

Now, here she was, with a spell only she could have created, one that was undoubtedly necromantic yet also benign, sharing it with the world. It was just the sort of thing she wanted.

Sadly, necromancers were not known for their speech-giving skills.





Amanita took a step back, letting the curtain fall, and started pacing, forcing herself to not hyperventilate. She couldn’t do this. She could do this. She couldn’t do this. She could do this. She’d never done it before. There was a time when she’d never done necromancy before. And back and forth and back and forth, like her brain was playing tennis with her thoughts. It was probably just nerves, but her mind was very good at coming up with plausible-sounding reasons for why she ought to just go home and never leave again. Even though she was the whole reason this seminar was being held in the first place.

Panic took up enough of her attention that she almost missed it when Code said, “…so without further ado, please welcome Amanita.”

With a gulp, Amanita walked onstage, barely managing to hide her shakes. She was pale green all over, but that was just her normal coloration. The crowd stomped out slightly-more-than-polite applause as she reached the lectern, thanked Code for the introduction, and arranged her notes. She waved a hoof for them to quiet down, and they did (holy cannoli Celestia and Princess Twilight did what she said).

She glanced up at the back corner. Bitterroot was up there, for whatever reason. She gave Amanita a reassuring smile and a small wave, which at least made her panic slightly less. She made sure her stance was right, looked at the audience in general, failed to ignore how small she felt, and cleared her throat.

“Psychometry,” Amanita said. Almost immediately, her mind blanked and she had to take a quick look at her notecards. Her tail twitched in embarrassment (thankfully, her cheeks weren’t burning — yet) and she looked back up. “Seeing the past of an object and… noteworthy events in its history. Hypothetically, one of- a very… versatile branch of magic. However, most attempts at spells for- at psychometric spells have been impractical at best, assuming they even work to begin with. The data- Information received from them is- hazy, very hazy, and the power requirements are steep, and the spells themselves are too complicated to justify their use.”

No response from the audience except forward-turned ears. Good sign. Amanita swallowed and held her head higher. “The- main issue with psychometry,” she continued, remembering not to glance at her notecards too often, “is that objects can’t really remember things, and when they do, it’s, it’s in ways that render psychometry redundant, such as physical notches in a sword. But bodies can remember things, and in non-physical ways. The more- impactful the event, the stronger the memory. If you get burned, you’ll automatically flinch away from fire.” (A few ponies in the audience nodded.) “And death is one of the most impactful events possible in life. After all, you can only die once.” She grinned, hoping it didn’t look too nervous. “U-usually.”

The crowd giggled. Emboldened, Amanita found herself speaking slightly louder. “With that in mind, we have created a spell that can, when properly applied, show the moment of a person’s death, so long as we have the body. Unlike many aspects of necromancy, it does not interact with the person’s soul in any way. It’s no different from looking at a photograph. We call it Tempus Mortis. If you’ll open up your packets, there are spell instructions inside.”

The room echoed with the rustling of paper as a dozen pages were turned at once. Before she launched into her explanations, Amanita allowed herself a grin and risked a thought of, This is going well.

Astonishingly, fate withstood the temptation and this continued to go well. Amanita didn’t stumble over her words or forget anything as she spoke. The crowd seemed to be following along as she laid out each step of Tempus Mortis. She didn’t miss the lost looks or disgusted cringes when she got to the parts related to necromancy, but that was to be expected. After all, she was the Guard’s first necromancer; foal’s play to her was brand-new and/or alien to everypony else. When she reached the end, her heart was almost beating at a normal rate.

“…giving you the sensation of being there at the instant the individual dies,” Amanita finished. The audience had shuffled a little as she’d spoken, ponies that had been sitting apart now close together so they could point at their papers and whisper to each other. She couldn’t make out the words, but at least the tones were invested. “Now, showing you’s better than telling you-”

Surprise rippled through the audience; Amanita was sure she felt the wind as Celestia’s wings twitched slightly open. She raised her hoof for silence. “Showing you’s better than telling you,” she said with a slightly raised voice, “and we have the body of a guard here, Sergeant Major Chainmail. With the permission of his descendants, we can show you just how he died. So if you’re, uh, not interested in seeing a dead body, move over there.” Amanita pointed to the right side of the room. “We’ll be putting up a sheet to block the view for anyone who doesn’t want to see it.”

Someone stuck a hoof up. “Will it also block the view of the casting?”

“Yes.”

Everypony in the audience went over to the left side of the room.

Amanita and Code glanced at each other. “No sheet it is, then,” said Code. She trotted offstage and quickly returned, wheeling up a gurney with the body of a ten-years-plus-dead pony on it, a unicorn stallion who wasn’t much more than bones and teeth and skin anymore. Some members of the audience grimaced slightly, but not much else. Code placed the gurney in the middle of the stage and stepped aside. As Amanita approached the desiccated corpse, her guts loosened. Finally, something she was used to.

First, she placed a hoof on the body. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be necessary in later versions of the spell, but for now, she needed a connection to the body, and a physical one would have to do.

Next, she gathered and shaped her magic. It wasn’t too complex, but the edges of it, the parts related to death, would make most ponies flinch away, by reflex if nothing else, the same way one flinches away from plunging their hoof into a corpse’s intestines. Most of the spell’s difficulty came from the caster needing a strong enough will to perform it while still keeping their lunch down, rather than any technical complexity or power requirements. But Amanita was a necromancer, capable of playing with rotting intestines with one hoof while eating spaghetti with the other; those energies were like old acquaintances to her and she worked them with thoughtless ease.

And, finally, the incantation. As she let the magic flow, Amanita intoned, “Meminerim mortem.” Technically, the words didn’t actually do anything, but the focus required for them gave Amanita that last little psychosomatic kick for the spell to work.

And what a kick it was.

Right where Amanita’s hoof was touching the body, chronology and physicality unraveled. Her existence was gone in what would’ve been an instant if time meant anything. Space ceased, leaving behind only ideas, concepts, and moments. Thanks to the spell, the most potent of those moments was the last thing Chainmail ever did. Amanita immersed herself.

Even before she saw anything, words and sounds rippled from the void, slightly echoic. A stallion’s voice, the scratching of claws, screams. “Don’t you touch them, you overgrown housecat! Get over here!” A bellow of rage, a wet slice, a crunch-

History slammed into being around her, a moment locked in time. Nothing was moving; Tempus Mortis captured the second the pony died, not an instant before or after. Everything was slightly musty, like experienced through a thin film, and limited in color, like an old photograph. Amanita was in a bar that was old even in its own time. A hole had been smashed through one of the walls, the bloodthirsty manticore responsible in the middle of the room. Glass shards, broken tables, shattered chairs, and jagged splinters coated the floor and hung in the air.

And there was Chainmail, a unicorn in the prime of life, thrusting forward with a spear, stabbing the manticore right in the eye. His face was frozen in a roar even as the manticore’s stinger caved in his chest. Even without the blunt force trauma, he wouldn’t have survived the poison, but he went down swinging. Or stabbing.

Amanita didn’t have much in the way of a body, but she could move. She “walked” around to the other side of the manticore and saw the spear exiting the back of the manticore’s head, something Chainmail couldn’t have seen. She looked over the bartop; a unicorn and an earth pony were huddled beneath it, the unicorn desperately putting up a flimsy shield to protect the two of them. Maybe Chainmail knew they were there, maybe he didn’t. Either way, time knew.

Amanita spent another few minutes wandering around the building, making sure to get a good look at the details. She saw regular ponies fleeing the scene and guards running in to attack the manticore, portraits on the walls, even the threading of screws if she looked hard enough. But she couldn’t go far from Chainmail; space vanished if she tried and she simply couldn’t move any further. The bar was where Chainmail had died, not whatever stores lay outside (although Amanita could see the trail of destruction the manticore had wrought in getting to the bar — its presence was an important part of his death, after all). Once she’d seen enough, Amanita removed herself from the past.

The last syllable of the original incantation was still hanging in the air when she fell back into being. Her head was spinning like she’d stood up too fast, but a few blinks put that to rest. She turned to the audience. “And that’s it,” she said. “The spell still follows the Law of Liminality, so no outside time will have passed. However, since you still experienced it, it can be shown with the right spells. If you’ll just give me a moment, I can do exactly that.”

And now came the tricky part.

Amanita was a necromancer, not an illusionist. And this spell, able to play back what she’d seen and heard, was an illusion spell. She’d done her best to learn it, but the finer details always escaped her — details that were necessary for the spell to function. Most of the time, it simply didn’t work for her, and when it did, it was more of an “I guess?” sort of working rather than a “Got it!” sort. But it was necessary to properly display the spell for others, and she only had to make it work once.

Amanita lowered her head and pushed magic through her horn, but when she tried shaping it, she only got sparks. Tried again, more sparks. The design kept wiggling from her grasp, like a wet, water-filled balloon. She tried one more time; still more sparks. And absolutely everypony in the room was waiting on her.

“Um, sorry,” mumbled Amanita. Then she remembered where she was and raised her voice. “Sorry,” she said more clearly, “but, um, nobody’s dead, so I, I’m having trouble with this.” She blinked and quickly turned away as the assembled archmages chuckled softly at her ineptitude and her face turned beet red. She clenched her teeth and scrunched her eyes shut and focused and-

She heard Chainmail’s voice again as the spell thankfully bubbled out of her. She breathed deeply, keeping the magic flowing, and risked a glance upward. The image, a record of what she’d experienced, was a bit fuzzy, but still perfectly “legible”. The scratching of nearly a dozen pens and pencils rippled through the room, nearly disrupting Amanita’s control. But she held on and the memory played out fairly clearly.

Once she dropped the spell, Amanita breathed a few times to stop her head from spinning, then returned her attention to the audience. Thankfully, the worst was over. “If you check the records of the Guard, you’ll see that Chainmail died in Stirrup Gap in 991, when…”

From there, it was smooth sailing, even if her mind kept glancing back. Amanita explained Chainmail’s death, went through possible applications, and was wrapping up her talk before she knew it. “…thereby providing a safe, simple, and non-invasive way to investigate death.” And that was it. Her speech was over. All that was left was the Q&A, where at least it wouldn’t be surprising if she screwed up. Her heart actually went a-flutter. “Now, are there any questions that don’t come from the princess?” (Princess Twilight’s hoof was already up on pure reflex.)

Most hooves in the audience went up as Princess Twilight pouted (and kept her hoof up). And Amanita suddenly felt ready to panic. What did she do here? Just pick a pony and let the others sit? Which one was the best one to pick? Starswirl’s hoof was up; did she go for the famous pony and risk alienating the others? Or should she-

Before she could overthink anything, she forced herself to point out at random. Then she moved her hoof so she was actually pointing at a pony. “Um, you, in the corner.”

An older pegasus stood up. “I’ve been looking through all your write-ups,” he said, “but I don’t see any ritual instructions for the spell. Doesn’t it follow the Holstein equivalence principle?”

“We, we’re pretty sure it does, yes,” said Amanita. “It’s just, we’re, uh, still trying to figure out what does what-” Her blanch was hidden by her already-pale coloration. That was a terrible way to explain it to any scientist, much less one who was probably one of the foremost ritualistic minds in Equestria; yet, put on the spot like that, she couldn’t come up with any better way to put it. She tried thinking, but her mouth locked up.

Code glanced at her for half an instant and was immediately talking to head off the silence. “You have to understand,” she said, “given the lack of research into necromancy before now, we’re still learning which ingredients have any meaning in this context and what that meaning is. We have no reason to assume this spell cannot be adapted into a tribe-independent ritual, but the setup of that ritual, and most necromantic rituals in general, is still very much uncharted territory.”

That seemed to satisfy the pegasus; he nodded and went back to taking notes. Amanita mouthed, Thank you, at Code, who gave a small nod back. Could’ve gone better. Could’ve gone worse. And the extent to which it could’ve gone better was smaller than the extent to which it could’ve gone worse. Which was… something. And something was better than nothing, so Amanita continued. “You, with the bow tie.”

Thankfully, her phrasing improved as she answered more and more questions and Code barely needed to intervene again. The questions were all easy, to boot, even if the sound of everypony taking notes was surprisingly loud. By the time Amanita picked Starswirl (!) for the next question, she was practically confident.

“I was looking at line…” Starswirl traced a hoof down his paper. “…9-” (Amanita quickly pulled up that line in her memory.) “-where you draw out the impression of death using Rachis’s Recall Rigmarole, only to cut out all but the beginning and end by setting the memory factor to infinity and sending its related fractions to zero-”

“It has to do with the nature of death,” said Amanita. “As I mentioned before, death is one of the most impactful events in a person’s life, so naturally-”

Starswirl interrupted her with a huff. “Well, yes, I understand that, but I’m speaking of measurements. There’s no proofs, no lemmas… How did you derive that?”

Amanita’s blood ran cold. She swallowed and forced herself to say, “E-experience.”

“…Ah.”

Silence fell on the room like a wet blanket as Starswirl slowly sat back down, looking every which way but Amanita. Even the scratches of pens had stopped. Amanita glanced at Code, who still wore a neutral expression but had folded her ears back and was pawing at the ground, apparently unconsciously. Amanita felt like her hooves were still stained with blood and her horn was still stained with worse.

Necromancer.

Amanita wasn’t sure whether Princess Twilight put her hoof up again to break the silence or whether she was just clueless, but she was grateful either way. “Erm, yes, P-Princess?”

“This spell was made to analyze death-” (She was talking fast. Definitely to break the silence.) “-but could it be used to analyze other physical events? Not as-is, obviously, you’d need to make a lot of changes…”

In spite of that bump in the road making everypony just a little bit quieter, the rest of the session managed to go off relatively hitch-free and Amanita soon realized she was walking offstage and ponies in the audience were milling about and the seminar was over. Her heart wasn’t even pumping that hard.

Well, there it was. Equestria’s first seminar on necromancy. If you ignored Amanita’s screwup with the memory-projection spell (which she had a hard time doing, admittedly), it had actually gone pretty well. But of course it would, everything else she’d done was so basic. Necromantically speaking, anyway.

…Huh. Basic. That was… not that far from the truth, really. So if they all learned-

“Good job, Amanita,” said Code. “You did excellently.”

Amanita nodded. “Thanks.”

“You don’t need to hang around if you don’t want to. I’ll see to it that Chainmail-” Code jerked her head back a little. “-gets reinterred myself.”

“Thanks. Again. So, uh, see you in the lab tomorrow?”

“In the lab tomorrow.” Code nodded to Amanita and trotted off.

Code leaving was almost like a signal to Amanita: the boss left, so you can, too. Irrational, she knew, but that was the way it felt. Some of her stuff was spread out across a front-row seat in a bad corner nopony would want, in case she’d needed it quickly, and soon she was packing it up piece by piece. For the moment, all she wanted was to get home.

Then her ears pricked up as she heard somepony approaching her.

“…more complicated than that,” Celestia was saying.

“I know, but that’s all I can think of!” protested Princess Twilight. “Nothing else fits!”

Amanita’s joints locked up, all the way up and down her spine. The Princess and the Prime Mover. Separately, she could probably handle either one, but both? Being in a conversation with the two most important ponies in Equestria was… It was genuinely uncomp-

“Excuse us. Amanita?” asked Celestia. “Do you have a moment?”

“Um.” Amanita swallowed and lifted her head. “Yeah.” She turned around to look Celestia in the eye, only remembering at the last second she needed to also look up for that. Celestia was big. “What, what do you need?” Please don’t be too complicated, please don’t be too complicated…

Princess Twilight began, “In all the…” She made a vague circular gesture. “…ritual foods you eat, it’s always rye bread. How come? The only thing I could come up with is that a lot of rye breads are black, and…” She nickered in a sort of disgusted amusement.

Not too complicated. Although you’d think Princess Twilight Sparkle would know better. “Well… yeah, that’s the reason. Rye bread is black. That’s it.”

Princess Twilight and Celestia exchanged looks. “That’s really it?” Princess Twilight asked. “The… color.” She sounded more disappointed than if Starswirl’s greatest written works were rendered illegible by water damage.

“Pretty much.”

“That seems a bit simplistic,” said Celestia.

“Tell that to funeral mourners,” Amanita said. For a moment, she managed to not feel mortified talking back to somepony who moved the sun itself holy crow that was a terrible idea dangit dangit dangit what on Equus was she DOING.

Talking sense, evidently, since Celestia’s response was to frown, then nod and say, “I see.” (Although based on her tone, that might’ve been a lie.)

Trying to ignore her stomach’s trapeze act, Amanita continued, “Symbols are usually symbols because they’re simplistic. It’s this… big idea packaged into a small space. And when something as simple as color can put you closer to your goal, you’ll tweak the color.”

“Huh,” said Princess Twilight. Her frown was far less regal than Celestia’s. “I was expecting something… more.”

Amanita shrugged. “That’s, that’s the way it is.” She dropped a half-eaten granola bar into her bag, clipped it shut, and slung it over her shoulder.

“Actually, wait another minute,” Princess Twilight said quickly. “I saw your resurrection and enthrallment rituals — and no offense, but they’re really creepy — and once I… actually worked the numbers out, I found that the enthrallment ritual actually uses more energy than resurrecting somepony.”

Celestia looked down at Princess Twilight and flicked her tail. “It does?”

“I know!” said Princess Twilight. “And resurrection even took less and less energy the longer it went on, where enthrallment took more! It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Yes, it does,” said Amanita, tilting her head. Did the two alicorns not get this? “Compared to enthrallment, all resurrection is is healing the body. By the time you put the soul back in, the last bit of magic that restarts the heart is so trivial the universe practically wants it to happen already.”

Judging by the looks on their faces, no, the two alicorns didn’t get this. Amanita took a quick breath. “Okay, so… it’s like this. In both enthrallment and resurrection, you start by doing a katabasis, right? Going to the underworld to retrieve a pony’s soul.”

“Is it really the underworld?” Princess Twilight muttered. “Elysium and Tartarus aren’t really-” She stopped when Celestia nudged her with a wing and motioned for Amanita to continue.

“And it’s the same thing in both, so they take the same amount of power. But, but in resurrection, you’re healing the body, and bodies heal themselves anyway. Holding healing spells together takes a lot of… dexterity, but not a lot of energy. The universe wants to do what you’re doing, you’re just making it easier.” Amanita’s words were picking up speed as she talked and she started gesturing. “Enthrallment, though, it’s subverting a pony’s will to follow your own, and… Well, wills don’t want to be controlled, that’s kinda the whole point of a will. So even though the enthrallment spell is simpler than healing on a… structural level, you need to fight the universe every step of the way and dump in thaum after thaum to get the pony’s mind secured. And you need to make it last so your thrall doesn’t get their mind back and… do something you don’t want them to do. It’s like… healing is playing an instrument, enthrallment is pulling a train car. The first one doesn’t need you to be as strong, but that doesn’t mean it’s easier.” Her ears twitched. “Does… that help?” she asked quietly, looking between Princess Twilight and Celestia.

Princess Twilight’s brow furrowed for a moment, then she smiled. “Actually, yes! Quite a lot!”

“Indeed,” said Celestia. She flicked her tail and lowered her head in a bow. “We apologize for taking up your time, and thank you for your service.”

Out of some crossed wire of reflex, Amanita said, “You, too.” Yet before she could feel silly about that, Princess Twilight and Celestia were already leaving, deep in conversation. Come to think of it, from what she knew of them, they probably did consider ruling Equestria a ser-

“Oh! You’re still here.” An auburn pegasus sidestepped in front of her, interest written all over her face. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Well… not really, n-no,” Amanita heard herself say. “I was- just leaving.”

“Well, I can walk and talk,” said the pegasus brightly. “I was wondering why exactly fire destroys thralls so thoroughly, and you’re sort of the only pony who knows that sort of thing.”

Amanita swallowed. She wanted to go home, but this was such a simple question. She hitched her bag over her shoulders and made for the door. “Fire burns,” she said to the following pegasus. Honestly, that was, like, Metaphysics 101. “Enthrallment needs the body and soul to match up, and fire changes things on a metaphysical level.” She pushed open the door and kept walking. “If you burn wood, it’s not wood anymore, it’s ash. So, with-”

“But what about rot?” somepony asked. Amanita twitched and spun around; she’d blundered into the crowd of scientists gathered outside the room in their own conversations with each other. And once they’d heard her, they’d all started gathering around her. “Rot changes things as well, why doesn’t it have as much of an effect on thralls?”

Grinning nervously, Amanita reluctantly continued her explanation. “Well…”





Bitterroot leaned against the outside wall of Canterlot University, crisp air turning her breath into steam. The cold bit at her exposed neck with shark teeth, but she ignored it (and the fact that she still needed to buy a scarf). Amanita had seemed a bit nervous during the seminar, which, okay, she was an adult, but she could probably use a friendly face as a pick-me-up. Otherwise, Bitterroot would be homeward bound by now.

And she was half-considering doing it anyway. The seminar had ended like thirty minutes ago; what was taking Amanita so long?

Something that’d leave her really wanting to get away from it, probably. So Bitterroot waited. She was a bounty hunter, she was used to waiting.

She heard some voices ripple through the doorway and stood up, flexing her wings. It wasn’t long before Amanita stumbled out the door, thronged by a gaggle of scientists so tightly Bitterroot was surprised she was able to stand up. Yeah, that would explain things.

“-it’s, it’s more complicated than that!” Amanita was protesting. “Ponies don’t just end at death, there’s more- Look, can you let me-”

“But for all practical purposes, that’s true, isn’t it?”

“I mean, most of the time, yeah, but in some cases- I really just want to get-”

“What sorts of cases?”

Bitterroot waited for a moment, but the crowd wasn’t leaving Amanita alone. Whenever she pressed forward to escape the crush, it simply relocated so she remained at its center. As her voice grew louder and angrier, the crowd just got louder and more persistent. No way she was getting out of that on her own. She’d practically need divine intervention. But with no gods around, Bitterroot was the next best thing, so she raked her mind for the best course of action. After a moment, she settled on sounding loud and acting official. She half-roughly shoved one of the outside professors aside, yelling, “Amanita! Amanita, we need you!”

Success! The crowd immediately parted like a shoal of fish, finally giving Amanita some breathing room. Before anypony could say a thing, Bitterroot marched up to her and yelled, “We’ve been waiting for you! You’re gonna be late!”

Amanita blinked, saw what Bitterroot was doing, and smacked herself on the forehead. “Yes, of course! The- thing!”

“I’ll carry you! We’ll get there faster!” And within seconds, the pair were soaring over Canterlot, with Bitterroot’s forelegs wrapped around Amanita’s trunk. The second they were a block away from the university, Bitterroot lowered them both to the ground and lightly deposited Amanita on the street.

