15 - If High on a Tree
Things got weird when you left physicality. The world existed on being, on things you could move and handle and poke and get bonked on the head by. Leave that behind, and the world was incomprehensible. Places that were right next to each other in the real world could be distant in the space of ideas simply because those two places weren’t much alike. Thoughtspace changed based on how you decided you perceived it, on what culture said was good or wasn’t, on your mood. It was a maelstrom of chaos, impossible to navigate.
But, Amanita had learned, that was just what ponies thought. They were physical creatures and it took a great deal of effort to think of things in terms of vibes instead of atoms. Not vibrations; vibes. Ponies could navigate their own headspace easily enough; if you dropped out of the physical world, you just needed to remember that those thoughts were the universe’s, not yours. That was the way Amanita thought of it, at least, and it’d worked pretty well so far.
Meditation wasn’t something normally associated with necromancers — too much calm introspection, not enough guttural chanting and blood sacrifices — but Circe had said that it was an indispensable skill when starting out. Bringing back the dead went against the logical progression of life and entropy, so you needed to know how the universe worked around it, or else your first poke would result in the universe bucking you back into your body as it recoiled. The easiest way to do that? Meditation. Meditate, dissociate, enervate, animate.
Amanita hadn’t truly meditated in years, but she fell back into it like it’d been waiting for her. The tailings were wet, so no dust tickled her nostrils. She could just breathe, the bare minimum for survival. She stopped paying attention to time; time was a physical thing and therefore irrelevant. With her magic spreading and her senses pushed aside, she slipped out.
With Circe, she normally had a dead thing to examine at this point so she could feel what needed to change. Now, all she had was dirt. Dirt that Charcoal had shown her had its own life, once upon a time. And just as Amanita had once adjusted to paradigm space, she now tried adjusting to earth life.
It took work. It took unlearning certain assumptions about what “life” was. But with biological death as a starting point, Amanita began pulling her way to geological death and uncoiling it. After some transient skimming, she realized she had to scale down time. Most ponies lived less than a hundred years, but even the Sisters were younger than Midwich. On those timescales, removing and cleaning coal would take but an eyeblink. Closely followed by that was scaling down space as well. All the space that Tratonmane took up was just a fraction of Midwich. She had to rethink what “here, now” was. She’d done it when starting as a necromancer. She did it again.
Then, just as pony life had impressions to bring back, Amanita found those of earthen life, one by one. They were just different enough that she couldn’t work them, but similar enough to recognize. Blood didn’t flow, but water did. Cells didn’t grow, but crops did. Bones didn’t hold it all together, but rock did. The heart didn’t beat, but-
Something rattled and wet rubble poured over Amanita’s head. Meditative or not, she still needed to breathe, and she sat bolt upright, painfully sneezing out the sopping coal mud that had trickled into her nostrils.
“Dear land!” squawked someone. “What in the pit’s waters are ye daein’, y’afflicted moldwarp?”
Amanita tried wiping debris from her eyes. Her furs being coated in more debris meant her success was arguably negative. She managed to blink enough to focus on somepony who looked like a coal-dusted pegasus miner was standing nearby, having pushed the breaker’s refuse pipe to pour onto her pile. The miner was glaring at her like she’d done something incredibly, incredibly stupid. And to be fair…
“Sorry,” Amanita said. She sneezed again; her throat ached, but fortunately nothing had gotten into her mouth. “I should’ve-” Sneeze. “I should’ve told someone.”
At the sound of her heartlands-accented voice, one of the officials’ voices, the miner’s eyes went wide and his ears went down. “I-” he said quietly. He took a step back on shaking legs. “Ma’am, I- beg yer pardon-”
“You have my pardon,” Amanita said. “This is my fault.” She curled forward and managed to heave herself from the pile and the still-flowing tailings. Black mud clung to every exposed part of her except the very tip of her muzzle. Already, Midwich’s chill was working its way in through the damp. Super. “I shouldn’t sleep in a trash pile and then complain when someone throws trash in, right?” She grinned. How much did her teeth stand out now?
The miner’s wings flexed. His mouth narrowed in anxious uncertainty. “Ah… well…” His gaze ping-ponged between her and the pile. “Then, beg yer pardon again, but… What in-” Cough. “What were ye doin’?”
Amanita nearly shook to clean herself before deciding splattering her conversation partner with mine residue wasn’t the best idea. “Testing some of the energies,” she said. Just correct enough. “Ley lines can sometimes leave residue in the rocks and tailings, and I was just feeling it.” Was that correct? It sounded correct. “But you’re right, I should’ve told someone. Sorry.”