“Sorry about that,” muttered Amanita. “It was… I just couldn’t get away from them. It was like they were a wolfpack.”

“Scream at them and get aggressive,” said Bitterroot, folding her wings. “It works on the wolves I’ve seen.”

Amanita grinned weakly as the pair started walking home. “So, uh, you were in the audience?” 

“You sounded nervous a few nights ago and I thought I’d support you.” Bitterroot shrugged. It was the least she could do.

“It helped a little. Thanks. But did you understand anything I said?”

“No. But I had fun not understanding it. How did it go for you?”

“Ehm.” Amanita coughed. “Alright. Better than I expected.”

“…So why do you sound disappointed?”

“Well- Nothing to do with the seminar, really. It’s…” Amanita bit her lip. “Look, I’m making history just by existing. I at least want it to be good history. I mean, most of it went fine, but how is it supposed to sound when I screw up the memory-projection spell in front of Princess Twilight, of all ponies, and try to pass it off as it not being about death?”

Bitterroot blinked. “Wait, you mean that wasn’t supposed to be a joke?”

“…What do you mean, ‘supposed to be’?”

“It sounded like a joke! You said something totally off-the-wall like it was nothing! It was funny!”

“It was?”

“Not super funny, but when I wasn’t expecting any jokes at all, yeah, it was funny. Why did you think they laughed?”

“Because I’m supposed to be a skilled necromancer but I was botching something simple outside that?”

“Look, this isn’t high school. These ponies are professionals. They get that you’re a necromancer and not an illusionist. Or at least they should.”

“…Huh. I never…” Amanita stared off at nothing for a moment, then shook her head. “I, I never had that… happen to me. Circe was…”

“Yeah. I know.”

“But… still…” Amanita folded her ears back. “Mages should be… well-rounded, shouldn’t they? I mean, once everypony in the Crazy Eights catches up with me-”

“You think they will?”

“Eventually, yeah! I don’t have a master anymore, it’s just me, and- I’m just a necromancer, so once somepony else who’s a necromancer and also a decent illusionist comes along-”

“How long have you been worried about this?”

“Just since the seminar. Everypony was asking me questions that I could answer in five seconds, and if they catch up quickly and suddenly I’m not enough of a necroma-”

“Amanita, they’re so far behind you that they’re still learning the basics. They’re impressed by you looking at somepony’s past when you’ve already resurrected ponies like it was nothing. If you’re worried about job security, you’ve got it for a looooong time. And there can be two necromancers in the Necromancy Corps, you know! Just… I don’t know, it’s not worth worrying over.”

“Yeah. I’m…” Amanita kicked at a loose cobblestone. “…still getting used to having a status quo that isn’t awful. Paranoia.”

“I get it.” Some of Bitterroot’s family had gone through bad times. It was the kind of thing that stuck with you. “But remember, status quo or not, I’m here for you.”

“I know.” Amanita smiled slightly. “Thanks.”

They walked in silence for a little longer. Bitterroot raised her head, spread her wings, and breathed deeply through her nose. She could feel the crisp winter air travel through her nostrils, down her windpipe, all the way to her lungs. She let it out slow, letting her breath mist up. “Nice weather, isn’t it?”

“I guess. The cold stinks,” Amanita mumbled. She shivered. “Anyone who says they like winter is lying.”

Bitterroot snorted. “I know plenty of ponies who’ll say otherwise.”

But Amanita shook her head. “They like surviving winter. They don’t like winter itself. It’s like… It’s practically spite. You can be outside for ages in spring, summer, even fall. Not winter. The cold drains the life from you.” She pulled her coat tighter and rubbed her hooves together. “Besides, they always like early winter, when you’re still in the honeymoon phase of snow, or late winter, when you have the hope of spring. Never midwinter. Everyone hates midwinter. Midwinter is the worst.”

Bitterroot opened her mouth, immediately closed it again. She tilted her head in thought. “Okay, that actually makes sense.”

“Spend a season without modern heating or air conditioning and then tell me you like it.”

“…Spring’s still nice.”

“It is! It’s warm, the sky’s blue again, you don’t need to worry about shoveling…”
> 2 - Field Experience
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amanita walked into work the next morning without much thought. She’d been fretting about the seminar for so long, and now that it was over, she could just unwind a little and research different ways to magically poke corpses. (And since she was the only one who really knew what she was doing, there were so many ways to fudge that if she wanted to.) The talk about thralls and fire yesterday had even got her thinking; if most necromancers used the same methods for enthrallment, maybe she could design a spell for quick liberation. Based on Circe’s methods, it wouldn’t be too-

But she came to halt as she approached the door to her lab, for who was hovering outside her door but Princess Twilight’s messenger, Spike. (She still wasn’t sure what his actual title was. Majordomo? Chancellor? Aide? Princess Twilight just said “assistant”, he seemed proud of that, and Amanita couldn’t muster up the courage to ask otherwise.) For a moment, Amanita panicked about something to do with the seminar before giving herself a mental slap. Still, the idea of talking to the princess wasn’t exactly an endearing one. She swallowed in anticipation and gave a tentative wave. “Hey, Spike.”

“Morning, Amanita!” Spike said brightly. (They’d seen each other twice in the past three moons and he still recognized her immediately without the crutch of her being the only unicorn in the castle.) “Twilight’s got an assignment for you!” And he was away, fluttering on those tiny little wings that really shouldn’t’ve been able to support that pudgy little body.

“Wait, what?” Amanita trotted to catch up with him. “What, what do you mean, ‘assignment’? …Okay, who died where? Because if-”

“Nopony’s dead. …I think. Twilight just told me to go and fetch you.” Spike twisted around in the air to look at Amanita. “And you need to resurrect somepony within three days, right? I bet if it was important, Twi would’ve already teleported you halfway across the country.”

“Or something,” Amanita said vaguely. That… kinda sounded like Princess Twilight, to be honest. She- “Wait, how did you know about the time limit?”

Spike just shrugged. “That was one of the only facts about necromancy Twilight knew for a while. She likes to talk about magic and I listen.” He fluttered closer to Amanita and stage-whispered, “I bet if I was a unicorn, I’d be one of the best mages out there. Did you know that…”

And based on the facts he spouted off, Amanita wasn’t sure that was braggadocio. She tried drinking it in as best she could as they walked, but much of the terminology flew right over her head. She couldn’t be sure whether Spike actually understood it, of course (or even if he was just pulling her leg), but that was another matter entirely.

“…which is why even creatures that aren’t mammals can get mustaches! I’ve tried to convince Twilight to give me another one, but…” Spike rubbed at his unmustached upper lip and sighed.

Amanita decided not to ask about “another one”, so she just gave a sort of, “Hmm.”

“Yeah,” said Spike. “It’s really- Oh, here we are-” And he was pulling a door open. Just how far had they walked? Amanita poked her head inside.

Princess Twilight’s study was like a library in relative miniature, and an imposing one at that. Literally every spare square inch of wall was lined with shelves and Amanita wasn’t convinced there weren’t more shelves behind them. All of the shelves were stuffed with books, ninety percent of which were older than any of the people in the room. The newer ones, books that could actually withstand some abuse (not that Twilight would abuse them) were scattered about along with spare parchment on tables, chairs, desks, basically anywhere there was room that wasn’t the floor (and sometimes yes on the floor). The only exception was a large table in the center on which was spread out a map of Equestria. Standing around that table were Code and Princess Twilight, in idle conversation about something.

“Hey, Twi?” said Spike. “I’ve got Amanita.” Amanita nervously waved.

Princess Twilight looked up from the map and smiled. “Thanks, Spike. You’re dismissed.”

Spike saluted, nudged Amanita into the room, and shut the door behind her, leaving Amanita alone with two of the most influential ponies in Equestria.

Amanita swallowed and walked up to the table. It was bigger than it’d seemed from the door. “What’s this about?” she asked.

“Nothing bad,” said Code. “Just an opportunity.”

“What sort of opportunity?”

“You’ll see.”

“You don’t need to be mysterious, you know.”

“Yes, I do. I’m the High Ritualist, I have a mysteriousness quota to keep up. Also, I don’t want to sit through Her Highness’s explanation two more times.”

“Charcoal should be along any minute,” said Princess Twilight. “We can start the-”

At that moment, the door opened on… someone who looked like a unicorn but definitely wasn’t. Her horn was oddly shaped, her hooves were cloven, she had scales on her back, and that was just the start. After a second of staring, Amanita’s brain clicked: that person was a kirin. They’d been… suffering from some ailment or something and Twilight and her friends had helped cure them. (Celestia, Amanita thought, I really need to catch up on current events…) She was a bulky sort of lean, a little bit taller than Bitterroot but not by much. Her coat was a not-quite-pale khaki that made Amanita think of wood of an unknown tree, although her mane (which was so incredibly floofy it went all the way down to her chest, like holy crow) was definitely the color of mahogany. Her red horn was just plain enormous, even bigger than Twilight’s, and it split and twisted until it looked more like a branch than anything. Her stance was… not exactly loose, not exactly tight. It was like this was a place she wanted to be, but wasn’t comfortable in just yet.

“Hello,” said the kirin. “Is this the, uh, the wight pla- the right place, sorry.” Her eyes locked on Princess Twilight. “Yes, it is.” Her gait was exaggerated as she walked to the table and took a place opposite Amanita, like she was posing for a dressage competition. “Have we done the… introductions yet?”

Princess Twilight cleared her throat. “Code, Amanita, this is Charcoal, an expert in environmental magic. She’s spent much of her life studying how magic moves through the land.”

The kirin — Charcoal — shrugged. “Well, it’s not like there was a whole lot else to do in the Grove will Silenced. While Silenced, while.” (Magically-induced muteness, Amanita remembered. That was the ailment.)

“Charcoal, this is Restricted Code, the High Ritualist-” The two shook. “-and this is Amanita, head of the Necromancy Corps.”

“Ooo.” Charcoal’s ears swiveled forward and she leaned across the table. “You’re the pony who can resurrect the dead?”

“Yeah.” Amanita certainly wasn’t complaining if that was the part of being a necromancer that Charcoal locked on to.

“Huh. Neat.”

“…It’s pretty neat, yeah.” Amanita realized she was grinning.

Code cleared her throat and tapped the table. “Princess Twilight, if you would.”

“Right.” Princess Twilight laid a sheet of paper on the map and started skimming it. “Three days ago, an arcanometeorological station in the North started recording strange readings. Nothing major and they thought it’d die down in a few hours. That happens from time to time, sometimes pegasus magic doesn’t disperse properly. But by the evening, the readings were still there, so they decided to take a closer look at it. Short version: a nearby ley line somehow got corrupted.”

That didn’t mean much to Amanita, but Charcoal blinked and raised her head by a few inches. “And it was just overnight?” Charcoal asked. “No slow shift or anything?”

“That’s actually why it took them so long to find out it was the ley line,” said Princess Twilight. She looked at the paper again. “According to this, the scientists thought it couldn’t’ve been that because the energy of a line changing that much that quickly is impossible.”

“I mean, it is.”

“And yet it happened. They literally woke up to it.” Princess Twilight looked at each person in turn. “Ley lines are important parts of their ecosystems, and if this is left unchecked, it could damage the land beyond repair. Plants would simply refuse to grow, no matter how much earth ponies tried to convince them. Monsters would start spawning, like chimeras and hydras. It might even cause the land itself to shift with the new energies.”

Well, there was an image. Amanita gulped. And apparently, Princess Twilight noticed, because she continued, “Of course, we wouldn’t see anything for another five years, but we might as well nip it in the bud now. Code is going to take you two on an expedition to get to the source of the ley line, figure out what’s wrong with it, and purify it.”

Charcoal actually broke out into a huge grin before deciding it was unbecoming and suppressing it into a smaller grin. Amanita, though, started shifting her weight from side to side. She managed to say, “Your Highness, with… with all due respect, I… I don’t think I’m the best pony for this job, I don’t know why you picked me-”

But Princess Twilight interrupted her. “Actually, Code suggested you.”

Amanita glanced at Code. “Me? Code- M-ma’am, I’m- I don’t know much about… fixing ley lines.” Drawing power from ley lines, sure. It was a decent power boost for any unicorn who could pull it off, and her old necromancy master had been an earth pony, a tribe who could drink magic from them almost as easily as they could drink water from a lake. Fixing them? Nuh-uh.

“That’s actually why I think you should come with me,” said Code. “Ley sanitation isn’t nearly as complex as it sounds. It’s merely big. The rituals involved are relatively simple-”

“It was actually a hobby of Princess Celestia back in the 400’s and 500’s!” said Princess Twilight brightly. “She was worried that a malign ley line could damage Equestria and took it upon herself to learn what she could about cleaning them up-”

“-are relatively simple,” Code said loudly, “so even an amateur could perform them. A ley cleansing ritual is often the first field task a newly-minted ritualist undertakes. It makes for excellent field experience: it involves shifting larger amounts of power than normal, but it’s slow and methodical enough that it’s hard to make mistakes and any mistakes you do make can be rectified before much damage is done. Even with the complete unknown of the line’s precise problem, it shouldn’t take long to pinpoint.”

She cleared her throat. “Amanita, as necessary as you are to the Necromancy Corps, your skills outside necromancy are a bit… lackluster.”

Amanita half-folded her ears back. “Yeah…”

“I thought that some real-world experience would benefit you. I’ll be there with you every step of the way and can answer whatever questions you may have. However, I realize you’re still new here, so if you don’t feel comfortable-”

“No,” she said quickly. “I- I was just thinking about this yesterday, that I need to be more than just a necromancer, and-” She nodded. “I, I’ll do it.”

“Excellent,” said Code. She turned to Princess Twilight. “So where is the source of the ley line?”

“Way out here.” Princess Twilight tapped a region in a corner of the map, deep in the northeast of Equestria.

Emphasis on deep north.

“That’s nearly off the, um, map,” said Charcoal, leaning forward. “How cold is it?”

“Cold,” said Amanita. “I’ve been that far north.” It wasn’t an experience she really wanted to remember, and not because it was where she’d learned most of her necromancy. It was just… cold. Just about everything ponies took for granted in the heartlands of Equestria was missing up there. Warmth? Controllable weather? Easily-accessible grass? Clear skies? Roads that stayed clear? Roads that were paved? Gone. It was a hardscrabble life, and most ponies didn’t like hardscrabble. To make matters worse, it was in the middle of a mountain range. Now the terrain itself was out to get you, on top of everything else. But ley lines being what they were, the source existing in a mountain was to be expected. Unfortunately.

To Amanita’s surprise, even Code seemed a bit put-off; her ears were back slightly and her voice was just a little bit tighter. “Your Highness,” Code said, “when you told me to pick a few ponies, I… was under the impression that… that we wouldn’t be in the middle of the… wilderness. If we’re that far out-”

“Actually, you’ll be staying in town.”

“…There’s a town there?” squawked Amanita. “Who- Who would live in a place like that?”

“It’s called Tratonmane,” Princess Twilight said. “There isn’t much information on it, but from what I can find, it’s an old mining town, founded about three hundred years ago. It sits less than half a mile from the ley line’s source in, um…” She bit her lip. “…Midwich, it’s Midwich Valley. What it’s like there, I don’t know.”

“Probably thin,” said Charcoal absently. “Deep, real deep. Very fertile for the region. Or is it ‘lush’? Lots of plants, either way. Dead straight. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a river.” When she realized everyone was looking at her, she said, “It’s… a… ley valley? What else, what else were you expecting?”

“Well,” said Code, “I… Hmm.” She gave Charcoal a brief look, nodded, and turned back to Princess Twilight. “If there’s a town, I retract my complaint. What sort of transportation can we expect?”

“You can take the train. There’s a branch line-”

“How does the Equestrian railway retch- reach absolutely everywhere?” asked Charcoal. “We kirins, we’re in our grove for who-knows-how-long away from everything else, then we come out and there’s stationery already sitting four miles away.” She frowned. “Or is it meters?” she mumbled. “No, it’s miles, definitely miles…”

“While Equestrian rail construction is certainly something,” said Code, “that’s not what we’re here for.”

One of Charcoal’s ears twitched and she pulled her head down slightly. “Sorry. I was, um, mute for, it was ages, you know, and I’m still, uh, re-learning conversation- stuff. I’ll… leave it for later?”

“I know a friend who loves railroads,” said Amanita. “I’ll see if I can get an answer from-”

Code cleared her throat loudly and rapped the table. Amanita quickly said, “Sorry.” She turned to Princess Twilight and said, “Uh, you can keep going.”

Princess Twilight had been looking between Charcoal and Amanita with some interest and actually seemed disappointed at the conversation getting derailed (har har). But she quickly covered it up. “There’s a spur along the line to Griffonstone. From what I can gather, trains only travel along it once a week, but it’ll take you there. Even if you’re probably the only passengers.”

“Good,” said Code. “What sort of equipment will we bring?”

From there, the meeting turned into a checklist of necessities and itineraries. Princess Twilight liked her checklists. They needed to bring this, do this this way, bring those, maybe stop by here, be here at this time tomorrow to leave… Important stuff, to be sure, but not stuff Amanita wanted to spend much time on. It was a relief when Princess Twilight finally said, “…And I think that covers it.”

“Mmhmm,” said Code. She rolled up her notes and stuck them in her pocket. “They know we’ll be coming, right?”

“Of course. I had a courier sent out yesterday.”

“Perfect.” Code bowed, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. “We won’t let you down, Your Highness.”

Amanita groveled that that was easy for her to say as they left the room. Code had probably already done it several dozen times. Although Charcoal didn’t seem too put out as she walked away (she was whistling), and how much work could she have done on ley lines if Equestria hadn’t even known she existed a year ago? And so Amanita started feeling not just anxious about her job, but anxious for feeling anxious about her job.

As if reading her mind, Code said, “You will do fine. More than fine. I genuinely don’t know if anyone has screwed up ley sanitation beyond a few minor mistakes, and I’ve done research.”

First time for everything, Amanita said to herself. She was already pretty good at firsts.

But just as the two split to go to their respective jobs, Amanita realized something. “Hey, Code?”

Code stopped walking to look at Amanita. “Hmm?”

“If ley sanitation is so easy, why’re you coming? Couldn’t you send another ritualist to teach me? This seems a bit below your pay grade.”

“Technically, it is. I just want to get out of the city for a little while,” Code said. “Canterlot’s… lack of spontaneity can be smothering. It’s been too long since I’ve danced in starlit fields. And if I can do it on the Crown’s bit, well, all the better. So I assigned myself to it.”

“…Being a colonel must be nice.”

Code threw back her head, sweeping what little of her close-cut mane she could through the air, and grinned. “It is quite nice, yes.” With that, she turned and strutted away.

Amanita snorted and headed for her lab. Maybe that’d be her goal in the future.





“Ever thought about getting your own place?” Bitterroot asked Amanita that night at dinner. She picked up another sprig of cilantro in her teeth and started chewing it down, centimeter by centimeter.

“A little. I have no idea what to look for.” Amanita twisted her own cilantro around a fork. “Why? You looking to get rid of me?”

“Nah, just curious.” Chew chew. “If you ever need help, though, I’m available.”

“Thanks.”

Several moons after her release from prison, and Amanita still hadn’t moved out of Bitterroot’s house. She hadn’t even moved from the couch, even though Bitterroot had offered to clean up one of the spare rooms enough for a bed. Amanita said it was “breaking her habits” (although her sleep schedule was still rather rigid). Still, Bitterroot wasn’t complaining, especially since she had somepony else to go grocery shopping every once in a while.

They ate in silence for a while, but Bitterroot could tell Amanita was trying to build herself up for something. It was in the way her shoulders were a bit tighter than usual and her ears kept twitching. It probably wasn’t bad, though; Amanita’s “conversation” wouldn’t be much more than terse grunts in that case.

It wasn’t long before Amanita said, “I’m gonna be away for a while. I’ve… sort of got an assignment.”

There it was. “Really? Like, with the Guard?”

“Yeah. It’s- Have you heard of ley sanitation?”

“…Nope.”

“Short version: ley line’s dirty, we’re gonna clean it. Code says it’ll help me get some actual experience. It’s really far north. There’s this town called Tratonmane, and- Anyway, I’ll be leaving tomorrow. It came up fast.”

“Hey, stuff happens. Congrats on the job.”

“Yeah.”

There was the terseness. Amanita was probably still brooding about yesterday and not being enough of a necromancer. Even though she’d just been selected to make her more of a necromancer.

So maybe- “Mind if I come?”

Amanita looked up. “Why?”

“Well-” Bitterroot flexed her wings a little. “I was thinking of getting out of Canterlot for a bit. There haven’t been a lot of bounties here recently, but wilderness towns always have some. Not worth a whole lot, but it’ll give me something to do.” Which was actually completely true. Bounties had been light on the ground (or in the sky) recently. “So depending on where you’re headed, maybe I could tag along for a bit.”

One of Amanita’s ears drooped. “Again: why?”

“For starters, you’re the greatest necromancer in the history of the Royal Guard-”

“Until the next one,” Amanita mumbled.

“-and I’ve never seen you do any big magic.”

“…Bitterroot, I’ve resurrected you twice.”

“And I was dead when that happened. By the time I was back, it was already over. Yeah, I know it’s not necromancy and I never learned much about ley lines, but I’d like to see it anyway. And… Well, it might be nice to have somepony to confide in if it all goes sideways. Just in case, you know?”

“That’d be nice,” said Amanita quietly. She raised her voice. “I’ll talk to Code tomorrow. You’ll need to be at the train station early in the morning with me, buy your own ticket and everything, and… y’know, Code might not want you coming with us.”

Bitterroot just shrugged. “Like I said, I was leaving Canterlot anyway. If she says no, I’ll just get off at a different station. Not a big deal.”

“Alright. And if it ever comes down to it, thanks for being there for me.”

“Sure.”

They ate.

Amanita spoke up again. “You know, maybe you should charge me rent.”





Canterlot Station was still chilly just after 7 AM in the middle of winter. Amanita pulled her coat closer around herself as the mist of her breath mingled with the mist of the train’s breath. Oil lamps hung along the platform to drive away the predawn dark. The hissing of pistons echoed in the cavernous space, especially with so few ponies to break up the sound. Her bags were slung across her barrel, tightly packed with clothes and gear. Code and Charcoal weren’t there yet, but the train wasn’t due to leave for another ten minutes or so.

Bitterroot trotted back from the ticket window. Pegasus magic probably meant she was feeling just fine in the chill. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been out near Griffonstone. I always go more northwest than northeast.”

“You go north a lot?” Amanita asked. Words could fill the time.