Blinks were the miner’s only response. Amanita couldn’t blame him.
“So what do you do with the tailings?” She waved a hoof at the pile she’d come out of. “Those obviously aren’t all the ones in the history of Tratonmane, but you’re collecting the water, so you’re not just tossing them in the river.”
The miner was silent. Maybe he was just still shocked by a pony crawling out of a tailings pile. As expected. “Or do you not know?” Amanita hedged. “I… I get it if you don’t.”
After a moment, the miner flicked an ear and, to her surprise, started talking. “I dinnae ken the presact method, but we use ’em fer rock fertilizer-”
Amanita gasped. “You’ve actually got rock fertilizer working? And you can use it to make more coal?”
“Aye. Gems, too.”
“Holy moly.” Lithogenic materials certainly existed, but were hard to come by, and darn near impossible to synthesize. She’d heard whispers about them while traveling with Circe; if you could get that working, mining (at least for stone) would be significantly easier. It’d be almost like farming: mine a vein of coal, spread some fertilizer, wait a year (or however long) to let the coal grow back, repeat. No going deeper and deeper into the earth to get out just a few more chunks. And here it was, just being casually used in the middle of frozen nowhere. “How, how does it work?” she asked, leaning forward. “Is it alchemy?” The implications were becoming avalanchous.
“I- I presume sae,” the miner said, taking a step back, “but I said I-”
“You said you don’t know, right, sorry,” Amanita said hastily. “Do you know who does know?”
“A- Nay, nay, pardon.” The miner shook his head. “An’, an’ I’ve a job that needs done-”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Amanita said. The miner nodded to her and was gone before she’d finished speaking. She barely noticed.
Rock fertilizer. Wow. Charcoal would certainly be interested in that. Amanita almost wanted to dive into the breaker and start asking how it all worked, but when she glanced up at the sky, it was getting towards evening. (Probably.) How long had she been under? Long enough to check in with Code and Charcoal.
The coal mud was beginning to crust. She gave herself a shake to get the worst of it off. Her furs were still damp, and being damp in the cold was generally a Bad Thing, but she couldn’t bring herself to worry. Perhaps she hadn’t learned as much from the tailings as she’d’ve liked, but she definitely had a route to learn more in the future. She just needed to ask first.
She rounded the breaker to head into Tratonmane proper, then glanced up the slope. She noticed Midwinter’s house. They were the Smart Ponies in Tratonmane, right? Might as well ask them.
When she knocked, the door was answered by a sooty-colored earth pony. “Hey,” said Amanita. “I’m Amanita.”
The earth pony paused before saying, “Fuligin.”
“Fuligin. Hey. Is Midwinter here? Just for a quick question. Or someone working with her.”
“Eh…” Fuligin glanced over his shoulder. “Is Carnelian alright?”
“Who?”
Carnelian was a regal-ish chiropterus, one Amanita felt like she’d seen around town. “What do you want?” she huffed. “I’m quite busy, you know.”
“Do either of you know how the rock fertilizer gets made?”
Amanita’s only answer was silence.
“Seriously?” Amanita asked. “That, that’s it? No response? Rock fertilizer. Over there?” She pointed at the breaker.
“How are you supposed to fertilize rock?” Carnelian said, incredulity dripping from every word.
“If it works, the magic in the fertilizer causes rocks in the mine to behave a certain way and… change to… You don’t know, do you?”
“No. I’ve never heard of… something like that,” huffed Carnelian.
“I cannae say I have, neither,” Fuligin said.
Bummer. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.” Amanita almost stepped away before turning back. “Also, uh, did either of you see Pyrita before she entered the mine? Arrastra said she went to talk to Midwinter, and Midwinter said she hadn’t seen Pyrita, but maybe one of you did?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t see her,” said Carnelian. “After all, I don’t keep track of every single pony that traipses by here.” She brushed off back downstairs.
Fuligin remained silent for a moment before shaking his head. “…Nay. ’Tis a while since I seen her last. I’ve been working wi’ Midwinter fer… a while, an’ that’s kept me busy.”
“Well, don’t stay too busy. Maybe you need to get out more.”
“Aye. I ken I do.” And Fuligin closed the door.
That could’ve gone better. Ah, well. Amanita hadn’t been expecting much, anyway. Back to Code and Charcoal it was. She headed northward, whistling.
Bitterroot almost felt ready to gnaw her wings off. She’d read her book, done it for hours. But it just didn’t feel right. She was wide awake, yet looking out now gave her the same darkness as when she’d started, making it feel like the middle of the night, which threw off her internal clock. And that would’ve been fine, except not one place in Midwich had a clock for her to reset by. She was left feeling listless and hyper at the same time. If she couldn’t do something soon, she’d lose her mind.
She set her book on a side table rather than chucking it across the room (it was a close thing), and kept herself from stomping as she left the inn. She immediately looked up. Thankfully, the sky was still visible, and right then, it was bluing. Approaching dusk. Fine.
Bitterroot flexed her wings and trotted in place. No way was she going back to her room. Not with this energy. That left Tratonmane. What to do in Tratonmane? …She needed to get to know the ponies who lived here. Remind herself that they were fixing the line for ponies who lived up here, not Just Because. It’d keep her centered.
A name flitted through her head: Arrastra. The old eyepatched mare she’d met that first night. Amanita and Code had helped with her sick sister Pyrita. (The name was Pyrita, right? …Yes, right.) She could use someone checking in on her, just in case. Now, which house had Amanita and Code said was Arrastra’s?
It took some knocking and a few more poking-into-houses than Bitterroot should’ve been comfortable doing, but soon one door-knocking was answered by a tired chiropterus with an eyepatch. “Aye?” Arrastra asked, somewhat gruffly.
“You’re Arrastra, right?” It was polite.
“Aye. Bitterroot?”
“Right.” Bitterroot pointed at a splotch on Arrastra’s chest. “And you’ve still got green on you.”
“Ach, I ken.” Arrastra waved a hoof dismissively and didn’t even bother looking down. “What dae ye want?”
“How’s Pyrita doing?”
Arrastra blinked. Her wings tightened, a gesture that was both familiar and not on a chiropterus. She opened her mouth, closed it. “Why’re ye pokin’ ’round?”
“I just want to check in, see how she’s doing.”
“Didnae ye say ye werenae workin’ fer the Crown?”
“I’m not. But it’d be nice to know she’s doing okay. I want to see what we’re fighting for.”
“…If’n ye wish,” said Arrastra. “C’mon.”
The inside was brightly lit, thanks to a warm fire roaring in the hearth. An old chiropterus was sitting in front of the fire, stoking it with a poker. A side table next to her had a plate with untouched food. A rough easel and painting stood in the corner. When Bitterroot and Arrastra entered, the pony raised her head and immediately fixed her eyes on Bitterroot in a way that made her spine crawl.
“Pyrita, this here’s Bitterroot,” said Arrastra, her voice significantly softer. Bitterroot raised a hoof just enough to wave.
Pyrita nodded once and went back to the fire.
“Y’ain’t touched yer vittles. Ain’t ye peckish?”
A silent head-shake. Nothing more.
Bitterroot swallowed. Maybe this was a mistake. “Is she okay?”
Arrastra sighed and collapsed into an empty chair. “I dinnae ken,” she muttered. “She’s been actin’ a touch addled since she waked up. But she still waked up when she didnae afore, an’…”
“And you don’t know if she’ll get any better from this?” guessed Bitterroot.
“Aye.”
Bitterroot glanced at Pyrita, still silent, still stoking the fire, still not eating. If she was like this all the time… “I can let the others know and we’ll figure out where to go from there,” she offered.
“Thankee,” Arrastra said dully. She groaned and ruffled her mane. “An’ thankee fer stoppin’ by. I… I…”
“Yeah.” Bitterroot dropped onto her haunches. “Not knowing if a family member’s going to get better is always tough.”
“More’n that. Pyrita- Ach, but ye dinnae want tae hear of an ole mare ramble.”
“I do if it’ll make you feel better.”
Arrastra smirked, but it looked fake. “Right helpful little bugger, ain’t ye?”
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” Bitterroot said with a shrug.
Arrastra’s grin faltered as the reference flew over her head with a whistle. She looked into the fire. “Pyrita plumb near raised me,” she said quietly. “Our parents died when we were but foals. Ye ken the wolves an’ bears?” Snort. “’Course ye do. They werenae bad sixty year ago. Not a blasted thing came out o’ the forest. ’Til they did. Packs an’ packs of ’em, all to once.”
Something pinged in Bitterroot’s memory. “The shelters weren’t built yet, were they?”