“Mmm. Not a lot a lot. Semi-often, maybe. If bounties ever try to leave Equestria, they usually head north. A lot of ponies don’t like the North, so they think it’s easier to hide out there, and I’m like, ‘I can get ten thousand bits for capturing you, I think I can handle the cold for that much’.”

Amanita chuckled.

“Amanita!”

She looked; Code and Charcoal were trotting onto the platform, both with their own coats and luggage: Charcoal with some overstuffed bags, Code casually hauling two carts carrying twice her weight in boxes. “Good. You’re here,” said Code. She glanced at Bitterroot. “Is she coming with us?”

“If I can,” said Bitterroot. “If you don’t want me to-”

But Code waved her off. “I can’t say where you can and can’t go. Buy your own ticket and stay out of our way and we won’t have a problem. You all get on board and I’ll get these to baggage.” Without another word, she walked towards the front of the train.

“Is she always like that?” Charcoal asked as she watched her go.

“More or less,” Amanita said. “Not exactly one for small talk, is she? Let’s get inside.”

Thankfully, the inside of the train wasn’t just warmer than the outside, but actually warm, if a bit dim. Amanita breathed deeply as she settled into her seat. Charcoal sat down across from her, took off her bags, and started rooting through them, muttering.

“Worried you might’ve forgotten something?” Amanita asked.

“Hmm?” Charcoal’s ear twitched as she looked up. “Uh, no, just…” She looked back inside. “Tetruple-checking my stuff. Just to, y’know, be sure. Again. Again.” Her ears moved back a little. “Again.”

The movements were familiar to Amanita. “What kind of stuff?”

Charcoal’s ears moved forward again and she started grinning. “Natural remedies! It’s, see, there’s a funny… thing about stuff like ley lines. If you get afflicted by magic like that, it’s, it’s natural magic, see? And it’s supposed to… stick around. So when it affects kirins- um, any sort of… animal, it’s, it’s kinda hard to get out. Unless you do it in the right way. Natural pills for natural ills!” She laughed, only to keep talking before Amanita could respond. “It’s for the magic to get in, but, but it’s probably best to be prepared. And I am prepared!”

Charcoal’s horn began glowing oddly as she whipped objects past Amanita’s face, almost too fast to see. “Willow, that’s good for pain, but you probably knew that… Wilderweed, that’s a good commune- immune booster… Noonflower, that can help mana flow better… Foal’s breath, great all-arounder…”

“Wait. Foal’s breath?” Amanita asked.

Charcoal came to a stop, holding a bag of some sort of blue pills. “Uh, yes?” she said tentatively.

“I thought that was just for your- silence- curse.”

“It’s actually good against a rot- a lot of mental magics,” said Charcoal. “It’s… I actually don’t know how it works. But Princess Twilight’s done some work and these-” She wiggled the pills. “-have effervescence of foal’s breath. Good for more mental ills than you’d think. Like ley lines making you go loopy! We probably won’t need them, but if we do need them, I’d rather have them, right?”

“Heh. I’ve been without ingredients enough to know that’s true.” Amanita blinked and shook her head. “Anyway, um…” She extended her hoof. “Amanita.”

Charcoal looked blankly at her hoof for a moment, then extended her own. “Um. Charcoal.” As they shook, she said, a bit quietly, “Is this a… pony thing, introducing yourself twice? We already knew each othen. Other.”

“It’s more… We’d been introduced professionally, not personally.”

“Huh.”

“So, uh…” What to ask, what to- “How’d you get into environmental magic?”

Charcoal’s face lit up. “Well, I’m- You know the- thing with the kirin, right? How we were silenced?”

“I-”

“It’s, there’s a lot of things you just can’t do if you can’t talk. But you can study stuff. And environmental magic, there’s a whole lot we didn’t know about it, so once we were silenced, I just- started studying it. It’s everywhere, you know. In all the plants and rocks and water and even animals. It’s where things like timberwolves come from, you know.”

“That’s-”

“And then Applejack and Fluttershy came by, and they de-silenced us and that was great. When we started going out into Equestria more, I, it turned out I knew a, um, a lot more about environmental magic than most ponies just because I’d been studying it on my own for so long, like out in the wild. Princess Twilight herself contacted me…”

As they talked, the whistle blew and the train started moving.





Bitterroot hung out on the observation car as the train left. Somehow, in all the different times she’d left Canterlot, she’d never done it in the hour before dawn. Clouds were just beginning to orange up on their bottoms and a tinge of gold was creeping into the sky. Yes, it was quite beautiful.

But as the train wound its way down the mountain, the sunrise was blocked by walls of rock and Bitterroot traipsed back up the cars. She had a long, long trip ahead.

Amanita was deep in conversation with the kirin — Charcoal, right? — so Bitterroot didn’t want to disrupt her. On the other side of the aisle, Code had her muzzle in a book. Not buried; judging from the title, it was more a train station novel than anything. Well, if she didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to talk. Bitterroot had some books of her own. She sat down across from Code and cleared her throat. “Hey!”

Code looked up. “Hello.”

“Colonel Restricted Code, right? The High Ritualist.”

“Just Code is fine.” Code closed her book and set it aside. “And I remember you. Bitterroot. Bounty hunter. You committed suicide in front of me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Bitterroot. “Does it really count as ‘suicide’ if you’re planning on being resurrected later? I mean, you can kill someone in self-defense, but that’s a bit different from a murder, right?”

Code frowned and flicked an ear. “That’s a good point, actually… Anyway, I remember you.”

“Clearly.” For a moment, Bitterroot searched for a topic. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, she asked, “So, uh, Amanita says you sometimes work with demons?”

Code blinked. For a moment, Bitterroot wondered if she’d accidentally broached some aspect of national security she didn’t know existed. Then Code shrugged and said, “At times. Getting to know them is fascinating. Many demons are unfairly demonized.”

One of Bitterroot’s ears dropped and she cocked her head.

“Yes, I hear myself,” said Code. “What I hear is a stereotype so thoroughly entrenched in the popular consciousness that it’s turned into etymology.”

“…Did you write that out beforehoof?”

“Eh…” Code wiggled a hoof. “Technically. I’ve had this sort of conversation many times before. Many of the demons we remember are the ones who took it upon themselves to come here and torment the less fortunate. If they were foals, they’d be the ones who torture ants with magnifying glasses. It’s the others I’m making contact with.”

“Huh.” Bitterroot imagined that if she kept asking, most of the ideas would fly right over her head with an audible whoosh, yet she kept asking anyway. “Do they… want anything?”

“Heh.” Code actually grinned a little. “Let’s just start by saying that, even for the ‘nice’ demons, they have a hard time getting the idea of just giving something away, even a few words. But if we focus on one demon at a time, we can make it work. Why, just last week, one of them actually remembered my name…”

The train chugged on through the predawn.
> 3 - Glacial Crossroads
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The world chilled even more as the train blazed north. Over the next day and a half, the group slowly left the heartlands of Equestria behind. Hazy horizons of snowy forests and rolling grasslands were sharpened into the jagged sawteeth of icy mountain ridges. Early on the second day, they had to switch from their train, an express headed northeastward for Griffonstone, to a mixed-goods train on a due-north branch line: a few mostly-empty passenger cars and plenty of freight.

Amanita checked her itinerary for the fifth time that hour. Their stop, Waypoint, was a few minutes and less than a mile away — even as she read, she felt the decelerative twitch of the brakes — but she was in that last restless leg of a long journey, where you can’t stop fidgeting and being ready to be done. She sighed and looked out the window. The train was traveling next to a fast-moving river; beyond that lay a thick forest, and beyond that loomed a mountain range. Not stood; loomed.

If you wanted to hide, you could do it easily there. She and Circe had spent a lot of time in mountain ranges, back when her attitude towards necromancy was a lot more… carefree.

She pulled her coat tighter and took deep breaths.

Code tapped her on the shoulder. “Amanita?”

“Yeah?” Amanita asked, turning away from the towering shadows.

“I can’t believe I forgot to ask you this before,” said Code, “but I assume you want to keep your status as a necromancer a secret, correct? At least for now.”

Amanita barely held back a snort. Talking about necromancy to scientists in Canterlot was one thing. Talking about it to ordinary ponies, particularly ones way out here? She might get lynched. “Yeah. For now. If it comes out, things are… not going well.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” said Code. She glanced over to Bitterroot and Charcoal as they stood up and stretched, ready to disembark at the station. “You two heard that, right?”

Without looking at Code, Bitterroot nodded. “Don’t let ponies know Amanita can raise the dead.”

“I fought we’d be- Thought we’d be doing that.” Charcoal adjusted her bag’s straps. “I’m ignorant, not stupid.”

“Good.”

The train slid into Waypoint Station and its whistle screeched. Before the conductor had finished hollering, the crew was off — the only people leaving. Little ribbons of snow chased each other across the empty platform in the wind. The depot building itself looked actually neatly built, with carefully chopped logs and surfaces carved to be flush with each other and an oddly large door, but was clearly more interested in function than in form, especially with the way the roof could use a new coat of paint. It would keep the worst of the cold out, and if that wasn’t enough for you, well, why were you up here to begin with?

Bizarrely, Charcoal didn’t seem too put out by the cold, even with the way midwinter in the North was undoubtedly biting her. She breathed in deeply through her nose and grinned through the steam of her exhale. “Chilly!” she chirped.

“Yep,” muttered Amanita. Her memories of Northern chill had never gone away, but she still held her legs close together.

“It’ll probably get worse in Midwich,” Charcoal said. “Warm air rises out of slot canyons like that and isn’t easily replaced! Super cold.”

Amanita wasn’t sure whether she loathed that bit of information or loved that warning.

Once they retrieved their baggage, they entered the depot, not much more than a few benches and a ticket window. A pegasus mare, apparently in her late fifties and well-bundled in spite of the shelter, was whistling out a light and bouncy tune as she used a broom to clean cobwebs from the corners. When she heard the door open, she twitched and Amanita barely noticed her shoulders sinking. “Hello, Royds,” she said in a long-suffering voice.

One of Code’s ears twitched. “Who?”

The mare whipped around to look at them, then blinked in surprise. “Oh! I, uh… thought you’uns were… someone else.” Her words twanged with a mountain accent. She looked at each of them in turn, almost suspiciously. “Did y’all get off at the wrong stop? Nothin’ here but woods and…” Her voice trailed off.

“The Tratonmane branch line ends here, right?”

“…I reckon so.” One of the mare’s ears drooped; the other folded back. “You’re the ritualists, right? From Canterlot? For the ley line hootenanny.” She looked at each person in turn, lingering twice as long on Charcoal (who grinned, but took a step back).

“We are. Except for her.” Code nodded at Bitterroot. “She’s a hanger-on.”

“Shoulda known. Nobody’s never did gone up through that way since I been workin’ here.”

“And how long have you been working here?” Amanita asked before anyone else could.

“Forty years.” The mare trotted into the ticket booth, muttering nothings to herself. She opened up the ticket window, dropped a name plaque on the desk — Travel Stamp, it said — and pulled out a rubber stamp and ink pad that somehow managed to be dusty. Once she licked down the stamp to get it wet (why would she do it like that), Travel said, “You’re sure you need to go thataways? ’Cause them jaspers’re odd folk.”

“Unless there’s a town closer to the ley line, yes.” Code fished out a coin purse and dropped it on the counter. “How much for four-”

“What makes them odd?” asked Charcoal, poking her head around Code. When Code shot her a Look, Charcoal protested, “I’m just asking!”

“Four tickets,” Code said quickly.

Travel gave Charcoal a Look of her own as she rang up Code. “They jus’… keep to themselves,” she said. “Which don’t sound like much, ’cept they don’t leave that gulch noways. Only pony who comes out ’ere drives the train. Once a week, coal an’ lumber out, supplies in, an’ that’s that. Friendly enough fellow, when ’e says anythin’. And nopony else ever comes out. Not ever?” She shook her head. “You’d swear they’re a-worshipin’ the mountains up there.”

Amanita frowned. She’d been in enough small Northern lumber or mining towns to know what came off to other ponies as weird. An oddly strong connection to home, stolidity, living out here to begin with… Plenty of ways. But because of those similarities, a lot of those towns formed close bonds with each other. So for Tratonmane to be weird compared to another mining town…

“Anyway…” Travel stamped out several tickets. “Y’got lucky. Train’s comin’ in about half an hour. Give it another half-hour to switch goods, an’ you’uns’ll be off.”

“Thank you,” said Code. “How much for-”

Amanita’s ear twitched as she heard something heavy step outside. She didn’t think much of it, but Travel’s eyes immediately grew huge. “Y’need to stay there for a little while longer,” she said quickly. She snatched the tickets back and tore them up.

Code remained unreadable as the steps grew closer and closer. “Why?”

“I want to avoid yak hugs,” whispered Travel.

The entrance door banged open and the frame was immediately filled with the blinged-out mountain of shaggy fur that was a yak. “GREETINGS, TRAIN PONY!” he bellowed in a voice that literally shook the foundation of the building. His misting breath was so dense it was practically steam.

Amanita couldn’t hear Travel’s long-suffering sigh, thanks to the yak’s echoes, but she didn’t need to; she could feel it in her bones. “Hello, Royds.”

Royds marched up to the ticket window, hanging out just behind Code. “Yakyakistan sends many thanks to ponies!” he roared (Code actually stumbled forward a bit). “Waypoint and Tratonmane trees still perfect for Puunmurskausmas!”

“Once again, I sell tickets, you furry bullhorn. Thank the head lumberjack.”

“Train pony is station master! Train pony responsible for making sure trees loaded onto trains quickly! Train pony good at that! But yak will talk to lumberjack too, yes.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” said Travel, “but as you can see, I’m busy-” She gestured at Code and grinned nervously. “-so darnit, you’ll have to keep moving.”

“Apologies at time not being perfect! Yak hopes next time will be perfect! Yak see you later!” (Travel’s wheeze was probably some form of strained laughter.) Royds turned to the door-

“Why do you chalk- talk like that?” asked Charcoal. “Without articles or conjugations or grammar.”

Amanita immediately cringed and she didn’t need to look to know similar reactions were coming from each of the other ponies. Yet Royds himself seemed unconcerned with the faux pas, assuming he noticed it at all. “Yaks smash pleonasms,” he declared sagely. “Yak speech simple, yet clear and obvious. Yaks need no more words; why use more words?”

Bitterroot glanced at Amanita. “Pleonasms?” she whispered.

“I think that’s ‘using too many words’,” Amanita replied.

Charcoal raised a hoof declaratively, saying, “…” She stroked her chin. “Huh. I might have to try that.”

“Indeed!” Royds gave Charcoal a light, friendly slap on the back that probably risked breaking her legs. “Yak speech very effective. Yak speech perfect! FAREWELL, PONIES! FAREWELL, NOT-PONY!” And he departed, leaving behind only wet yak footprints and little earthquakes.

After a moment of silence, Travel breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thankee,” she muttered. “He can get rather…”

“Wood pony!” Royds bellowed from outside.

“Diplomat yak!” a pony bellowed back.

“…excitable, an’ I’m old. One o’ these days, he’ll just sqush me right flat in a hug.”

“Yaks do be like that,” said Code.

Travel quickly stamped out another set of tickets and exchanged them with Code’s bits. “Tratonmane’s thataway, if’n y’wanna watch for the train.” Travel pointed out a window, opposite the side they’d come in. “Beyond the woods, on the other side o’ the mountains.”

Amanita took that as an opportunity to leave, exiting the station to take a look at the town and the mountains. Waypoint was a decent size for its isolation, with plenty of buildings, including at least one sawmill. Maybe it wasn’t thriving, but it was doing alright for itself. Amanita had enjoyed worse in her travels. It was practically familiar.

The mountains, though…

Amanita wasn’t scared of mountains. She knew them. Ish. She’d spent years in mountains. But looking at this range, at these giant slabs of stone and snow, she was looking into the wilderness in more ways than one. She knew virtually nothing about ley lines, and the closer she got to the mountains, the more acutely she felt that and the more likely botching everything seemed. The sight of the mountains almost repulsed her with fear.

But she held. She looked up at the mountains and fruitlessly told her beating heart to slow down. She’d botched things before, after all. Her life, for one, throwing it away to chase after a dead marefriend under a lich’s tutelage, and that had worked out well. Ish. She could do this.

She had to do this. She’d be a one-trick pony otherwise.

That was why she couldn’t stop her skin crawling.





The locomotive didn’t produce any smoke or steam.

That was what Bitterroot noticed when she first saw the Tratonmane train approach. It was a narrow-gauge one, with several flatcars loaded with lumber, several gondola cars loaded with coal, two boxcars, and a single passenger car at the very back. (She wouldn’t be surprised if that one was more out of obligation than anything.) The actual engine was a bit short and squat, resembling the K-36’s out west with some strange doodads bolted on. And yet it didn’t have any smoke. She’d have to ask the engineer about that.

Travel was lying next to her, sucking on a twig, watching the train approach with an air of familiarity. Bitterroot gave her a little nudge to get her attention. “Pretty big train for something that only comes once a week,” Bitterroot said.

“In course it is. That there’s all o’ the town’s goods for the week,” said Travel.

“Really?”

“Train’s the only way in or outta Midwich.” Travel worked the twig around in her mouth. “Less you wanna walk the long way ’round. Or fly, since you’re a pegasus an’ all. It’s the lifeblood o’ the place. Cut it off and the town’d die.”

Bitterroot looked back at the mountains, really looked at them. Now, it was easy to see just how impassible they were, with no easy passes or gaps that she could make out. There weren’t even many foothills; the mountains just jutted straight from the ground. It was more like a natural wall than anything she’d seen before. And they were going right into the middle of it.

“Ley ranges are like that,” said Charcoal absently. She started making jerky upward gestures. “You get all this energy, and it just kinda pushes the mountains up and keeps them together as it rises from the earth… We’re real lucky there’s a train to there, or else there’d be… I don’t know. Not a very good path. Why do ponies build train tracks everywhere? It’s weird.”

“Don’t ask me,” Travel said. “I just live here.”

Charcoal glanced at Bitterroot. “You live in Canterlot. Do you have a compulsion to build things?”

“Nope. It’s because of wing envy!” Bitterroot said brightly, flaring hers.

Charcoal tilted her head.

“I’m serious. Pegasi can get to places easily. But transporting supplies there, that takes more effort. And railroads are pretty much the best high-volume freight system there is that isn’t rivers. So sometimes, pegasi assemble in a fertile or resource-rich area pretty quickly, other ponies get there faster than usual so they don’t miss out, railroads are built to bring in supplies for the booming population, and then everyone realizes we’ve laid another hundred miles of track through the middle of nowhere.”

“Hmm. That… makes sense. But it’s-”

“It’s really oversimplified. That’s the gist of it, but there are- You live in Canterlot, right? I’ve got a book I can lend you when we get back. Wake of Steel, by Wood Tie. It’s about nothing but this.”

“Hmm. Sure, I’d like that.” Charcoal looked at the mountains again. “I wonder why Tratonmane was pounded- founded there, though. It’s so far from everything. I guess Waypoint was already a place where-”

Travel snorted. “Other way ’round. Waypoint started for Tratonmane. Why d’you think we’re called ‘Waypoint’? That’s what we are. Nopony cares enough to name us anythin’ else. ’Specially not us. Our history ain’t much, afore you ask. Y’ever heard o’ the… Fuel Vassalage Commission?” She said the last two words slowly, like they were another language. The name was vaguely familiar, but Bitterroot shook her head.

“So.” Travel bit off part of the branch, swallowed it, and stuck the rest behind her ear. She sat up straight and continued, “Two, three hundred year ago, we get steam engines. And those engines, they’re mighty useful for gettin’ around, but they need coal, and lots of it. So Her Highness, she wants a head start on fuel, so she goes an’ sets up this big scheme where she pays for towns in faraway places across the country to mine coal.”

Charcoal’s ears went up. “Ooo! Like Tratonmane!”

“Yes, indeedy. Celestya pays — well, paid, now — she pays for vittles an’ medicine t’ go up there, so long as coal keeps comin’ down. An’ it still is. There’s such towns all up an’ down these mountains. Waypoint, we’re just where Tratonmane hits the branch. Otherwise, we ain’t nothin’. Which is nice when y’don’t want much.”

There it was. Bitterroot knew her rail history, but logistics were a bit less interesting. She’d probably read about the FVC a dozen times, only to forget it each time. Knowing where a particular hunk of coal came from was definitely a less interesting part of trains. “I see lumber, too,” Bitterroot said, pointing. “Is that also part of the commission?”

Travel just shrugged. “Lotta trees out ’ere. Get some real good earthers ’oo know how to grow plants, and you can grow trees faster’n you can cut ’em down. Neat way to bring in more bits. Waypoint makes money that way, too. My ma said Tratonmane also sold charged gems or summat, but that stopped a few years afore I’s born.”

“Mmhmm.” Bitterroot went back to watching the train; by now, it was already pulling up to the platform. The engine slid smoothly past the depot and came to a stop with the passenger car right in front of the station doors. Immediately, a grayish unicorn stallion hopped out of the engine and trotted back down the train, whistling something. He came to a stop at where the passenger car connected to the hopper ahead of it and ducked in between the cars.

Curiosity pulled her forward like a magnet and Bitterroot was next to the stallion when he clambered back onto the platform. “Hey,” she said.

The stallion actually flinched and looked at her with sky-blue eyes that probably should’ve been sparkling but seemed dull at the moment. “…Hidy,” he said. His ears were twitching in anxiety. About foreigners, maybe? Bitterroot couldn’t blame him. They were intruding. His coat was as gray as the mountains around them, his mane coal-black, but he also looked a touch too slender for his own good, like he wanted to be the physical sort but had trouble committing. He still had time left in his life; he hadn’t yet hit forty.

She nodded towards the locomotive. “There’s no steam,” she said. Not from the engine, anyway. The stallion’s breath was steaming up plenty hard. (Then Bitterroot abruptly realized that he was wearing thick furs. Not unusual this far north, but if there was a firebox, the heat ought to have kept him warm. If. The furs were clean, too.)

He blinked and twitched back maybe half an inch. “I… guess nae.” His voice could’ve had a lot of rumbling gravel, but he needed to put it in himself and didn’t feel like it at the moment, so it was rather unmemorable at the moment.

“How come? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean. I like trains, and-”

“Missis, can ye walk an’ talk?” the stallion asked, his voice tense. “Got a schedule tae keep-” He nodded towards the engine. “-and ye’re a-holdin’ me up.” His accent was even thicker than Travel’s.

“Yes I can,” Bitterroot said quickly. She started walking for the engine; the stallion was at her side almost immediately. “So, train. No smoke.”