Arrastra’s voice was growing dull. “This is what got us thinkin’ about ’em. Somethin’ like ten ponies died in one night. Ma got her throat ripped out an’ Pa didnae take it sae well. I cannae recollect o’ much, but he jes’ werenae Pa nae more. An’ a few days later, he was gone.”
“What happened?”
“Dinnae ken. He-” Arrastra’s breath hitched and she wiped at her eye. “He jes’ didnae come home that night. An’ he werenae there in the morn, neither. Nor the nex’ night. An’ when he werenae home the morn after that, I locked myself in the bathroom an’ was a-cryin’ and a-rarin’ fer hours.” She didn’t look away from the fire, but Bitterroot somehow felt her turn. “I was eight.”
Brrr.
“An’ Pyrita was jes’ thirteen, but she stepped up. Heh. Tougher’n nails an’ right long-headed, she was. She prolly could’ve minded out fer the both o’ us even if Tratonmane hadn’t helped. Pyrita’s plumb near the reason I raised at all.”
“And you didn’t turn out half bad.”
Arrastra snorted. “She were better. She helped dig out the shelters, build up the ballista towers, an’ more. One o’ the best, most rimptious messes ye’d ever ken. An’ now she’s…” She gestured vaguely at Pyrita.
“Yeah.”
“I’d do arythin’ fer family. But it can be hard.” With a sigh, Arrastra got out of her chair and walked over to Pyrita. “Sis, are ye certain ye dinnae wish tae eat?”
Nothing but a nod. Arrastra closed her eye and hung her head. Then, stroking one of Pyrita’s forelegs, she began singing.
“Oh, go tae sleep, oh my dear little devil
Fer yer night shall be filled wi’ yer dreams and yer revels.
Though the Midwich wind may blow, an’ it may shake,
Swathed within yer bed, nay, ye shall not wake.”
The last note hung in the air, filled with a history Bitterroot didn’t know. “It’s a nice song,” shhe said.
“’Twas beautiful when Pa sang it. Or when she sang it fer me.”
Silence. The fire crackled and popped as Pyrita stoked.
“I dinnae ken how I’m a-doin’, but thankee fer swingin’ ’round,” said Arrastra. She didn’t look at Bitterroot.
“Right,” Bitterroot said, standing up. “I’ll let the others know about-”
“Trisect.”
The word was raspy, like the speaker was about to have a coughing fit. And it hadn’t come from Arrastra, so-
Pyrita was gazing at Bitterroot with no expression, oddly stiff ears, and uncomfortably wide eyes. Bitterroot found herself shuffling back. “A-are you, uh, talking, talking to me?” she asked. Her brain was void of any other ideas.
The head-tilt Pyrita gave in response was so stiff it bordered on freakish. “You are the only trisect here, worm,” she monotoned. “Your line has already been severed twice.” She didn’t take her hoof off the poker.
Something touched the primal part of Bitterroot’s brain. Pyrita’s words wormed their way into her mind like nothing and wrenched her thoughts toward them. She opened her mouth; no words came out.
“Pyra…” With a shaking hoof, Arrastra reached out and turned Pyrita’s head towards her; Pyrita’s eyes stayed locked on Bitterroot. “Pyrita, w-what’re ye sayin’?”
“You are letting the sewists know. You are letting the sewists hear.”
“I, I dinnae ken what she’s a-sayin’,” whispered Arrastra, horrorstruck. “I, she- Pyrita, please.”
Bitterroot’s thoughts were running faster than she ever had. “Who?” she asked. “Who- Who are the sewists? What’s so bad about that? What are you talking about?”
Pyrita delicately nudged away Arrastra’s hooves; Arrastra was too shocked to stop her. “Your third eye is seeing things it oughtn’t. We’d best close it. You will be led on.”
And she whipped the poker from the fire and jammed the red-hot tip against Bitterroot’s neck.
Bitterroot shrieked and was driven back by the pressure and pain, shuffling until her back hit the edge of a table and she was bent over it. Pyrita moved with her, keeping the poker pressed against her neck, utterly expressionless all the while. “Flow,” she intoned.
Then Arrastra wrenched Pyrita off her with a mighty yank, very nearly throwing her across the floor. Almost hyperventilating, Bitterroot pushed herself up. She could barely even think; her thoughts were blotted out by the searing pain in her neck. The world seemed to be reeling around her, reorienting itself to that burn.
“Whoa, careful,” whispered Arrastra. She quickly but carefully wormed her hooves under Bitterroot’s body and moved her to the floor. “Dinnae move. Right back.” Before Bitterroot was aware Arrastra had gone outside, she was back and pressing a lump of snow to the burn. “Breathe. Jes’ breathe,” she said as she applied pressure. “It’s how ye ken ye’re alive.” Somehow, her voice was almost soothing.
Bitterroot did so. She clamped her eyes shut and breathed. The pain didn’t exactly lessen, but it became familiar. Agonized gasps through clenched teeth became labored, but measured, inhales and exhales. The cold snowmelt trickling down her neck gave her something to concentrate on.
“I beg yer pardon, a thousand times over,” gasped Arrastra. “I dinnae ken what-”
“S’alright,” Bitterroot wheezed. The vibration of her voice box behind the seared skin made even the words painful. “It happens.”
Warm, damp air washed over Bitterroot’s face as Arrastra exhaled raspily. It was probably supposed to be a laugh. “How’re you’n a-feelin’?”
How did she feel? Bitterroot actually paused for a moment to think. “It hurts- but that’s- it,” she managed to say. “I’ve- been through- a lot worse.” She’d died twice, after all.
“Alright,” whispered Arrastra. She carefully brushed some of the snow away, so tenderly it didn’t make the pain any worse. “Let’s take a gander at-”
She didn’t continue.
“What- what is it?” grunted Bitterroot. “Is it bad?” It felt bad. When Arrastra didn’t respond, Bitterroot cracked open an eye.
Arrastra had blanched. She was taking swift, unsteady breaths and her pupil had shrunk in surprise or terror.
“What’s wrong?” Bitterroot asked.
“It’s…” Arrastra blinked and shook her head. “I… No, it- Pyrita!” She whipped her head around, searching the room. But Pyrita was gone. Arrastra scrambled up the steps to the second floor, yelling. “Pyrita, where are ye?”
Wincing, Bitterroot scooped the snow from the floor and pressed it back to her neck, taking deep, measured breaths. The burning seemed to be pulsing, crawling like vines up and down her veins, biting its way across her neck. Arrastra ran back down the stairs, her eye wild; before Bitterroot could say anything, she was gone, out the door, calling out Pyrita’s name.
Just what had she seen in that burn? Bitterroot stumbled to the bathroom, to a mirror. She pulled the snow away and tried to raise her head, only to flinch back as the stretching skin made her nerves scream even louder. She wrenched her eyes shut, clenched her teeth, and took several deep breaths. In, out, in, out, in-
She flung her eyes open and forced her head up. Fighting through the agony, she took a look at her burn.
It was a crossed circle.
Bitterroot gasped in pain as she let her head fall and slapped the snow back on her burn. Or- a brand? It was… very precise. Deliberate? But the pain kept pushing out actual thoughts and focusing quickly turned into a fool’s errand. And the snow was melting, to boot.
She needed a drink.
Water was available. Bitterroot tried the faucet and cursed when water blasted out at the slightest touch. But she was able to fill a cup and get some liquid in her stomach. That done, she limped three-leggedly to the outside, scooped up another pile of snow, and applied pressure. She couldn’t see Pyrita or Arrastra. They must’ve gone into Tratonmane, maybe to-
Then Arrastra’s scream of terror echoed through the valley.
“Cut her down! Land’s sakes, cut her down!”
Amanita had reached the bottom of the slope when she heard the keening. It cut through her soul like nothing else. There was only one thing that made someone make a sound like that. Amanita was galloping before she could react, all sense of chill vanishing in an instant.
A crowd was forming in the square, clustering around the Great Ash and exchanging frightened whispers.. The few unicorns there had lit their horns, throwing an unusual amount of light around. Everyone was breathing so much that all the mist made it look like the ground was steaming beneath them. Outside the crowd, Code and Charcoal were in their own knot, whispering something Amanita couldn’t make out. She didn’t see Bitterroot
Amanita got a bit closer to the crowd. In spite of the light, she had a hard time seeing what was going on. She reared and awkwardly balanced. Something was dangling from the Ash on a rope, something large. A pony was desperately hacking at the rope with a knife; the rope snapped seconds after Amanita started looking, but she recognized the shape before it fell.
Pyrita, hanging limply from a noose.
A scant moment after the rope snapped, Amanita heard voices. Mostly Arrastra, babbling. Others she didn’t recognize from Tratonmane.