“Havenae had a fire burnin’ in…” The stallion clicked his tongue and looked up. “…dinnae ken. Long as I been a-drivin’. Dinnae need one, aryhow. Replaced the firebox wi’ some magic hootenanny. Drives the engine jes’ fine.”

Bitterroot had heard of those. Arcane dynamos of some kind. You were supposed to be able to drive locomotives with them, saving money and weight on fuel, since you were using thaumaturgical batteries rather than coal. At least, that was the idea. As was its wont, reality felt the need to intrude, and most such dynamos were still disappointingly inefficient, utterly impractical for trains. Unless the route wasn’t long and the train wasn’t big and you only needed to make a single round trip every week. And if you didn’t need a firemare… Bitterroot looked back down the train to be sure. No conductor. “And you’re the only pony who drives the train?”

The stallion looked at Bitterroot, squinting. It was an expression Bitterroot had seen plenty of times before; he was trying to get a read on her for some reason. Then he glanced at the ponies she was traveling companion to, loading their baggage into the passenger car, and she got it.

“I’m not really with them, I’ll keep mum on any… rules violations,” Bitterroot said quickly. Too quickly? “One of them’s my friend and I’m giving her moral support. I’m a bounty hunter, not a ritualist.” When the stallion still looked doubtful, she dug into her furs and pulled out her bounty hunting license. “See? Independent, not working for the Crown.”

The stallion glanced only briefly at the license, but Bitterroot could still see the tension leave his body. “Yep,” he said. “Jes’ me. Been that way fer more’n ten year, bringin’ everythin’ in an’ out. ’Tis tough, bein’ responsible fer everythin’, but eh. Somepony’s got tae do it.” He twitched, as if realizing something, and actually laughed a little.

By now, they’d reached the engine. Bitterroot leaned into the cab. Many of the gauges were missing and where the firebox normally was, now there was a large panel protecting… something. The battery, probably. But the controls still looked like those of a normal steam locomotive, just simplified to account for the lack of steam management. Brakes, regulator, sander. Easy. Bitterroot could probably drive it herself if-

“Ahem,” enunciated the stallion. “Got me a job that needs doin’. Ye can marvel at it everwhen we get back tae Tratonmane. Really, ye can.”

“Right,” said Bitterroot. One last look and she pulled out. She headed back towards the passenger car; her own baggage needed packing. “Name’s Bitterroot, by the way,” she hollered out.

“Tallbush!” the stallion yelled back. “Pleased tae meet ye!”





A bit of shunting juggling left the full freight cars behind in Waypoint and the passenger car coupled to the front of a new set of empty cars. (Bitterroot found the juggling fascinating, but she knew she was the only one who did.) The process was quick, and soon the train was away with the crew from Canterlot.

Up close, the mountains weren’t quite as unassailable as they had appeared, even if that wasn’t saying much. There were sideways canyons in the range, almost like slots, that weren’t easily visible from Waypoint. But the route through them was winding and the train had to take it slow as it climbed across wooded slopes and through ravines, hanging onto the mountainside for dear life. Tallbush had said it’d take nearly an hour to reach Tratonmane from Waypoint. And from the snailish way the mountain was crawling by, Bitterroot was sure that wasn’t an exaggeration. At least the car wasn’t drafty.

Charcoal was leaning out the windows, marveling at the mountains for reasons Bitterroot couldn’t tell. (“Pretty mountains” counted, she supposed. They were quite pretty.) Amanita was sitting in a loose, worn-down seat, reading something and waiting for the trip to be over. And Code…

Code was sitting in the middle of the car, eyes closed, taking long, deep breaths. In through the nose, hold for two seconds, out through the mouth, hold for two seconds, repeat. Her breathing was easy and steady, borderline mechanical in its regularity. She didn’t move much except to pivot as the train rounded curves. Somehow, even though her eyes were closed, she always ended up pointing north-ish.

Eventually, Bitterroot couldn’t help herself. “What’re you doing?”

Code didn’t twitch. “Trying to feel the ebb and flow of the area,” she said without opening her eyes. “Getting a head start on the primary form for the ritual. It needs to be tuned to work for the particular… region it’s performed in. Cacti don’t grow in apple orchards.”

“Can you feel anything?”

“Not really. Moving makes it harder to keep the connection to the earth.” Code shrugged. “It passes the time.”

She’d lived with a necromancer for moons, she’d been resurrected twice, and Bitterroot still didn’t get rituals. Code didn’t seem to be doing anything, just sitting there. At least when Amanita did magic, you could watch the pretty sparkles. Maybe it was an earth pony thing. “That it does. Wish it could for me.”

Finally, Code opened her eyes to stare at Bitterroot in confusion. “What? What do you mean?”

The fact that Code sounded so surprised surprised Bitterroot. It was a simple thing. “Well, you’re feeling the earth, right?”

“And you would feel the air.” Code squinted at Bitterroot with the air of a teacher disapproving of a homework-neglecting pupil; the glasses didn’t help. “You’ve never done a lick of magic besides flight and cloudwalking, have you?”

“I can do other things besides that?”

“Quite a bit more. There’s more to weather-wrangling than just trying to kick clouds, after all.” Code looked like she was going to continue, only to glance out the window at the passing mountains. When she turned back, she said, “I can try to teach you, if you want. How to feel the energies in the land. I can’t say how good I’ll be, since we’re different tribes, but I can give it a shot.”

Eh, what the hay. Maybe she’d learn something. Anypony could do ritual magic; this might be the first step towards that. And if not, it’d pass the time. Bitterroot plonked herself down across from Code. “Sure. Hit me.”

“That quick?” Code asked, raising an eyebrow. “Alright.” She looked at her own hooves for a moment, turning one of them over like it was an archaeological artifact (of the kind that didn’t risk melting your face off). “First things first,” she said. “Try to clear your head. You’re new to this, so we’ll need to do everything we can to help you focus on the magic.”

Heh. Empty your mind. Something Bitterroot was either very good at or very bad at, depending on the situation. Stakeouts, where she could be waiting for hours on end? Blanker than a whiteboard, where anything put in it would vanish in moments. Otherwise? Yeah, no. Closing her eyes, she tried to shift into stakeout mode. No big movements while not forcing herself to stay completely still, deep breaths, steady.

“There’s magic all around us, all throughout reality,” said Code, “and we barely scratch the surface of it. You’re a pegasus, so you’re attuned to the air. Reach out. Feel it in your feathers.”

Bitterroot decided against talking back to her teacher, decided educating somepony on anatomy was more important, and spoke up. “You know that, technically speaking, feathers are dead, right? They’ve got no blood vessels in them, no nerves…”

“Yes. That’s why feeling anything with them is noteworthy.”

Point to the expert. Bitterroot extended her wings to make them more… there. Feelable. There was just enough wind in the car for her to notice. Normally, she tried to ignore those winds, but if she was trying to feel magic in them… She breathed in. She breathed out. She’d had a teenage job as a weather wrangler, and she still remembered the unruly nature of storms, the static zing around clouds. She’d just assumed that was built-up lightning, but maybe that was unfocused magic? She reached for the memory, tried to recognize it in the winds around her-

And suddenly her wings seemed to expand.

It was a hazy feeling, like an incredibly minor buzz from an electric jolt, but it was absolutely there. In fact, it wasn’t so much a feeling as awareness. She knew all the ways the air was gently ruffling her feathers without actually feeling anything. More like… proprioception. Sort of. Not really. In spite of her shock, she tried to stay calm. She managed to hold it for another moment as miniscule winds flitted about her before she just had to look at her wings.

The feeling vanished the instant she opened her eyes. Her wings didn’t look any different.

“Yeah. You felt it.” Code was grinning. “It’s always a punch when you first break through to the aether. I still remember my first time. Just the life in everything.”

Bitterroot hadn’t felt life, but that was probably just because she was a pegasus and not an earth pony. What she had felt was an atmosphere that was slowly gaining energy. What was normally cold and dry — how did she know what those felt like? — was getting charged bit by bit as they approached the ley line. It was the electric thrum of a thundercloud, but turned down to one percent and everywhere. “It’s… Wow,” she said quietly. She was already closing her eyes again. “I didn’t realize what was all there.”

Code laughed. “Most unicorns don’t realize it’s there, and they can sense magic more easily than either of us. They just rip away the magic they need and never let themselves get immersed.”

The buzz was almost coming back. Bitterroot could feel it. “And this… kind of magic is how rituals work, right? Why any tribe can use them.”

“Indeed. It all comes from the same source. Different tribes just use it in different ways.”

“Does that include restraint rituals?” Worth a shot.

“…Technically, yes. If you can draw the circle, write out the runes, and donate the blood.”

And almost immediately, Bitterroot put the kibosh on that idea. The buzz slipped away from her as she shivered.

“It’s not much blood,” Code said, far too casually, “just a few drops. You need to give some of your own life to restrain another’s. But blood is blood, and it can usually only hold for a few minutes, anyway. Rope would serve you better.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bitterroot. But a blood sacrifice was a blood sacrifice, and that thought rolling around in her head made it hard for her to find the buzz again.

“And as for the magic itself, I wish I could help you more, but I wouldn’t know how. Different access mechanisms. Just keep examining it and you’ll learn what everything means. Oh, and if you suddenly get the urge to burst into song, that’s normal. Doing so will let you draw in even more magic, although you’ll want to stay vigilant if it’s in a minor key…”





It was amazing how much you could notice when noticing was all you were able to do.

The train, for example. Everypony knew trains rattled and rumbled. Rails weren’t perfect, after all. But the more Amanita paid attention to it, the more she thought she could take a stab at the tracks. They were well-worn, smoothed out by frequent use, but still sturdy. The route wound enough that there wasn’t much of an attempt to keep the tracks straight. Fair enough; given an environment like this, it might’ve been too much hassle. For most of the trip, the train had been crawling upward, but it’d crested a hill and started shuffling downward a while back. It actually wasn’t the worst train ride Amanita had been on.

She’d tried reading, but anxiety made her mind skip like a record as she read the same sentence over and over and the same thoughts kept flitting through her head. Now, she was just keeping her head down. It was always the same; the build-up to the doing was worse than the actual doing. It’d been true for necromancy, it’d been true for running from her master, it’d been true for prison, it’d been true for offering her services to the Guard, it was going to be true for ley sanitation. Right? Right.

The carriage twitched as it went over a slight dip in the track where some of the wood would probably need replacing in the next year or so. It wasn’t the kind to just disintegrate beneath you, at the very least. Wood was stronger than most Canterlotians gave it credit for.

Knowing that didn’t make the build-up any easier. It was still there, and she was in the middle of it. Tratonmane inched closer with every turn of the wheels, potential disaster along with it. She kept getting an image of a lynch mob forming after it was found out she was a necromancer. And what would she do about that? Murder somepony and resurrect them to show that she meant well? Ponies didn’t take well to people getting murdered to prove a point.

She was slipping slightly forward as the train went over bumps; the downward slope was just steep enough for that. She wiggled her way into a proper position.

She just wanted a bit of status quo. Whether or not to keep her status as a necromancer secret kept penduluming; good idea, bad idea, for the best, for the worst… She’d almost gotten it back in Canterlot, where everypony knew her, but coming here felt like she was being uprooted. Even though it was only, what, a week? Two? Not long. Probably not even a full moon. It wasn’t like-

“Hey!” chirped Charcoal, making Amanita twitch and shattering her thoughts to pieces. “Didya see the tree line? We’re getting close!”

“No, Charcoal,” Amanita said, remaining hunched over her book like a vulture over a corpse, “I did not see the tree line.”

She hadn’t snapped, but the silence was oddly tense.

“Areyoubusy?” Charcoal asked quietly. “Um, wow, I am so sorry. I’ll just, um, be… over-”

“No!” Amanita said quickly. She raised her head; Charcoal was already shuffling away, ears down. “You’re, you’re fine. I’m just- stressed. I…” She rubbed the back of her neck; she didn’t look away. “I want this to go well. And I’m… worried of what’ll happen if it doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” said Charcoal quietly. “Me, too.”

Silence.

“Tree line?” blurted Amanita.

“Oh, yeah!” (Amanita wondered if all kirins could switch moods on a dime or if it was just Charcoal.) “Come, come take a luck! Look!” Charcoal pulled Amanita to a window and pointed. “You see how the tree line keeps getting higher?”

It only took Amanita a moment or two to find it. The effect was surprisingly strong. “Yeah.”

“The trees get more energy from the ley line, so they’re hardier, so it takes worse conditions for them to be able to not grow! It’s really neat, if you-”

Darkness suddenly overtook them and a thunderous din battered their ears. Amanita tensed up and was ready to duck under a seat to hide from the specter of danger when she realized: tunnel. They’d just entered a tunnel. And hadn’t Tallbush said the tunnel was the last thing before Tratonmane?

Either he had or everyone thought he had, since everybody began scrambling to get their baggage together. Besides her clothes, Amanita had a large bag stuffed with notes and ritual paraphernalia, necromantic and non-necromantic alike for both. (Anyone looking inside would probably be very confused.) And if anypony happened to die while they were out here, well. That wasn’t worth keeping her secrets for. She’d be ready.

Hopefully.

The carriage jolted slightly as the brakes were applied. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the train emerged from the tunnel into an evening gloom as it entered Midwich Valley.
> 4 - A Scar on the Back of Beyond
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cliffs were the first thing Amanita noticed. And the second. And the third. The sixth, too. Mainly because they made it too dark to quickly see much else.

Charcoal had said Midwich Valley would be deep. She hadn’t said it would be deep. Amanita craned her head to look, even leaning out the window, but the walls just went up and up and up and up and up. They must’ve been half a mile high, minimum, and they were sheer, with barely any foothills. Amanita was getting vertigo just looking at them and she wasn’t even afraid of heights.

And then there was the width of the valley, or to be more precise, the lack thereof. “Valley” was a misnomer, probably chosen to make the place sound less menacing. Midwich was only half a mile wide and it looked like it’d take less than ten minutes to walk from one wall to another, assuming you took your time. It wasn’t a valley; it was a canyon, a cleft, a rift, a wound hacked out of the earth by some immense force. With the mountains towering on either side, it felt like they were trapped between the jaws of the earth.

Combine the two, and Midwich Valley was swathed in shadow. It wasn’t even five and yet the immense walls blocked out the sun, leaving most of the canyon floor cloaked in gray. It was hardly pitch-black, more like just after sunset, but that didn’t make it feel cozy. The sky was far too blue for the dimness and one of the walls was still gleaming with sunlight that didn’t reach ponies. The color hadn’t yet bled out from the valley floor, but it was about to.

Amanita glanced out the window just in time to spot a passing sign: “Welcome to Tratonmane”. The words were clear, but it was old and battered and in need of repainting. It’d probably been up since the town was founded. Who was it welcoming, anyway?

“Holy cannoli. Now that’s a mother-ducking ley line.”

Somehow, Charcoal had been the one to say that; she was gawking out one side of the train, and once Amanita looked, she knew why. Midwich Valley was straight. Dead straight. So straight she had trouble believing it. Even with the forest hiding some of the strongest right angles, it just didn’t look natural, more like a drainage ditch than anything. She could practically see to the horizon, miles away.

Code was looking out the window, too. “Well,” she said, “at least we won’t have trouble telling which way’s north.”

“That’s north?” asked Bitterroot. “Actual north north, not north-northeast?”

“Powerful ley lines often align themselves to north or south if they’re close enough,” said Charcoal. She’d pressed her muzzle to the train window. “It’s an earth thing. That’s totally north north. I’ve never heard of a ley valley this defined before, sweet Shine…”

“And now,” said Code, “you get to study it.”

Charcoal was actually wagging her tail like a dog and her voice was downright dreamy. “Yeah…”

The valley was even narrower at the tunnel than at the rest of it, so the train had to curve as it approached the opposite wall until it was facing directly north. Midwich was on a slight downward slope, but the track stopped on a flat stony ridge; Amanita wouldn’t have been surprised if it’d been built up with magic. There was a platform next to the passenger car once it slid to a stop, but no station building. Two ponies were waiting for them in wavering lamplight, a pegasus stallion and a chiropterus mare, both well-bundled-up. Their postures were loose and they seemed to be chatting warmly.

With her baggage in her aura, Amanita stepped outside and immediately started shivering. Even through her furs, it wasn’t just cold, it was downright glacial, thanks to the shadows. If there was any opportunity for cold air to worm its way into her clothes, it was found and exploited as thoroughly as possible. She’d never felt it this cold, not even when she’d been a necromancer on the lam and had to trek through blizzards to avoid detection. (Well, there was once. But that was when she’d fallen into a nearly-frozen river, so that didn’t count.) It was cold. It was cold cold cold cold COLD.

The pegasus noticed her shakes and laughed, steamed breath enveloping his head. “Bit nippy, ain’t it?” he said. His voice was higher-pitched than expected, with no grit or gravel anywhere to be heard in it. His words sounded more joking than mocking, although he and the other pony were both taking the cold like champs.

“Come, Whipple,” said the chiropterus, “they’re outsiders. They merely need time to acclimate, nothing more.” She eyed Amanita, grinning impishly. “Although perhaps I ought to give you my coat. You seem to need it more than I do.”

“This, a-comin’ frae the bat named Midwinter,” said Whipple, giving the bat in question a playful shove. “Ye could get away wi’ wearin’ nothin’ in a cold-as-blixen blizzard.”

“That I could,” Midwinter said, smiling. “That I could.”

“Ach, but where are our manners?” Whippletree stepped forward, flared his wings, and bowed. “Whippletree, militiapony o’Tratonmane,” he said with probably more grandeur than his position deserved. “Afteren I heard the call frae Canterlot, I’s a-thinkin’ you’uns deserved a welcome.” He was just past middle age and seemed to be a big pony in a regular-sized body, with his exaggerated movements and his thick neck. His coat, unusually floofy thanks to the cold, was a downright verdant green that would’ve been out-of-place if not for being mostly covered up by his armor. In spite of the situation, he was fully decked out, a battered iron peytral over what looked like a full-body gambeson. But battered or not, Amanita noted that it’d been fitted for him.

“Militia,” said Code. Her gaze flitted across the scars of Whippletree’s armor and his lack of a hard helmet. “Hmm.” Her voice was mostly uninflected, but Amanita caught a few slight downward hitches of skepticism, the sort of thing you only recognized after working a long time with her.

“Well, it ain’t like we can lick it tae Canterlot fer what you'un’d call ‘proper’ trainin’,” Whippletree said. His voice was as light as his wings were suddenly tense. “Midwich gives gooder trainin’, aryway.” With an air of not wanting to look at Code, he started to glance over the rest of the group, only to twitch like he’d been given an electric shock when he saw Charcoal. “Ah…” He wobbled forward and back as if he wasn’t sure which way to go. “What… are ye? …I mean no offense!” he yelped.

“I’m a kirin!” Charcoal chirped as the faux pas whistled away, missing her by a mile. “I’m new. We’re new. We only entered Equestria like two seasons ago. Half a year ago. It’s complicated.”

“I can imagine,” Midwinter whispered, staring at Charcoal. She coughed, licked her lips (probably chapped; Amanita was already wishing she’d brought some lip balm), and pulled herself up. “Midwinter Fire,” she said. “I have no association with the militia and was merely here to see the arrival of those sent to help us.” She looked at least a decade younger than Whippletree. Even beneath her thick clothes, she was the sort of lean that just looked swift, even though chiropteri were generally slower than regular pegasi. Her coat was a gleaming black, not unlike coal, that nearly hid her in the darkness. Her mane shone white and her eyes gleamed copper. A red gem was affixed in a pendant hanging from her neck. “Can we commence with the introductions?”

“Ahem. Yes.” Code stood tall, which still meant she was at least half a head shorter than everyone else. She slapped a leg across her chest. “Restricted Code. Ritualist.” She pointed at each equine in turn. “Amanita. Ritualist in training. Charcoal. Environmental magic specialist. And Bitterroot. Tagalong bounty hunter who’s not working with us.”

Amanita risked clearing her throat. “She’s a friend of mine.” Once she couldn’t take it back, her mind immediately began spinning elaborate theories on how that would lead back to her being outed as a necromancer.

“Well, pleasure tae learn y’all,” said Whippletree. “Speakin’ of, did…” He glanced toward the front of the train.

Tallbush was leaning against the engine. “Aye, they already learned me, and I them,” he said, standing up. “Do you'uns need ary help?” he asked Code. “With… arythin’?”

“Unlikely,” said Code. “We just need to drop off our luggage at the inn, and then we can get to work.”

“Mmhmm. Where’ll you'uns be a-workin’?”

“Until we get a better view of the situation, that’s hard to say,” said Code. “Down near where Tratonmane meets the forest, to begin with.”

“Right,” said Whippletree. He turned his attention to Tallbush. “I reckon we ain’t a-doin’ the, uh…” He glanced at Code. “The meetin’?” he half-whispered.

“Nah,” said Tallbush at normal volume. “Dinnae got nae reason tae hold an assembly.”

Whippletree blinked twice, then nodded.

“Hopefully, we won’t impose ourselves on you too long,” said Code. “We could be out of here when the train leaves in a week. But that all depends on what the land says.”

As Code checked their cargo for damage and loaded it onto sledges, Amanita looked out over Midwich to the north and, for the first time, examined Tratonmane itself as best she could. Thanks to the dearth of land, the town was packed together more closely than similar villages, the outlines of buildings only discernible by the chiaroscuric contrast of lamps in the streets; there was even a tower or two, from what she could tell. It was maybe four hundred feet across, but quite a bit longer, almost like a snake. Amanita guessed the population at somewhere between three and five hundred. A slim but swift river wove its way down through the valley and split Tratonmane in two. The sides of Midwich Valley outside Tratonmane, right up to the walls, were free of regular wooden buildings and instead had… greenhouses, it seemed? That was one way to grow food up here. The entire valley floor seemed to sag, the edges higher than middle, as if the mountains were holding everything up.

There was a line not too far in the distance, where gray transitioned sharply to black. Amanita squinted at it and realized that that was where Tratonmane stopped. There weren’t any more buildings, there was a gap of land, and then Midwich Forest just… started. There was nothing gradual, nothing hazy, not even the slightest bit. Just a line so sharp and straight you could probably trace it with a ruler.

Amanita knew forests could be like that. She’d seen it plenty of times. But something about that got to her in ways the cold didn’t.

“Excuse me.” Next to her, Midwinter grinned. “I know it’s something, but remember to breathe.”

“Yeah,” said Amanita. “It’s just so… straight.” The forest line or the actual valley? Both, really.

“Truly, there is no other place like it in the world,” said Midwinter. “It is part of the reason I moved here.”

“Really?” asked Charcoal. “How did you hear about-”

“All set, we’re going,” Code said loudly. “Whippletree’s leading.”