“Pyrita, Pyrita- C-come on, I’m a-beggin’ ye-”
“Arrastra-”
“Her heart ain’t beatin’. Pyrita-”
“Jes’ set her down. Lemme take a gander-”
“She weren’t up there a minute. How’d she pass already?”
“…She’s cold. That ain’t right…”
“Pyrita, ye were a-gettin’ better… Why’d ye-”
“Code, go get my ingredients,” Amanita heard herself say.
Whatever conversation there was between Code and Charcoal came to an immediate halt. Code looked at Amanita. She looked at Arrastra and Pyrita. She looked at the way Amanita was looking at them. And she got it. Blinking, she pushed her glasses up her muzzle. “Are- Amanita, are you sure about this?”
“Yes.” Amanita looked Code dead in the eyes. “We came here to help them. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t associated with the ley line.”
Code looked at Amanita.
Amanita looked at Code.
And Code nodded. “If that’s what you want. Be right back.” And she was gone into the dark.
Her heart battering her ribcage, Amanita tried stepping forward; Charcoal telekinetically grabbed her tail to keep her from moving. “You- You’re gonna dell them?” asked Charcoal in a scared voice that was somehow low and high at the same time. “About- you?” She was pawing at the ground and her tail was flicking around restlessly.
“Yes.” Amanita pulled her tail from Charcoal’s grip, but nothing more than that. “I’m the only one who can help them.”
Charcoal’s eyes darted from the crowd to Amanita and back again. “They- They’ll-” She drew a hoof across her neck.
“I don’t care.”
“A-Amanita, this is a mistake.”
“It’s my mistake to make.”
Charcoal opened her mouth. Bit her lip. Looked away. Didn’t say anything more. When she didn’t grab the tail again, Amanita stepped forward. Once she reached the outside edge of the crowd, she hollered out, “Hey! Hey, let me through! I can help!”
The Tratonmanians looked at her and quickly stepped aside. Amanita both had trouble walking forward and felt like she was being pushed. At the center, right next to the Ash, lay Pyrita’s body. She still had the frayed noose around her neck and her eyes were glassy. Arrastra was sitting next to her, hugging Crosscut and crying softly into her shoulder. “It’s alright, Ma,” Crosscut was saying, “I’m here fer ye.” But she had her own tears trickling down her muzzle.
Amanita swallowed, intensifying the pit in her stomach, and cleared her throat. “E-excuse me,” she said.
Crosscut opened her mouth, but Arrastra cut her off, glaring at Amanita through her wet eye. “What dae ye want, flatlander?” she growled, her ears back.
“I can help,” Amanita said. “I’m-”
“We dinnae need yer help,” Arrastra said, stepping forward and jabbing Amanita in the chest. “We ken what tae do fer her. What were ye plannin’? Diggin’ her grave? Preachin’ funeral fer somepony ye never kenned?” She spat on the ground between them. “Why dae ye think we have need o’ ye, ye up-headed moldwarp?”
“Because I’m a necromancer.”
What few whispers there were died down quickly as the wind whispered through the valley. After a moment, Crosscut took a step back, making little head shakes; Arrastra stared at her and opened her mouth to speak.
“I’m a necromancer,” Amanita repeated. It felt right to say that, somehow. “Yes, the rest of my team knows. I’m working officially with the Guard. And I can bring Pyrita back.”
“She’s telling the truth!” Bitterroot’s voice rang out. Snow gusted about as she hop-flew from the edge of the crowd to land at Amanita’s side. Breathlessly, she said, “She’s a necromancer and she can bring back the dead. I’ve had my throat slit and she saved me.” She pulled her neck up to expose the thick scar across her throat. “See?”
Confusion chiseled onto her face, Arrastra slowly leaned forward to inspect Bitterroot’s scar, even reaching up as if to touch it. Frantic murmurs were spreading through the crowd. Arrastra looked at Pyrita’s body again.
“Excuse me. Excuse me!” Ponies stepped aside as Code strode forward, Amanita’s saddlebags and a staff over her back. She casually slung them at Amanita’s hooves. “Everything you need,” Code said.
Crosscut cleared her throat. “S-she’s a necromancer?” she asked Code, pointing at Amanita. “A real ’un.”
“And a fine one at that,” Code said immediately. “She can bring back Pyrita.”
Arrastra and Crosscut stared at each other, rooted to the ground, a few emotions removed from utter shock; Arrastra was blinking rapidly, but she was almost smiling. “W-what dae ye require?” she asked.
“Everyone!” Code roared authoritatively. “Amanita needs room to work. Yes, it’s necromancy, but she’s safe. So if you could please-”
The rumble of the crowd stepping back actually had a slight echo. Amanita almost missed it from the way her heart was rumbling in her ears. She looked through her bag and carefully pulled out everything she needed. Then she took a breath and got to work.
Working with the Guard had meant Amanita could refine her rituals, and the more she researched, the more she realized that Circe had been working with designs that were decades old at best and kludging them together without thought until they worked. Amanita had started in the Crazy Eights as a near-complete novice in ritualism, yet after just a few months, had started refining her ritual down to make it easier. But although some of the specifics changed, the broad strokes remained the same.
She carefully moved Pyrita’s body to a flatter part of ground. The body didn’t need to be facing north, but Amanita left it that way out of habit. Chalk wouldn’t work well out here, so Amanita traced the circle in the snow with the staff. Still nine feet, three threes, still counterclockwise. She even remembered to skew it to account for the power of the ley line. And once she closed it, she could feel the hum.
She hid a grin. Whether she’d be easily replaced in the future or not, this was satisfying.
She needed fewer runes than before, so sketching them out took less time. Yet the circle’s power grew all the same. Ponies in the crowd were feeling it and shifting around, and someone was talking to someone else. Amanita didn’t look up. No distractions. The candles were utterly the same, although their light seemed too bright for the darkness. Amanita briefly worried about the wind, but when the time came to light them, the air conveniently turned oddly still. Her actions flowed, like the ritual was a well-trodden path the universe knew by memory.
Final step. Amanita still needed a toadstone for the ritual to work, but three tufts of phoenix down had been pared down to one. Handy. She sat down, laying one hoof on the stone and another on the feather. Closing her eyes, she muttered mnemonic nothings under her breath, waiting for the symbolism to open up.
She waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And-
…
…Nothing happened. It wasn’t working.
It wasn’t working.
Stress made her heart rate spike like a piston. Her breathing grew faster, shallower. This… What was wrong? What was wrong? She’d done it right. She felt the magic of the circle. She’d drawn the runes right. She’d felt the buzz of magic in the circle. WHAT WAS WRONG?
“Is it workin’?”
Amanita’s neck burned and was sore. The entire sunblasted town was looking at her. Her head was heavy. She wanted to curl into a ball. Arrastra had stepped from the crowd and her voice was just so hopeful… “I, I don’t know,” Amanita said. Cold wind scratched at her dry throat. “It’s, let me… check.” She wouldn’t find anything. But she could stall.
She looked at the circle. She could still feel it humming. Humming in the proper way. Humming in the way it did only when every other step had been properly accomplished. Amanita even probed it with her magic. It was good. It was right. With the circle complete, there were only so many things that could be wrong. She started flipping through them, discarding them.
“Amanita?” asked Arrastra. “P-please…”
The tone broke her and Amanita floundered. She needed to say something. Anything. She seized what she assumed was the truth without thinking. “It’s, it’s… There’s a…” Her voice was small. She wiped her forehead down. Was it wet from the tailings or sweat? “There’s a limit to- to who I can bring back. It’s, it needs to be done within three days or, or else it won’t work.”
“But…” Arrastra looked down at Pyrita’s still body in confusion. Her voice was still steady with tentative hope. “She died jes’ now. It ain’t even been an hour. What’re ye sayin’?”
Amanita kept talking even as the truth became the worst possible thing to say.
“Your sister died in the mine a week ago. Whatever came out, it wasn’t her.”
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Oh boy...
So, something in the valley can tell that Bitterroot's a rezzed pony and doesn't want her around. Is that why Whippleroot attacked her back then?
And now she's branded with the same symbol as the grain mother. She'd better tell Amanita and Code about that quickly. Seems like the kind of thing that can turn her into a meat puppet.
dun dun duuuuun
Pear shaped indeed
Oooh, wow. The creepiness is escalating rapidly!
Trisect... thrice cut?
Oh.........oh.........fuck.....
There is definately something very wrong in Tratonmane. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a necromancer working in the mine right now. I wonder why Pyrita was enthralled and what she was doing in the mine at all.
That exchange with Bitterroot and Pyrita was extremely well done and creepy. I'd say something generic like 'well that escalated quickly', but really, this was almost a relief to have 14 chapters of intricately ratcheting tension finally starting to resolve into something terrifying instead of suspenseful.