With the station on the ledge, the crew had to head south to reach a downward slope before going north into Tratonmane proper. To the south, Midwich narrowed more and more until the walls finally met in a mild V shape. Several small waterfalls plummeted over the rim and down into the canyon to feed into the river, their roars oddly muted. Not too far from the station, with tracks leading to it, Amanita could make out the hulking, angular mass of a coal breaker. Well, Tratonmane was a mining town; it’d be more surprising if it didn’t have one. There didn’t seem to be many other buildings on that side of the station, just a few houses.

They reached where the rising valley floor met the ledge, then swung around to start downhill on the riverbank. Midwinter, however, came to a halt. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you four,” she said, “but I must be off. I have projects that need attending to.” Her piece said, she continued on upriver.

“Dinnae mind that,” Whippletree said casually. “She’s a throng sort, all the time a-goin’ forwards and backwards.”

Bitterroot surreptitiously glanced at Amanita. “Throng?” she whispered.

“Throng?” Charcoal didn’t whisper.

Amanita caught Tallbush rolling his eyes, but Whippletree remained as unfazed as Charcoal had been. “Oh, y’ken. Busy. A-bustlin’. Occupied. Y’ken.”

“No, I don’t ken,” said Charcoal. A pause. “Well, I didn’t. I do now!”

“I take it the mine’s that way?” asked Code, squinting upriver.

“Southmost point o’ Midwich,” Tallbush said quickly, still giving Charcoal a look that wasn’t a glare just yet.

“We might need to take a closer look at it eventually,” Code thought aloud. “Ley lines and mines have a rich history. Oh, and…”

She bent down and ate a chunk of dirt.

As she straightened up and swallowed, Code gave the shocked ponies a look like they were the weird ones. “What?” she asked, wiping her mouth down. “Earth pony, ley lines in the earth. I’m attuning myself to the ley lines. Obviously.”

“You’re… here to investigate the ley lines being bad,” said Bitterroot, her voice wavering between surprise and amusement. “Is that even safe?”

“On these timescales? Absolutely. I’m the High Ritualist, I’ve taken backlash far worse than this.”

“But-”

Amanita raised a hoof. “Bitterroot, if Code says it’s safe, then it’s safe. Trust me.”

Tallbush coughed and shuffled his hooves. “You’re, eh… a-feelin’ the magic, are ye?”

“I’m getting there,” said Code. “It’ll take a while to really get it moving around my hooves.”

“Eh-heh. Well, I, eh, I need tae go. I got… jobs that need doin’. Money. Freight.” And Tallbush was immediately trotting back to the station while trying to look like he wasn’t running away from anything, no sir.

Whippletree’s ears twitched, then he glanced at the rest of the ponies and shrugged. “Nae idea what’s gotten intae him. Let’s keep a-movin’.”

The houses started quickly once they reached the bottom of the ridge. The central road was nearly flat from constant usage and surprisingly wide; it wouldn’t have been that out-of-place in Canterlot, actually. Oil lamps and light gems lined the buildings and the scene would’ve been a cozy just-after-sunset one if not for the glare of the wall above reminding them of the light they were missing. Plenty of ponies walked the streets; mostly earth ponies and pegasi, with unicorns being relatively rare. In fact, chiropteri seemed to be more common than unicorns. Although that might’ve just been their eyes occasionally flashing in the gloom and infrequent, high-pitched chirps of echolocation.

On a whim, Amanita took as close a look at the nearest pony as she could, but although she searched, she couldn’t see any signs of malnourishment. She looked at the buildings; wooden, thick, sturdy, no gaps in the walls, even intact glass in the windows. Tratonmane was doing surprisingly well, considering its isolation.

Then she noticed the looks they were getting. The quick ones, with set jaws and lowered ears that saw them, then turned away. From just about every pony on the street. Some even ambled to the other side of the road once they were finished with their quick glare. They were familiar to her. The Tratonmanians were holding them in contempt.

It was almost certainly just them being foreigners — Tratonmane probably had a well-oiled routine that didn’t react well to Crown agents being tossed into the works — but that wasn’t the only place she’d seen them. They’d also been present years ago, after Northern townsponies learned she and Circe were necromancers but before Circe killed someone to use as a thrall and that turned to fear. Amanita had only seen them a few times, but it wasn’t a look you easily forgot.

She glanced behind her. Bitterroot seemed to have noticed, from the way her eyes were flicking back and forth. Code was supremely unconcerned. And Charcoal was losing a quarter-inch with every twenty steps she took as her ears grew more and more limp. Amanita slowed her pace until she was side-by-side with Charcoal. “Don’t take it personally,” she whispered. “We’re-”

“I know. Foreigners. I, I once did it myself,” mumbled Charcoal. “But it’s hard not to.”

“Remember, we’re here for each other,” said Amanita. “Feel free to talk to me about… anything.”

“Mmhmm,” Charcoal hummed vaguely. “But-” Her ears and head snapped further up at the same time; she looked straight ahead like a pointer dog. “What’s that?” she asked.

“We’re a-comin’ up on the square,” said Whippletree. “If’n y’ever-”

“No, the tree.” Charcoal picked up speed until she practically galloped past Whippletree to the silhouette of a tree.

And what a tree it was.

It was easily the largest tree Amanita had ever seen, several dozen feet thick at the ground and several stories tall. Thick, gnarled branches, free of leaves, reached upwards as they twisted around each other; they weren’t clawing for ponies but holding up the sky. It was too big to move much in the wind, but the movements Amanita could see were slow, portentous, like a ship of the line or a siege engine. Amanita had never seen its like before and she knew she’d never see its like again. As if to emphasize its grandeur, a thick road ringed it, lined with more lamps than anywhere else in Tratonmane. It was clearly the center of town.

Charcoal was almost touching the trunk, staring straight up. “Wow wow wow,” she gasped. “Wow. Ley lines and a ley tree like this? I’m in Elysium. Karma’s gonna have to kill me to balance everything out.”

“Karma doesn’t work like that,” said Code.

“Oh.” From Charcoal’s voice, she literally could not care less. Assuming the sentence had registered at all.

“That there’s the Great Ash,” said Whippletree. “Somethin’, ain’t it? Tratonmane grew up ’round it. ’Tis how we kenned this was someplace special.”

“Heh. Yeah…”

“Ash trees don’t normally get this big, do they?” asked Bitterroot. “You could practically fit a house in there.”

“It’s… You know how earth pony magic helps plants grow? But ley lines are nothing but earth magic. If the line’s strong enough, plants can use that instead. This…” Charcoal rapped the tree trunk. “…is basically what you would get if you had a dozen earth ponies pouring their magic into one tree nonstop for ages. Look at how pig it is. Erm, big.”

“If it’s been feeding on the ley line all this time,” said Bitterroot, “I’m not sure ‘pig’ is wrong.”

“It’s probably older than most other ash trees, too,” said Charcoal. “Ley trees often survive things that would kill other trees. You, you know Princess Twilight? How she used to live in a library?” She pawed at the ground and her tail whipped through the air. “Uh, uh, Golden Oaks! Yeah, that. I’ve seen pictures. It was a library, you know? They hollowed the entire inside, but the tree, it still had green leaves. You know how that’s possible?” She stomped on the ground. “Ley lines. Enough magic to keep it live even though they removed its heart.”

“There are an unusual number of ley lines around Ponyville,” said Code. “They come from the Tree of Harmony. Or,” she said, her voice dropping like an earth pony thrown from a hot-air balloon, “what used to be the Tree.”

“What used to be the Tree?” asked Bitterroot. “What happened to it?”

Code’s ears immediately folded back. “Let’s. Not. Talk about it,” she said in a voice that was a bit too level. She took a bite of dirt the same way a stressed pony would take a swig of any sort of alcohol.

“Hang on…” muttered Charcoal. Her horn pulsed and she delicately ran a hoof over the Ash’s bark. “Is it… dead?”

“Aye,” Whippletree said, nodding sadly. “Musta been… ten, twenty year ago. The Ash jes’ stopped makin’ leaves. Shame. I loved it in the summer.”

“Well, it had to happen eventually,” said Charcoal, her own voice a bit downbeat. She did a circle around the tree, keeping her hoof on the bark all the while. “Ley lines don’t make things immortal, although they do live longer. It must’ve been, I dunno, six or seven hundred years old. That’s old for an ash. And they don’t do well in shaded areas, to poot. It’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did.” The look she gave Whippletree was pleading to the point that Amanita was disconcertingly reminded of a puppy. “You’re keeping it up, right?”

“ ’Course we are!” Whippletree sounded offended at the very thought and his wings were fidgeting aggressively. “Its roots are ’neath all the town. It’s part o’ Tratonmane an’ we ain’t a-choppin’ it down arytime soon. It’ll take a big shift in town fer us tae be rid o’ the Ash.”

“Great!” Charcoal smiled up at the Ash and tapped its trunk. “Hang in there,” she whispered. (A passing pony gave her an odd stare.)

“Aryhoo,” said Whippletree, “you'uns’ll be a-stayin’ right o’er there.” He pointed at a large, stocky building, probably an inn or tavern (or both), deep in shadow on the western side of the square. The sign over the door called it the Watering Cave. “Cannae say what the rooms’re like. Drink’s good, though.”

“Mmhmm.” Code glanced northward, then at the sledge she was still dragging, and sighed. “I’m itching to get to the forest and get to work, but we need to get our cargo out of the open.” She took a step towards the Cave.

“Hey, wait a sec,” said Bitterroot. “Why don’t I do this? I’ll get us a room, get this all taken up, everything. You can get started.”

“You’re sure?” Code asked.

“Hey,” Bitterroot said with a casual shrug, “it’s not like I’ll be doing anything down there. Might as well make myself useful.”

“Then thank you.” Code was out of her harness almost immediately.

“If you came here just to see what it was like,” Amanita asked as she set her bags down, “why are you offering to do busywork for us first thing?”

Bitterroot looked at Amanita and grinned. “C’mon, we just got here. I’m sure it’ll be more interesting later.”

“If’n y’wanna see the forest — cannae imagine why — jes’ follow the road.” Whippletree pointed down the road. “Hard tae get lost.” He glanced back south down the valley. “If’n ye dinnae mind, I think I’ve some other things that require doin’. But I’ll be here in the future, if ye need me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for your help,” Code said, giving Whippletree a nod. She didn’t give him any time for a response, instead immediately turning and trotting north, Charcoal right at her tail. Amanita gave Bitterroot and Whippletree a quick wave, then took off after the others.





The houses of Tratonmane thinned quickly as the trio headed northward. One moment, they were in what was nearly downtown, then the buildings vanished and lamps were thin on the ground, replaced by open fields and chicken runs; tall grain on one side, and untilled earth on the other. Flashing lights flitted through the dark in the open field. If she squinted, Amanita could make out the shapes of foals with light-gem necklaces, playing some kind of game. After a moment, she heard their voices.

“Gotcha, Wythe!”

“Nuh-uh, nah ye didnae!”

“Did too!”

“Did not, Plumb, ye school butter!”

“Oh, that’s-”

“Foals!” a matron said firmly. “Keep it civil! Wythe, dinnae say things like that!”

Imagine trying to raise a foal in an environment like this. But they seemed to be doing alright.

Charcoal had galloped ahead of Amanita and Code and was taking the time to examine the grain. A nearby earth pony farmer was eyeing her, but although the grain was ripening, Charcoal didn’t seem interested in trying any straight from the stalk (which placed her willpower a little bit higher than Amanita’s, honestly). “Rye,” she said. “Good rye. Out of season, too.”

Amanita felt a centipede slithering down her spine. Lots of rye. For lots of rye bread. As she’d told Princess Twilight and Celestia, necromancers liked rye bread. Necromancers also liked the cold, the isolated, the remote-

No. No, this was… coincidence. Rye didn’t mean necromancers were here. Right?

“Makes sense,” Charcoal continued. She broke away and followed after Amanita and Code. “Rye glows- grows well in the cold, did you know that? It does. And, hey! Ley line! That’ll make up for a lot.”

…Huh. Very much coincidence, apparently.

Apparently.

“So, wow, we really gotta fix this,” Charcoal rambled. “If we don’t, they could… starve next year. Yeah.” She rubbed her stomach. “Bad ley line means bad plants.”

“Consider it your motivation,” said Code.

The river found its way next to the street and meandered back and forth as they walked. Lamps were less frequent; Amanita lit her horn to provide them some extra light. Further ahead, just off the road and near the edge of the river, more lights clustered together, some shining everywhere, some focused in beams. Soon, Amanita heard the unmistakable whack whack whack of wood being chopped.

“What dae y’think?” a stallion said. “Ought we dae some grubbin’?”

“Nah.” The mare’s voice was panted, like she was keeping herself from breathing hard. “We’ll get ’em-” Whack. “-on the morrow.” Whack. “We still need-” Whack. “-tae get these logs-” Whack. “-up the skid road-” Whack. “-and I ain’t doin’ it while we’re all done fer.”

“Alright. Thankee.”

The darkness sharpened into about a dozen and a half equine silhouettes crowded around fallen trees and stumps, chopping, cutting, sawing, whatever it took to make those logs easier to manage. The trees, both standing and downed, were bigger than most other trees Amanita had seen, although nowhere near the mass of the Great Ash. Code called out, “Hello, there!”

Almost immediately, the axes stopped chopping as all the ponies looked their way. Most of them were earth ponies, but Amanita caught the wings of pegasi, the eyeflash of chiropteri, or the horns of unicorns from a few of them. The cold radiating from the crowd was unconnected to the snow. About two seconds before the silence shifted from tense to awkward, an earth pony with an ax draped across her back stepped forward. “Keep on a-workin’, woodhicks!” she hollered. She was the same mare who’d been speaking before. “Them bein’ new ain’t nae reason fer you'uns tae footercooter!”

As the lumberjacks hesitantly resumed their work, the mare leaned against the nearest fallen tree, one with a trunk almost as thick as she was tall. It was hard to say whether she was large for her small size or small for her large size; she was well-muscled and had disproportionately large hooves, at any rate. She’d been working so hard that her furs were actually slightly open so she could cool off. Her coat was a shining amber, her flowing mane bandsaw gray. “So,” she said, her voice as flat as a frozen-over pond, “what brings you'uns here?”

Code cleared her throat. “You may have heard that there’s a ley line in the region that went bad for some reason. We’re the ritualist team sent to heal it.” She pointed at each team member in turn. “Restricted Code. Amanita. Charcoal.”

Amanita almost raised a hoof to wave. But that was dorky; she didn’t want to look dorky, did she? Or would it seem endearing? Did it matter? They might only be here a week and she didn’t think she’d be talking to the townsponies that much. But if she was wrong and they seemed aloof-

The mare looked at Code for a long moment before saying, “I heard.” She clapped a leg across her chest. “Crosscut. I’m the teamster fer these loggers, the finest ponies in Tratonmane.”

“Don’t let the militia hear you say that,” said Amanita. The joke sounded forced the second it escaped her control.

Yet Crosscut laughed anyway, although the laugh was bitter. “They hold wi’ that view! They ain’t a-workin’ on the edge o’ Midwich every day.” She fixed Amanita with a glare that wasn’t exactly enraged but so disapproving that Amanita still took a step back. “If ye kenned a single cusséd thing about our valley, ye’d ken we’re less’n twenty feet frae the nastiest wood in all Equestria.”

Amanita took another look at Midwich Forest and, while the darkness might’ve played a part, thought that assessment had a pretty good chance of being accurate. Code, however, seemed unfazed. “Forests do have a habit of being nasty places,” she said blandly. It wasn’t a refutation of Crosscut’s words, but it wasn’t not a refutation, either. “The Everfree, for example. Between the strange magic running through it and the monsters living in it, the Everfree’ll kill you if you look at it funny.”

“That right?” Crosscut snorted. “Midwich ain’t a-waitin’ fer an excuse. Ferget the wolves, lowlander, the trees theirselves are what’ll get ye. This dark, this long, they’re-”

“Oh, Shine,” gasped Charcoal, clapping a hoof to her mouth. “These are all night trees?”

“And they’re encroachin’ on our town more every year. Movin’ an’ all.” Crosscut spat on the ground as Charcoal leaned back from the forest. “Let ’em come. More wood fer the kiln.”

Amanita felt like she’d missed something and was flailing as if she’d gone too far up a staircase in the dark. Coughing loudly, she said, “Um, excuse me, but, uh… what’s a night tree?”

Every woodcutter and Charcoal stared at her like she’d made the sort of mistake that put you on the cover of tabloids for the next few weeks. “It’s a tree,” Crosscut said, somehow managing to not sound too insulting by explaining the obvious. “At night.”

Amanita was absolutely sure she’d missed something, and now she was suspecting she’d missed it years ago. It was only a mild assurance that Code looked the same way. “And… that’s… important?”

“Well, yeah,” said Charcoal. “Day trees and night trees aren’t the same thing.”

A blank stare from Amanita, mulled confusion from Code, nods from the Tratonmanians.

“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you don’t notice it!” protested Charcoal. “When a branch taps your widow- window, window in the day, it’s just the wind, right? But, but, but, but when that happens in the night, suddenly it’s real scary. Even though nothing changes. Except-” She waggled a hoof Importantly at Code. “-the tree’s now a night tree, not a day tree.”

“Day trees leave houses alone,” added Crosscut. “Night trees can crowd all ’round a house they dinnae like, pound the shingles off the roof, bust in the window glass an’ the door panels… That’s the sort o’ night ye dinnae wanna head out intae. Even y’all city folk ken that.”

“It doesn’t always happen that bad,” said Charcoal. “If they’re well-tended or given enough magic, night trees are pretty much the same as day trees. They just stay-” She whipped to look at Crosscut like there was a rope through her nose. “We’re so close to a ley line you’ve got a ley tree glowing- growing in the town square. How can you have this many bad night trees?”

Crosscut just shrugged. “I dinnae ken. And my ma says it weren’t this bad when she were a filly. This forest was jes’ a forest fifty year ago.”

“And nothing happened?” Charcoal said. “It just started?” It was like every part of her body had been turned towards interest; her ears were pointed straight at Crosscut, she was leaning forward, and she was practically bouncing on her hooves.

“Sure enough, bit by bit,” said Crosscut. “Nothin’ you notice right then, Ma says, but when yer a-lookin’ back, ye can see all the signs an’ omens an’ whatnot. It’s-”

One of the pegasi tapped Crosscut on the back. “Hate tae butt in, but can ye borrow me some strength? Ax got stuck.” She wrapped her hooves around the ax in question and gave it a hard yank to demonstrate. It didn’t budge.

Crosscut tapped the ground with a hoof, flicking towards the pegasus, and Amanita felt a strange buzz in the ground. Next to her, Code’s eyes snapped wide open and she started massaging the dirt with her hooves. The pegasus blinked like she’d been flicked on the ear, flexed her wings, and casually yanked the ax out with a fraction of the effort that hadn’t made it twitch before. “Thankee,” she said, and went right back to chopping.

The buzzing stopped; Crosscut didn’t seem to have noticed. “It was little thing after little thing,” she said. “Took more’n-”

“What was that?” asked Code.

Crosscut blinked. “What was what?”

“That.” Code pointed at the lumberjack. “She couldn’t pull the ax out, so you… let her borrow your strength?”

“Aye. And?”

“Earth pony strength. Magic.”

“…Aye. And?”

The look on Code’s face was one Amanita recognized well; she was anticipating a paradigm shift. “…How?”

“By… lettin’ her… use it?”

Code dropped onto her haunches and rubbed the bridge of her muzzle as her mouth worked soundlessly in what was probably a mantra of self-control. Then she calmly took a breath, calmly stood up, calmly adjusted her glasses, and calmly shrieked, “You can give your magic to other ponies?”

“Dear land, how’s that a surprise? It’s jes’ magic, ain’t it? I shape it, she uses it.”

And Amanita’s mind took off so fast it’d probably be rainbooming if it were physical.

Magic was magic. That was fact. Any ritual could be worked by a pony of any tribe; the magic was molded by the acts and the symbolism and the paraphernalia of the ritual before the pony picked it up. This had been proven time and again, and was now such a basic fundamental part of ritualism that most ritual students were already taking it for granted before their first year.

But then, who said the magic had to be shaped by the ritual?

Each of the pony tribes controlled magic and cast their spells in their own way. There was absolutely nothing saying that the pony who controlled the magic and the pony who cast the spell had to be the same pony, or even the same tribe; everypony just assumed there was. But the magic wrought by a ritual could technically be done by any unicorn of sufficient power, since they shaped the magic directly. On a fundamental level, there wasn’t much difference between “ritual” and “unicorn” as a source of prebuilt magic. And from there, just the very notion of ponies mixing magic sent ideas spinning through Amanita’s mind, threatening to block out everything else.

She immediately took the deepest breath she could, forcing herself to feel the cold air stab its way down her throat all the way to her lungs. That was for later. They’d just opened up a new field of study, but now, they needed to work on the ley line.

“…because of liminality,” muttered Code as she sketched metaphysics diagrams in the snow. “But alicorns can use all three, so why not other tribes?… If tribal differences are mostly biological-”

“Why’re you'uns a-lookin’ that way?” Crosscut asked, looking back and forth between Amanita and Code like she couldn’t decide which disaster to watch. “It’s jes’ borrowin’.”

“-then perhaps-” Code blinked, forced out a cough, and adjusted her glasses. “This… borrowing,” she said. “It’s… unknown in Equestria.”

“Unkno-” Crosscut whipped around and yelled to the lumberjacks, “Ay! Woodhicks! The Crown dinnae ken borrowin’!” The work didn’t let up, but laughter rippled through the group. Amanita felt her cheeks grow warm.

But either Code’s red coat was hiding her own reaction or (more likely) she was just unflappable. “Regrettably, we don’t,” she confirmed. “Forgotten dogmas in arcane study.” Her voice dropped. “By Celestia, how did we miss that…”

“An’ you'uns came here tryin’ tae help us wi’ magic?” Crosscut snorted. “Forget me, but it’s hard tae confidence you'uns if’n y’dinnae ken borrowin’.”

“Good thing we’re not here to borrow magic, then,” said Code. She ate some more dirt.

Crosscut didn’t look particularly reassured.

“Is that working?” Amanita asked Code.

“It’s hard to say,” said Code. She looked down and massaged the ground beneath her hooves. “I’ve never felt a ley line quite like this before.”

“How?” Crosscut’s ears twitched back slightly, and Amanita noticed the nearby pegasus pivoting an ear towards them.

“It’s still too early to say for certain, but lines are rarely this… focused,” said Code. She closed her eyes, slowly swaying back and forth; Amanita felt magic thrum around her. “You can see it from how defined the valley is. I think it’s contained entirely within Midwich. That’s quite unusual for healthy ley lines, let alone sour ones.”