Count it on a fellow necromantic entity to take one look at the twice-killed bounty hunter and see right through her
Also, going back and reading the prologue has a much different feeling now, with everything we've come to understand of Tratonmane thus far.
11907246
probably that she has 3 distinct "periods" that she's lived, essentially. Died twice, so the the 3 periods are cut from each other
Okay... crazy theory time.
What if Pyrita is currently being controlled by something other than the villains? Her behaviour was alien, and she referred to Bitterroot as a worm. What if she was the Great Ash? Code had compared it to the Tree of Harmony, which was sapient.
Maybe the necromancers had killed the Great Ash, or had attempted to enthrall it. Maybe it was using Pyrita's body to get out of the mine and warn someone. Or maybe the necromancers had attempted to bind it into Pyrita's body, and it had escaped.
If it was the Great Ash, it might explain why it committed suicide by hanging Pyrita's vessel at its physical location. It wouldn't make sense for the necromancers to destroy their own creation/victim so openly and so symbolically. Whether it is truly dead now or had just relinquished control of a bound/possessed vessel remains to be seen.
Speaking of necromancers, it mentioned sewists, so there's more than one. My money's on Carnelian and Midwinter being involved. They're in charge of the water system and were very cagey about it.
And... their behaviour towards the gang has been reminiscent of Circe. Somewhat arrogant, haughty, and disdainful towards folks with 'disabilities' (Charcoal) or indifference to acquiring knowledge for power (Bitterroot). Admittedly not proof of evil, since they could just be unpleasant ponies, but still...
Fuligin might also be a part of it. He seemed quite freaked out when told that Pyrita had been to the mine, and denied knowing about it afterward.
And... I think something happened to Bitterroot when she went into the bunker after the thief. We cut away to her back outside after having found nothing, but her mind could've been tampered with, and the necromancers might be using her to scry on the gang.
That's why the Great Ash branded Bitterroot with the grain mother symbol to prevent the necromancers from using her further.
That's from Chapter 8.
'Pyrita' had mentioned a trisect to Arrastra before the gang arrived in town (if I've got the timing right), so there's someone other than Bitterroot who's also been resurrected.
Not sure what a 'walker' would be referring to, though. A thrall? Is Fuligin a thrall? He does work for Carnelian and Midwinter...
Gaah, so many clues and potential red herrings! I'm sure there are more out there, but it's 5AM and I'm too tired to search and piece them together right now.
Ah hell naw.
...Oh god...if Pyrita's strange behavior was caused by it being not really her, what does that say about the other strangeness or sudden aggression happening around town? Now all that trying to divert the group away from the mine is looking real suspicious.
Amanita keeps expecting to be replaced, yet her sheer skill into twisting Reality for her magic is probably not something so easily replicated in a long while. Even if there's other who get skilled at Necromancy, her experience is still gonna count for a lot.
Like instantly pinpointing there's corpses afoot. Nobody can identify a dead body faster than Amanita.
Just spent my morning catching up on this fascinating series, and what a ride it's been. Wonderful worldbuilding, gripping plot, fascinating characters. Good stuff. I think Core is probably my favourite. I enjoy her full embrace of being a serious professional within an inherently silly world. I'm glad that it was established that she has access to eggs here, ha!
For this current mystery, there are so many potential threads to pull on.
The way all of the recorded deaths we were shown were either wolf attacks, bear attacks, or old age/dying in one's sleep. No accidents? No illnesses? No murders? (And yet Whippletree said that his friend just disappeared... Might just be that we didn't get to see any others but. Hm.) The bear attacks are interesting to note, actually, as most of the focus has been on the wolves. It was a bear killed by a timberwolf...
The dead Ash... Can Amanita's spell be used on trees....?
Can't wait to see what happens next!
11907248
This. This exactly!
Say, I had a thought this morning, was the Grain Mother actually suppressing whatever was puppeting Pyrite?
Also maybe it's time to call Pyrite's soul back to see if she can give answers.
Functional rock fertilizer on top of sharing magic. This town is just full of unlikely miracles. Makes me wonder what they did to achieve them.
And to think, we were wondering about how long it was taking for someone to die in this story...
In any case, events are definitely going to accelerate from here, and that's assuming the townsponies actually believe Amanita. This is going to get very messy, very fast. (Though hopefully that may expedite the permission to access the mine. If there's capital-T Things in there, Tallbush may not actually have the authority to bar them from getting in.) Looking forward to seeing it unfold further.