“Worth payin’ it ary mind?” Crosscut asked.

“Not sure,” Code said. “We’re still in the preliminaries. We’ll need to do some actual readings before we can say for certain.”

“So we should follow the river.”

Amanita twitched; somehow, she’d forgotten about Charcoal. The kirin was staring off downriver into Midwich Forest, making little hmm, hah, heh grunts of thought as she rocked her head back and forth.

“Nay,” said Crosscut, almost reflexively.

“Yay,” responded Charcoal. “If you’re near a ley line, the course a river takes can tell you a lot about the line. It’s all, y’know, shaped by the energies of the line, the ebb and flow and strength and character and I’ve read several books about this, it’s really neat. It’s like a… glass through the earth into the line itself. If you really want to study ley lines, you look at two things: mountains and rivers.”

“Ye didnae listen at me when I told you'uns Midwich is dangerous, aye?” said Crosscut. “An’ now ye want that you'uns jes’…” She flicked a hoof towards the forest. “…head straight in. Belly o’ the beast an’ all.”

“Of course I listened and of course I don’t want to!” said Charcoal. “What kind of idiot do you take me for? But we’re not here to be safe. We came to take a look at the ley line. The river can help us study the ley line. That’s all there is to it. We want to help.” She glanced at the forest and scooted away from it by an inch. “Even if I really don’t want to go into the forest made entirely of night trees.”

Crosscut looked between each of the ritualists, then at Midwich Forest, in turn. “Ye’d do that?” she asked, somewhere between ashamed and surprised. “Danger an’ all?”

“Reluctantly,” said Amanita. “But yeah.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the continued thwack of axes and buzzing of saws. She shook her head and wiped her forehead down. “If’n it needs a-doin’, it needs a-doin’,” she muttered. “If it comes tae that, keep yer minds out an’ yer swords close, aye? We dinnae want ary more outsiders comin’ ’round ’ere.”

“Of course. We could use some help,” said Code. “A militia detachment, maybe, for protection. But following the river is a good idea, as long as we watch out for-”

The howl of a wolf cut through the darkness.

The lumberjacks all snapped to look at the forest; herd instinct (they called it “peer pressure”, now) made Amanita tense up. She’d heard wolves before. Didn’t mean she liked them. The echo rumbled and rolled up and down the valley, seeming to flatten out other sounds as it passed. There was something violent in that howl, ominous and threatening. And based on Tratonmane’s reaction, perhaps something worse.

Another howl. Closer.

“Leaf, git tae the hall, ring the bell, now,” Crosscut hissed. She wasn’t looking at anypony in particular, but a pegasus promptly took off for Tratonmane, wings pumping hard.

Before Amanita could ask what that was about, the lumberjacks pulled back from the forest; some brandished their axes and saws, some unsheathed swords or took up spears. They all immediately assembled into a defensive line, facing Midwich.

“You say yer ritualists.” Crosscut twirled her ax and didn’t look away from the forest. “I hope ye also ken how tae fight.”
> 5 - The Forest Will Eat You Alive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Earth pony magic being mostly focused on strength didn’t seem that impressive until you had to do what they did without magic. Code was borderline shrimpy compared to Bitterroot, yet Bitterroot was struggling with just one crate where Code had easily pulled two. Flight was nice and all, but sometimes, she really wanted to be an earth pony.

“Ye ken fer certain y’ain’t needin’ my help?” asked Whippletree.

“I’m sure,” wheezed Bitterroot as she pumped her wings and pounded snow into water until she was digging at the ground below and panted until her breath made her resemble a locomotive and the sledge budged forward another single inch.

“Right,’ said Whippletree. He glanced south, towards the station. “Then I’d best be off. Got some…”

Bitterroot stopped listening after that and continued with what she somehow managed to convince herself was pulling. After she didn’t know how long, she was able to hook her hooves around the doorframe to the Watering Cave and pull on something that wasn’t incredibly slippery. She could actually when she was inside because the air was something resembling warm. Yeah, she was going to have to work to get the crates to whatever room they were staying in.

“How do.”

Once the exertion stars left her eyes, Bitterroot took a look around the Cave’s common room. Nothing special, although the room stretched back for longer than she’d expected. Packed dirt floor, tables and chairs, she’d seen it before. A few of those chairs were occupied by ponies who were occupied with either their drinks or staring at Bitterroot. There was a stove in the center, with a roaring fire that kept the room relatively toasty and a chimney funneling smoke up and out. Across one wall, right near the door, was a bar, with oodles of barrels and a surprising amount of vegetables and a thoroughly grumpy unicorn mare who was no longer crunching numbers.

“Fine,” said Bitterroot. She gave the sledge another tug, managing to get it slightly into the room. “You?”

The unicorn glanced at Bitterroot’s crates. “Dunno. Need ’elp?”

“Only if you’re the innkeep and I wouldn’t be intruding.”

It took several moments for the unicorn to admit, “Aye.”

“Then yes.”

Bitterroot didn’t hear anything, but the unicorn’s chest moved in a way that indicated a sigh. Still, she came out from behind the bar and walked up to Bitterroot. “Cabin Still,” she grunted. “Innkeep.”

“Bitterroot,” Bitterroot replied. “Bounty hunter.”

Cabin eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then poked her head out of the door. “Ritual doodads?” she asked when she saw the sledge. “Fer the ley line?”

“Yep,” said Bitterroot. “I need help getting it up to our rooms.”

Cabin grunted again. “Log crib’d be gooder.” With a few deep breaths of exertion, she took a hold of the first crate in her magic and, with Bitterroot’s help, finegaled it into the Cave. Cabin slowly led the two of them to a door in the far corner.

“You, uh, doing alright?” Bitterroot asked. It seemed the right thing to ask.

Grunt.

“…So you are?”

Grunt.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

Grunt.

The door led to a small storage area, dark and cold and low-ceilinged but with plenty of space for the crates. Once they moved the crates in, Bitterroot started slinging their bags around her flanks. When Cabin sullenly followed suit, Bitterroot said, “Oh, no, I got this, you don’t need-”

“Showin’ which room’s yers,” grunted Cabin. (She didn’t seem to breathe normally, only grunt.) “Goin’ up aryway.”

“Alright, thanks.”

Grunt.

Only one step creaked as they went up. Bitterroot ignored it just as she ignored Cabin’s attitude. She was an outsider, it was to be expected in a town this… closed. Best to just go with the flow and act like she didn’t care. (Which she didn’t. Experience.)

The second floor didn’t have a lot of doors for rooms, but more than Bitterroot would have expected. As Cabin led her down a narrow hall, Bitterroot asked, “How come you have… these rooms? Ponies never come here, right?”

“Buildin’s old,” Cabin said, digging in a pocket for the key. “Cheaper tae keep it’n tear it all down.”

A notion hardly exclusive to Tratonmane, or even Equestria, or probably even Equus. Bitterroot nodded. “And it comes in handy in the once-in-a-lifetime moments when ponies come to visit, right?”

“Aye.” Not even the slightest quirk of a grin.

The room Cabin gave them was incredibly bare-bones, to the point that Bitterroot had stayed in more luxurious hostels — four beds with thick blankets, something that might’ve been a desk, a few chairs — but it was accommodation and it was decently warm and it had a window with an acceptable view of the Great Ash. There wasn’t even any howling from the wind. Bitterroot let her bags drop to the floor and rolled her shoulders. Maybe she’d go for a quick flight, just to stretch her wings out a little. She didn’t use them as much as some pegasi, but they could still ache.

“Key an’ spare,” Cabin suddenly said. She tossed a ring with two keys at Bitterroot. “Privy’s at the end o’ the hall.” She left without any more ceremony.

Privy, up here? Maybe it was just a garderobe. Bitterroot glanced through the door and did a double-take when she saw a full bathroom. A cramped, somewhat rundown bathroom that was about a hundred years out of date, but an actual bathroom, with a sink and mirror and flush toilet and shower. Bitterroot tried the last; the shower took a while to get warm, but they had hot water. Naturally, the first thing she did when she was back downstairs was ask Cabin, “You have plumbing?”

“Aye,” said Cabin. She didn’t look up as she continued working through her finances. “Inventor works in town.”

“Huh.” Bitterroot had known a few inventor-ish ponies, once upon a time. Interesting people, although they weren’t the mad science types. Maybe she’d find out who and talk with them a little. Maybe she’d become the hero of the town before she left. Ah, well. She turned to step away from the desk, only to quickly step back. “Say, uh, don’t I owe you anything? Money, I mean, to pay for the room.”

“Nay. Crown Housin’ Act o’ 529,” said Cabin gruffly. Now, even her ears were angled back.

“Ah, right,” said Bitterroot, pretending that meant something rather than being one of a stupidly huge number of old laws she’d never needed to learn. She’d ask Code about it later. “Thanks.”

An even surlier grunt than usual. Somehow.

The other ponies were giving her looks bordering on dirty and it made her coat crawl, so Bitterroot headed outside. At least she’d get less dirty looks out there. Yeah, she definitely wouldn’t want to visit here. It was gloomy, sure, but that just made it interesting. It was the ponies that killed the vibe. In these sorts of towns, everything settled into a sort of comfortable status quo, and foreigners like herself disrupted that status quo. A status so quo, in fact, that ponies in other foreigner-disliking towns thought them weird, if Waypoint was anything to go by. Even absent any other factors, it wasn’t that surprising that Tratonmane’s dislike of them was nearly palpable. At the moment, Bitterroot wanted nothing more than to wing it southeast.

Which, of course, meant that everyone else probably wanted to leave, too. Amanita included. And what sort of moral support would Bitterroot be if she left the moment the going got tough? The sort that would be remembered forever, the same way crystal ponies remembered Sombra or Celestia remembered Nightmare Moon. No, she’d be staying. Maybe she could get friendly with the locals, or at least to a level less hostile than “please die in a fire”. She knew a few methods for that.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, and Bitterroot looked up at the eastern wall of Midwich. She’d never seen anything quite like it, something that bright while everything around it was so dim. The shadow of the western peaks had visibly crept upwards a little since their arrival, enough so that Bitterroot wondered if she could see it move if she sat and watched.

A light on the tip of a unicorn’s horn bobbed towards her across the street. Unicorns seemed to have an advantage when it came to visibility in a place like this, which made it surprising that there were so few. (Although the prevalence of chiropteri wasn’t surprising.) As the unicorn approached, he resolved into Tallbush. “Hidy,” he said, nodding at her.

“Hidy,” said Bitterroot. The word rolled off the tongue nicely.

“Arypony else in yer herd around?”

“Not at the moment. They headed down towards the forest.” Bitterroot pointed. It was a bit strange, thinking of north as “down”, but she’d adjust.

Tallbush’s ear twitched. “Right, right,” he muttered. He glanced towards the forest for a moment. “So, eh, y’ain’t with ’em? A-workin’ fer the Crown, I mean,” he added quickly.

“Not officially, no. Like I said, just with a friend.”

“Mmhmm.  What, what dae ye ken about ’em?”

Bitterroot blinked. Some interest in the people working to fix the ley line was expected, but Tallbush was sounding inquisitive even for that. Almost… nervous, like he needed to know the answer. She wasn’t sure he noticed his tone himself, so she kept her frown on the inside. “Mostly, I just know Amanita. The unicorn,” she said. “She’s a… junior ritualist. She-”

“I recomember o’ that frae the knock-down- The introduction.” Tallbush’s voice was fast and he didn’t seem to realize he was pawing at the ground. “What manner o’ rituals?”

“Er-” Bitterroot flinched backward and her tail twitched. “Just- kinda- in general, I guess. She needs to be able to do… a lot of different things. She’s here to learn.”

“And the others? Restricted Code an’… Charcoal.”

“Nothing you wouldn’t know from what Code told you earlier. I barely know them. You’d be better off asking them.”

“Eh… Dinnae wish tae go near the forest. ’Tis right savagerous.”

Bitterroot didn’t know the exact meaning of the word, but she got the gist. How could she not, when it sounded like that? “When they come back up, then.”

“If’n I got the time. It’s… We’ll see.”

Bitterroot just shrugged. Schedules were more rigid in Canterlot than out in the country, but they were often more full out in the country. It was entirely possible that he wouldn’t be free for Celestia knew how long. She’d see.

She looked south, up the hills Tratonmane seemed to spill down. Even in the lamplight, you could sort of make out where space began to get tighter in the town’s history based on the orientation of the buildings. There were places where the outlines of the buildings were more naturalistically placed, probably following the contours of the land, but as you went out from them, buildings and roads seemed to snap into place along a grid to make more efficient use of the space they had. If the buildings were lucky, they had some extra space around them (maybe fenced off) to keep the snapping from looking too abrupt or out-of-place. How many of those older buildings, once placed for beauty and now taking up space, were ones that wouldn’t be rebuilt along more modern lines because Tratonmane liked them too much to knock them down? How many such buildings had been knocked down anyway? There was a history of the town sitting there for all to see in its street layout alone.

Which… Hmm. “You wouldn’t happen to have any sort of… history of the town, would you?” Bitterroot said casually. “Specifically of the ley lines. That’d be nice.”

“Aye, got ’em in the town hall,” Tallbush said. “Farmers’ records.”

“Really?” Bitterroot quickly stood up straight and Tallbush twitched. “That’d be great! Can you show me?”

Tallbush blinked, chewed his lip for a moment. A surprisingly long moment. Three seconds before Bitterroot was about to speak, he said, “Sure. Town library.” He clicked his tongue, nodded in another direction, and crunched off through the dark snow, Bitterroot following him.

Their destination was right across the square from the Watering Cave, on the other side of the Ash. It was an unadorned building with a tall roof and a crosshaired window right above the door. Many of the other windows, though, were tightly boarded up from top to bottom. It was also clearly one of the older buildings in Tratonmane, maybe the oldest. That might explain the extra space on each side compared to other buildings, including a snow-covered graveyard; it’d been built when space wasn’t quite at such a premium. The building was topped off by a bell tower, four or five stories tall.

“As declared, Tratonmane’s town hall,” Tallbush said, throwing open the door. “Dinnae mind the damage; powerful bad storm recently. Broke all the glass in the place, if’n ye can believe that!”

Bitterroot stepped inside, stomping grime and snow off from her coat in the mudroom; the air was warmish, at least. The peaked, high-ceilinged room before her stretched for a surprisingly long ways, filled with row after row of benches and leading to an open space for an off-center lectern at the back. Still-glowing oil lamps hung on the walls, casting shadows every which way but providing enough light to see by. The windows on either side had been boarded up on the inside as well as the outside, apparently victims of the storm. “Lotta space,” Bitterroot commented. “You could probably fit the whole town in here.”

“Well-” Tallbush coughed. “We’d hardly be a-holdin’ our assemblies out in the snow, aye? Built more’n we really had need of.”

Better too much space than not enough space. Bitterroot nodded.

Tallbush pointed towards a door in one of the back corners. “Got a library back thataways,” he said as he led her up the center aisle. “Prolly ain’t what yer used tae, but got a lavish o’ hist’ry on ley lines in-”

He froze, head high, ears pricking up, one of his rear legs nervously twitching at the ground. Bitterroot held her breath and listened. She could barely make out the fading echoes of a wolf’s distant howl. But it was so far away, it couldn’t possibly be-

Another howl, slightly closer, still far. Bitterroot was ready to ignore it when Tallbush turned right around and walked up to her. “Gotta hike ’em,” he said quickly. He didn’t sound particularly worried, but he did sound anxious. Whatever this situation was, he’d been through it plenty of times before, but he hadn’t stopped taking it seriously.

“Why?” asked Bitterroot. “The wolves?”

“Lissen, it ain’t-”

BONG.

The sudden ringing of the bell, so loud and so close, sent Bitterroot’s teeth rattling, all the way down to their roots. The entire building shook with the force of the bell’s clangs, to the point that dust was swirling down from the ceiling.

Before she could say anything, Tallbush had grabbed her tail in his magic and was awkwardly dragging her along. Most of what he said next was cut off by another BONG, but Bitterroot picked up, “-ain’t safe tae be out-” BONG.

She still didn’t know what was up, but it was probably best to follow somepony who knew what they were talking about. She pulled her tail from his magic and trotted after him. “What’s going on? Are the wolves dangerous?”

Tallbush snorted. “Worser’n that. ’Tis like they hate us.”

In Tratonmane, Bitterroot heard yelling, the rumble of hooves, and the high-pitched chirps of echolocation. Ponies were flowing in from all over, heading towards a slope behind the Watering Cave. Unicorns had their horns lit and non-unicorns were holding lanterns high, waving others on. It was quick, but it was surprisingly orderly, with little panic. Like they’d drilled for it.

“Happens e’ery moon ’r so,” continued Tallbush, falling into line at the tail end. “Them wolves, they try tae get intae Tratonmane an’ take our ponies away. Cannae say why. Jes’ went meaner’n striped snakes afore I’s born. Got tae be ready.”

Before he was born. In Bitterroot’s inexperienced mind, this was the sort of thing that would be easily explained by the ley line, but that option was already shut. Probably. She’d keep it in mind, even though the people whose job it actually was to manage this almost certainly already knew.

With the crowd still moving, they rounded a corner of the Cave. Before them, Bitterroot saw a yawning hole in the hill, thick doors standing open. It looked like nothing more than a bunker. Ponies were quickly filing in, and soon Bitterroot was stumbling down the staircase. It wasn’t long, maybe half a story, but she had to do some awkward wing-flails to keep from tumbling onto the ponies below. The room beyond was as basic as could be: walls, floor, ceiling, support columns, benches, dim lamps, two or three doorways. It wasn’t large, either, maybe half the size of the room at the town hall, and enough ponies were in it that it felt packed. Each and every hard stone surface reflected sound around, mixing it all into a sonic slurry of hoofsteps, under-the-breath mutters, and echolocation. But just like the entry had been painless, the slurry was unworried.

Behind her, a last few stragglers came in and the bunker door was slammed shut. Bitterroot looked back up the stairs and saw a locking mechanism that banks would envy. “Is this overkill?” she risked asking Tallbush.

“Me pa didnae believe so,” Tallbush said flatly. “Neither did the crowd that built it. Mebbe is now. Prolly weren’t back then. Ain’t never lost a pony so long as they make it in ’ere.”

Bitterroot didn’t miss the implications of that last phrase. Tallbush seemed to notice, because he quickly said, “Why dinnae ye sit yerself down. Got things that need sayin’.” Without another word, he moved to a more central part of the room and stomped several times. “Alright, everpony, lissen up!” he said in the sudden silence.

Bitterroot listened for a few moments, but it was just a speech on assurances and “don’t worry”s. A good speech, to be fair, but she’d heard it before. She picked her way around the ponies, towards a dark corner where there wasn’t anypony. If she was going to be in here with a crowd of strangers, she could at least stay out of their way.

The second she sat down, Bitterroot was thinking. How long would the wolves be around? If it was too long, Tallbush would say something, right? Unless he had more pressing matters on his mind, like his speech. …The one that was already concluded and hadn’t sent him back over to Bitterroot. Still, Bitterroot could sit. It was like a stakeout, something she knew well as a bounty hunter, except she didn’t even need to keep her attention focused on anything, which was a plus. She’d give it what she thought was half an hour, then she’d find Tallbush and see what questions he could answer. Surely he could tell her something as simple as-

“Well. Fresh blood.”

Bitterroot twitched and spun around. A chiropterus nearly old enough to be Bitterroot’s mother was standing next to her, just there, like she’d materialized from the darkness. Her coloration — night-black mane, late-late-evening-purple coat — didn’t help. And then there were her furs (thinner than usual): black, seemingly from coal dust. She was even slightly smaller than most other ponies, her eye level about an inch below Bitterroot’s. She practically looked made to skulk. She wasn’t quite smirking at Bitterroot, her piercing eyes half-lidded.

“Hmm?” Bitterroot asked. She pretended to be not surprised, even though she’d convince nopony.

“Oh, you know,” the chiropterus replied, waving a hoof casually. “I’ve lived here for some time and we don’t get visitors much.” Her voice flowed, almost teasing. “Carnelian Orchard.”

“Bitterroot. You know the ley line? I’m with the ponies here to-”

“Of course you are,” said Orchard. “That’s the sole reason the Crown has sent ponies up in all the time I’ve been here. I’m merely curious as to why this is worthy of intervention.”

“Dunno,” Bitterroot said with a shrug. “Technically, I don’t work with them.” How many times was she going to have to say something along those lines? A lot.

“You don’t?” Orchard raised her head, which still meant she was slightly shorter than Bitterroot. “You don’t work for the Crown?”

“I guess I do if you consider bounty hunting working for it. I don’t. They’d need to salary me.”

“Huh.” Orchard smiled again. “I suppose in that case, I shouldn’t be asking you about their reasoning.” She threw a mock salute. “Take care of yourself. The princess isn’t looking after you.” She turned away and walked into the bunker.

Of course Bitterroot knew the princess wasn’t looking after her. That wasn’t even a bad thing. The last time the princess wasn’t looking after her, she’d snagged the largest bounty of her entire life and made a friend. Tratonmane didn’t seem quite so lucky, though.

Bitterroot glanced at the door. No one was moving toward it. Well, it’d open when it opened. She settled in to wait.





The last time Amanita had faced down animals in the North, she’d been chased by a rabid bear and only saved by a passing ranger who’d died in the process. (She’d brought the ranger back, but still.) She still remembered it well; the deep roars that rattled your bones and curdled your blood, the heavy thud of the bear’s weight, the dull sheen of claws that seemed far too long for their own good. Tartarus, she could still remember the rancid, sickly flat stench of the bear’s breath. She wanted to bolt back to Tratonmane and lock herself in her room until the danger was past. (Which room was her room? The one with the thickest walls, the biggest door, and the strongest lock, obviously.)

But she had a job to do. She had to look strong. She had to look professional. It was why she was here. And of all the positive and negative qualities alike she could ascribe to professionals, “runs to the hills at the first sign of trouble” wasn’t one of them.

So the skilled Canterlot necromancer shied away, on the verge of bolting, as the backwoods lumberjacks formed up into something like a defensive line. It seemed strong; Amanita didn’t know enough to say. Code had taken up a position on one of the flanks. Charcoal was rocking back and forth on her hooves, unsure of whether to be scared or interested in whatever was coming their way. Crosscut was in the center of the line, glancing up and down it and barking out warnings.

The deep boom of a bell rang out across the valley, once, twice, thrice. Its echoes were heard countless times more. It was clearly a warning, but Amanita wasn’t sure whether it was to the town or the forest. Maybe both.

Yet another howl, even closer than before. This one was joined by several others.

Then, behind her, Amanita heard the whisk of wings and a rumble of hooves. Before she could turn around, five ponies, all wearing the battered armor of a militia, galloped around or flew over her. Armed with a spear, Whippletree was leading the charge; as the other guards ran around the lumberjacks formed up between them and the forest, Whippletree landed next to Crosscut and somehow gave her a peck on the cheek without looking away from Midwich. “Hidy, dona,” he said.

“Hidy, jusem,” she said back, not looking at him. “Where’s Wythe?”

“In the southern shelter. Got ’er in meself.”

“Thankee.”

Whippletree flap-hopped over the line and strode in front of even the other militiaponies. They were a motley crew, ranging from the stereotypical strong pegasus of Whippletree to a scrawny young earth pony who probably wouldn’t have been old enough to drink in Canterlot to an old unicorn who held himself like a veteran. Their armor was all battered, but they all held themselves strong.

In the gloom, just outside the edge of the lights, twigs started snapping and leaves started rustling. The black rippled in that strange way where you can’t make out any shape in the dark but you can still see it moving. Whippletree’s ears pivoted this way and that; he kept jinking in different directions with his wings, keeping himself between the woods and everyone else, as the noise moved about.

“Excuse me.” Code had moved down the line and was talking to Crosscut. “Is this normal? For Tratonmane, I mean.”

“Wish it weren’t,” Crosscut said around her ax. “But they keep comin’ up ’ere, an’ we keep prickin’ ’em. Mebbe one day, they’ll get the hint. Animals o’ this sort only ken pain.”

“How often do they come?”

“Once ’r twice a-”

“Varnish!” Whippletree yelled, pointing with his spear. “Dinnae stray tae far afield! Yer leavin’ yer charges bare!”

Amanita glanced to look. On one of the flanks, the old unicorn was slowly inching towards Midwich, the glow of his levitated sword sending light cascading across the ground. “I’m watching!” he growled in a voice of boulders. “You don’t need to tell me-”

Two wolves burst from the darkened brush. Eyes glowing, jaws slavering, breath following them like fog, they were big, bigger than any wolf Amanita had seen before. They charged for Varnish, eerily silent, crossing the space between him and the forest in a second. Everypony reeled towards them, weapons up if they were armed.

Yet even distracted, Varnish outpaced them. As the wolves leapt, his sword whipped through the air, so fast the air crackled, and he almost casually stepped aside. One wolf hit the ground with blood already staining its pelt from a gash running the length of its entire body. The other landed on its paws but barely had time to turn before Varnish ran it through.

And as everypony was watching him, the next two wolves descended on the other flank.

They were smaller than the first two, but faster, and bowled over the nearest guard before he knew what hit him. Then they ignored him, pouncing on a vulnerable earth pony, each biting into one of his front legs. By the time Varnish had pulled his sword out, the victim was already being dragged towards the edges of Midwich Forest.

At the first sound of his screams, the guards pivoted. As the stallion began to disappear towards the river, Whippletree’s wings snapped open and he rocketed down the line. A cloud of snow was kicked up as Code in his wake.

Just before the view of the earth pony was blocked by trees, Whippletree slammed spear-first into one of the wolves. The force of the impact ripped its jaws off the pony. Whippletree flared his wings to come to a near-instant stop, letting the impaled wolf tumble away into the river.

Almost immediately after, Code impacted the other wolf, wrapping her legs around it and yanking it away with pure inertia. They rolled tail over teakettle across tree roots, but somehow Code ended up on top as she pinned the wolf to the ground by a hoof on its throat. In the space of a second, she hooked her other hoof around her sword hilt, drew it, and forced it so deep into the wolf’s chest that only the tip of the pommel was sticking out.

The instant Code’s wolf had let go, Whippletree bit down on the wounded pony’s mane and dragged him away from the forest. Several lumberjacks surged forward to help him. In the thicket, Amanita could make out several dark shapes rustling around, the occasional glinting eye. But with a few angry growls, the shapes dispersed.

“Ha!” bellowed Whippletree. “Y’ain’t gettin’ one today, mongrels!” Where once the treeline had been a line demarcating danger, now he ambled over it and into the river to rip his spear from the dead wolf. He took a few deep but quick swigs from the river, then said, “Midwich Militia, on me! We’re goin’ in an’ houndin’ ’em about in case they’re a-stickin’ ’round!”

As the militia galloped off into the forest, Amanita’s legs suddenly started shaking as her adrenaline bled out. It was all so fast, less than half a minute; she hadn’t even fully psyched herself up yet. And, of course, it wouldn’t surprise her if she had to go out and encounter more of them in the forest. Thoughts immediately started racing through her head of being separated from her group, getting lost in the woods, and winding up food for wolves or worse. Because, existence of Tratonmane aside, the North was like that; it was where animals that didn’t like pony tutelage went. The nastier ones, the more vicious ones, the ones that would probably be on wanted posters if they were ponies. Creatures up here were bloodthirsty.

But at the same time: Heh. The great necromancer and protégé of the High Ritualist, scared of a few animals.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

“Did you see that?” Charcoal muttered to Amanita. Without waiting for an answer, she gestured towards the forest. “The wolves. They flanned that. Planned that.”

“Mmhmm.” It had certainly seemed that way, but Amanita couldn’t muster the focus to think about it.

“I mean, that was really…” Charcoal made some vague whooshing sounds as she pointed at each exit location. “…timed. No more wolves than necessary. And quick, they didn’t go after that one guard… Did that guard have greaves? Maybe he did… It’d be harder for wolves to get a hold on those…”

Charcoal went on rambling. Still in the dark of Midwich, Amanita could see Code hacking at a tree root with her sword, and when she turned her ears in that direction, she could just barely make out Code’s growled invectives. She raised a hoof to walk over, but that was when Code stood up, resheathed her sword, and strode out, panting. She adjusted her glasses and said, a touch too calmly, “If we ever go into Midwich, watch the trees. They will try to catch you.”

“See? Night trees,” said Charcoal, grinning.

“I was out there just a few seconds,” Code said, “and I already felt one of the roots moving beneath me. I could make out enough of its intent in my magic that a preemptive thwacking seemed… expedient. I might’ve let my spite get the better of me, though.” She pulled out her sword again and examined the blade in Amanita’s hornlight. It was still in decent shape, although it was clearly chipped here and there. “Hmm… I wonder if they have enough silver for me to re-plate it…”

“How… worried should we be about… ambulatory trees?” Amanita asked. Part of her couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth; the rest of her reminded the first part that she’d brought back the dead multiple times, so what was so weird about trees moving?

“That depends on a lot of things,” said Charcoal. “Ley line, water, light, nutrients in the dirt, magic, how old they are…”

“Get us a list later, we could need it,” said Code. She stowed her sword with a twirl. “How’s the other pony holding up?”

Right. The almost-foalnapped stallion. The lumberjacks were gathered around him, but they didn’t sound panicked. Amanita wiggled her way into the ring to get a better look.

The wolves had bitten clean through the sleeves on his front legs and torn them open, almost ripping them off entirely. Gashes ran down his legs, thin but long, ragged. The blood they were leaking was dark in the horn- and lamplight. Crosscut and another pony were already over halfway done bandaging him up. He’d also picked up smaller, much less severe wounds on his face and his chest from being dragged like a toy across the rough ground. His teeth were gritted and his breathing labored, but his eyes were bright and clear. He’d more than live.

Pretty soon, Crosscut was tying off the end of the last bandage. “There… we… go.” She waved the lumberjack away and they all pulled back to give the stallion space. “ ’Bout as good as we can get it right now. Can ye walk?”

The stallion gathered his legs under him and slowly, slowly pushed up, groaning all the while. One of his front legs twitched painfully as the knees of his rear legs shook and banged together. His head heaved with the force of his breaths. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Aye.”

Crosscut gave him a long, long Look.

“Aye,” the stallion repeated. “I dinnae- need- nae help.” He turned towards Tratonmane, took a step, and let out a pained gasp, nearly collapsing forward.

Amanita blinked, then lurched forward. What was she thinking, letting this happen in front of her? “Wait!” she yelped. “Wait, I, I can help you. It’ll only-”

“Didnae- ye hear me?” grunted the stallion. “I-”

“Stop trying to be tough, you’re only hurting yourself.” Amanita scrambled in front of him and raised her head to look him in the eye. “Do you really think you can make it to Tratonmane by yourself?”

The stallion opened his mouth to answer, then shook his head, as if not saying it aloud would keep it from being true.

“Alright. So just lie down.”

The stallion winced, moaning softly, as he lowered himself back down to the ground. Amanita swallowed and began weaving her magic. It was ages since she’d cast this particular spell, but she still knew it even better than necromancy. Delicately, she prodded with her magic at the body that wanted to be, that it would heal into, and then nudged the wounds closer towards that body. At the same time, she telekinetically pulled the gashes together, like she was going to suture them. Gently, not too fast, to avoid too much scarring, she carefully knit the worst of the cuts back together. Over several minutes, the stallion’s whimpers died down to occasional gasps of pain petered out to long, deep breaths. He watched Amanita intently, like he was surprised she was doing this.

When she finished, Amanita unwound his bandages to reveal that all of the stallion’s wounds were closed. He had some scars, but those would fade in the next few days. Probably. “Do you feel okay?” she asked, stepping away.

“Eh…” The stallion flexed his legs, rolled onto his belly, stood up. He quizzically pawed at the ground. “I reckon so.”

“Good. Then you should be all set.”

“If he works, he ain’t gonna reopen ’is wounds, is he?” Crosscut asked. “I dinnae want ’im all stove up.”

“That shouldn’t happen,” said Amanita. “…I think. I’ve… never done it with this sort of physical work before, but I don’t see why that would affect anything.”

As she eyed one of the downed trees, Crosscut chewed her lip, then said to the stallion, “Ach, jes’ get yerself home. We got this.”

“Positive?” he asked. “I can-”

“Deed an’ double,” Crosscut said resolutely. “Stay safe an’ heal up. I ain’t gonna risk it.”

“Thankee,” said the stallion. He bowed to Crosscut and slow-trotted back to Tratonmane, moseying from lamplight to lamplight.

Crosscut watched him go, apparently to make sure he was moving fine, then said to the crowd, “We’re down a skidder. Arypony comin’ back an’ takin’ up ’is gear? Or are we leavin’ the tree fer the morrow?”

“All you need to do is drag the tree to Tratonmane, correct?” asked Code. “I could probably do it.”

Crosscut looked Code up and down, kneading the ground beneath her. Then she nodded. “I reckon so. Yer magic’s stout. Somepony help ’er intae some gears!”

The “gears” were a harness, hooked up to the tree to drag it down the road. It was a bit oversized on Code’s small frame and the tree it was hooked up to was just plain huge, but once she dug her hooves in and Amanita felt the ground beneath her buzzing, Code was pulling the tree up the road with the best of them. And from the way she was humming, she was enjoying herself. All of the earth ponies were dragging their own trees, with the five non-earth ponies all harnessed to a single tree and using large staves to help dig themselves in and pull the tree along. Amanita actually felt a little guilty, just plain walking.

The bell rang again, but it seemed less urgent now and it took longer to ring again. Amanita started to make out equine silhouettes in Tratonmane’s shadows, filtering out from whatever shelter they’d moved into. Just how often did the wolves attack?

Crosscut angled her path so she could get closer to Amanita as they walked. “So yer a blood doctor?”

“A what?” Amanita asked.

“A blood doctor.”

“What, like a hematologist? No.”

Crosscut stared at Amanita like she’d suddenly switched to Draconic.

“I’m- not a- doctor doctor,” Amanita said. “I just- I know some healing magic. It’s my special talent.” One she probably should’ve fostered instead of turning to necromancy.

“Ye stopped his bleedin’,” Crosscut said, nodding up the path. “That makes you’un a blood doctor. And thankee.”

“Okay, then,” said Amanita. “I just- I wasn’t sure what- that phrase meant, and- you​know​what​I’ll​shut​up​now.”

Crosscut snorted. “Are you’un always like this? Performin’ great magic an’ a-bein’ all shy ’bout it?”

Amanita blinked twice and one of her rear hooves twitched. How remarkably vague and remarkably specific at the same time. “I- suppose. Kinda. Maybe.”

“I wonder if we could capture a wolf,” Charcoal suddenly said. She was walking backwards, still watching Midwich.

Several trees, Crosscut’s among them, came to a halt as the ponies turned to stare at her. “I… beg yer pardon?” Crosscut nearly gasped.

“Wolf. Capture.” Charcoal raised her front hooves, paused, and smashed them together. “Like a clap. Trap.” She looked around and seemed shocked to be confronted with shock. “We need to study them!” she protested. “They’re animals! They’re more affected by the ley line than ponies! Or kirins!”

“The-” Crosscut grunted and started dragging her log again, her frustrations redirected from her mouth down to her legs. It was quite effective. “The wolves bein’ tetched in the head,” she grunted, “ain’t got nothin’ tae do wi’ the line.”

“Do we know that?” asked Charcoal. “Maybe the line’s been going bad for a lot longer and we just saw it right-”

“It ain’t,” Crosscut grunted. “Tratonmane’s been eatin’ food frae it since afore I’s born and nopony’s gone bad yet. The line ain’t the problem.”

“Oh,” Charcoal said. Her ears drooped as she turned forwards. “I… I was just…” Her voice and her head dropped with every word. “I was just thinking…”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Code said loudly. “Just not one that applies in this circumstance. Keep thinking. Not every idea’s going to be a good one.”

Charcoal made some affirmative sound, but she didn’t lift her head all the way back up. Almost without thinking, Amanita got close to her. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispered. “Seriously.”

“But it was a stupid idea!” Charcoal whispered back. “I should’ve remembered-”

“Hey, hey.” Amanita lightly elbowed her. “We all forget things. Just ignore it and move on.”

“Okay, but…” Charcoal sucked a breath in through her nose and raised her head up. “Okay,” she mumbled. “Okay. But, but what if I keep thinking like that? What if I can’t stop coming up with- those sorts of bad ideas?”

“I hope you don’t,” said Amanita. She looked back at Midwich. At the black branches clawing for the sky. At the forest that apparently wasn’t affected by the ley line, but was seemingly one of the most dangerous places in Equestria. At the place that held normal animals who nonetheless hated ponies. At the land that was deadly despite supposedly feeding on a clean ley line. “Because you might be right about not detecting any changes in the ley line until now. If this mission isn’t as easy as Code thinks it is, we’ll need all the ideas we can get.”
> 6 - Inns and Other Combat Arenas
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a way, Code was one of the least earth-pony earth ponies Amanita had ever known. In a tribe known for being big and bulky, she was small and slim. But size played absolutely no role in magical strength, as evidenced by the fact that Code was able to haul her mammoth log all the way to Tratonmane without pause, keeping up with the rest of the lumberjacks all the while. The grass beneath her hooves seemed to perk up out of the snow as she passed and Amanita swore the dirt was buzzing. And Code wasn’t even straining that hard, although her mouth looked like a smokestack.

Finally, the group reached a lumber mill just outside the edge of Tratonmane, between the farms and the houses. When Code unhooked her harness, she… There wasn’t another word for it. Her movements were catlike. “I should use my magic more often,” she said as she stretched. “I forgot how satisfying it can feel.”

“Start a-livin’ ’ere an’ that’ll happen most every day,” said Crosscut. “Thankee fer the help.”

“Of course.” Code threw back her head and nickered. “It’s what we’re here for.” And she ate still some more dirt.

Amanita thought she heard a snort from Crosscut, but Code was already leading them away. The snow crunched beneath their feet and their silhouettes shimmered whenever they left the lamplight. Tratonmane’s layout was simple enough that even after the one trip, Amanita knew the way back to the inn: due south, keeping the darkening but still illuminated eastern wall on her left.

…Or was it right?

No, it was left, it was on her right when she was going north. Right? Amanita hurriedly sketched out a compass rose in her mind. On her left. (Imagine getting turned around in a town this small.)

“Do you really not use your magic that often?” Charcoal said. “You’re the High Ritualist!”

“I don’t use my magic that often,” said Code. “Rituals are different magic, not mine. It’s different.”

“If using your own magic is like walking from A to B,” Amanita piped up, “using a ritual is like riding in a carriage from A to B. It’s the same result, but it feels different. And neither one is better than the other, since they do different things.”

“And sometimes you just want to walk, even though it’s harder,” Charcoal mused. She looked down and pawed briefly at the cobblestones. “Like growing a tree from scratch versus just buying and planting one.”

“That’s… not a bad analogy,” said Amanita. It didn’t make much sense to her, granted, but she could see where Charcoal was coming from: investment and your own magic weighed against convenience and rituals. And if it made sense to Charcoal, that was all that really mattered.

Bitterroot was lounging against the wall of the Watering Cave when they arrived. “Hey,” she said, pushing herself up. “I went looking for you, but it’s hard to search in the dark. Figured I’d wait here for you.”

“You don’t need to make any concessions for us,” said Code.

“Yeah, but I thought you should know that the innkeep — her name’s Cabin Still — waived the fee. Something called the, uh…” Bitterroot looked down, biting her lip and rustling her wings. “The Housing Act of, uh…”

“529?” Code asked.

“Yeah, 529.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless there’s some other reason for her to give us free room and board, yeah.”

“But why…?” Code shook her head and walked inside, her hooves falling heavily. Bitterroot shrugged at Amanita and Charcoal and followed.

Code was standing at the front desk, drumming her hoof as her ears constantly flicked and ignoring the looks the few patrons were giving her. A unicorn, probably Cabin still, was standing off to one side behind the desk, polishing a glass and ignoring Code in equal measure. Already, the atmosphere was getting wound tighter, bit by bit. Amanita felt she had to be elsewhere but couldn’t bring herself to move, like she was awkwardly sitting in on two friends shouting at each other but one of them was blocking the only door out.

“Our… beds’re upstairs,” Bitterroot said quietly to Amanita and Charcoal. She was moving slowly, like Code and Cabin’s standoff had hypnotized her. “They’re… I don’t think they’re that bad, but-”

“You ought to know,” Code said loudly, “that I was once involved in a ritual that lasted for nearly thirty-seven hours. No eating. No drinking. No sleep. No rest. No breaks of any sort. So if you think you can ignore me until I go away for whatever reason, you are sorely mistaken.”

Cabin heaved with a silent sigh and stomped up to Code, saying nothing.

“I heard you’re giving us the rooms for free,” said Code.

The grunt Cabin let out sounded something like an, “Aye.”

“I’d like to pay for them.”

Cabin raised her head, tilted it. “ ’Tis the duty o’-”

“I don’t care.” Code dug into a pocket and dropped six coins on the desk — high-value, based on their size. “I’d like to pay for them.”

“Ye dinnae have tae. Yer givin' a service.”

“And so are you. I’d like to pay for them.”

“It’s money!” said Charcoal. “Why are you saying no to money? Is this some weird pony thing?” She glanced sidelong at Amanita and whispered, “Is it?” Amanita shook her head.

“I dinnae need paid nor pitied,” snapped Cabin, not even glancing at Charcoal. “Act says I’m a-housin’ ye, so I’m a-housin’ ye.” Her eyes were boring into Code like drills.

Code’s eyes hammered Cabin right back. “Pity’s got nothing to do with it. Your money supports me through taxes. It’s only fair that my money supports you through paying your fees.”

Cabin grinned. “What if’n we’re real good at evadin’ taxes ’cause we’re so isolated?”

Code grinned back. “Then that’s the Royal Revenue Service’s problem, not mine. This money here’s my problem, not yours. But if you want to go by the old ways…” Still keeping her eyes locked on Cabin, she reached out a leg, as if to swipe the bits back into her purse.

For a moment, Amanita thought Code would actually go through with it. Then: “Well, money’s money,” said Cabin. She levitated the coins away and began rooting through the cashbox.

“Stick it all on our tab,” said Code. “Everything we buy, take from that. If we run out of money, let me know.” She moved to take a step away, only to turn back. “Wait. You… do know that the Act was repealed in 891, right?”

“…’Twas?” Cabin asked with a blink.

“Indeed. There was a monster outbreak out west, near… Snoweave. Small town, easily overrun. Celestia sent a Guard detachment there to take care of it, but since there were more guardsponies than civilians in the town, all being supported without compensation, the economy was devastated. Once she heard, Celestia promptly struck down the Act and paid back Snoweave’s expenses twice over.”

“…Nay. Didnae ken that.”

But as Cabin looked in the cashbox, at the money she was owed, Amanita noticed her jaw clench.

“It was a stupid law, anyway,” said Code. “Quite easy to abuse.”

Cabin slammed the cashbox shut and made some vaguely affirmative grunt. Code didn’t seem to notice. “Beds’re upstairs,” Cabin said. “Pegasus can show ye.” A long pause as if she were struggling to speak. “Lemme ken if’n you’uns need somethin’.”

“Mmhmm.”

After tearing her eyes away from Cabin, Bitterroot led them upstairs. “The rooms are… Well, they’re basic, but they’re not too bad, actually. Warm enough and I didn’t feel any drafts. Haven’t had a chance to try the bed yet, though. Oh, and there’s a bathroom. An actual bathroom, with plumbing and everything.”

“Really?” asked Amanita. Back when she was learning under Circe, plumbing was among the things she missed the most. You always took for granted how convenient faucets were until you didn’t have access to them anymore.

“Yeah, and it even works better than some metro hotels I’ve stayed at. Oh, and Code, there’s a storage room in the back, that’s where I put our equipment…”





Getting settled in, including double-checking their equipment, took a surprisingly long time, after which they all agreed to have dinner. The food they had access to was simple, hardy. Bread, some simple fruits and vegetables like tomato and lettuce, some cheeses, and not much else, although Cabin said broth for soup was available. If they wanted anything heated up, they had to do it themselves on the central stove. Amanita preferred it that way; it let her get her food exactly how she wanted it. It was a good stove, too.

As the crew gathered to eat, more ponies started trickling into the Watering Cave, mostly to drink. It wasn’t crowded yet, but it soon would be.

Amanita chewed on her stack of foodstuffs pretending to be a sandwich and watched Charcoal, who was holding a lettuce leaf in her magic and examining it for the secrets of the universe. She turned it over, stretched it as much as she could, licked it. For some reason, Amanita couldn’t work up the courage to ask what the hay she was doing.

But eventually, Charcoal just stuffed the entire leaf into her mouth and chewed. “Thif if goo’ le’ufe,” she declared.

“Mmhmm,” said Amanita.

Charcoal swallowed. “I mean it was blown we- grown well. These ponies really know how to use the ley line.” She picked up another leaf and peered at it. “You need to know what to look for, but once you do…” She waved the leaf in Code’s face like a flag and tugged at it. You’d’ve thought she’d found a treasure that would make Daring Do jealous. “In these conditions, the leaves should not be this big. But they are!”

Code nudged the leaf away. “I’ll look at them later.”

“You should. They’re really neat.” Charcoal looked at the still-growing crowd around them, then threw back her head and yelled, “WHOEVER GREW THE LETTUCE, IT’S REALLY GREAT!”

Amanita had never seen an entire bar go silent before. It was quick, maybe for only one or two seconds, but you’d have to be comatose to miss it. For an instant, the whole world turned its attention on Charcoal. She promptly reddened, pulled her hood up as far as it could go before it bumped into her horn, and hunched over her food. “I​shouldn’t​have​said​that,” she mumbled.

“Well, you did make her day.” Bitterroot pointed off to one side, at a mare with the smile of a lottery winner.

Charcoal briefly glanced in that direction and managed a small grin. “Good,” she whispered. She managed to raise her head a little, but she kept her hood up.

Code scraped a tomato seed from her chin with a knife and licked it down. “So, does anypony have any suggestions for our course of action tomorrow?”

Amanita took a big bite of a sandwich to block her face. She was just a ritualist, and a newbie at that. Why was she being asked? Just to be included? It felt like-

But Amanita’s train of thought was promptly derailed as Charcoal’s steamed on through. “The ley line only soured in Tratonmane recently,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d’ve felt it in the lettuce. How long can lettuce last once it’s been grown? Five, six weeks with magic? So, accounting for growing time, that’s… At least in and around Tramontane- Tratonmane, the line was good up until around seven weeks ago, I think, maximum.”

“But we didn’t even see anything wrong with the line until less than a week ago,” said Code.

“Yes, but only at that monitoring station,” said Charcoal. “And that’s, what, fifty miles north of here? Something like that. And based on the valley, the line starts there and froze- flows down that way.” She pointed at random walls on opposite sides of her that Amanita assumed were south and north respectively. (How good was her internal compass?) “So if something bad’s going down in Midwich Forest, it might not ever reach Tratonmane. Not unless there’s some weirdo trying to push it this way, and that’s the kind of magic we’d definitely notice.”

“…True,” Code said, drumming her hoof on the table, eyes distant. “But why are you even thinking about that in the first place?”

Charcoal opened her mouth, closed it again. She glanced at Amanita and said, “The wolves. Tratonmane’s so worried about them that they’d built shelters, but regular wolves don’t behave like that. If the Tratonmane militia keeps attacking them like we saw, trying to get into town for food just isn’t worth it and they’ll go someplace else. Unless a ley line was messing with their heads or something. But they started going mutts- going nuts like fifty years ago, right? Or maybe even more. If the line somehow got…” She wrapped her hooves around each other. “…twisted in Midwich, then got untwisted further down, then that untwist got either retwisted or ununtwisted… Yeah, I know there’s pretty much no chance that could happen, but not a whole lot else makes sense.”

“And there isn’t a chance it could be… some smaller changes that we’re only seeing now?” Amanita asked. Just in case.

Charcoal shook her head. “Ley lines are nature. And on things this big, nature doesn’t do subtle. It’s like… an avalanche or a tidal wave. It’s big and ponderous and it takes a long time to happen and you know it’s happening when it does.” She stuck her snout in her cup to gulp down some water. “What I really need is some kind of history of the ley line, where… I dunno.”

“I actually talked to, uh, Tallbush earlier today,” Bitterroot spoke up. “He said they’ve got records in the library.”

“Ooo, they do? Nice,” said Charcoal. “I’ll need to take a look at those.”

“I’ll pick them up,” said Bitterroot.

“You’re sure?” asked Code. “You don’t need to.”

“I like to keep busy,” said Bitterroot. “And it won’t take that long, anyway.”

“Go ahead if you want to,” Code said with a shrug. “Just remember: just like Twilight and her friends, you’re not getting paid for this.”

“Which means immortality’s just around the corner!” Bitterroot laughed. She grinned at Amanita. “Thanks to my friends.”

“Not quite yet, though,” Amanita said, not holding back her own grin.

“Also, we might need to go into Midwich Forest,” Charcoal said casually. She chewed her lettuce as everyone else stared at her.

Amanita was the first to speak up. “Already? I thought- It sounded like it was a… last-resort thing. You saw the wolves.”

“Which makes me more certain that there’s something up in the woods,” said Charcoal, fixing Amanita with an oddly intense stare. “So I say we look at it now, when we’re all still ready to go, rather than in a week when we’re tired and angry and more likely to become wolf chow. It won’t be that… that… intense or involved. We just follow the river, head in, see what twitches when we poke the magic, come back out. In and out before lunch.”

“Have you really thought this through?” asked Code. “Or is this an idea that just flung itself from your head?”

Charcoal blinked and her ears folded back, but she still said, “I’ve thought about it. And I think it needs to be done. We stepped into this village locking- looking for information on a bad ley line and what’s the first thing we see? Something that’s usually caused by a bad ley line. That’s a sign.”

“And a gut feeling, right?” Bitterroot asked. “Those are usually worth following.”

Code hmmed and hahed as she nudged a tiny little grape tomato around her plate. Then she took a breath and said, “Let’s sleep on it. What you’re saying makes sense; I just want to be sure it isn’t also hasty.”

With so little actual study done on the ley line just yet, there wasn’t much else to talk about. Conversation gave way to eating; the meal’s taste was nothing spectacular, but it sure was filling. By the time she was wiping down her plate, Amanita knew she’d want nothing more than to lie down in a few hours.

Charcoal immediately stood up. “I’m going to our room,” she said. “I’ve got some books I need to catch up on.” She swiped everyone’s empty plates, deposited them on the bar where Cabin had said to deposit them, and was up the stairs, ignoring every stare thrown her way.

“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Amanita,” Code said. “In private. Experimental.”

Necromantic, in other words. Code had been quite hooves-off while Amanita had crafted Tempus Mortis, probably because she, like Princess Twilight, was the type where one question would turn into two would turn into five until she was asking thesis-level questions. But unlike with Princess Twilight, Equestria wouldn’t patiently wait while Code asked those questions, and she wasn’t one to track down Amanita for a personal chat outside of working hours. So now, when the two of them would be sharing a room for a week (why did that sound dirty?), would be the best time to ask about some of the finer details of necromancy. Amanita nodded.

Once the two were upstairs, Amanita double-checked to be sure the hallway was empty and locked the door. Code had pulled up two chairs next to the writing desk, laid out a scroll, and was wetting a quill for writing. Once Amanita sat down, Code said, “I hope you don’t mind discussing necromancy now-”

“Of course not,” said Amanita. “It’s my job.” Maybe not for long, if she did her job too well and inadvertently taught a pony how to replace her. But she’d try to worry about that later. (She failed and worried about it now. But she tried.)

Code nodded. “Then, I was wondering: why does removing their soul render someone immortal? Liches have been rather mum on the mechanics, naturally.”

“It’s not just removing the soul, or else they’d just die,” said Amanita. “It’s… The soul is the metaphysical catalyst for change, so if you remove it properly, you prevent that change from happening.”

“Thereby keeping them from dying or aging,” Code muttered. Her quill darted across the scroll, writing nigh-illegible shorthoof.

“Basically tricking the universe into thinking that they should stay the same as they were when they first became a lich,” Amanita said, nodding. “Whenever they get damaged, that damage refuses to stick on a metaphysical level, and they fall back to their undamaged state. That’s the point of a phylactery: its static nature helps provide an… anchor for the lack of change. But you need to allow some change, for various reasons. Just not too much and not too little. Too much, and the body starts becoming emaciated while you still can’t die. Too little, and you can’t form new memories. Anterograde amnesia.”

“Heh. That’s a contrast. I haven’t seen many things sillier than a lich with memory problems…”





Bitterroot had an idea of what the others vanished off to do. But herself? Oh, she had no responsibilities whatsoever. As Amanita slipped upstairs, Bitterroot slipped over to the bar. If she wanted to feel at home in this distant village, she had some sampling to do.

Cabin gave her a cursory, obligatory look as she chose a chair at the bar. Bitterroot ignored that and asked, “So, what sorts of drinks do you have?”

Cabin just pointed at the menu board behind her. Bitterroot started reading, her disbelief increasing with every name. “Mountain dynamite… Knock-em-stiff… Tanglehoof… Forty-rod… Conversation fluid… Draconequus’s eye-water… Squirrel liquor…” And she wasn’t even halfway down the list. She looked Cabin in the eye and pointed at the menu of absurdities. “Are those supposed to be… real names?”

“Brewed right ’ere in Tratonmane.” Cabin’s face was as straight as could be. “Whiskeys.”

“All of it? What, does everypony in this valley make moonshine?”

“Aye.”

Bitterroot blinked. “Seriously?”

Cabin shrugged. “Three out o’ four families dae it. Nary a drop o’ outside liquor’s come intae Tratonmane.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“Huh.” Bitterroot was used to the idea, of course. The more isolated a town was, the more self-sufficient they were — by necessity, if nothing else. But more and more, it was like Tratonmane was the pinnacle of that ideal, where the land itself provided nearly everything the ponies needed. Liquor wasn’t the easiest to make in the North, so some towns broke down and brought theirs in from outside. Tratonmane was poo-pooing the very idea.

Her eyes roved across the board as Cabin eyed her and she couldn’t stop the names from blending together. Whiskey was appealing right then, but she knew nothing about which whiskey tasted like what. She might as well be guessing.

Which… There was an idea. Bitterroot stuck three bits on the counter. “Three shots. Your favorite, your least favorite, and one in the middle, but don’t tell me which is which. I wanna be surprised.”

“Risky,” said Cabin.

“That’s the idea.”

“Yer funeral.” Cabin snatched up the money in her magic, turned around, snatched up three shot glasses in her magic, and walked up and down the line of kegs. Bitterroot looked at the ceiling and whistled as she did so. Somehow, it didn’t sound out of place.

“Here,” said Cabin. She plonked the now-full glasses in front of Bitterroot. “Splo, high life, blockade.”

Bitterroot picked up a glass. “High life’s the best, followed by blockade, then splo, isn’t it?”

“Mebbe,” said Cabin. “Mebbe not.”

“Eh, c’mon,” said a stallion who’d sat down on one side of Bitterroot. “She got ’em, firs’ try. Let ’er ken that.” That drew a slow, seemingly reluctant nod from Cabin, and the unnamed stallion grinned at Bitterroot. “Ye’re a bold one, ain’tcha?”

“Or stupid. I could be that, too.” And Bitterroot downed the first shot.

From the way it burned, it was less a drink and more a barrel of army ants clawing at her esophagus. The sensation went straight to her sinuses and made her want to cough her nostrils out. She took deep breaths, managing to not break down as she waited for the alcohol to leave and the flavor to arrive. “Splo,” she said when neither happened. “Definitely splo.” Her voice was a bit scratchier than usual and simply saying the words finally got her coughing.

Cabin’s mouth twitched upward slightly. “Aye.”

The stallion next to her chuckled. “Ye’re a-takin’ it better’n I did.”

“That’s ’cause ye dinnae drink!” said Cabin.

“Sure, but she werenae supposed tae ken that.” The stallion winked at Bitterroot.

“Next one…” Bitterroot drank the next shot. And compared to the first one, it was downright pleasant. Partly because it had some semblance of flavor, but that flavor was also pretty solid. It was a bit bitter in parts, but spicy in others, almost lemony. An unusual taste, but a good one. But was it a good whiskey or a great whiskey? Bitterroot smacked her lips. She settled on “good”; she’d order it if it was available, but it wasn’t something she’d go out of her way to look for. “Blockade, right?” she asked Cabin.

“…Aye.” Was that some grudging respect in Cabin’s voice?

The old stallion next to her was laughing, the new group behind her were chattering, and the filled glass in front of her was calling. Ready for some high life, Bitterroot prepared to snatch up the glass-

The door to the Cave banged open; Bitterroot reflexively nudged the glass to one side so she could look in its reflection, realized what she was doing, and glanced over her shoulder out of curiosity. Whippletree was standing in the doorway, his wings at his sides, his hooves spread in aggression, his nostrils flaring as he breathed. It was such a change from his earlier character that it actually gave Bitterroot pause. Rough day? Maybe. He’d had to go into Midwich Forest, although he seemed none the worse for wear.

Well, it wasn’t her concern. She took up the glass in her hoof, raised it to her mouth-

-and spilled it all over herself as she was clouted from behind. “Ye’re in my spot,” Whippletree growled. “I like this spot.”

“Sorry,” Bitterroot said. What was with bars and Special Spots? She didn’t begrudge Whippletree his, far from it. She had her own Spots at bars back in Canterlot. But ponies were attracted to spots at places they frequented for whatever reason and staked out their claim like they were colonizing some distant land. It was everywhere — and, also like distant lands, generally not worth fighting over, not when you could just move over a little and get some new territory. “I’ll move.” She immediately hopped off the chair and made for the next one over.

But Whippletree quickly put a hoof on her shoulder and shoved her away from the chair. “Ye really think that’s it?” he snarled at her. “That you’un can jes’ walk away after that?”

“Erm… yes?” One of Bitterroot’s ears was drooping. She’d met ponies protective of their Spots before, but coming from Whippletree, it was… very, very strange. “I didn’t know. Look, there’s your spot back, I’m moving.”

But when she tried to move away again, Whippletree yanked her right back. “That ain’t civil, no siree. Ye dinnae take a pony’s seat like that.”

“Look, Whippletree, what do you want from me?” Bitterroot protested. She was halfway through the sentence when an intrusive idea worked its way into her mind. When she followed it through to the end, that result was… not great, but probably better than what it’d be otherwise, defusing the situation without too much violence. She seized it. “A fight?”

Bitterroot had been in plenty of bar fights. Even in Equestria, if you spent as much time in bars as she did, pure large-number statistics ensured you got dragged into a fight at some point. So as she spoke, she prepared. Spread your legs, lower your body. It’d be bracing and lower her center of gravity, making it harder to knock her over. Wings tight. The tension the muscles required meant it got her heart pumping. Tail down. It’d be harder to take a hold of. And look your opponent in the eye. It was a minor intimidation factor that could mean the difference.

The two ponies looked at each other. Then Whippletree’s mouth grew wide in such a manner that its corners turned upward. It was probably supposed to be a smile. “Y’ken what?” He spread his hooves and his wings tightened. “Aye.” He swung.

And Bitterroot took it full in the jaw.

Or appeared to. She’d actually started moving right before Whippletree had hit her, absorbing the worst of the blow. It’d sting a little in the morning, but it wouldn’t ache. A few quick, subtle wing twitches added to her momentum, sending her spinning theatrically, making it look worse than it was. She carefully timed her stumble to take her closer to the door and even managed to fall dramatically right between two tables. Perfect.

It was simple. If a stranger strode into town and beat up a guard, that’d be memorable, wouldn’t it? She’d immediately be pegged as a Tough Gal and ponies would be cautious around her. But if that same stranger was beaten up by a guard, that was normal. Of course the guards were tougher than her. She’d been having shots; she was probably a bit drunk. All she needed to do was get beaten up and thrown out, and she’d be considered beneath notice for a lot of things. Ponies would underestimate her, at least to some degree. It was always a tossup as to what that degree was, but it was also always there.

And if she couldn’t beat up the guard in the first place (which happened more often than not), at least she could control how badly she got beaten down. That was a lesson she’d learned quickly.

As Whippletree approached, Bitterroot wondered: punchable grin or not? It depended on the crowd. …Not. Tratonmane didn’t need another excuse to dislike her. A punchable grin would make it look like she was some smug idiot getting what she deserved. “Whoa, hey,” she said, raising her voice and a hoof, “we don’t need-”

Whippletree kicked at her; Bitterroot rolled over before it could fully hit and moaned convincingly. He bit down on her mane and hoisted her onto a table against the protests of the patrons already there. “My spot’s mine,” he growled, “an’ by the Deormont, I ain’t a-lettin’ some hollow-hooved moldwarp like you’un take it.”

“Lithen,” Bitterroot gasped, affecting a lisp to sound more broken, “I’m thorry, I’m thure we can work-”

“Quiet!” Whippletree roared in her ear.

“Whipple, what’s gotten intae ye?” asked the mare whose whiskey Bitterroot’s mane was nearly in.

“She was in my spot!” And Whippletree shoved Bitterroot roughly off the table.

She tumbled as best she could, towards the door, but her head still banged a chair a bit too hard for comfort. Best to cut it short. Holding one leg across her chest like she was having trouble breathing, Bitterroot raised a hoof. “I’m going!” she wheezed. “I’m going.” Without another word, she staggered for the door, ears back.

And because her ears were back, she heard the patter of Whippletree’s hooves a second early. She lunged forward in time to absorb the worst of the buck, but still lost control and rolled out of the Watering Cave in ways she didn’t want to. Nothing broke, but she wound up face first in the frigid powder of outside snow.

Bitterroot had thought Midwich in the day was dark. At night, they didn’t even have the glow of sunlight bouncing off the valley walls and darkness had fallen like a blanket on top of another blanket. The wind was channeled to whistle up and down through Tratonmane, sounding more like ghosts than anything Bitterroot had heard before. Even the lamps seemed withdrawn in the light they gave. Her head was spinning when she stood up and the oppressive black made it worse.

Bitterroot stood up and tried to blink away the spots from her vision. It didn’t work; the world was bendable before her as the ground slowly waved below. Something was warm on the inside of her mouth. When she probed it with her tongue, she tasted copper. (Why did everyone agree that blood tasted coppery?) Must’ve bitten the inside of her cheek. Ah, well. Still not as bad as the first time she’d faked a beatdown. That one was practically the real thing.

She took a few steps and managed to stay upright. Promising. Another few, turn. Still up. Good. She was able to walk in a small circle to keep blood flowing, and although she wavered dangerously, she didn’t fall. She kept one ear angled towards the Cave; the sounds from inside were angry ones, shouty, and not all from Whippletree. Definitely not something she wanted to be a part of.

At first she thought the high-pitched ringing she heard was tinnitus, but by the time she’d completed four laps, she realized it was rapid, constant echolocation, closer than she’d heard it before. Another lap, then she squinted into the darkness.

“Heh. Was a-wond’rin’ when ye’d notice.”

It was easy once she had the sound of a voice to track. Some of the gloom resolved into the silhouette of a pony sitting just beyond the edge of the lamplight. Beyond her quite ordinary shape, all Bitterroot could make out was that only one of her eyes was glinting.

“Eh. It’s dark and I got beat up,” Bitterroot said with a shrug. She ran a tongue across her teeth; she hadn’t thought any got knocked out, but it didn’t hurt to check. Everything was there and tight. “And that’s about the extent of my excuses.”

“I’ve heard o’ worser ’uns.” And she stepped into the light.

The chiropterus before Bitterroot was an equine sword: hard and narrow. Even her lips were thin and the eye that wasn’t patched had the dull but well-used smoothness of a whetstone. But not her wings; even folded, Bitterroot could see that her wings were wide and supple. Her coat was unpolished gray and her mane was messy and unkempt enough to look messy and unkempt when only a few inches were poking out of her hood. She had a few scars on her face, visible only by the way they were slightly darker than the rest of her coat. They were even harder to pick out from the general weathering of age; the mare must’ve been over 65. Although, standing out from the rest of her was-

“You’ve got green on you,” Bitterroot said, pointing.

“Hmm?” The mare looked down and quickly spotted the splotch of green on her chest. “Ach, I’ve been a-paintin’.” She squinted at Bitterroot. “Got banged up plumb good, did ye, lowlander?”

“Eh, I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse.” Of course she had. She’d died twice, after all. (Buuuuut it probably wasn’t a good idea to mention that just yet.)

The mare snorted. “So which shagnasty threw the hissy? Pine Bark? Bet ’twas ’er. She cannae keep…”

Hissy. Funny how some parts of language changed so much while others changed so little. “Whippletree,” Bitterroot said. “I took his spot.”

She was rolling one of her legs when she realized the silence had stretched on for too long. The mare was staring at her as if she’d made some grievous faux pas. “No, ye didnae,” the mare said.

“Yes, I did.”

“Mebbe it were somepony else. But it ain’t Whippletree,” growled the mare. “He dinnae dae that. I ken yer meant tae treat yer in-laws like poison, but he’s the nicest cusséd pony ye’ll e’er meet. He’ll hurt himself afore he hurts aryone else.”

And a few hours ago, Bitterroot probably would’ve agreed. But eh. Maybe he was just having an off night. So she shrugged. “I’m Bitterroot, by the way,” she said as a means of changing the subject.

The mare’s eye glinted, but if she noticed the diversion, she must’ve been glad for it. “Arrastra,” she said.

“And before you say anything, I’m technically not with the Crown. One of the ritualists is a friend, so I’m tagging along.” Maybe she could hone that into a reflex, be able to just say it without thinking about it.

“So I’m a-guessin’ ye cannae tell me why this be the problem that finally brought Canterlot tae interfere out ’ere?”

“Sorry, no. I just heard that the ley line could affect plants and animals in the region. I never even heard of Tratonmane a few days ago.”

Arrastra snorted and rolled her eyes. “O’ course,” she muttered. “Cent’ries wi’out ary…” Another snort. “Well, best o’ luck tae you’uns, at ary rate, even if’n ye ferget about all of’ us the second it’s done. Better’n nothin’.” Her voice was halfway between sincere and a petulant foal being forced to apologize. Without another word, Arrastra nodded to Bitterroot and strode off into the night, chirping to find her way.

A surprisingly reasonable attitude, given some of the looks Bitterroot had seen. The conversation had distracted her enough for the worst of her aches to die down, so she risked poking her head back into the Cave. Off near the bar, where she’d first run into Whippletree, a herd of ponies had assembled. There was shouting. A lot of shouting. It was hard to tell what anyone was saying, as a matter of fact. But it was a distraction. She slipped in, edged along the walls, and started up the stairs without anyone caring about her enough to stop her. One of the steps creaked and she reflexively winced, but she was the only one close enough to hear it.

The sound tapered off on the second floor, reaching a point where her next-door neighbors were sometimes louder. Amanita and Code were deep in conversation about something — probably necromancy, from the way the door had been locked and how often Bitterroot heard “death” — and Charcoal had claimed one of the beds for reading, although she kept an ear turned in Amanita’s and Code’s direction.

Bitterroot rolled her shoulders. Maybe it was the fight, maybe it was the darkness, but bed was sounding pretty good, even if she didn’t sleep just yet. She’d wake up sore, but that’d soon pass. The rest of tomorrow… She’d see.